Vasya could only laugh. She said, “If I were you, I’d delay your march to join Mamai. They are going to have a bad few days. I will see you at the battle.”

“God willing,” said Oleg Ivanovich, and bowed.

Vasya inclined her head, turned Pozhar, and then they were back on the Midnight-road.

MOTHER OF GOD, I am tired of darkness, Vasya thought. Pozhar’s sure feet made nothing of the night, the changing landscape, but there was no comfort in the surge of the mare’s running, her jutting withers and swift strides. Vasya rubbed her face, and tried to focus her mind. Her brother’s warning had shaken her. He was right. All the anchor-stones of her life had gone: home and family and sometimes it seemed her very self, lost in the fire. Even Morozko had gone, not to return until the snow fell. Now her companion in the darkness was a creature whose nature was madness given flesh. But sometimes he sounded ordinary, even sensible, and every time that happened she had to remind herself to keep up her defenses.

Now the Bear was pacing the golden mare, beast-shaped. “Men will not keep their word,” he said.

“I do not recall asking for your opinion,” she snapped.

“Better for chyerti to fight them, before they destroy us,” the Bear went on. She could hear the echo of men screaming in his low voice. “Or better yet, let the Russians and the Tatars destroy each other.”

“Dmitrii and Sergei will keep their word,” she said.

“Have you ever thought what meddling in their war will cost you?” he said. “What price Dmitrii’s promise and his admiration? I saw the look in your eyes when Dmitrii called you princess.”

“Is the prize not worth the risk?”

“That depends,” said the Bear, as they ran through Midnight. “I am not sure you know what you’re risking.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t trust his seeming-sense any more than she trusted his wickedness.

THE LAKE WAS DARK in the moonlight, rippling black, white dazzles on the crests of the waves. No long, terrifying journey on foot for her this time; Vasya found the lake swiftly, as though her blood remembered it.

She and Pozhar and the Bear burst out of the trees and found themselves beside the great stretch of moonlit water. Vasya’s breath caught in her throat and she slid down the mare’s shoulder.

The horses were grazing where she’d last seen them, near the shore. This time they didn’t run from her but stood, ghostly in the cold mist of early autumn night, raised their flawless heads and looked. Pozhar pricked her ears and called softly to her kin.

The witch’s empty house stood black and still on its tall posts, on the other side of the field. Still a grim ruin, the domovaya asleep once more, perhaps, waiting in her oven. Vasya let herself briefly imagine the house warm with firelight, with laughter, her family close, the horses—a great herd—grazing in the starlight outside.