I soon realised that walking through snowdrifts was a very dubious pleasure. So I veered towards the forest, having sensibly decided that there ought to be less snow by the trees.
I was proved right twice over. First, there were indeed no snowdrifts at the edge of the forest, and second, I found a narrow path, pretty well trodden. I simply hadn’t noticed it before in the shadow.
One of the ancients once said that roads always lead to the people who built them. And in any case, I had no other option. I set off along the path. First I walked, and then I started running to warm myself up.
‘I’ll run until I get tired,’ I decided. ‘And then I’ll enter the Twilight … to warm up.’
I just hoped I’d have enough strength for running and the Twilight.
I ran for about fifteen minutes: there was absolutely no wind, so I actually did manage to get warmer. The cutting went on and on, an unbroken stretch of silvery, glittering snow. It wasn’t me who should have been running here; it should have been some knight of old in a doublet with fur on the outside and his enchanted sword at his belt. And his faithful tame wolf running a few steps ahead …
Almost as soon as I thought about the wolf, I heard barking from somewhere on my left. Dogs. A wolf’s bark is different. And they don’t bark in winter.
I stopped and looked. There was a warm orange glow flickering through the trees: and as well as the barking I could hear voices. People’s voices.
I didn’t waste much time thinking. I walked forward until I reached the path branching off towards the camp-fire and turned onto it.
Soon two dogs came bounding towards me – a white Karelian laika with a tight coil of a tail, almost invisible against the background of the snow, and a shaggy Newfoundland terrier, as black as pitch. The laika was yelping in a voice that rang like a sleighbell and the Newfoundland was barking gruffly: ‘Booff! Booff!’
‘Petro! Is that you?’ someone asked from the camp-fire.
‘No,’ I replied regretfully. ‘It’s not Petro. But can I warm myself a while?’
To be quite honest, the first thing I wanted to do wasn’t to warm myself but to find out where I was. So I wouldn’t have to go wandering through the forest at random, but could go straight to the suburban railway.
‘Come on over here! Don’t worry about the dogs, they won’t touch you!’
And the dogs didn’t touch me. The little laika ran round me cautiously at a constant distance of about four metres, and the Newfoundland simply came skipping up to my feet, sniffed my shoes, snorted and ran back to the campfire.
There were more than ten people sitting by the fire. And hanging on a long chain, thrown over a thick horizontal branch of the nearest pine tree, there was a big pot, with something bubbling promisingly inside it. The people were sitting on two logs, I could see most of them had metal mugs in their hands and somebody was just opening a new bottle of vodka.
‘Oh, look at that!’ said a young, bearded guy who looked like a geologist as I emerged from the darkness into the light. ‘Just a thin sweater!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve got a few slight problems.’
‘Sit down!’ said someone who had come over to me. They sat me down almost forcibly and immediately thrust a mug of vodka into my hand.
‘Drink that.’
I didn’t dare disobey. It burned my throat but a few seconds later I’d already forgotten it was the middle of winter.
‘Styopa! Didn’t you have a spare jacket somewhere?’ the bearded guy asked, still giving the orders.
‘Yes,’ someone answered from the opposite log, and then ran off briskly to one side, where there were dark tents pitched in the gaps between the trees.
‘And I’ve got a hat,’ said a plump girl with plaits like a schoolgirl’s. ‘Just a moment …’
‘Been out in the cold long?’ the bearded guy asked me.
‘Not very. Only about twenty minutes. Just don’t ask how I got here.’
‘We won’t,’ he replied. ‘We’ll find a place for you to sleep, and a spare sleeping bag too. And tomorrow we’re going to Moscow. You can come with us, if you like.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’d be glad to.’
‘We’ve got a birthday here,’ Styopa explained as he came up to me, holding a bluish-green ski jacket. ‘Here, take this.’
‘Thanks a lot, guys,’ I said sincerely, thanking them mostly not for the hospitality, but for not asking any unnecessary questions.
The jacket was warm. Warmer than it looked.
‘And whose birthday is it?’ I asked.
One of the girls stopped kissing her latest bearded admirer.
‘Mine,’ she told me. ‘My name’s Tamara.’
‘Happy birthday,’ I said. It sounded a bit flat. I felt genuinely sorry that I had nothing to give her as a present, and I felt ashamed to hand her a hundred-dollar note. It would have been too much like my generous tipping at the hotel.
‘What’s your name?’ the first bearded guy asked me. ‘I’m Matvei.’
‘Vitaly.’ I shook the hand that he held out. ‘A birthday party in the forest in the middle of winter – I’ve never been to one of those before.’
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Matvei remarked philosophically.
The dogs started barking again and dashed off into the dark night.
‘Well, is it Petro this time at last?’ the birthday girl asked hopefully.
‘Is that you, Petro?’ Styopa roared in a surprisingly resonant baritone quite unlike the normal voice he used when speaking to other people.
‘Yes,’ said a voice in the forest.
‘And have you brought the champagne?’
‘Yes,’ Petro confirmed happily.
‘Hoo-ray,’ the girls all shouted together. ‘Hooray for Petro, our saviour!’
I felt stealthily under my jacket for the case that must conceal the mysterious Fáfnir’s Talon. And I thought that I could relax until morning and soak in the relaxed atmosphere of somebody else’s celebration. The people round the campfire made a point of not singling me out – they filled my mug with vodka as if I were one of them, then handed me a plate of steaming pilaff. As if the light of their fire attracted underdressed travellers out of the forest every day of the week.
It was a great pity there wasn’t a single Other among them. Not even an uninitiated one.
CHAPTER 4
SEMYON WALKED into Gesar’s office, froze for a moment just inside the door and shook his head very slightly.
‘He’s not in Moscow. Definitely not.’
‘That’s kind of stupid,’ Ignat snorted from his armchair. ‘If he’s supposed to do something with the Talon in Moscow, then what’s the point of opening a portal to somewhere outside the city?’
Gesar glanced sideways at Ignat. There was something mysterious in his glance: the first name for it that came to mind was ‘higher knowledge’.
‘Maybe not so stupid,’ he objected quietly. ‘The Dark One had no choice. Either stay in Moscow and lose the Talon, or clear out and take the Talon with him, and then try to break back in again. What’s bad about all this is that the Brothers managed to get the Talon to this Dark One from Ukraine, and he managed to trick us.’
Gesar sighed, closed his eyes for a moment and corrected himself:
‘No, not us, of course. It was me he tricked. Me.’
Svetlana was huddling miserably in the corner of the sofa by the window. She started sobbing again.
‘I’m sorry, Boris Ignatievich …’
So far Anton had been sitting as straight as a ramrod, but now he moved close to her and put his arm round her shoulders without speaking.
‘Don’t cry, Svetlana. It’s not your fault. If I couldn’t guess what the Dark One was going to do, then you can’t possibly be blamed for anything.’