“Since the sunlight weakened it,” Uulamets said. “Yes. And it’s doubtless not feeling well. Hope that’s the case. I have a job for you.”
“What?”
“There’ll be a cave on the riverward side of this hill. There’ll be a nest there. I want you to put something in it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pyetr said.
“Or you can do it,” Uulamets said with a particularly unpleasant grin. “Soon, I’d say, since I’m relatively sure the vodyanoi’s out of his lair at the moment, and I wouldn’t give odds he’ll stay away long.” Uulamets held up the pot in the forked stick. “This. Just throw it in. You faced down the creature once. You don’t really have to go inside. And of course your sword’s enough to protect you.”
“No,” Sasha said.
“It’s after all for his own rescue,” Uulamets said. “I’ll do it myself if I have to. Or you can. But our brave fellow so wants to prove he’s right about the sword—”
“I’m not a fool!” Pyetr said.
“Of course not. Nor a coward, are you? Shall I do it? I’m certainly not as agile, or as strong…”
Pyetr walked up and held out his hand for the stick and the pot, scowling.
“No,” Sasha said. “Pyetr, don’t.”
“It’s easy,” Pyetr said nastily. “Your wizard says it is.”
“It should be,” Uulamets said, “if one isn’t a fool.”
“Old man.” Pyetr said on a deep breath, and rocking on his feet, “I’ve a great deal more patience than you and far better breeding. Which, considering I was born in a gutter, I’ve never been able to say before.”
With which Pyetr took the pot in hand, flung the stick down, and walked off while Sasha was still standing there numb.
“Let me go!” he said to Uulamets, and felt the release as sudden as the relaxing of a fist.
He ran, then.
CHAPTER 12
PYETR HEARD the boy coming behind him as he crossed the ridge, turned around in mid-step and thought with honorable motives the old man had denied he even owned that he ought to order Sasha straight back to Uulamets.
But he thought then, too, that the boy had made a difference against the thing before, that between them, they had been able to handle it, and that if he got himself killed altogether needlessly, Sasha was in a great deal more difficulty being left to Uulamets’ keeping.
So he stood there until Sasha caught up, then walked on down the slope to the river, passing the uncomfortably warm little pot from one hand to the other.
“Why don’t you let me—” Sasha began.
“No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”
“He was trying to make you mad.”
“I am mad.”
“Please be careful.”
Decent advice, he thought. He said, “Know how to use a sword?”
“No,” Sasha said.
“Take it anyway.” He drew the whole sword belt off and passed it to Sasha as they reached the bottom of the hill, on the green, grassy margin of the river. “Point or edge, it doesn’t matter. Aim for the eyes. Nothing likes that. Take it! I don’t want it banging about my ribs. I’ve got one hand full.”
Sasha took it from him and hung it over his shoulder. “Be careful of—”
“I’m being careful, for the god’s sake.” The edge of the river was a clean one here, except where a young willow stood, and that—judging where the knoll was situated on the other side of the ridge and where the hole had been on that other side, in the pit—was the likeliest place for a den unless it was entirely underwater.
It was also the likeliest place for the snaky thing to be hiding, and when he came closer and saw there was indeed a dark space among the willow-roots, he had a very queasy feeling in his stomach.
“Well,” he said, “if I toss grandfather’s potion into the wrong hole, he’s not going to be happy. But I don’t know how I’m to tell.” He set his foot on a willow root and grasped a trailing bunch of willow strands. They were lithe and strong, leafless but budding.
“It’s alive,” Sasha said in the same instant he realized it. “The tree—”
He looked around into a pale face not Sasha’s, and yelled and scrambled back for another foothold as something whipped around his ankle.
He yelled as it jerked: he went down under the water and the yell became bubbles. Muscular flesh wrapped him about. He shoved at it and it threw more coils about him as he suddenly found himself in air again, in the dark, traveling backwards and upwards in the wet soft embrace of a Thing the shape of which seemed to be changing by the instant. He choked, spat, swore at it and kicked it in its soft body with all his might, and when it disliked that enough it spun rapidly about, carrying him upright with it. Breath cold and foul as a swamp’s bottom gusted down on his face.
“Damn you!” he cried, terrified, and struggled and kicked for all he was worth. He lost the pot he had in his hand, he hit the soft muddy floor and he skidded down the slick bank into the water.
Huge coils slipped past him like a river in spate and battered him left and right.
He came up choking and spitting, scrambling as far from touching anything as he could—heaved himself up onto the bank and put his hand on something sharp and hard, among a great number of small, sharp objects that rattled with a bony sound—at which he stopped very still, caught a mouthful of air and listened.
He moved from his awkwardly braced position. A bone rattled softly. He braced again, hearing no sound at all but his own breathing, and began to shiver, a slow quiver of one leg and an arm.
It was making no noise. It might be in the water waiting for him. It might have coiled up on the other bank of the cave. The place was full of dark, cold water, and bones; and the longer he delayed the more terrible it seemed to die there. He could see least lightening of the water in the direction he took for the river, and with a great gulp of air he let go, slipped into the water and ducked under the surface, clawing his way toward the light for all he was worth.
His fingers found something soft and oozing at that threshold—only mud, he told himself; and then something hard and odd—more bones on the bottom. The eyeholes of a skull. He shoved it away with a shudder, fighting to escape the hole and the roots.
Then something grappled with him, and he kicked and fought his way to the surface, blind and struggling against what he suddenly realized was a wet and equally frightened boy.
“God!” he yelled, grabbing a willow root and trying to hold on to Sasha at the same time, Sasha gasping and thrashing and trying to hold on to him, flailing with the sword in his other hand.
“I thought you were dead!” Sasha cried.
“Then what were you doing?” he yelled, and choked and dragged the boy as high as he could hold him, so that Sasha could get a grip on the willow.
Sasha climbed, flung the sword onto the bank and hauled himself up where he could be of some help himself, hauling at Pyetr’s coat, pulling him up where Pyetr could climb, shivering and coughing, onto the roots and the bank and as far from the water as he could pull both of them.
“Fool!” he shouted at the boy, shaking him, still himself trembling with fright.
Then it dawned on him by the boy’s white face and his lack of a coat and his having the sword that Sasha might not have fallen in. That so shocked him he sat there with his fist knotted in the boy’s wet shirt and the boy staring at him as if he expected to be murdered, and could not move, except he had to cough, and let Sasha go.
“Don’t ever do a thing like that!” he said when he could get his breath. “God, boy.”