Sasha had a last wild thought of refusing, of siding with Pyetr against the old man, but courage or foolishness failed him, even yet he had no notion which. He gathered up the bag Uulamets had packed, while Uulamets took his staff from against the wall and lifted the latch.
There was no wind. There was nothing threatening outside. “Come along,” Uulamets said, and they took their coats from the pegs and followed him.
No ghost, no wind, no breath of trouble—until the Thing from the yard scuttled out the door between Pyetr’s feet and he stifled an outcry.
“What was that?” Pyetr exclaimed, hand on his sword hilt as the Thing disappeared into the hedge.
“Nothing,” Uulamets said, motioned Pyetr to pull the door to, and led the way down the walk-up. He stopped at the bottom and asked, “Do you see anything? Do you feel anything?”
Pyetr slung his sword belt over his coat and pointed ahead into the woods. “I’d say that way,” he said. His teeth were chattering, but he started off foremost through the yard, kicked the gate open, muttering something about the cold and the dark and fools. He led them toward the riverside.
Sasha turned his head to bring the side of his eye to bear, and saw nothing of the ghost in any direction. He overtook Pyetr with a sudden downhill rush as they reached the river and the dockside, caught Pyetr’s arm and whispered, “Did she really say that? About Uulamets? Pyetr? Do you see her?”
“The old man wants a walk,” Pyetr said in a half-voice, “that’s what he’ll get.” He seemed still to be shivering, although of nights they had had, this was one of the warmest. “This is a stupid thing to do, boy.”
“Did she say that? About not trusting him?”
Uulamets was almost down the hill, chiding them for breakneck speed. There was no time for any long answer.
“What do you think?” Pyetr said. “Do you trust him?” His teeth were chattering still. “Damn, the wind’s cold.”
“There’s no wind here,” Sasha said. He felt Pyetr’s hand and it was cold and clammy. He clenched it tighter as Uulamets came up by them. He had the strongest feeling that he ought to have doubted Uulamets more, and that he ought not to have encouraged Pyetr to have come out here—that Pyetr had been on the side of common sense all along and that all his caution had done was to bring Pyetr out here tonight.
But Pyetr pulled away and started up the river, the same direction they had gone to find the ghost that first night.
“Does he know where she is?” Uulamets asked, catching Sasha’s arm.
“He says so,” Sasha said on a breath, not quite a lie, and broke away after Pyetr, quickly, because Pyetr was going faster than was safe in the thicket, along the river edge, through reeds and through a low place that they had to wade. Sasha struggled to overtake him, and Uulamets came close behind him, warning him mind his step, wait, listen to someone who knew the ground.
Pyetr climbed to dry ground and suddenly vanished into the trees and the dark over the ridge.
“Pyetr!” Sasha cried, shoved the sack at master Uulamets and ran after Pyetr in acute fear that with every moment wasted, they risked losing him. He heard master Uulamets far behind him shouting at him to wait, come back, and he paid no attention. He could see the pale gray of Pyetr’s coat at the bottom of the wooded hill, and he simply locked his arms in front of his face and charged downhill through the thicket heedless of the thorn branches. “Pyetr, wait, I’m coming!”
Pyetr seemed not to hear him. Pyetr appeared to move with woodcraft he had never had, evading thickets, never choosing a false way. By that alone Sasha guessed Pyetr had a guide who did know the ground all too well, and he tried only to stay close enough to see which way Pyetr chose. Wherever that failed, he simply took the short way, breaking through brush, scoring his hands and face, snagging his coat and tearing through by sheer force.
He wished Pyetr to slow down and use good sense. He wished the rusalka to leave Pyetr in peace. He wished himself to keep Pyetr in sight and he wished that Uulamets would find his track and so find Pyetr’s. Common sense said that was too many wishes at once, and that half of them might wish away the others, or do something terrible, but he was too frightened to think things through with any clarity. In a doubtful case, master Uulamets had counseled him, wish only good, and he did that with all the force he could muster, while he was tearing his way through the thickets. He saw Pyetr at the top of a ridge, and dived breakneck down a ravine, clawing his way up the other side in the dark, climbing with the help of roots and branches and coming muddy-handed to the crest in time to gain a little.
“Pyetr!” he cried. “I’m with you! For the god’s sake, wait for me!”
Pyetr was already going down the other side, toward the river again—in the gray dim light that Sasha realized was the breaking of the day. Sasha held his aching side and kept going, down the hill of mouldering leaves and down again, by a rill-cut path which ran down to the river.
Something was amiss here. Sasha felt it before he was aware what was so strange in that place to which Pyetr was going: the trees gave way to open ground, a knoll grown over with grass and living moss—or it seemed that way, in what little light they had, in the way the grass gave underfoot: it was some sort of demarcation Pyetr approached, following what sort of illusion Sasha did not know. He only reasoned that if this was the boundary between life and death in this woods things were surely backwards, and that whatever threat there was, was strong here. He ran, vaulted over an upthrust rock and with Pyetr in reach made no attempt at reason: he flung himself at Pyetr’s back and knocked him sprawling, caught Pyetr’s arm across his forehead as Pyetr rolled and was, the next he knew, flat on his back with Pyetr’s hands on his shoulders, both of them gasping for air.
“She’ll kill you!” Sasha gasped.
Pyetr leaned on him, catching his breath, looking about him as if he had no least idea where he had gotten to; and said then, between gasps, “Where’s the old man?”
“I don’t know! You ran off. I followed you.”
Pyetr looked the more bewildered. “You were the one who ran off,” he said, as if there was no sense in anything. He rolled aside and sat down, leaning on one hand, looking about, while Sasha sat up holding his side, feeling the discomfort of damp ground soaking cold through his breeches. He dared not move. The whole forest seemed too still, no whisper of leaves: those all were dead; no dawn sounds: those were dead, too. There was only the river rushing by the bank.
Then the slow, heavy movement of something dragged by stages over the leafy ground.
“Father Sky, what’s that?” Sasha breathed, edging closer to Pyetr, scanning all the wooded ridges that encircled this smooth-sided knoll.
Pyetr got up to one knee and began to draw his sword as quietly as possible, but at the first whisper of steel the sound stopped, and Pyetr stopped, in a hush so still not even the wind seemed to breathe.
Sasha clenched his hands and shut his eyes a moment, wishing their safety so hard it made him dizzy; and opened his eyes to a woods that looked no different. Pyetr was getting to his feet, sword still a quarter drawn. He pulled it rasping from its sheath and walked a few investigatory steps up to the summit of the knoll
—and vanished with a yell, straight into the earth.
“Pyetr!” Sasha scrambled forward and flung himself flat as he would on pond ice, crawled to the edge and looked over into the deep, shadowed pit with what might be Pyetr’s sprawled body half-buried at the bottom. He could in no wise be certain in the dim light. “Pyetr!” he called.