Prince Ivan (30 page)

He was right.

“Prince Ivan, Prince Ivan!” said the bird in a tiny, scratchy voice, “I beseech you, spare my unborn children!”

Ivan leaned his face against the rough bark of the tree-trunk, holding on as best he could with both knees and one hand. No matter that the bird could fly considerably better than he could, it would have been lacking in manners to fling her from his finger as he tumbled to the forest floor, as he most surely would have done had he not held on very tight. Despite his anticipation, it still came as a shock to be addressed by a bird other than his brothers-in-law, who were very different from the normal run of forest poultry. This one might sound like any other bird trained to talk, but it was clear that what she said wasn’t learned by rote.

“Mother Bird,” he said patiently, “I don’t know where you learnt my name and I don’t care, but I haven’t eaten in almost two days and I’m starving.”

The bird looked at him from one eye, then the other, and bobbed up and down some more. “You could survive longer without eating, Prince Ivan,” she said, “than my family could survive if you ate them!”

Ivan admitted the logic in that, but logic did little to assuage his hunger and he looked speculatively towards the nest again. The mother bird bobbed low, and flickered her wings as she would do if trying to distract a snake. Prince Ivan didn’t know if that was an insult or not, but – though he would have eaten all the eggs without a second thought had she not been there – he wasn’t yet so hungry that he would devour children with their mother shrieking in his ears at every mouthful.

“Oh, never mind,” he said irritably. “It’s all right.” And he slithered to the ground.

The bird fluttered round his ears all the way down, crying thanks and blessings on his head until Ivan was weary of her squeaky voice. Then at last she settled on his shoulder, bouncing, excited, and tickling his ear.

“You ask how I know your name, Prince Ivan?” she asked. “It’s a name well known! And for your kindness, I’ll help you when you least expect it!” There was a flurry of wings, and she was gone, back to her nest where the eggs had been cool for long enough.

Ivan stared up, scratching his head for several more reasons than leaf-mould in his hair; then he picked up his coat and swordbelt, and trudged off towards the east.

That was where he saw the wolf-cub, dozing underneath a bush. It was fat and milk-fed, plainly good to eat if one had the taste for such a dish, and the folk who dwelt beyond the White and Golden Hordes had eaten stranger things for ages past. Right now Ivan was more than willing to sample wolf, and if he could light a fire so much the better, but even raw fresh meat would be more than welcome. Ivan watched as the wolf-cub rolled over with its plump little belly to the sky, whimpered twice, twitched once, and sank into a deeper sleep. Then, as he had done so often when hunting in the forests around Khorlov, he sank out of sight in the dense undergrowth and drew his sword.

“Prince Ivan, spare my child,” said a low, growly voice that came on a gust of warm breath to tickle his ear, and a huge paw came down on the flat of his sword and pressed it to the moss. Being a young man of rapidly increasing sense where his survival was concerned, Ivan released the sword and slithered well clear of it before he made another move, and that was merely to look up. Then up some more.

Ivan knew how large the grey wolves of Mother Russia would be, but there had been an elephant in this one’s ancestry not so long ago, tusks and all. Her lolling tongue was like a scarlet carpet, and her yellow-green eyes were deep and wide enough to drown in, if her great tapered fangs gave time enough. He blinked twice, very fast, then remembered his manners.

“Good evening, Mother Wolf.” he said, and got up very slowly, leaving his sword where it lay under the wolf’s huge paw.

“And good evening to you, Prince Ivan. It would seem that you’re hungry.”

“Mother Wolf, hunger doesn’t describe it. I’m
starving
.”

“After no more than two days?” The wolf looked at him with those deep, deadly eyes, and grinned still wider until all her white teeth were on display. “Go for a week in the deeps of winter with nothing to eat save snow and ice, then tell me you’re starving. For now, Prince Ivan, your privileged, high-born and no doubt tasty insides are no more than slightly empty.”

“Ah. I understand.”

“You don’t. Pray you never will.” She turned her fanged head sideways to look at the sleeping cub, then glanced at the sword before gazing at Ivan once more. “Will you spare my cub?”

“You give me little choice,” said Ivan, growing bold again now that the threat of long fangs in his throat had gone away somewhat. The wolf twitched her ears and watched him narrowly as he picked up his sword again, only relaxing from her crouch once it was sheathed.

“You have every choice,” she said. “To kill and eat us both before both of us eat you.”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” said Ivan.

“But regained your sense.” The wolf flopped down beside him for all the world like the great hunting dogs in Khorlov, and only her ability to speak – and the knowledge that she was one of the grim grey Russian wolves – kept Ivan from scratching her behind the ears. Then she looked sidelong at him, and this time her ragged ivory grin stretched back and back until it threatened to meet at the nape of her neck. “I can guess your thoughts, Prince Ivan,” she said, “and if I guess them correctly, there’s an itch just under the left one…”

Ivan grinned in his turn, weakly and with less teeth to show, then reached out to the deep grey fur and began to scratch. “You should be in politics,” he said, “or teaching cunning to the foxes.”

Mother Wolf wriggled luxuriously as his fingers rubbed the good places behind her ears. “We taught the foxes long ago,” she said. “How else do you think they learnt to be so crafty? But they were so careless about it, and made cunning such a thing that no wise beast would want to be, that we despaired of them and taught them nothing more.”

“And politics?” said Ivan. “What of that? You have to be human to be in politics.”

She turned her handsome head to stare at him and for just an instant a woman lay at his side, tanned and naked with dark hair and wise green eyes. Then the wolf was back, grinning more than ever. “Men look so hard for men who turn to wolves that they forget to look for wolves who turn to men. It’s fun to herd the silly sheep instead of hunting them. Once in a while…”

There was a nudging in his lap, and Ivan looked down to see the wolf-cub, more or less awake, rolling to have its tummy scratched. He smiled crookedly, then laughed a small laugh meant for no one but himself and began to pet the little four-legged pudding. Even with its mother thrice three Tsardoms distant instead of breathing down his neck, he could never kill and eat this wolf-cub now.

“Prince Ivan,” said Mother Wolf, “we don’t take without a fair exchange, so take this: for my cub’s life I give you aid unasked, and help unlooked-for. Just be sure to take both when they come!”

She and her cub bounded away, and Ivan lay flat on his back and wondered whether to laugh, or be angry, or just to rub his empty stomach and wish that the next thing he chose to eat had no advocate to speak in its defence.

Either he wished wrongly or not hard enough, but the shock of the third occasion was set fair to end both hunger and life. Had she spoken earlier all would have been well; had she spoken later Ivan would have been very sorry, but he would also have had been back on the ground with something to eat.

When the queen bee spoke to him that ground was still more than twenty feet below, and her tiny buzzing voice right in his ear made him jump so hard and fast that he lost his footing and hung, for several painful minutes that felt more like hours, by the arm thrust into a hollow tree in search of honey.

After a while, unsure how he’d got down with his neck intact, Ivan sat cross-legged between the tree’s roots and cradled his sore arm, cursing with a brilliance of invention and invective to delight Guard-Captain Akimov. The last thing he wanted was a brown and golden honey-bee sitting on his knee, especially the same bee that had caused his slip in the first place. Besides, she was a
bee
. Ivan had grown if not familiar, then at least accustomed to human words from creatures clad in fur and feathers.

Insects were another matter.

“Thank you for not harming my children, Prince Ivan,” she said, and as she spoke, she danced up and down, then side to side, then all the combinations of those movements. Ivan watched her as he had once watched the bees in Khorlov’s honey-hives and knew that she was also talking bee-talk to him – although the dance, and the pain in his arm, and the shrill whining of her voice, served to make him dizzy rather than bring him any sort of understanding. He lay back full length on the moss and pine-needles and wasn’t especially surprised when she settled on his nose.

“Prince Ivan,” said the tiny voice, “for your kindness, one day I’ll prove useful to you!”

The bee’s constant dancing tickled Ivan’s nose, and her choice of spot to rest and dance was making him cross-eyed. “Mother Bee,” he said, squinting in an attempt to see her properly, “I’m famished. You could prove useful straight away if you could tell me where to find some food.”

“Easily done,” said the bee, and sprang into the air. Ivan took that opportunity to rub his nose, since it would have been impolite while the queen bee still sat there. He watched as she danced in the air, making little darting movements towards the east. “Go this way for a little distance,” she said, “and you’ll reach a clearing at the centre of the forest. Someone will feed you there. But be warned, Prince Ivan – as you value your soul and hope of Heaven, eat no meat!” The bee went twice around his head, buzzing loudly, and then flew back to her hive, leaving Ivan alone with his sore arm and his hunger.

*

It was almost a relief when he found the clearing at the heart of the pine forest. Almost, but not quite. He and his sisters had been told stories about the witch Baba Yaga, about her iron teeth and her hut with hen’s feet, but the stories Tsar Aleksandr’s children heard had caused no more than a comfortable shudder. They were the kind best enjoyed when wrapped up warm by the great log fires, cuddling mugs of hot-milk-and-cinnamon while listening wide-eyed to whichever storyteller their father the Tsar had paid to entertain the hall that evening. It was only now, confronted with a reality that he could see with his own eyes and worse, smell with his own nose, that Ivan guessed just how much they’d
not
been told.

Most of the truth.

At first glance all was plain and ordinary. The clearing was as round as a wagon-wheel, ringed by a fence, and a tumbledown
izba
hut was at the hub. But at the second glance, and all others after it, nothing was ordinary ever again.

The clearing hadn’t been made by cutting away the trees and all the brush that grew between them; it looked instead to have been made by a great lid set down on the forest and left there until everything beneath was dead from lack of sunlight. What grass covered the sour bare soil was sickly yellow and, though its growth was short as any meadow, Ivan couldn’t imagine any animal wanting to crop at it – or even want to stay nearby, because the stink in the warm still evening air was fit to make a goat vomit.

The stink came from the fence. What had seemed to be sun-bleached sticks lashed together with thin twine were indeed sun-bleached, but they were bones. Before they had been brought here to make the fence something had picked them almost clean of meat, but far from clean enough. The vile stink of corruption bore witness that the picking had been far from thorough, despite the gouges visible in a thighbone here and a ribcage there, gouges left in them by great jagged teeth.

Iron
teeth
… thought Ivan, gazing as steadily as he was able at the lengths of twine, for a closer look revealed them to be what he had expected: dried sinews and long strips of gut.

Then a crow cawed at him and he looked up, and saw the heads.

Some were simple skulls, domes and curves and angles scoured by the sun and rinsed by the rain until they were the colour of old ivory. Others were more recent, too recent. Flies and crows had been busy, but like whatever had gnawed the bones of the fence, they hadn’t been busy enough. These heads had yet to attain a state of clean-grinning serenity, and their appearance made Prince Ivan wince. They were set on slender stakes at intervals all around the horrid fence, and there were many, oh, so many of them.

Ivan thought of Mar’ya Morevna, a prisoner in Koshchey’s kremlin until he came to free her on a horse with the speed to get away. It counted for little against the way he felt now, for though he cherished her as he cherished hope of Heaven, yet he feared such a death as would await him here as no man who hasn’t died could fear. It was like the river of fire, but intimately worse. Not even Mikhail the Raven’s sorceries could restore life to a corpse both hacked apart and eaten. He turned away from the clearing and its stink of death, knowing that honour required he earn his horse as Koshchey done, with three days service guarding Baba Yaga’s herd, but surely there could be no loss to honour if he crept back later and stole one from such a monster as lived in this obscene place…

“Many thought as you do now, Prince Ivan,” said a voice at his back. “And this one most recently of all.”

Ivan jumped almost out of his skin, and when he turned again his mace was in one hand and his sword was in the other. The hut was no longer at the centre of the clearing but right next to the fence, rearing above him on the scaled, spurred legs of a monstrous chicken. When he was little and listened to the stories, he’d always laughed at the thought of a house with the feet of a common barnyard fowl. There was nothing common about these. They stood as high as the head of a mounted man, with claws and spurs the size of scytheblades. Ivan looked at them, and thought of what a kick from them could do, and felt sick.