

The Bones of the Earth
Part 1: Initiation Rites

By Scott Bury

SMASHWORDS EDITION

The Bones of the Earth, Part 1: Initiation Rites

Copyright 2011 by Scott Bury

All rights reserved

No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Published by The Written Word Communications Company at Smashwords

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

www.writtenword.ca

ISBN 978-0-9869529-1-3

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information is available.

Foreword from the author

The Bones of the Earth is a work of fiction; some would even say fantasy. However, it is set in a very real time and place, and writing it involved extensive historical research. For that reason, the genre or label I like best is "historical magic realism."

The real setting of this story is eastern Europe in the sixth century CE. The story begins on the southern slopes of the western Carpathian mountains, a region now at the borders of Ukraine, Romania and Hungary, and that may be the origin of the Slavic peoples.

The names may seem strange to those used to reading fiction set in more western locations. They are all old Slavic, Gothic, Greek and Latin names, chosen to make the story as true to the period as possible. The geography, historical details and religious ideas are also as true to the period as I could make them.

But those details are not the point. The most important thing is that you enjoy this story.

# Chapter One: Mystery and ecstasy

Wait. Wait. Wait.

_Wait until the full moon is high,_ Vorona chanted _. Wait until magic fills the night._

They waited as Vorona's steady drumbeat pulled the full moon over the trees.

"Mysyach," she repeated with every drum beat. No one else spoke or even moved. They waited as Mysyach, the moon goddess, slowly revealed her face. On this warm night, they felt a promise being fulfilled: "A full moon the night before the summer solstice is a very rare event," Vorona had said one full moon ago in this same clearing. "It is the time for young men and women to worship, to celebrate their own fertility." They had danced naked to Vorona's beating drum and returned home, exhausted and expectant.

Now, one month later, the night before the summer solstice, they gathered again in the clearing. Vorona's moonlight ceremonies were irresistible, and open only to the unmarried young adults—no children or married people allowed. Twenty such came to the clearing just before moonrise, speaking low and fast in small groups. In the middle were the most popular couple, Mrost the bully and his girlfriend Grat; the others laughed at all their jokes and never dared interrupt them..

As always, Javor was the last to arrive and stood a little apart, wondering what to do. _What if they tell me to leave?_ he thought _._ He shifted his weight from foot to foot until he spotted Hrech, his only friend. Then he saw Elli talking with her two girlfriends at the side of the clearing. _She is prettier than Grat, and nicer, too,_ he thought as usual. _Why does everyone like Grat better?_ He wondered whether he should go to Hrech or Elli.

No one noticed Vorona arrive; she seemed to appear in the centre of the clearing. Vorona had set herself up as the village's witch: the woman who knew about herbs and remedies, who knew who was too closely related to marry, who dispensed potions and advice about finding a lover or getting a baby. But she was no crone. Perhaps twenty years old, she had long, rich brown hair and curves that Javor had started to notice when he had turned 13. She had big, widely-spaced eyes that she accented by painting dark outlines around them, and they flashed green in daylight and strangely silver by firelight. She had high cheekbones, a delicate face, wide lips and a delicate dimple like a tiny furrow in the end of her nose.

Tonight, she wore a metal necklace and a silvery bracelet. A single piece of amber hung in the centre of her forehead, suspended from a leather band around her head. A long robe of yellow and red, woven in a fiery pattern, hung from her shoulders. The front was cut very low and Javor took a good look at the curve of her breasts in the moonlight. As she turned he could see that the robe's skirts parted at the side, revealing not only her leg but her whole hip. His heart started to beat faster.

The moon's lower edge cleared the tallest tree and Vorona startled them all by crying "Worship, young people!" She lifted her hands. "Mistress of the night, Mysyach, bless us tonight as we pay homage to thee!" A pyramid of wood at her feet burst into flame, all at once, quickly building into a bonfire. _How did she do that?_ Javor wondered.

"It is time, young worshippers! Join hands in a circle around the fire and begin the ceremony!" Vorona commanded, then bent her head down and crooned words Javor didn't understand.

"What's she saying?" someone whispered.

"She doe this every gathering," Hrech whispered back. "It's some ancient language for speaking to the gods and spirits."

Javor suspected she made it up as she went along.

The young people joined hands around Vorona and the fire. And now came that familiar fear, that empty space below his ribs as Javor wondered whether the others would let him into the circle. Hrech had already taken the hand of Elli's friend, Teshla. Teshla's other hand held Elli's, but Javor pulled them apart and stepped between them. Elli looked startled, but then smiled nervously as her eyes met Javor's.

Teshla clicked her tongue—she didn't like Javor.

But tonight, they could not exclude him. Vorona had commanded them _all_ to dance beneath the full moon. They had to obey their village shaman, even if she was a woman.

They started an awkward, slow dance around the fire as Vorona continued her keening chant. Suddenly, she threw her hands skyward. "Dance, young lovers, dance! Tonight Mysyach, goddess of the moon is full and ripe! This night is filled with power, with the energy of youth, of life, of strength!" She beat on her small drum, crooning wordlessly. The beat went on and on, faster and faster. The dancers moved frantically to keep up but Vorona was relentless, beating and singing faster and faster.

With a final beat, she stopped. The dancers stopped, too, puffing. "Sit, my children," said Vorona. _So now we're her children, are we?_ The dancers dropped onto the grass. Javor made certain he was lying on his elbows close to Elli. He noticed she didn't move away.

"Tonight, the moon goddess reaches the height of her power. Tonight is a night for youth, for new lives to begin. Tonight the moon goddess breathes life into our crops, begins transforming flowers into fruit. Tonight babies are conceived." The girls giggled nervously.

_It's been a long time since a baby was born alive in our village,_ Javor thought.

"Tonight, my children, the moon goddess's power reaches into our bodies and souls and kindles a fire, an irresistible hunger that can only be satisfied in one way ... "

"How's that, Vorona?" It was Mrost, leering from across the fire.

Vorona glared at Mrost until he lost his smile and looked down. She passed around two wineskins. Javor had drunk sweet, thick undiluted wine before, but this stuff was different. One sip made every sense hard-edged. Javor could hear Elli whispering to Teshla: "... kiss him ..." He could see the fire bright and hot against the black night, could see each of the young people in the ring around it. But the forest beyond vanished, the stars faded. Even the crickets and owls fell silent.

Vorona sang again in her weird language, and Javor thought he could understand her in some roundabout way. All the young people understood. They rose to their feet, joined hands and danced again. Vorona's drum drove them. She threw her head back and sang, voice rising and falling. The dance went on and on, around and around the fire until there was nothing else but the motion and the fire and Vorona's voice.

All at once, the dancers pulled off their rough tunics. Javor felt a moment's panic when Elli let go of his hand to pull her tunic off, and he gasped at the sight of her long neck, her breasts, her belly and hips and thighs in the firelight. He pulled off his own tunic and dropped his trousers, stumbling over them. He and Elli grasped hands again and Elli looked at him with wide eyes, her mouth slightly open, hair over her face as they danced.

He breathed fast and could feel sweat coming between his hand and Elli's. On and on they went, naked before the fire that jumped higher and higher. _How does it keep growing if no one is adding fuel?_ Javor wondered once, and then the beat of the drum and Vorona's voice and the motion of dancing filled his mind and Javor didn't think anymore.

And then Elli's hands were on his shoulders and her mouth was pressing on his. Javor's knees buckled and Elli came down on him. He felt a thrilling shock as her naked belly touched his own. He fell softly onto damp, cold earth, weeds scratching his naked skin. He kissed her, hands roving over her skin. He was afraid when he touched her breasts, but Elli kissed him hard again, open-mouthed, then moved her mouth onto his neck. _I should try to make this last,_ Javor thought, but then he was on top of Elli. She pulled him close and then he was inside her. He moved, awkwardly at first, and Elli gasped once in pain, then pulled him closer. Javor pushed his body up, and some small part of him was still amazed at what was happening. His eyes could see only Elli's, and his body was not under his control. He thrust his hips harder and quickly felt himself flowing into her as Vorona's drum drove them on. He fell to the side, looking at the bonfire, conscious of other couples in the grass around him.

Slowly, reality returned. Javor looked over at Elli, who stared, panting, at the sky. Vorona's drum was slowing, her voice falling. He gradually heard other voices, low and embarrassed.

Javor rose up on one elbow. "Elli ..." But he didn't know what to say, so he kissed her cheek gently. She didn't seem to notice, so he kissed her again, breathing in her scent. His thigh felt wet. He kissed her neck, her shoulder, then her breast, hoping to pull the nipple between his lips. _Why didn't I do that before?_ he wondered, but Elli sat up and pulled away, looking at him with wide eyes. Javor smiled sheepishly. He looked at her, carefully, taking the moment to look at her naked body. She was thin, too thin, really, as they all were. But her breasts were round and high and they made his mouth water. She had almost flawless skin. Her lips were wide and thin but her eyes were large. Those eyes were what Javor had first noticed about Elli.

She gave a little cry, and tears started down her cheeks. Javor hugged her close, caressing her smooth back. Vorona's drum made three final, slow beats, and Javor could now hear Elli sobbing into his neck. "Sshh, shh," he said. _Why is she crying?_

Vorona's song ended. Slowly, the night sounds returned, the crickets and frogs and night birds, the sound of the stream and the breeze, the gentle roar of the fire. Javor felt the breeze stirring the hair on his neck, and was conscious of the silky feel of Elli's skin under his hands and pressing against his chest, side and legs, of the slight tickle—did he imagine it?—of her nipples against his ribs.

"Mysyach is sinking into the night, my children," said Vorona. Her voice brought them all back to the present. Now Javor was also conscious of the grass prickling his leg, of the scratches on his back and how cool the night breeze felt. "We have all done well. We have worshipped the goddess. You felt her power in your genitals, her fertility in your wetness. Now dress yourselves and go. The celebration is ended." Elli moved away from him and pulled her tunic over herself. Javor looked for his. _What difference does it make which one we each put on? They're all the same._

He looked up, but Elli was already with her friends, talking fast and low. They left the clearing, heading toward the village.

"Go back, my children. Go back to your homes. Sleep while you can. When the sun rises, it will be the solstice, the celebration of the sun."

The fire was dying. Vorona gathered her belongings into a cloth bag, shouldered it and started back to the village. Javor wanted to speak with her, but didn't know what to say.

"Come on, Javor, your parents will be up soon." It was Hrech. Without answering, Javor followed him along the stream. The moon was setting. How long had they danced? "I hope we can get a little sleep before dawn," said Hrech.

"Yah." Without talking any more, they walked back to the village of low, round clay-and-twig huts, half-sunk into the ground, arranged in a flattened circle at the foot of a low hill.

Javor's hut was at one narrow end of the oval, nestled against a small ridge of the hill. Javor's father, Swat, liked to say that the slight rise protected them against the north wind, but Javor could never understand how a rise as high as his waist could provide any shelter.

It was only as he crept through the doorway and fell onto his straw mat that Javor realized how tired he was. He fell asleep immediately. And he dreamed a terrible dream.

He was flying a over wide plain where tall grass browned in the sun. On top of a small hill, a palisade guarded a village. Smoke drifted over the palisade—the village was burning. Bodies lay in front of the huts, and children huddled against the walls, crying for their murdered parents.

Across the plain, horsemen chased people on foot. He wanted to warn the running people about the horsemen, but he could not bring his mouth to open, nor make the smallest noise.

One horseman closed on two men and a woman. The horseman raised a curved shape—a sword. He brought it down sharply, once, twice—the running men fell, twisting, arms flailing, then still. Now, only the woman was left. The horse ran in front of her. The woman darted to one side, then the other, but the horse blocked her. The rider tired of the game quickly, and struck her, too, and she fell.

Javor rose higher, and he could see across the plain. Everywhere, groups of mounted men in dark armour chased terrified villagers on foot. Villages burned. Armoured men raped women. Finally, he descended, watching a group of grinning men taking their turns raping two girls while a village burned behind them. The smoke billowed and concentrated into an enormous man shape.

He forced his lungs to contract as the smoke grew darker and the shape it formed grew more distinct. He could see two great arms, thick as trees, ending in great curved cruel claws.

Javor strained. He pushed and then the scream climbed out of his throat, and he was sitting upright in his bed. The watery dawn light filtered in. He was sweating. To one side, he could hear his parents shifting.

"A dream," he whispered to himself, falling back onto the heather that made up his bed. He gradually slowed his breath, but he could not go back to sleep.

His father got up and smiled. "Time for the ceremony," he said.

# Chapter 2: The Rescue

Look down. Two young men, boys really, walk across the meadows and forests on the southern slopes of mountains that rise gently, then heave up suddenly to angry grey crags occasionally topped by snow. One of the boys is very tall, with long yellow-gold hair. His long legs propel him swiftly across a meadow thick with yellow and purple flowers. He pays no attention to flies buzzing around him, to crickets and rabbits that leap out of his way.

His companion is smaller with tangled, long black hair. Blotches of soft black fuzz swirl around his chin and down his neck. He scurries to keep up with the blonde's strides and is out of breath. They have been walking fast, nearly running, for hours. It is the solstice, some time past the year's highest noon. Birds are quiet in the hottest part of the day, but insects chirp and hum and trill. Leaves on the trees are still a light green, not yet burned dark by the summer. The air is warm, not hot, not yet.

The dark one gets more anxious with every step. But all morning, the blonde boy has ignored him. The dark boy recognizes this trait in his friend: his ability to focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, for hours at a time. In their village, he was called "the dreamer," or worse. Even in normal circumstances, you had to call him by name two or three times to get his attention. But now, he is following the trail of horsemen, mounted raiders, and no matter how many times the dark boy calls "Javor," no matter how futile the quest, he cannot be pulled away.

Sometimes, it is easy to see the trampled grass or broken twigs and bushes, or a torn bit of cloth on a branch. Often, the light-haired boy seems to follow signs that his dark companion cannot see, and every time the dark boy doubts his friend and thinks they have lost the trail, he sees another sign—horse droppings, the surest of all, or once, a girl's colourfully embroidered apron.

The dark boy begins touching every oak and birch tree they pass to pray to their spirits for protection, help, sanity for his friend. "You know, we keep going east. East is bad luck, Javor," he puffs as they start up a slope.

Javor ignores that, too. At the crest of a ridge, he looks around, sees something that his friend cannot, continues at his same obsessive pace.

"You realize," his friend says, trying hard to keep up, "that we fall farther behind them with every step we take. They're on horses." Still no response, so he reaches out and grabs Javor's arm, forcing him to stop.

The blonde turns and looks at his friend without recognizing him. "Javor, we're chasing mounted warriors," the dark boy repeats. "We'll never catch up."

Javor blinks and looks uncomfortable. He seems to realize where he is, comes out of the trance he can put himself into.

"We've been chasing them for hours, and we have no more hope now of ever catching up to them than we ever did. Let's go back home."

"Home?" Javor says it like he has never heard the word before. "No. We have to get the girls back, Hrech."

Javor looks at Hrech, his best friend—his only friend—but what he sees is the morning in the village, all the villagers in their best, whitest clothes, the men in their embroidered vests, women in embroidered aprons and garlands of flowers, all standing in a circle around the oak tree on top of the holy hill. He remembers how Vorona, the shaman, led the villagers in the hymn to Zaria, the heavenly bride of the sun, to pull the sun over the horizon. They lifted freshly-cut maple branches and sang to the _kupalo_ , the spirits who came out of the forest at the end of winter to spend the summer under the growing grain. The sun rose; Javor saw Elli wearing flowers in her hair, dancing with the other marriageable girls in a separate circle around Grat, the popular girl who had been chosen to be _kupailo_. The kupailo girl threw out wreaths of flowers; the girls who caught them would be married by fall. The kupailo was supposed to be the most beautiful, but Javor thought Elli was prettier than Grat.

Javor watched intently, hoping and at the same time dreading that Elli would catch a wreath. Before she could, they heard a rapid drumming noise. Someone yelled "horsemen!"

Down the hill, in front of a cloud of dust, mounted men rode fast toward the village. Javor counted: five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Immediately, the villagers dropped their maple branches and ran for their homes—there was no time to get to the _holody_ , the wooden stockade around the low hill. Riders were invariably soldiers, and that meant trouble.

The women hid in their huts while the men gathered in the centre of the village. The riders reined in hard enough to make their horses rear. They were all armoured and helmeted, with long black hair and beards. They all wore leather armour reinforced with iron strips and studs. Each had a shield on his back, straps over each shoulder, a sword at his side and a small battle-axe on his saddle.

The leader was a large man. In their armour, his shoulders looked to Javor to be wider than any he had ever seen, and his bare forearms rippled with muscle. He bore a horrible scar across his nose. He barked "Who headman here is?" in a strong, strange accent.

Roslaw stepped forward. "We are a peaceful village, sir. We want no trouble."

The rider stared at him. "I Krajan am, Lord of this region in the name of King Bayan," he barked. "This village owe tribute to Bayan, King of the Avars, Overlord of the Empire."

"But Maurice is the Roman emperor," said Old Oresh. The oldest man in the village, he looked up at the man on horseback, swaying a little.

Krajan guided his horse over to Oresh. So fast Javor could hardly see it, Krajan struck Oresh with an iron bar. The old man toppled face-first into the ground and lay still. From a hut, a woman screamed.

"Rome dead is!" Krajan bellowed. "Bayan supreme is! This village owe tribute and support to men of Bayan! You!" he pointed his cudgel at Roslaw. "Food for my men and horses! Bread, meat, wine! Now!"

Terrified, Roslaw ran for his hut. "Borys, some feed for their horses. Hurry!"

Javor heard a yell, rough laughter and girls' screams. One of the Avars had dismounted and was pulling two young women by the hair toward his fellows. With a shock, Javor realized they were Grat and Elli. Stupidly, they had hidden behind a haystack to watch what was going on, and the rider had caught them. The girls struggled and cried uselessly. The rider brought them to his leader.

Krajan dismounted and grabbed Elli by the chin. His mouth twisted into a horrible smile.

"Elli!" Javor yelled and lunged toward them, but his father, Swat, caught him from behind, pinning his arms and pushing him to the ground.

"No, Javor! They'll kill you!" Javor managed to break free in time to see the girls' mothers run out, screaming. Another raider stepped in front of them and savagely hit them with a heavy club. All the other villagers groaned, but no one had the courage to move. The women tried to get up, but the Avar hit Grat's mother on the head again. She fell into the dust and did not move. Elli's mother backed away on hands and knees, crying.

Roslaw and some other men ran up with bags of food. "No, please, leave the girls alone! Take the food, take it all, but leave our daughters!"

Krajan backhanded Roslaw savagely. The warrior's heavy leather and steel gauntlet made a sickening crushing sound as it connected with the headman's face, and Roslaw slumped into the dirt, bleeding from the nose and mouth.

Mladen, Elli's father, sprang forward with a scythe, screaming "Everyone together! We outnumber them!" Faster than anyone could see, another raider drew a sword and slashed down. The scythe clattered to the hard ground, Mladen's severed hand still gripping it. The Avars cheered and laughed; Mladen fell to his knees, gasping and staring in disbelief at the empty space at the end of his arm. Blood spurted over and over again onto the ground, splashing Elli and Grat until the Avar thrust his sword into Mladen's neck, then kicked his body down. Elli's mother shrieked. The village men cried out, but still no one dared move.

Krajan, the leader, looked down from his horse. "We take these," he declared flatly. His men packed the food into their saddlebags; two of them tied the girls' hands in front of them, then loaded them, crying but complacent, onto the backs of their horses. Laughing, the Avars rode down the hill and into the forest.

"We _can't_ save them." Hrech's insistent tone brought Javor back to the moment. He realized they were both still in their dress clothes, bright white now stained with mud and sweat and grass. "Even if you do catch up to them, you can't fight them," Hrech said. "There are at least 10 of them, all of them heavily armed. And they know how to fight and they don't hesitate to kill anyone."

"I can't just do nothing," Javor said, his voice hoarse. He swatted absent-mindedly at a fly near his face. "I have to try to get them back. No one else is doing anything."

Hrech nodded, remembering how the village women had come out of their huts to join their men as the Avars rode away. Only when the thundering sound of hoof beats had faded into the distance, when the raiders were surely gone, did the women begin to wail and the men to cry.

Elli's mother helped Grat's mother to her feet. She turned to scream at Roslaw, the headman. "Do something!" Blood smeared the dirt on her face from where the Avar had knocked her down. "They've killed my husband! They'll kill my daughter! They'll rape her! Get them back!"

"What can we do?" Roslaw protested. He held one hand over his eye and his own blood seeped between his fingers.

"We can all go after them!" said one man.

"They've already killed Mladen and Oresh!" Roslaw barked. "You go after them, they'll kill you, too!"

"Not if we all stayed together!" said someone else. "Like Mladen said!"

"Who here even has a sword? Who's willing to die today?" With one eye, Roslaw glared at each man, one by one. Each one looked down. "Exactly. There's no point in all of us getting killed."

Hrech put his hands on his friend's shoulders. "They're gone, Javor. They might as well have died in a pestilence. And if you don't stop this madness, you'll just get yourself killed."

Javor blinked. He looked down the Avars' trail, where it skirted a stand of poplars and beeches. _Two boys armed with a knife and a wood-axe don't stand a chance against heavily armed, trained and experienced warriors on horseback—who probably had friends they were meeting,_ he realized. _I am going to be responsible for killing my only friend_. "Hrech, go back home if you want to," he said. "I'm going on."

Hrech sighed. "I can't leave you out here, far from home, alone," he said. He did not say _No one else is likely to come looking for you._ Not for Javor. Maybe they would search for someone else, anyone else, but Hrech was almost the only one in their village, other than Javor's parents, who cared at all about the strange, tall blonde boy. _Weird_ , they said. _Strange_. _Touched_. Nobody ever said _stupid_ , no one except Mean Mrost, who delighted in making people feel bad. No, Javor was not stupid, Hrech thought. But he certainly had his own way of looking at things.

"So what's your plan?" Hrech asked. Javor looked at him blankly again. "Do you _have_ a plan?"

Javor had to admit that he had none. He had set after the raiders in heat and anger, thinking only of Elli, the girl he loved, whom he last saw crying and afraid.

He still could not understand it. He knew people could be cruel—he had suffered the cruelty of children often enough. But to kill men just to show how tough you were ... to steal food from hungry people ... to beat women so you could take their daughters ...

He shook his head as he followed the trampled underbrush and broken branches of horses' passing.

He also could not believe that the other villagers, his people, his relatives had done: nothing. They buried Oresh and Mladen, they laid Grat's mother down on a straw bed. They talked and argued and yelled and cried.

But they just let the Avars take the girls away.

He remembered how his father, Swat, had sat down beside Roslaw with a pitcher of ale. "I know we don't have much. But if we gathered everything we have, food, ale, the few treasures any of us have, maybe we could negotiate with them, get the girls back."

Roslaw just shook his head.

"It's too dangerous," said Bogdan, a small nervous man with a continual tic in his left eye. "They would just take what we offered for the girls and kill everyone who came to talk!"

"We would need to arm ourselves," Swat had tried to say reasonably. But other men gathered and the whole thing became a squabbling, useless argument.

It was at that point that Javor had known what had to be done—what he had to do. He could almost see himself doing it. He went quietly to his hut, found the little wooden case his mother had shown him the day before and took out his great-grandfather's long dagger. Even in the dim light of the hut, he could see the angles and spirals on the blade, the fish-shape of the handle. The blade's curve was comforting, as if there were no other shape a blade could be. _Like a big tooth._ He wrapped it in a soft cloth and tucked it into his belt, then stepped out of the hut and toward the edge of the village.

At that moment, he heard a sound like an owl's call from the hut. Anyone else would have wondered about that: _why is there an owl in my hut? Why is it calling during the day?_ But Javor was focused on something else.

"Where are you going?" said a voice at his side. Javor jumped, but it was only Hrech.

"I'm going after Elli and Grat. Are you coming or not?"

"Are you _crazy_? Are you _trying_ to get killed? Do you even have a weapon?"

Javor took out the fish-handled dagger. Hrech goggled. "Where did you get that?"

"It was my great-grandfather's. Come on."

"Javor, you can't," Hrech sputtered, arguing what would become for him a refrain for the day. "You can't catch up with mounted men when you're on foot. And even if you do, what could you do by yourself?"

"I have to do _something_. No one else is."

"No one else is _stupid_ enough!" Hrech felt more afraid now even than when the raiders were in the village. "You're one boy against 10 armed men, and all you have is a fancy knife!"

Javor took long strides into the grass the horses had trampled. Behind him, the adults argued and cried and whimpered, oblivious to the two boys leaving. "They've got to stop to rest sometime. I'll keep going and sooner or later, I'll catch up with them. Are you going with me?"

Hrech scrambled to keep up with Javor's long strides. _Poor guy never has been able to see straight_ , he thought. "The only thing you're going to accomplish is to get yourself killed."

"I don't care. If Elli's gone ..." _What_? He did not think past that. "I've got to do _something_ ," he repeated. He started to run along Avars' trail.

Hrech knew he could not stop Javor, but he also knew his friend would not be able to survive on his own. Javor was bigger and physically stronger—he didn't know it, but he was the strongest bachelor in the village—but Javor acted very young, like a child. "I'm with you," Hrech panted. "But I'll need a weapon, too." He ran as fast as he could back to the village and found Swat's axe beside Javor's hut. By the time he had caught up to Javor again, he did not have enough breath to argue anymore. So he had followed Javor. By noon, his throat was parched.

He finally made Javor stop to drink at a clear stream. Javor hadn't realized just how thirsty he was, even though the sun was high and hot. He touched his hair: it was hot on top, wet in the back. He drank some more, then splashed water over his head. Hrech did the same.

"I don't care what you do. I'm taking a breather," Hrech said. Javor said nothing, but sat beside his friend in the shade of a birch tree. Hrech looked up at his friend. He could see Javor withdrawing into himself. His jaw went slack, his lips parted slightly. He stared at the birch tree as if he were trying to count its leaves, but his eyes were not focused. Hrech knew he had to say something to bring Javor back to the here-and-now. "So, what now?"

Javor looked up the stream bank, where the Avars' trail led into the trees. "Our only hope is that the riders are not too worried about putting much distance between themselves and us, and that they'll stop soon to rest and eat. But then, they'll probably rape the girls."

Hrech winced. It was another trait of Javor's to say out loud exactly the thing you didn't want to think about.

They hadn't taken any food or anything for the night. But Javor remembered Elli screaming as the rider dragged her by her long hair. And he thought of all the men of his village, waiting for someone else to make the first move. _If we had all rushed them when Mladen did, we would have saved the girls. But who else would be dead?_

"I hate to repeat myself, Javor, but we're two kids with a knife and a wood-axe, and there are ten of them with armour and swords and gods know what else," Hrech argued. "We won't stand a chance."

"We'll catch up with them at night, sneak into their camp quietly, free the girls and steal the horses," Javor replied, surprising himself. "The moon will still be pretty big tonight, and the sky will be clear. We'll have enough light."

"There'll be at least one on watch," Hrech protested.

"Then we'll have to kill him quietly," Javor answered. _Where did these words, these ideas, come from?_ "We'll have to be careful not to make any noise that would alert them. But they won't be expecting us. They've done this before, I'll bet. And I'll bet that every time, the poor villagers were too afraid of getting killed to follow and rescue two girls.

"I think they'll get really drunk, eat everything they can, rape the girls, then tie them up and fall asleep. We'll sneak up when they're deep asleep. If there's one on guard, we'll have to kill him quickly before he can alert the others. I'll sneak up behind him and ... and cut his throat." Javor felt the dagger's fish-shaped handle, which nestled in his palm comfortingly. "You untie their horses and lead them away, but be sure you don't make any noise doing it. Then we'll untie the girls. They'll probably be tied up near the guard. Then we'll get out of there as fast as we can." He was making this up as he went along, but it all seemed to make sense.

"They'll follow us, you know, to get the girls back. And to revenge their dead guard," Hrech said.

"You're right. Well, we'll have to kill all of them. First save the girls, take them someplace safe, then sneak back and cut their throats while they sleep."

"I—I don't think I can do that, Javor."

"You've killed chickens and pigs, haven't you?"

"I can't kill a sleeping man," Hrech said in a very small voice.

Javor turned to look at Hrech directly, something he almost never did. "Do you know what they're going to do to the girls? First, they'll rape them repeatedly. They'll each take their turns with them, keeping them for their amusement as they ride back to wherever the Avars stay. When they get tired of them, they'll kill them and leave their bodies to the vultures and dogs. And they'll go to another village and take more girls.

"If Elli and Grat are really lucky, the raiders will sell them to a slave trader and they'll go to Persia or someplace even farther and live the rest of their lives as slaves for some prince. Either way, we'll never see them again alive, unless we do something right now. Are you with me or not?"

Hrech fell into step without another word, his face miserable.

At nightfall, they stopped by a stream to rest and drink. They found some nuts and sour pears. Hrech fell asleep, but Javor couldn't. _Elli_ , he thought. He thought of her thin legs, cut and dirty, of the tears on her face as she was pushed astride the horse.

When the moon rose, Javor woke Hrech and they slowly followed the horses' tracks. From the droppings, they knew they had almost caught up to the riders. The group must have stopped long before nightfall and had a lazy afternoon.

The trail soon led into the forest. Javor and Hrech crept ahead, trying not to make any noise, listening. Javor winced every time they broke a twig or made a branch swish.

Soon, they heard a girl's sobs. The moonlight would not penetrate the shadows under the trees, so Javor felt his way toward the sound. Hrech stepped on his heels and whispered "sorry." A twig cracked underfoot and the sobs stopped with a sudden inward breath. Javor squinted: a darker shadow under a tree seemed head-shaped. Javor fell to his knees and found himself touching Elli's soft hair. Her fist was in her mouth. Grat was beside her, trembling with the effort to stop sobbing.

The girls were bound to the tree with a thin rope looped around their waists and wrists. Hrech stepped around Javor to cut the rope with the axe, frustrated because Javor never seemed to know how to do anything practical. He pulled Grat to her feet. "Where are the soldiers?" he whispered. No answer. "Did they let you go?" Javor and Hrech led the girls to a narrow path. "Are you hurt?" Hrech asked as they stumbled along, but Elli would only shake her head. She pointed toward a clearing. When they reached it, the girls would go no closer. Leaving Hrech with the girls and holding his dagger in front of him, Javor stepped into the clearing.

It was hard to make out at first what he saw in the moonlight, but when his foot struck something that rolled, understanding hit him like a cold wave. It was a severed head; the Avar helmet rolled off it and continued a short distance before it fell over in the grass.

Javor was surrounded by the dismembered bodies of the whole troop. Ten heavily armoured men had been literally torn apart— _maybe more. They may have had friends._ Everywhere he looked there were legs, arms, torso, heads. A shadowy heap turned out to be a horse, its throat torn open. Javor turned and turned, his head swimming. _What could have done this?_

Trembling, he returned to Hrech and the girls. He could only shake his head when Hrech asked, "What is it? What's there? What is scaring you all so?" They found the path and went the opposite way they had come, hoping it would lead home. In the next clearing they came to, they found two of the soldiers' horses, grazing, wearing their saddles and bridles. The boys took the reins. No one thought of riding the horses—no one in their village had a horse and no one knew how to get on, let alone hold on and ride.

Finding their way home was easy—they just followed the same path that had brought them to the raiders' camp. Hrech and Javor fell behind the girls and whispered. "What was in that clearing?" Hrech demanded.

"The soldiers. They'd been torn apart."

"What do you mean?"

"What I said. Arms and legs and heads ripped apart."

"More soldiers? Greeks?"

"No. That wasn't done by swords. It was like—like when you eat a chicken and pull the meat off the bones. It was ... I don't know. Unbelievable."

They drank at a stream. Hrech made a fire while Elli and Grat washed. They had nothing to dry themselves with and shivered, even though the night was warm. Grat didn't say anything, only sobbed continually. Finally, they huddled together for warmth. Again, Hrech fell asleep. Javor felt weary, too, but could not sleep. If he closed his eyes, he saw the dead, mutilated raiders in the field. _It's no more than they deserved,_ he thought _. But still—what had done that?_

Elli was awake, too. Grat was crying, but she seemed half asleep. "Did they hurt you, Elli?" Javor asked.

She shook her head. She answered haltingly, pausing and shuddering. "Nothing serious. They hit us to make us stop crying when we set out. We kept slipping off the horses, and they would get mad and slap us when we fell off." She absently rubbed her face, remembering pain. Javor could see tears glistening on her face in the sinking moonlight.

"Did they touch you?" Javor asked. He hesitated. "Did they...did they rape you?"

Elli shook her head. "Not yet. They were going to. I knew it." Her voice started to tremble. "They actually gave us some food. They made a camp where you found us and ate the food that Roslaw gave them, and gave us a little. And they started to drink some strong wine. They made us drink, too. Grat got sick ..."

"What happened to them?"

Elli looked down. "I don't know," she said in a shaking whisper. "At sunset, they tied us to a tree. I thought they would rape us then—they were all gathered around. But their horses started to make a lot of noise and they ran to see why. One stayed to guard us. Then there was a horrible noise, a roar like a bear, only worse, louder ... then the men were screaming. Our guard ran to his friends and then he screamed. Then he ... he stopped." Elli bit her lip. Javor could see her hands shaking as she pulled her tunic closer to her body.

"Did you see anything?"

Elli shook her head. She stared at Javor, trying to tell him something with her eyes, but no words would come. Javor put his arms around her and pulled her closer, chafing her arms to try to warm her up. When her trembling subsided, she nuzzled her head under Javor's chin.

"I could not see anything but the trees. There was a lot of commotion, movement, I could tell men were running this way and that. There was sound, like branches breaking, but ... wet. I think it was the arms and legs of the men, breaking." She buried her face in his chest, like she had three nights ago after Vorona's celebration. Her tears dripped onto Javor's skin.

Eventually, Elli fell asleep, but Javor could not. He listened intently, but the only sounds were crickets, frogs and birds. Once, far off, a wolf howled.

When the sun rose at last, Javor woke the others. They silently set off again for home, leading the horses, conscious of how hungry they were.

# Chapter 3: coming home

The girls couldn't walk very fast, and it took all day to get home. Grat cried all the way and by afternoon developed a limp.

Hrech tried to cheer the girls. "Everyone is going to be thrilled to see you back at the village. There's going to be a big party!"

The girls did not look any happier. Javor chimed in with "Yah, everyone is going to celebrate. They'll be so happy!" He put his arm around Elli and patted her shoulder like his father used to do to him when he was small.

That surprised Hrech—Javor had never been able to follow his lead spontaneously like that before.

"My mother," Grat sobbed. She fell to her knees.

"I'm sure she's okay, Grat," Hrech lied, his hands on her shoulders. "I saw her with the other ladies before Javor and I left. She was just a little roughed up."

Hrech's words did not reassure Grat. She sat in the tall grass, weeping. The boys could not get her to stand.

Elli put her head on Javor's shoulder. Like a pot boiling over, her grief finally came out, but unlike Grat, Elli cried quietly. Once she sniffed "Papa, oh, Papa," but nothing else was intelligible.

They stayed in that spot until the boys pulled the girls toward a stream and made them drink cool, fresh water. The girls stopped crying, but Grat could not look at either of the boys.

Finally, Hrech managed to get them moving again. It was a sombre journey. Grat wept almost continuously, but at least she managed to keep walking. Elli followed her, eyes unfocused.

A rabbit suddenly hopped through high grass. "Hey, look at the bunny!" Javor cried out. "I hope she's not too far from home! Hey, bunny—why do you wiggle your nose? Do I smell so bad?" He laughed and looked at the girls, but they did not respond.

"Look, the bunny is running toward those trees," Javor continued, trying hard to break through the girls' mood. "Hey, do you think it wants to climb the tree?" He looked at the others, grinning.

The girls ignored him, and Hrech just gave him a strange look. _No one ever gets my jokes,_ Javor thought.

Javor had another idea. "Hey, do you girls want to climb a tree?" They all stopped and stared at him. Javor jumped to the closest tree, grabbed a branch and pulled himself up. He loved climbing trees. He looked down at the others. "Come on up. It's nice here among the leaves. You can see far, it's comfortable. Come on."

The other three looked at him with expressions that he could not read—he could not read many expressions. He jumped down and gave up trying to cheer anyone. The walk home continued in silence except for the sound of wind in the leaves and the calls of birds. He looked up at the sky, at the high, wispy clouds fanning out like white hair, and below them, another layer of puffy white clouds, like small loaves of flat bread.

His mind drifted forward, and Javor pictured coming home with the unhurt girls. He imagined a shout from the circle of huts as a lookout saw them approaching. He could see a crowd running out to greet them at the foot of the hill below the village. His father would clap him on the shoulder and say "My boy, my _boy!_ " He could see his father glowing with pride, see his mother smiling and weeping at the same time, her worries banished, relieved that her last son had returned. He imagined Roslaw, the headman, clapping him on both shoulders, grinning from ear to ear, proclaiming him the hero. The villagers would give him flowers and bread and mugs of ale. Elli's mother would hug him, and then Elli would kiss him again, and so would Grat, and even that scrawny, nasty Mrost would have to congratulate him and acknowledge him as the hero. And the next day, they would resume their interrupted solstice celebration and Javor, would jump over the bonfire and everyone would cheer.

And Elli will be my girl, and we will be betrothed and then married before the fall.

He did not let himself think of the dead Avars, or of Elli's murdered father.

The sun was setting before they saw Nastasiu's circle of huts nestled against the hill.

"Something's wrong," said Hrech. There was no sound coming from the village, no dogs barking, no babies crying. No one shouted as the four young people and two horses came closer. No one came running out to clap Javor on the shoulders.

Hrech ran to the first hut and then stopped dead. The hut had collapsed, its thatched roof spilling onto the ground. A corner post, thicker around than a man could reach with two hands, had been broken as if over someone's knee.

Then they heard weeping and sobbing. They saw bodies between the huts. A dog sprawled, its neck broken. Mara, Javor's neighbour, slumped over a rock, legs at unnatural angles. Her children cried over her body. As the four young people turned to survey the scene, they saw men and women binding each other's wounds.

Javor went to a man sitting in the dirt, holding his head. "What happened?" The man turned around; it was Roslaw, his face covered in fresh blood. There was a new bruise under his eye in addition to the scar he had received from Krajan, the Avar.

"Where were you?" he asked.

"We brought the girls back. Did more soldiers come?"

Roslaw shook his head and turned away. Tekla, his wife, a very thin woman with bulging eyes and grey-streaked black hair, answered. "Not soldiers, boy," she said. She appeared shaken but unhurt."A monster. A monster. It killed so many, then ..." and she broke down, kneeling in the dust, weeping.

The only thing that Javor could say was "There's no such thing as monsters ..." He turned. Elli's eyes were wide, searching around the village. Grat just held Hrech's hand, insensate.

Elli shrieked "Mama!" and ran across the village. Lyuba, her mother, came out of her hut, eyes wide in disbelief. Mother and daughter embraced, weeping. Javor could see a red wound across Lyuba's forehead from the Avar's blow.

Hrech led Grat to her hut; her mother had not come out. "You'd better check your home, Javor," he said.

Javor felt as if there was only an empty space in the middle of his body. He ran to the end of the village.

His hut was standing, but the thatch over the doorway was gone, as if ripped away by a huge claw. In the dying red light he saw his father lying face-down in front of the door. In his hand was his long scythe. Javor could not breathe. One side of his father's skull was caved in and matted with blood. Slowly, Javor bent down and stepped carefully over the body into the hut, not daring to think about his mother.

He had to wait until his eyes adjusted to the gloom, and then he saw Ketia lying on the floor, her back against the cold oven, as if she were trying to warm her back. But her legs were splayed awkwardly, and her head was slumped forward.

Javor put his hand on her shoulder and felt wetness: blood. He pushed her head up and it lolled to one side. Javor was numb. He couldn't move. His hands dropped and then his stomach heaved. He barely had time to move his head away from his mother's body before he spewed a thin stream of bile onto the ground.

When the retching passed, Javor carefully pulled his mother toward him, holding her head gently so that it would not fall too far forward. He pressed her tightly to his chest, hoping that his life, his heartbeat, could somehow flow into hers. He did not hear the thin whine coming from his throat, did not feel the tears on his face. He wept, rocking his mother's body until night filled the hut.

Hands gently laid Ketia on the floor. Other hands pulled him out of the hut, but he could not see whose they were because his eyes were blurred. He stumbled into the arms of ... he blinked until his vision cleared. Photius, the Greek traveller, the strange man who had wandered into the village two days earlier, the day before the solstice. Javor found his feet and stared at the stranger in his wide-brimmed hat and ragged grey cloak, holding his long walking staff, unscratched, unhurt.

Javor's mind reeled back. He saw his father two days earlier, walking into the woods to gather honey before the sun set. That was when the stranger had walked into the village: tall, thin, older than any many Javor had ever seen before, wearing a long grey cloak and a strange hat with a wide brim that were almost exactly the same shade as his long grey beard. He carried a long walking staff, but it seemed unnecessary.

He strolled casually into the centre of the village, where the men were resting and talking after working in the fields and before going home for their evening meal. The women would have supper ready when the sun's rays shone level, into the eyes.

"Good evening, gentle folk," the stranger said with a heavy accent. "Can you tell me the name of this village?"

"Holody," said Roslaw, the headman. They actually called the village Nastasiu. _Holody_ meant simply "fort"—they did not trust outsiders. Best to give away as little as possible. The _holody_ was a small log palisade around one of the hills beside the village.

"What a charming little hamlet." As if he were a native, the old man sat on a stone among the villagers. "And would you kind people have a bit of water for a thirsty traveller?" Someone passed him a clay cup and he gulped it down, then held it out for more and got it. _Would they give me water if I just held out a cup?_ Javor wondered.

All the villagers stared at the old man without saying anything. Finally, Roslaw demanded "And who might you be, stranger?"

"My name is Photius." A Greek!

"And where do you come from, and where are you going?" Roslaw asked.

"I come from Constantinople, but by way of long journeys through many troubled lands, and I am headed north."

"What are you looking for?" Roslaw continued, but he was drowned out by an excited babble as the village's entire adult male population forgot their caution and marvelled at this rarest of sights, a stranger.

"Constantinople! Have you seen Constantinople?" "Are its walls really made of gold?" "Were they built by a god?" "Is the war with the Persians over?" "Is Justinian still the emperor?"

The stranger was laughing. "So many questions! I'll answer them all, of course, but first you must answer a question or two of mine. Is there somewhere I can spend the night? And can I get a little something to eat here?"

Looking at Photius' wrinkled face, Javor had a horrifying thought. "What do you know about this?" he demanded, his voice a hoarse whisper.

The old man shook his head, his long beard waving. "Less than you, my boy. Please, sit by the fire." He pulled out a wineskin from under his cloak and gave Javor a drink. Then he gave him a small piece of cake. Somehow the cake was nourishing. He felt stronger, calmer.

The sun had set and the sky was nearly black. In the firelight, the Greek traveller appeared strange, different from anyone Javor knew in some way that he could not define.

"I'm terribly sorry about your parents, boy," said Photius in a gentle, yet hoarse voice. "About your whole village. First raiders, now this—it's too much in two days."

"I'm not a boy anymore. I'm 15 now."

"Ah. Well, that may be fortunate." The old man took a drink of wine.

"Who did this? Did you see?"

Photius nodded. "Oh, yes. A monster."

"Don't tell me stories ..."

"No story, Javor. It was a monster, twice the size of a man. It swept into the village like a whirlwind, knocking down houses and killing to inflict terror. It was looking for something, something it found in your house."

"In _my_ house?"

"It came straight toward your hut. Your father tried to bar it, threatened it with his scythe, but the monster knocked him down in a heartbeat. Your mother didn't even have time to scream. At least, for them, it was quick."

"But _why?_ "

"Think, Javor. What did your family have that no one else in this village has?"

The answer hit Javor like a bucket of cold water. _The amulet!_ He sprang to his feet, stepped gingerly past his father's body again—someone had pulled Swat to one side and arranged his arms and legs so he did not look quite as horrifying. Inside, he tried not to look at his mother, but saw that someone had straightened her neck and arranged her hands across her chest.

Her hands: he could see her delicate, clever hands taking out a wooden box from somewhere in the hut—her hiding spot. He could see her hand brushing her long hair over her shoulder, then lifting the wooden lid with an air of reverence and expectation. It was evening, and it was dark in the hut. Ketia lit one candle, so Javor knew she thought was she was about to show him was important. She looked into his eyes, and he knew that she expected Javor to be thrilled about whatever was in the box.

Javor remembered hearing the neighbours, Borys and Mara, gossiping with Javor's father outside. "Can you imagine!" Mara was saying. "Right in front of everyone, she takes a stranger into her house!"

"He's an old man. I hope Ehnyi doesn't wear him out tonight!" Borys laughed. Mara and Swat laughed along.

Swat spoke up. "It will be good for Ehnyi, to have a man in her bed—" Borys and Mara laughed loudly at that.

"Mama, why am I so different from both you and Papa?" Javor asked suddenly.

Ketia was used to Javor's sudden shifts in focus. "We're all a little different from our parents, Javor."

"Yes, but Hrech looks like his mother, and a little like his father. So does Elli. But I'm so much taller than you and Papa."

"My grandfather was a very tall man, taller than you," she answered. "You'll still grow a little, so you could reach his height. And I want to show you something he gave to me. He told me to give it to my most deserving son. Now hush.

"Grandfather Medvediu was the biggest man in the town—the family lived in a real town in those days, far to the south of here. Not only was he big, he was the most handsome. All the ladies of the town said so. His golden hair gleamed in the sun. Like yours, Javor.

"Grandfather was a hero. He was in the Emperor's army, and when he was young he went to fight against the Persians." This was Javor's favourite story. He had heard it regularly since he could remember and never tired of it.

"Grandfather Medvediu was a very brave man, and in the wars he won some treasures. Some he sold on his way home, but some he kept."

"Did he really kill a giant, Mama?" Javor asked as he always did at this point in the story.

"Oh, yes. He was the bravest soldier in the army. One day, Grandfather Medvediu's group found themselves in the mighty Caucasus Mountains." Ketia's voice always took on a dreamy quality at this point. "A giant had been harassing the people of the Caucasus. It was a huge ogre who stole sheep and killed shepherds. It would come into the villages and demand food."

"All the Emperor's soldiers were afraid to face the giant, but not your great-grandfather. He took a sword and his armour and he climbed up the mountain to the giant's cave. He challenged the giant: 'Hey, ugly! Come and fight someone who knows how to fight,' he said. And the giant came out. It was twice as tall as Grandfather, and it carried an enormous club. It swung that club right at Grandfather's head, but your great-grandfather ducked and drew his sword."

"Their fight went on for a day and a night, but finally your tireless great-grandfather dealt a killing blow. He almost cut the giant's head completely off, and when its body fell off that mountainside into a deep canyon, no one could find it.

"The giant's cave was filled with treasures, but most of them were slick with the ogre's slimy touch. Grandfather Medvediu did find two things that were fit for human touch."

This was new—an element in the story that Ketia had never told him before. She pulled out a bundle wrapped in a soft white cloth from the box, . Javor leaned forward for a closer look until he could feel the heat from the candle against his cheek. He held his breath while Ketia opened the cloth to reveal a long dagger with a whitish handle carved to resemble a fish. Javor took it in his hand and carefully felt the edge; it was sharper than any blade he had ever seen and glinted in the candlelight. The side of the blade was engraved with a spiral pattern and many small markings. "Runes," said his mother. "They're magical." But that was all she knew.

There was a second item in the cloth: a flat piece of grey metal, about the size of Javor's fist, but with an odd shape: ovoid, but with a flat side. _It looks like a fish's scale. Or a snake's._ It had a chain attached to a loop on top. Its centre was depressed and carved into a strange pattern. Around the edge were small figures, more runes; Javor had never seen writing, had never even heard of it. "These are magical, Javor. And since you will be a man tomorrow, I am showing them to you for the first time. They are my heirlooms, and when I die they will be yours. My grandfather told me that together, they would protect me against evil. And that is why the three of us are alive today, Javor, in such an evil world." She took the dagger and the amulet, wrapped them carefully in the cloth and replaced them in the little wooden box.

Protect us from evil? Some magic. It's protected this family so well, most of its children are dead.

The box was nothing but splinters. The cloth that had wrapped the amulet and the dagger was ripped. The monster had been after the amulet. Javor's hand went to his rope belt and felt the dagger, covered with a fold of his tunic. It felt reassuring, somehow.

The magic is real. I took the dagger away, and the monster came and killed them.

Mama, Papa, I am sorry! I did not know!

He staggered outside and poured out his story to Photius: everything his mother had ever told him about her grandfather Medvediu, the amulet and the dagger, how he had taken the dagger to rescue the girls, how the Avars had been killed and dismembered. "And now, my father, my mother ..." His voice dried into a croak. He reached for Photius' wine-skin and drank, but did not taste it.

His uncle and aunt came up; they were unhurt. The killer had passed them by. His aunt led him to her house, put him to bed on a pallet of straw. After two days of trauma and chase, Javor quickly fell into exhausted sleep.

And when the rising sun woke him again, he knew what he had to do.

# Chapter 4: The hunt

By mid-morning, when Javor was expecting the air to get hot, low, dark clouds came out of the north, growling. A north wind, dry and chill, carried a strange odour too faint to really identify. Javor felt annoyed because he could not quite identify it before it blew away. He stopped to shift the heavy pack on his shoulders

Photius looked back over his shoulder."Are you tired, my boy? Or have you recovered from yesterday?" he asked.

"I'll never recover." His voice sounded strange to him: hoarse, deeper than before. He hiked the pack higher on his back and stepped past Photius.

They had been walking since just past sunrise, heading north by northeast. The killer's trail wasn't hard to find: a path of trampled grass and broken bushes and trees, scattered with debris. It led across the pastures and then into the forest beyond, and then up into the higher hills. Along the way lay mementos of the killer's passage: footprints, broken trees, and several times, parts of human bodies. Javor gagged the first time he had seen a woman's leg, bloody and twisted, lying lost in tall grass.

"I want revenge," Javor had said in the village under the morning's first light.

"Revenge?" Roslaw had said. Most of the headman's face was a bruise. There was a nasty red scar under one eye and he was even gruffer than normal. "Javor, you're brave, no one would deny that. But there's a difference between bringing back two girls whose kidnappers have been killed for you, and facing that _thing._ You would not stand a chance."

"I'm going. Who's coming with me?"

Only the Greek traveler, Photius, answered. "I'll come with you, young man. I, too, want this monster dead. Its destruction is part of my mission." Javor had wondered what he meant by that, but did not ask. He focused on gathering what he needed.

With barely a word, the villagers had helped him pack. His uncle, Swat's older brother, gave him fresh trousers, a tunic, boots and a cloak. His aunt brought bread, fruit and other food, enough for him and Photius for two days, three if they stretched it.

Javor had tucked his great-grandfather's dagger into his rope-belt and tugged on it to make sure it would stay. He had taken his father's small axe, the same one that Hrech had taken, in what felt like a different life. _To remember him when I kill that murderer._ When he had walked out of the village, Photius had walked in step beside him. Javor had taken one last look behind him, to see his people gathered at the edge of the village; Roslaw had waved, and so had his uncle; his aunt had wrung her hands and cried. And he had seen Elli, who had just looked at him, her fist in front of her mouth, her eyes wide.

But no one had said anything.

Javor had looked at the sky. _Clouds moving from the west. It'll be a nice day._

Good day for hunting.

Javor had shrugged to adjust the pack, and had walked north-east without saying goodbye.

"Do you want to take a rest?" Photius was saying. He was having no trouble keeping up with Javor's long strides. It was the first time they had spoken since leaving the village.

"I want revenge," Javor repeated. "Now tell me the truth: who killed my parents?"

"Your people told you: it was a monster," Photius said seriously.

"Look, I know everyone was terrified," Javor snarled. "So if it was man who was so terrible, he was a monster, I understand. Now tell me about him. Was he alone? How was he armed? How big was he? What did he look like? I'm going to track him down and do to him what he did ... he did to my ..." Javor choked. He could not breathe. All he could see was his father, his dark hair soaked with blood. He could feel his mother's little body in his arms. He choked and wheezed and his whole body shook. The pack slipped off his shoulders and pulled him backward, until he was lying awkwardly on the pack, his knees bent painfully.

Photius knelt beside him and brushed his fingertips over Javor's temples and eyes, murmuring low. Javor took a great, shuddering breath and stood. He blinked, shook his head, then picked up his pack and strode ahead again.

"It was a monster, Javor," said Photius, walking just behind him. "Really. Not a man. It was enormous, man-shaped but twice as high. Scaly grey skin. Massive arms and legs, with sharp claws as long as your hand. A mouth like a boar's, but filled with fangs like an enormous lizard. It suddenly appeared in the town just after dawn, and no one even saw it coming. It broke heavy timbers like you would break a piece of kindling."

The wanderer's words filled Javor with a creeping horror, a loathing somehow coupled with familiarity. He felt he could imagine the creature, not only how it looked but what its voice, its roar sounded like, how the thing smelled.

"It knocked down a hut, and the people inside ran screaming. The fiend hit the woman there with its fist and broke her back as she ran. Your headman, Roslaw, tried to throw a hunting spear at it, and it just bounced off its skin. The monster slashed at him, and Roslaw was lucky to keep his head on his shoulders.

"But the monster had a purpose. It went straight toward your hut. Your father tried to stop it—he stood in front with his heavy scythe, and he hit the monster with a blow that would have sliced an ox. But the fiend barely felt it. It slashed and pulled down half the roof and then hit your father on the head. For what it's worth, my boy, I think your father's end was swift."

"Please, don't tell me what it did to my mother," Javor interrupted. "I know enough, already."

At sunset they camped beneath a stand of stunted trees. Photius built a fire while Javor looked for some wild fruit or berries, but they ate most of the food that Javor's aunt had given them. Javor stared into the fire, but all he could see was his father.

He saw Swat standing in front of his house, swinging the heavy scythe. Behind him, his mother in the doorway, crying, pulling her husband. Swat swung the scythe again, but a monstrous claw swept down. Swat dodged and the claw hit the thatch, bringing it down on Swat's legs. The man stumbled and the claw hit him, hard, on the head. Swat fell flat onto the ground and did not move.

Javor saw the doorway torn apart, saw his mother fall back...he squeezed his eyes tight, then looked into the darkness around him. At anything but his mother.

Photius came close and raised his hand. Javor flinched back, but the old man shook his head. Tentatively, he reached closer again until his fingertips touched Javor's eyelids. "Sleep now, son," said the old man. "Tomorrow, we enter the monster's own territory."

The sun rose behind murky clouds and a northern breeze chilled Javor. They broke their fast with clear water from a spring, a few berries and two of Photius' mysteriously sustaining cakes.

They followed the faint path through the grass. As they went on, the grass became shorter, the ground stonier and the killer's trail fainter. Soon, Javor couldn't even distinguish it, but Photius forged ahead, confident.

Past a small rise, the thin grass disappeared into a loosely-packed scrabble. A few bent, withered trees with hardly any leaves clung weakly to the hillside. Ahead, a brackish creek wandered sluggishly to the east. At the bank, Photius said "Take care now, son. Don't touch the water," and they hopped carefully from stone to stone across a natural ford. Javor could see craggy mountains ahead; surprisingly, they had no snow on their tops. The whole vista seemed dead and repellent. Javor gagged on the reek of rotting animal carcasses.

"Take care, I say," Photius repeated. "This is no place to quail." Photius gave Javor a sip from his wineskin. Javor had drunk ale, even the heavy _wodova_ the villagers brewed, but he had never known anything like this liquor. A heat he never felt before spread throughout his body, to the tips of his fingers and toes. "That should sustain you. Take heart now, lad. The test is soon."

"What test?" asked Javor. But the old man just smiled grimly and tucked the wineskin back into the folds of his cloak. And Javor knew what he meant.

The sun rose higher but cast no more light. The path started to rise again through dusty hills while the sky seemed to get lower. All morning, the old man told stories that Javor barely heard. All he could think of was his mother's broken body, his father's crushed skull.

"They live in the desolate lands, you know," the old man was saying. "The far north, the north-east; and in latter days, many have been coming from the east toward the north-west, around the edges of the civilized world."

"Why?" asked Javor, surprised at his own interest.

"Civilization is abhorrent to them," said the old man, delighted to have an interested audience at last. "Civilized men learn how the world works, which gives them power over darkness and ignorance. The monsters know this and hate it. Their power is based on fear and ignorance."

"Why? What difference does civilization make?"

"Knowledge, my boy. Knowledge banishes ignorance, banishes fear."

"I don't see how knowing about monsters makes them any less powerful or fearsome," Javor answered. He was getting angry. He still did not know whether he believed the story about a monster. _But then, what broke those heavy timbers? It took four men to move those._

"Knowledge erodes their power, my boy. First, and most obviously, the more we know about our enemy, the easier it is to defeat him. We must learn the monster's weaknesses, you see."

Photius stopped walking and swung his pack off his back, then sat on a rock. "Tell me, do you believe in gods?"

Javor stopped, too. "Well, yes, like Perun and the Dazhbog and the Chernobog."

"Why?"

Javor opened his mouth but could think of no answer.

"Is it because your parents told you they were real? They told you all the stories, and the headman and the shaman and all the other people you know repeated them. So, why can you not believe in monsters?"

"I have seen Perun's lightning and the dawn of Zaria. And I have lost brothers and sisters to the Chernobog."

"Ah—the dark god. You refer to the pestilences."

Javor nodded. "But I have never seen a monster or anything like one."

"Do you believe in bears? Wolves? How often have you come face-to-face with one?"

"I _have_ seen a bear and I have seen what wolves do. I have seen a whole chicken coop ripped apart and all the chickens killed by a fox, I have seen the bones of deer in the forest after they've been killed by wolves. But I have never seen any sign of a monster."

"Until now. Javor, how else could you explain the effects you saw on your own home? Or what your own people are telling you?"

Javor was getting angry. _What does he want from me?_ "People are stupid. My people are stupid. They could have fought off those raiders if they had stood together. And they tell each other tales and then believe them! One man catches a small deer, but by the time the story gets around the village, it's a herd of wild oxen! So, no, I don't believe my people!"

"True. If you talk to three different people in the village, you'll get three different descriptions of the monster. That's the way it is with people, and evil things everywhere thrive on that. So do the gods, mind you. No one knows where they come from or what they want, or how strong they really are or what their weaknesses are. Soon the rumour of them is greater and far worse than they are themselves. A man in your own village, Borys I think his name was, told me about a dragon that ate a whole village in the south. I have heard that tale in other villages, too. But the name of the destroyed village always changes, and with each telling, the beast does something worse and gets bigger and stronger. And if the monster's reputation is so fearsome, soon it doesn't have to do anything but show up to make people run in panic, and the monster can take what he wants without any bother."

"Are ... are you saying the monster that killed my parents isn't so bad?"

"No, unfortunately, my lad, in this case we've seen just how bad it is. But we're going to find out its weaknesses." He set out along the trail again, and Javor followed.

By midday, they were climbing the steep, rocky slopes of a grey mountain. The air grew steadily colder and the clouds got lower and darker. Above, Javor could see only grey: grey rocks reaching dizzyingly upward, grey skies. No white or green.

They stopped for a rest at a small ravine cut by a mountain stream. Photius sat against a rock and shared some of his wine and his mysterious, invigorating bread.

"We are now about to enter a truly dangerous area, my young friend," he said, gazing calmly up the mountain.

"How do you know?" Javor didn't see anything about the slope immediately above them that set it apart from the part they had just climbed.

"The aura of this place is black, dead. There are loathsome things ahead."

Javor let his pack slip to the ground and looked at the old man. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back against a boulder, and from Javor's perspective it seemed the rock was almost a continuation of Photius' head.

Then Photius' head seemed to move. It got longer, higher, and something black rose over the top. No—some animal, a huge snake was rising from behind the rock. In an instant, it towered over Photius. Covered in gleaming black scales, it curved its hideous neck downward again in a fluid motion, opening its maw wider, wider, so wide that Javor thought he would lose his mind. Slime dripped off its lips and teeth like daggers grew outward from the jaw.

Sound faded and time slowed for Javor. Photius looked up, eyes widening in horror. The snake, or whatever it was, lowered its head as if to swallow the old man whole. Javor's body seemed to know what to do without his mind telling it. He realized that his father's small hatchet was in his hand and that he was raising it over his head. He took two long, fast steps and sprang upward, swinging his arm down as he rose over Photius. The axe came down hard onto the snake's skull, and he could feel its blade digging into flesh and bone. There was a horrible wrench at his shoulder, and he let go of the handle, and then his feet were on the ground again. He bumped into Photius, sending the old man sprawling.

Javor became aware of sound again, of Photius yelling incoherently and the snake-thing roaring, tossing its head back and forth with the axe embedded in its skull, spurting slime and blood that hissed when it struck the rocks around them.

Across the ravine, miles of tail writhed and tossed in rings and loops among the rocks. The snake-thing brought its head down hard on the ground right beside Photius, then heaved up again.

Javor scooped the old man up in his arms—he was surprisingly light—and leaped up the hill, away from the snake's death throes, just as it brought its head down again into the ravine. Half-carrying Photius, Javor scrambled up the slope. When they had climbed far enough that they could no longer see the snake-thing among the boulders, Javor halted, panting. "Was that the monster that killed my parents?" he gasped.

"No, Javor," Photius gasped back. He looked bad. His face was gray and he seemed to be trembling. "No. That was a mere minor beast, a cold-drake of some kind. It was much smaller and weaker than the thing that killed the people of your village and all those warriors." Javor was beginning to get his breath under control.

Javor started back down the slope again, half-sliding on his backside.

"Where are you going, boy?" Photius asked, panic around the edges of his voice.

"To get my axe back." It was still embedded in the monster's skull. Despite Photius' incoherent admonitions to stay away from the drake, Javor skidded and slid back to the ravine where the thing's body lay strung out like an unravelled skein of wool. Its tongue now hung out of its mouth, draped over a dead log. As if it isn't long enough, already, Javor thought. Stinking steam rose from it. Javor reached for the axe handle, embedded deep in the fire-drake's skull, and pulled hard. It would not budge until Javor tugged several times, and then all it once it came out of the monster's head with a sucking sound. Javor watched in wonder as the drake's blood—if that's what it was—evaporated in steam until the axe blade was completely clean. He shuddered, then tucked the axe handle into his belt and climbed back up to Photius.

# Chapter 5: The cave

By afternoon, Javor was panicking with every step as they crept along a ledge narrower than his shoulders. The ledge was covered with a thin layer of tiny pebbles, and each footfall slid and crunched and pushed a puff of dust over the edge.

Cliffs rose almost straight up on their left and dropped so far on the right that Javor felt dizzy if he looked over. It did not seem to bother Photius, though, who walked carefully but steadily forward and up.

There was no sound but the wind. Above, the sky roiled with gray clouds. _Clouds don't move like that,_ Javor thought. He pictured rocks falling from the top of the cliff, crushing them or hurling them down the slope to be smashed against yet other rocks.

"How do you know where we're going?" Javor asked when they paused. The sun was getting lower, sinking behind his shoulders. He hadn't seen a footprint or a trace of any living thing since the cold-drake.

"There are signs for those who know how to see them," the old man answered. Javor was getting tired of Photius' enigmatic statements. _Why was he in this part of the country, anyway, and why did he arrive just at the same time as this monster?_

"Do you have a plan, Photius? You said the more we know of this monster, the better we can find its weaknesses. What do you know? When we find this monster, do you have any idea of what to do then?"

The old man smiled a little. "I was beginning to wonder if you would ever ask, Javor. Well, this monster appears to live in a desolate place, so that means it doesn't need to eat very often. A human or two every few weeks seems to suffice.

"Also, with all these rocks about, it must have a tough hide. So probably your father's little hatchet there won't even cut it."

"Then why did you bring me here? What's the point of this chase, if I haven't a hope of killing this monster!"

The old man seemed to smile, but with the sinking sun shining into his eyes, Javor couldn't be sure. "You came here freely, Javor. Remember, I only came after you. The question is, why did you come?"

"You're the one who's tracking this monster! You're leading _me_! And to what?" Javor screamed. "What do you want from me? Why have you brought me to this place?"

"For what you wanted, Javor," said Photius, and still his voice was even and soft, gentle. "For revenge."

_Is this old man crazy?_ "How am I supposed to get revenge on a monster that can't be hurt?" The old man's calm was getting on his nerves. "How do I know that you don't intend to have the monster kill me, too?"

Photius looked disappointed, not offended. "Now, Javor, do you really believe that I would go to all this trouble, walking for days in this desolate place, if all I wanted was merely to achieve your end? I think there would be easier ways to accomplish that." He chuckled when Javor grasped the handle of his axe. "Now, Javor. Look at me, and then trust what your own heart tells you: do you believe that I intend you any harm?"

Javor looked at Photius, and somehow knew that he could trust the stranger, this old man from a far-off civilization, who seemed to know his thoughts before he did. He let go the axe.

"Come, Javor. We can't stay perched on this narrow ledge. Besides, I don't believe we have much farther to go."

They scrambled with hands and feet up a slope that was slightly gentler only when compared to the cliffs they had passed. Javor's fingertips were bleeding by the time they reached a small, flat area covered with loose stones. There was no going farther. Ahead, the cliff rose sheer again, straight up to a height Javor couldn't guess at. Behind, getting darker already in the setting sunlight, Javor could see the country stretching out, rivers like ribbons, trees fading into meadows and pastures.

They put their packs down on the plateau. _Where now?_

Photius just stared at the rock wall. It seemed deeply scored, as if it had been raked by claws the size of oak trees. To one side, a thin stream fell from the shadowed heights above, falling with a tiny sound far below. Other than that and the wind whistling around the crags, the silence was complete. No bird sang, no insects buzzed. Javor couldn't even bring himself to speak for fear of breaking the silence.

Photius lifted his arms over his head. He spoke in a strange language—not Greek, or not what Javor believed was Greek. It sounded, somehow, very old, ancient as the rocks in front of him. " _Ad natha rim bach, al nath roh-on_!" he cried. And then, among the cracks and striations on the rock wall, Javor saw a deep cleft. "Hey! Is that a cave there? Why didn't I see that before?" He realized that he was whispering.

"Hush! I have opened the monster's lair. It is within." Photius put his hands on Javor's shoulders and spoke more words in that ancient language. "I have put such spells of protection on us both as I know," he said. "They may not do much against the monster's claws or teeth, but against any foul magic here that may cloud our eyes or our minds or prevent us from entering, or worse, leaving, they should protect us for at least a short time. Now is the hour, my boy. Now is time for you to attempt your revenge. For this monster is not invincible, not immortal. It can be killed and sent back to the pit that spawned it, if the right man attempts it. Are you such a man?"

Javor's knees felt weak, his stomach churned, even his testicles felt cold and vulnerable. _I can't do this. I'm not a warrior!_ The cave gaped like a beast's maw, and for the first time, he believed the story of the monster that killed his parents and so many others in the village. Involuntarily, he took a step back. His hands shook.

But then he saw his father's body across the threshold, his mother broken in front of her own oven. He lifted his axe.

"No, Javor. Not the axe. The old knife. Your great-grandfather's knife." Javor drew it from its sheath and looked again at the strange markings on it. They gleamed, catching the light of the sinking sun like running fire.

They heard a shriek from behind them. Javor spun to see a dark, winged _something_ falling toward them from the sky, filling more and more of his vision. A saurian maw gaped to show long, terrifying teeth. "Dragon! Run!" shouted Photius, and together they flung themselves into the cave. Javor scraped his chin on the cave floor, and turned just in time to see a long, reptilian shape sweep past the entrance to the cave, screaming in rage and frustration.

"Was—was that it?" Javor panted. "The monster that killed my parents?"

"No," Photius panted in reply. He was as shaken as Javor. "No, that was a dragon. They often live in mountains. I did not know there was a dragon in these parts. However, the monster that we seek is within this cave, so we had best keep our voices down."

You are the one doing all the talking, old man.

The cave was narrow, so Javor went in front. The last of the dying daylight did not penetrate very deep, but a strange pale light came from the top of Photius' walking staff. They could see the sides of the cave were wet, dripping with a foul-smelling moisture. "Do not touch the wall, Javor!" Photius warned. Javor tried to draw his shoulders in. His skin crawled when he thought of the liquid on the cave wall touching him.

There was a heat coming from within, and soon he was sweating. He could see a dull red glow ahead in the tunnel. A dark mist coiled about them.

The tunnel opened into a wide cavern, and the ceiling receded to a height Javor couldn't guess at. The red light and the heat came from a gaping chasm at the far end. Strewn about the uneven floor were bones—human bones, and armour and weapons and coins that glimmered dully in the red light.

All this Javor took in within a second, for crouching in front of the chasm was the proof of the story: man-shaped, but far, far larger. It was hideous, covered in a dull grey, leathery hide. Its impossibly wide, pig-like mouth was chewing something. Glowing red eyes shadowed by a stony brow glared at him with an alien expression for less than a heartbeat, and then it was reaching for Javor, right in front of him, filling his field of vision, roaring so loudly that Javor's ears hurt. Its claw slashed at his head. Without thinking, Javor lunged forward, between the monster's legs. The monster hit the cave wall and bits of rock flew in all directions.

Javor rolled and sprang up. If he had time to think, he would have been surprised to find his grandfather's dagger was in his hand. The monster had Photius trapped against the wall. It seemed to be wary of his glowing staff, squinting against its light.

Javor screamed as fearsomely as he could and sprang forward, slashing the knife downward. He aimed at the monster's back, but with agility surprising in such a large creature it twisted out of the way, and the knife bit into its arm. The monster roared again, a sound that froze Javor's heart, and then with awful strength flung Javor across the cave. He rolled to the edge of the chasm. For a second, he felt as if he was going to tip over and plunge in; below was only a dull red light in a deeper blackness and a foul odour. He knew there was no bottom, only an endless drop that called to him; something in Javor's mind yearned to lean over and fly into the chasm, to give himself to the infinite fall.

With a huge effort, Javor twisted away from the edge. He gripped his knife but the monster grabbed him in one huge claw and lifted him off the ground, pinning his right arm against his side. Its mouth opened, revealing row upon row of triangular teeth, and its hot breath stank.

Then Javor looked down, and saw that in its other claw the monster was holding the amulet— _his_ amulet, the one his mother had inherited from her grandfather. But the monster's grip tightened and drove all thought out of his mind. Javor struggled to breathe and his right arm felt as if it would break. The claws started to dig into his skin.

Javor's focus narrowed to three brightly shining points: the monster holding him; the dagger clenched stubbornly in his trapped right hand; and the amulet in the monster's left claw. Everything else faded, slipped back as if into a great distance.

That claw rose to maul him to pieces. Something in Javor's mind called out, and he saw the amulet rise from the monster's grip, as if it had jumped, and sail into his outstretched left hand.

The monster roared in anger and confusion. Javor felt a surge of strength from the amulet. The monster's grip weakened and the claws no longer bit into him.

The fiend tried to bite Javor's shoulder, but the horrible teeth were unable to break his skin. Its grip slipped and Javor tore his right arm free as he dropped to the ground. Once again the monster's claws slashed down, but Javor dodged, jumped and stabbed. The knife sank deep into the monster's neck and black blood spurted, hissing as it hit the rock. It roared again, angry and afraid, but now its hands held its neck.

A wide sweep of its arm knocked Javor across the cave. The amulet flew off to his left, while the dagger skittered across the cave floor to his right. The monster saw them fly and its eyes flared red. Black blood spurting from its neck, it rushed Javor again. He scrambled back, but the hideous claw drew a bright red line all the way down his thigh.

The pain burned so intensely that Javor could not scream. His mouth opened but he could not breathe, and all he could see was blankness. Somehow, he pushed backward and slid across the cave, barely out of the monster's grasp.

"Javor!" Photius called as he kicked the amulet to him. The old man ran forward and smacked the monster as hard as he could with his glowing walking stick. The monster staggered as Photius lifted his staff. Bright blue sparks flew from its tip. The monster blinked, flinched, hesitated for the briefest moment, then backhanded Photius. He flew across the cavern and his staff flew the other way. The blue light nearly died out. The monster picked up Photius as if he were a doll and shook him back and forth.

Those few seconds were enough for Javor to find his amulet. He felt a rush of strength moving up from his hand. He pushed the searing pain in his thigh out of his mind and ran as fast as he could for the dagger.

The monster saw Javor and swatted one huge hand down on Javor's head. Javor fell to the ground, sending a fresh, unbelievable jolt of pain up from his thigh. The only thing he could think was _Hold onto the amulet._

He could hear the monster coming closer, could feel its breath on his back, but he could see only blackness. Then he felt the dagger's fish-shaped handle find its way into his palm. He rolled, slashing the dagger upward and kept rolling to dodge the thing's entrails spilling onto the ground.

The monster fell to its knees. Though mortally wounded, it would not stop. It flailed its arms as if trying to swat Javor, to squish him like a fly. Ignoring the pain in his leg, Javor stood and brought the dagger down like he was chopping wood. He felt it dig into something and kept pushing it until the monster's arm fell, severed, to the stony floor.

The monster screamed, but there was no more power in its voice. Javor gripped the amulet in his left palm and straightened. Holding the dagger in both hands, he brought the blade down as hard as he could into the monster's head. The dagger bit deep and extinguished the red glow in the monster's eyes. It slumped forward, limp on the ground and did not move any more.

Javor stood looking at the beast for a long time. The only sound he could hear was his own panting. Photius staggered to his side and put his hand on the young man's shoulder.

"You've done it, boy!" he panted. His voice was hoarse. "You've destroyed the scourge of Dacia, the bane of many fine warriors who have tried. And you have achieved your revenge."

Javor didn't answer. His mind whirled. He saw the monster lying at his feet, and his parents' bodies in their own home. He didn't even know how he felt, himself. Should he laugh or cry, or howl in triumph? He didn't _feel_ triumphant. He felt —

"Owwww," came a low groan from his throat.

Photius crouched, holding his blue-glowing staff next to Javor's thigh. Carefully, he pulled the ripped cloth away and frowned. "Well, it could have been worse. Much worse. I can help it, but I'll need water. We'll have to get out of here quickly."

He asked Javor to hold the glowing staff and, using Javor's small axe, hacked off all eight of the monster's claws one by one, dropping them into a bag. Javor's stomach squirmed as Photius picked up the severed arm and arranged it on the ground to make chopping the claws easier. Then he pulled the head around and, to Javor's great disgust, used pliers to pull out two of its teeth.

"What are you doing?"

"A demon's claws and teeth contain powerful magic, Javor," Photius answered without looking up. "And power like that can be very useful if one has the knowledge."

"Is that why you brought me here—to kill the monster so you can get its magic?"

Photius still didn't look up. "Remember, boy, I didn't bring you here. You came of your own accord, seeking revenge. And you've succeeded. I would not have predicted that." He took back the staff and poked through the debris on the floor. "Well, this monster has been here for some time. Less than a century, though." He stooped, picked up a handful of gold and silver coins, and dropped them into a pouch tied at his waist.

"Well, well, look at this, here." He brought a long sword in a metal scabbard to Javor. Photius looped one of its two belts around Javor's waist, and the other over his shoulder. In the bluish light of Photius' staff, Javor could see that the scabbard was decorated with triangular patterns. He drew the sword and saw more triangles and some spiral patterns. He thought looked similar to the markings on his dagger. _More runes?_ Somehow, the sword felt good buckled on.

Photius gathered more gear from the debris of other warriors who had tried and failed to kill the monster. He buckled a short sword around his own waist, and took a helmet for Javor.

Javor took a a few treasures for himself: a metal wristlet with jewels worked into it, a necklace and some coins. He put his grandfather's knife in its sheath on the sword-belt on his right hip, and tried the helmet for size. A little loose, but not bad. The visor would take some getting used to, he thought. The throbbing in his thigh would not stop.

A sudden shriek: above them, a shadow darker than the gloom of the cavern's heights fell. In less than a second it was upon them, the winged dragon from the slope outside. Photius threw himself face-down on the cavern floor, but Javor held his hands up, foolishly trying to ward off the danger. Somehow, the amulet was again in his left hand. At the last instant, the dragon swooped up again, shrieking angrily, and disappeared, impossibly, Javor thought, down the narrow tunnel.

A rumble came from deep below their feet and a fume came out of the glowing chasm. The cave seemed to shake. "We had better get out of this cave," said Photius. "But first, we must return this monster to the depths it came from. Come, help me push!" He put his hands against the monster's mutilated shoulder. Javor started pushing on the legs and felt pain stabbing up from his thigh through his whole body. Somehow, they heaved the monster's carcass toward the chasm. With one final push, the body went over the edge and fell down, down, down until they could no longer see it. They heard no sound of it hitting bottom, no splash. Photius tossed the severed arm after the body and it, too, disappeared into the shadows.

The whole mountain began shaking. Noise, fumes and flames leapt out of the chasm. Photius grabbed Javor's arm and pushed him into the tunnel, yelling "Run!" They ran as fast as they could for the surface, not daring to look back at flames and molten rock leaping out of the chasm.

With a dash and a roll, they reached the open air just as a violent wrenching of the ground knocked them down. Javor scrambled to his feet, but Photius could not find his footing with the mountainside crumbling beneath him. Javor helped him up, then snatched their packs. Together, they slid down the steep slope as the cave entrance collapsed into a ruin of tumbled rock.

Finally, they came to a stop at a relatively flat spot, scattered with stones as big as Javor's head. "Well done, my boy, well done," Photius coughed. "Maybe we shouldn't have rolled the monster into the chasm, after all. Still, how was I to know? Ah, well—next time."

"Next time for what?" Javor demanded.

"Next time I find a dead monster." He straightened his clothing, pulled his pack onto his shoulders, picked up his staff, pulled his hood over his head and started back down the long path. "It's getting late, but we'd best get as far down this mountain as we can before it's too dark to go any farther. It's still an evil place. Come, Javor."

"What about the dragon?"

"It seemed scared off by your amulet, my boy. At any rate, we'll have to take our chances, and we need some water to tend to your wound. I don't fancy sitting on this mountain all night long."

They stumbled down the mountain through the deepening darkness. Soon the nearly full moon rose, and in its pale light they managed to find a relatively flat area. "See if you can build a fire," Photius suggested. He put down his pack and pulled out little sacks and a wooden bowl. He started mixing powders and water from a skin into a strange-smelling paste in the bowl, while Javor limped to find firewood.

When he had gathered a small amount of dead wood, he realized he had no way to start a fire. Photius poked the tip of his long walking staff into the midst of the wood and a bit of smoke rose. Soon, a campfire was burning, merry in its own way in that wasteland.

Photius rubbed the paste onto the wound, as gently as he could. "I'm sorry, my boy, it's the best I can do out here," he said as Javor flinched and gasped. But when the old man was done, Javor was surprised that his leg actually felt better.

So he let his frustration out. "Don't give me any more round-about answers. How long have you been searching for this monster?"

Photius allowed his staff to dim, and the night closed around them. "Very well, I'll tell you what I can.

"I have been searching for quite a long time, following tales and rumours of evil and destruction. This monster, whose name is Ghastog—at least, that's what my order has called it for over a century—has destroyed many villages and towns, and burned down a substantial portion of a city in Greece, too. For the past decade, it has travelled about Dacia and Sarmatia, taking life where it wants, and it has also wandered far from here at times. During that time, it gathered other evil forms to it, like the cold-drake you killed yesterday.

"Two monsters in two days! What a warrior you have turned out to be, Javor!"

"Never mind that, old man. Tell me what _you_ are doing here now!"

Photius sighed and gazed into the fire. "My mission was to find the monster and find also a warrior fit to destroy it and all its foul brood. For it was more than wild and wanton, Javor. It was purely evil. Look about you: it exuded an evil spell that sickened, weakened and killed, sooner or later, anything in its vicinity. That's why there is nothing living around here, save other evil creatures like it, and they spread around devouring what they need to live, and so their circle of evil spreads.

"Creatures like Ghastog are old, Javor, old. Many centuries of centuries, older than you can guess. They may be older than the world we live in. They hate humanity, and fear us and are bent on destroying us.

"For over a century now, their numbers have been increasing alarmingly. They seem to come from some source far in the east, in farthest Asia or the legendary islands beyond it. There is great evil coming from the east, Javor: pestilences and foul airs. That is why Rome has been overrun by wild barbarians from across the steppe lands—they are running from others who are themselves running from the evil that seems to have vomited from the doors of Hell itself. And that's not all: the seas are rising. Whole coastlines around the Euxine Sea have been submerged, villages and towns drowned. It is as though the Earth itself was striving to destroy the human race."

Javor shivered and leaned closer to the fire. "How do you know all this?"

"I belong to an order of scholars and priests from many lands. We have many different beliefs, worship different gods, but we have drawn together to try to avert this threat to civilization, to humanity. We seek the Answer to the riddle of the nature of the world and these plagues and how we might destroy them forever. We are working together, as well as we might, to gather knowledge of these calamities, to share it and to fight them. We search for heroes, for dragon-slayers and monster-killers to remove this evil spawn—heroes like you, Javor."

"I _told_ you, I'm no warrior!"

Photius smiled. "I have seen evidence to the contrary. Look at yourself—with no training and virtually no weapons, you just destroyed two monsters. A few days ago, you armed yourself with a knife and a farmer's axe and set off fearlessly to rescue two girls from a gang of thugs. Those are warrior traits, as I see it."

But Javor didn't feel like a warrior. He realized how tired he was, how his whole body ached and how hungry he felt. He lay back against a rock, tried to get comfortable and soon fell asleep.

## Chapter 6: pain

Every step was agony. Pain shot up his left thigh every time he put his foot onto the stony ground. An ache snaked from his right hip, around the small of his back and up to his right shoulder. Javor realized it resulted from favouring his left foot. His boots were nearly worn out. His right boot was pinching his little toe where it poked out the side, and grit had worked in and scraped his sole.

The bruises on his chest and side smarted with every little bump from the salvaged armour—none of which fit very well. The helmet had become too hot and uncomfortable a long time ago, and he had tied it to his pack. Now it bumped against his hip with every step.

Photius talked all the way down the mountain and continued as they walked through the forests and meadows. "It seems as if the earth itself has determined to eradicate humanity. A century ago, Hell opened its gates, somewhere far to the East—perhaps even beyond Asia on the edge of the world. Out of those gates have issued hosts of evil: evil men and all sorts of monsters, and pestilences, diseases that men had never seen before," he prattled on. "But that was not the first time that the earth has seen monsters or evil. No, evil has been with us forever. And the races of monsters are far older than the race of men. You can feel it, can't you, the immense age of these fiends?"

Javor realized that he had not heard much of what Photius had been saying all day. There had been stories about monsters and demons and gods. But his attention was claimed by his thigh, back, shoulder and bruises.

Javor looked at the sky. _Clear tomorrow._ The farther they got from the monster's cave, the more familiar and predictable the clouds and the weather looked, and the monster and dragon seemed less plausible. He had given up on looking over his shoulder for the dragon that attacked them on the mountainside because Photius did not seem concerned about it. The clouds made him think of sitting in the pasture again, and that made him think of his father ... _not now._

To keep from thinking about his parents, he paid attention to Photius. "The dragons—which, of course, originated in the far East—their race goes especially far back, perhaps as far as the beginnings of the earth," he was saying as he used his walking stick to push branches out of his path. "One of my colleagues, now, believes that the dragons embody the essence of the earth itself. Of course," he laughed slightly, "I don't hold with that, myself. How can they represent anything but the spirit of evil, when they wreak so much destruction wherever they go?"

_How much farther is it to home?_ Javor wondered.

"Of old, a race of immortals arose on the earth and they began a war to rid the earth of the monsters. Some they imprisoned deep under the earth, others they pushed into the depths of the Ocean Sea, and some they simply slew with swords and other weapons. These monster-killers travelled around the world, destroyed many monsters and earned many names for themselves: Zeus, Apollo, Gilgamesh, Herakles, Siegfried. There are many stories, and some of them are simply fabrications. But doubt not, dear boy, that all those stories have some essence of fact, or at least they once did."

Photius' ceaseless voice began to irritate Javor. "I don't know many of the old stories," he said.

"No? You never heard of Herakles, or Zeus, or ... "

"Sorry."

"Hmm. Well, I've been doing all the talking today. Tell me the stories you have heard."

"The only story that I know is about my great-grandfather, Medvediu." Javor could not stand the pain in his leg any longer. He sat on a log beside their path and stretched his legs in front of him, letting the pack fall into the brush behind.

"Medvediu—that means 'bear' in your language, doesn't it?" Photius asked, putting down his own pack.

"Sort of. Medvyd is 'bear.' I never thought about that, before. He was a soldier in the Imperial Army, and fought against the Persians. He went to the Caucausus Mountains and killed a giant that had been terrorizing the people around, and he threw its body off a cliff, but no one ever found its body. Then he took some treasures from the giant's cave ... "

Photius pulled a small metal bottle out of his pack, then gingerly parted the torn trouser leg and applied two drops from the bottle onto the long, red welt that ran the length of the thigh. "Just as we did yesterday, your great-grandfather took that enchanted knife and magic amulet, and passed them down to you," he said.

"Yes. That's why I had to get them back, you see: they're the only things of any worth that my family ever had, and my mother gave them to me at my—my birthday ..." Tears welled up in Javor's eyes, and finally a dam of some kind broke in him. He sat down by the path and cried. His father, his mother, six brothers and sisters, all killed one by one by pestilence, by a silent, mysterious death in the cradle, or in their mother's womb—and now, most unbelievable of all, by a monster. Javor cried until he felt drained.

The sun was high. Photius gave Javor a small towel to dry his face. They sheltered in the shade of some beech trees, sipping Photius' wine.

They started again when the afternoon had worn on and a northwest breeze cooled the air. Javor stepped gingerly on his left foot until he was sure the pain had decreased. His thigh was still uncomfortable, but he was surprised by how well Photius' potion had worked.

"I know how hard it is," said Photius as he shrugged his pack onto his shoulders and led the way. "I lost my wife, too, to a pestilence, a mysterious plague from the East, when we were visiting in Persia.

They continued in silence until Javor asked "How long have you been were you following it, searching for it? How did you come to my village a day before this—this monster?"

"Indeed, I was looking for Ghastog. As I said, I belong to an ancient order of learned men (and some women, too, by the way) whose purpose is to find and destroy as many monsters, fiends, ogres and dragons as we can."

"But why?"

"I told you: they're inimical to mankind. It is the theory of my order that the legions of Hell began a war long ago and conquered the Earth, destroying many of the gods. And there is another phenomenon happening now: the arising of the one God. I am not certain what it means, but the old gods, it seems, are dying out."

"What does all this mean to me?" Javor asked, impatient.

"It is your destiny, Javor." Photius stopped dramatically. "You have been chosen."

Javor stepped around Photius and kept walking. "Chosen? For what?"

"To help rid the world of monsters, to clear the way for the development of mankind. You are destined to carry on the struggle to rid the world of monsters."

"Forget it, old man. I'm going back to my _holody_ and putting my parents' farm back together. I've had enough of monsters."

With another dramatic gesture, Photius swept back his cloak to reveal a long sword belted to his side. "A long time ago, _I_ was chosen. I have carried the struggle on. In my time, I have destroyed dozens of such things, werewolves and ogres and monsters that beggar description. I have seen comrades, friends, loved ones ripped apart by them. But I did not shy away from my fate. I was chosen, I took up the arms, and I fulfilled my destiny.

"Now my doom has called me not only to follow demons, but in my old age, to find one to carry on the struggle for me when I am gone. And that one is you, Javor. You have been chosen to follow me."

"Choose someone else, old man. I don't care about your monsters. I don't want to chase ogres around the world. I want to go back to my village and marry Elli and raise children. Forget it!"

Photius laughed again. "I did not choose you, Javor! You have been chosen by a power far higher than me or the Emperor of Constantinople, or the Patriarch of the new Church. You cannot evade this fate, Javor. It will follow you.

"Do not doubt yourself, Javor. Look at yourself: you're taller and broader by far than anyone else in your _holody,_ even your parents. You fought and defeated that monster without any training in warcraft, or in wielding a blade. And the magic amulet of your great-grandfather leaped into your hand of its own accord—because it knows its rightful owner."

"I don't care, Photius. I want no part of this."

"If you're so sure of that, my boy, then why haven't you taken off the armour and sword?"

Javor swore and strode on, but he didn't take off the armor or the sword.

By late afternoon of the next day, they could see Nastasciu again. Still, no one was out. _Just like the last time I came back, with Elli and Grat. I guess I'll never get a hero's welcome._

The villagers were still hiding inside the _holody_ , but this time, he did not find it any more damaged than when he had left. Javor waved at a woman wearing a flowered kerchief on her head who was watching over the log-wall. She called down to someone else to open the gate.

People had set up temporary shelters inside. They were tending fires or cooking, afraid to venture outside the stockade. They stared at Javor and Photius.

Javor went to the big wooden cistern in the centre and scooped water into his hands to drink. He washed his head and when he looked up again, there was Roslaw. That fool, Borys, was behind his shoulder.

"You're back," Roslaw said. Javor nodded and drank more water.

Hrech ran up and threw his arms around Javor. "You're back! You're alive! I was so worried for you!" He let Javor go, then hugged him tight again. Finally, he just stared as if he could not believe that Javor was really there.

The villagers gathered around them. "Where did you get the weapons?" Roslaw asked.

"From the monster's cave," Javor answered. Small children came up to touch his buckler. One started to play with the helmet on the ground. "Don't touch that," said Roslaw, sharply, and the children backed away. But the whole village stood around them.

Javor pulled his boots off, wiggling his toes gratefully in the dirt of home.

"So what happened to the monster?" asked Borys.

Photius put his hand on Javor's shoulder. "Javor slew it after a tremendous battle, using the dagger of his great-grandfather, Medvediu." From the back of the crowd, someone guffawed. "After dispatching the fiend, he despoiled it and then tossed its foul carcass back into the abyss whence it sprang." Someone else snorted at that.

"The monster is really dead?" Roslaw asked.

"Verily!" Photius reached into the purse hanging from his belt. "Behold its claws!" And he held up one of the cruelly curved claws for all to see. The villagers drew back as if Photius would attack them with it himself.

Then Roslaw patted Javor on the shoulder. "Well done!" He smiled broadly, which twisted the scar across his face hideously. But his eyes were not smiling. "Thank you. Come, join us for supper. Tekla!" he called to his wife. Soon, Javor and Photius had bread, wine and meat and a crowd had gathered to listen to their story.

Photius did most of the talking. "We walked for days, three days trailing the fiend, on a trail as hellish as you can imagine. Every step was more and more desolate, until finally we were in the midst of a lifeless landscape. We stopped to rest for a moment, a minute's respite from our labours, when we were attacked — "

"By the monster?" someone asked.

"No, by one of its underlings, a minor cold-drake, a huge worm, the length of five tall men. I would have been devoured in an instant had it not been for the quick reflexes of young Javor here. He moves like a cat, indeed he showed himself a true warrior. He leaped and in one blow of his father's axe dispatched the evil monstrosity ..."

Another laugh interrupted Photius' monologue. It had come from Mrost, the young man who most consistently tormented him. "You said before that he used his grandfather's magical dagger. Your whole story's nothin' but goat-shit!"

"It was his great-grandfather's dagger, and that was on the monster that attacked this village, not on its menial ... " Photius protested.

"You didn't kill any monsters," Mrost sneered. "You ran off, scared when you saw your parents killed, and wandered around for days. You picked up some of the armour from those raiders—we saw what the monster did to them, and you had rich pickings. Now you're hungry so you come back here and try to claim some glory for yourself, you coward."

Javor stood up, hand on his sword-hilt. "I went for revenge for my parents, Mrost!" he shouted, his face hot. It was the first time he had ever stood up to Mrost, and he felt his heart pounding. _Why am I afraid of him? I've just killed two monsters!_ "Who's the coward! Come over here and say that!"

"Javor is a great warrior, a kind this village will not see again," said a low, calm voice. It was Vorona, the witch. As usual, no one had noticed her until she was right behind them. This time, she was covered almost head to toe with a featureless cloak and grey hood. "It is time for you to be anointed as a warrior of the gods, Javor. Come." She held out her hand. Everyone fell silent as she led Javor toward the gate of the _holody._ She said not a word nor made a gesture, but two of the young men serving as guards at the gate opened it for her so that she didn't even break stride.

She led Javor down the slope past the village, directly to her hut near the riverbank, as the villagers watched from the gate. Javor hesitated outside her doorway. He had never seen the inside of her hut—he couldn't think of anyone else who had, other than Photius. Then he thought again that he was a warrior who had killed two fearsome monsters, and he must look silly, afraid to enter a woman's hut.

Still, he nervously pushed past the skins across her doorway.

In the dim light, Vorona gestured for Javor to remove his armour. He dropped his helmet, buckler and weapons to the ground, standing in his tunic and torn trousers and rope sandals. She herself removed her hood and cloak, leaving just a thin colourless wrap. From some recess, she brought out earthenware jars and some wooden bowls. Murmuring prayers or spells, she mixed wine, water and milk in the bowl, then sprinkled a handful of dust into it. Next, she lit a candle, which cast very little light but seemed to give off a lot of strange-smelling smoke. More dust on the candle filled the hut with a sharp smell and made the flame dance crazily.

Javor began to feel dizzy. He found he couldn't look at anything but Vorona, who seemed to shimmer in the candle's dancing light.

She stood. Without taking her eyes from his, she bent at the knees, grasped the bottom of Javor's tunic and pulled it over his head. A tug at the tattered trousers' waistband made them fall apart, and he was nude. Javor felt his throat go dry. She gave him the bowl; Javor drank. It tasted awful, but he swallowed without gagging, his eyes still captivated by hers. "Wine, to represent the blood of life. Water, the cleanser and purifier. Milk, which represents the female and male liquids that bring new life into the world. Salt, essential to life."

She poured fresh water into another bowl, dipped a cloth in it and began to wash Javor, starting at his face, working downward. The scrubbing aroused Javor. Vorona washed every bit of his skin, which first warmed him, then left him cool. He felt as if every nerve in his body was alert, seeking stimulation.

From a small vial, Vorona poured some strong-smelling oil into her hand and spread it over his skin, starting at his neck, then his shoulders. The oil made his skin tingle. He felt hot, suddenly. "Sacred oil, pressed from acorns of the oaks holy to the gods," she murmurred.

Vorona's hand moved lower, across his stomach. Javor flushed as he realized his penis was stiffening. Then her hand swept across it and his erection jumped, full. He held his breath. _What is she doing?_

"Your actions have shown you to be one chosen by the powers of the world to accomplish wondrous deeds," she said, as if she had heard his question. Her hands moved up his arms. Without losing contact with his skin, she moved around him and began spreading the oil on his neck and shoulders. Drops of oil set his skin on fire as they ran down his back. His vision swam, and he felt as if he were rocking back and forth on his feet, no matter how hard he tried to stand still. He couldn't speak.

"As a warrior, you must be anointed before you set out on your quest," she said.

_What quest?_ Vorona shook her head slightly. "You have begun a great quest. The events of the past few days show that you must leave the narrow confines of your life and seek a greater glory. Your quest will change the world, but first you must see the truth." All through this, her hand swept across his skin, up and down his thighs, down to his feet, then back up the back of his thighs, across his buttocks, higher on his back.

Javor's skin burned. He breathed hard as if he were running. Sweat ran into his eyes. She turned and seemed to be searching in the shadows behind her. Javor looked at her curvy back, barely covered by her threadbare wrap.

Before Javor could react, she stabbed him in the thigh with a thin blade. Javor jumped but somehow remained silent. Vorona collected the blood that flowed from the wound into another small bowl. When she was satisfied with the amount she had collected, she held a broad leaf against the cut, patting it in place.

She held out a tiny bottle. "Spit," she said, and he spat as much as he could. When she had enough, she sealed the bottle and put it away behind her.

"Wine and water, blood and saliva," she said. Then she stepped back and in one motion shrugged and shook her breasts, and her wrap fell from her body, revealing an impossibly voluptuous beauty. Her breasts were full and heavy, her hips wide, her thighs smooth and white. He was aware, mortified of his erection stiffening again, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Vorona knelt in front of him, rubbed more oil onto her palms, took his erection in hand again and stroked, gazing into his eyes. Javor couldn't believe what was happening. His mind went blank. His penis jumped and his skin burned. His breathing grew faster and hoarser, and in a few seconds he ejaculated. Calmly and efficiently, Vorona caught his semen in another bowl and set it aside. "Milk and semen, the beginning of new life." Then she blew out the candle, dipped the cloth in cool water again, and again washed his whole body.

When it was done, Javor collapsed onto her straw mattress. She patted his forehead and gave him some wine in a clay cup. "Now it is time, my young warrior." She gave him his tunic and helped him pull it on. "Time for you to go and find your destiny."

Somehow, Javor struggled back into his armour and buckled his weapons on. He staggered out of the hut into the setting sunlight. _How did it get so late? How long was I in there?_ He blinked, then walked back to the _holody,_ where the villagers were getting ready for bed. Four stood on benches so they could see over the wooden palisade around the _holody_. Others tended the animals that had been brought into the shelter for the night. Javor found Photius beside a small fire, quietly eating a frugal evening meal. Photius shared a little more of his wine, and they listened to the muttering from the fires scattered around them.

Hrech hunkered down beside Javor. "Are you okay?"

_He is the only one who shows any concern,_ Javor realized. He nodded.

"So, what happened here while I was away?"

"Nothing much," Hrech shrugged. "We just brought as much as we could inside the _holody_ , and kept a lookout. Vorona wanted to continue the solstice ceremonies, but no one else did. But other than that, it's been quiet. No raiders, no monsters. Nothing."

It was now dark. Hrech patted Javor on the shoulder and went back to his family. Photius said "You take first watch, Javor," then stretched himself out on a blanket and fell asleep immediately.

Javor looked up at the sky, thinking of his parents. _Have I failed you?_

_Yes,_ came the reply, but he could not tell whether it was his own thought, his father's or someone else's. He shook his head. There was no use wondering about that.

He tried to remember the sound of his parents' voice. He thought of his mother, first: her quiet, high voice, so assured, yet so sad. "Not enough rain this year," she had said while picking new beans—how long ago? Five days? Six? Seven? The day before the solstice. Javor was too tired to work it out, yet too nervous to sleep.

It had not been a good year for farming. The sun had shone mercilessly since the snows left, rain had been rare and the crops were puny. "Tomorrow will be a big day," he remembered her voice saying. "You'll be a man. Oh, the years go by so fast!"

"Do you ever think about Alla and Swat?" he had asked.

Ketia stopped picking beans and reached up high to touch Javor's cheek gently. Tears wet her face. "You're so _big,_ " she said with a sad smile. "I never would have thought my baby would grow to be so tall." She turned away and pretended to look under the leaves for more beans. Javor heard her sniff.

Sitting in the darkness beside the snoring Photius, Javor scolded himself. _Why did I make my mother cry? Idiot!_

Javor knew how much sadness his mother had carried every day. Her first baby, a girl, had been stillborn, as had her fourth. The second child, another girl, was Alla. Javor remembered her long dark hair and hazel eyes like her mother's, and her clever hands that used to knit little toy lambs for him. She and Young Swat, the third child and first boy, had been Javor's only friends for most of his life.

There had been two other children, but Javor had never known them; one had died in her cradle only a few weeks after being born, the other had drowned in the stream as a baby, before Javor was born.

Then came the winter of the pestilence, three years ago. Javor remembered seeing men, women, babies looking drawn, pale, remembered how they coughed and trembled all day, remembered the babies' weak cries. Within days, they would die. Boleslaw, the shaman, and his acolytes, two thin teenage boys, would go from house to house chanting prayers and burning incense, with no effect. Ketia prayed to Mokosh, the goddess of health and the spinner of the thread of life. Swat worked feverishly to patch every draft in the hut, but the winter wind still blew in, and ice still collected on the walls.

That winter was deep and hard. Snow came early and in volumes the oldest villagers had never seen, and they succumbed to the pestilence first. Boleslaw coughed up blood while burning incense and died in front of his acolytes. They were also dead by the next day.

In the deepest winter, Young Swat and Javor helped their father dig a trench through the snow so they could get in and out of their hut. Young Swat tired quickly and slumped into the snow as he watched the others dig with crude wooden shovels his father had made. He went back to the hut, and his mother screamed when he collapsed in the doorway.

Ketia touched her oldest boy's face and recoiled: he was hot with fever. She and Alla pulled him into his bed and covered him as well as they could. He began to sweat and shiver at the same time. Frantic, Ketia tried to give her boy some soup, but he could not swallow.

Through the day, as the snow swirled and the wind howled, Alla wiped her brother's forehead. She wiped his mouth and chin when he started to cough. By nightfall, Young Swat was coughing blood. Alla wiped his face and chest through the night, but by the next morning she had fever, too. They both coughed and shivered through the day, while their father stoked the fire until the hut was so hot that Javor had to step outside periodically and wet his throat by eating snow.

The coughing kept them awake all the next night. Until it stopped.

Ketia wept continuously for weeks. Javor never saw her without tears on her face. But she continued cooking and mending and cleaning and looking after her last child.

"I think about them every day," she had answered Javor on that summer day, only a few days but an entire lifetime earlier. "But we can't bring them back."

Once, Javor knew, Ketia had been a pretty woman with long, dark hair that shone as it cascaded over her shoulders. Now, her hair was gray and ragged, lines circled her mouth and neck and she seemed to squint all the time. She smiled rarely, and when she did, Javor could see gaps between her teeth. She occasionally complained of several more loose teeth.

But her voice, her voice was still high and musical and the sweetest sound that Javor knew.

Can you ever forgive me?

Wolves howling brought Javor back to the night. The moon and stars were quickly covered by swirling black clouds. _Clouds never move that fast,_ he thought.

The villagers stopped talking; mothers held their children closer. The wind blew dust around the _holody_.

Clouds come in before the wind starts? That never happened before.

Javor stood and looked over the stockade. Even the trees in the forest seemed to have come closer. The wolves sounded closer, howling to each other as if they were planning a strategy. And there was another noise, too: something moving through the woods, breaking boughs and crashing through underbrush.

Photius appeared beside Javor, peering into the night. The darkness seemed to be a thick smoke.

"What's going on?" Javor asked.

"Something is coming for you, Javor," Photius whispered. "Another of Ghastog's lieutenants, like the drake on the mountain side."

A violent gust blew out most of the campfires and all of the torches. Then the wind stopped entirely. The forest was completely silent, without any sound. None of the villagers dared make a noise.

No one was sleeping now. Most of the men crept to the palisade to peek over its northern edge. A sudden rushing noise came from above and the wind came back, pushing down hard. Then something hit Javor from above, knocking him sprawling to the ground. He looked up and the sky above was blotted out. He heard Photius yelling. Then he saw what for a moment looked like branches of trees, stripped of their bark. No—those were teeth, long fangs, a dozen of them at least, in a maw that was gaping for his head. He realized it was the dragon from the mountain as it settled one hideous claw on his chest. The talons ripped his clothes, even the ancient armour he had taken from the monster's cave.

As dragons go, it was not huge, about the size of a horse in its body, but with a neck as long again as its body and a long, long tail that ended in a whip shape. It had a head like a snake's, but longer, with sharp, short horns and flaring ears like bats' wings. Its skin was black and scaly, shining almost wetly in the firelight. Its eyes were red as flames, shaped like a cat's, no, like a snake's, slitted and hypnotic. Javor felt his will bending, he felt he wanted to submit to this fiend. Then another voice spoke to his mind, to a deeper part of his very being, and his hand went to the amulet again, hanging around his neck.

As soon as his fingers touched the amulet, the dragon's head recoiled with an angry hiss. It lifted its claw quickly as if Javor's touch burned it. Javor scrambled to his feet, whipped out the sword he had taken from Ghastog's cave and slashed. The enchanted blade slid across the dragon's neck, drawing the slightest scratch on its hide. Black blood oozed along the blade's edge and began to smoke. Javor saw the blade evaporate into smoke until the dragon's whiplike tail slashed his legs from under him.

"The dagger! The dagger!" It was Photius, running across the _holody._ The top of his staff glowed and his cloak waved behind him as he ran, swift for an old man. His own sword banged against his side with each step. "Use the dagger!" he cried.

_Medvediu's dagger!_ Javor scrambled to his feet again as, almost of its own volition, the knife swept out of its sheath with a ringing sound. Instinctively, Javor grasped the hilt between two hands and held it in front of him, facing the dragon, which drew back from the blade.

The world faded away for Javor again, leaving only the dagger and the dragon, but he had no idea what to do next. The dragon seemed to realize it, too. Its head struck forward, stabbing with its hideous long teeth. The dagger seemed to move of its own will, slashing down at the neck. The dragon dodged at the last instant, hissing. Its spittle hit the ground, smoking and hissing.

Then the dragon raised itself on its rear legs and, screaming, swiped at Javor with its front claws. Again the dagger led Javor's arms, out up and down, a mighty sweeping stroke at the demon's extended leg. Javor felt a shock and a rush and saw a spray of black blood and realized he had shorn off the dragon's front left foot.

The dragon's screaming hit a deafening note. It spewed froth from its mouth, a venom that burned whatever it touched. Its tail thrashed madly, knocking Photius down and sending his glowing stick clattering on the stones. It stretched out its wide wings, beat them twice and lifted into the night sky, disappearing with a gasping, choking scream.

Javor helped Photius to his feet. "Are you all right?" the old man asked. Javor gasped and nodded. But before he could say anything, before he could even think, a sudden gust shook the trees. Javor climbed up the palisade again. A shadow deeper than the night swept over the grassy slope and then WHAM! a huge impact shuddered the palisade, knocking the watchers down.

Pandemonium now inside the _holody_ as the villagers panicked. WHAM! again, another blow to the flimsy walls, and women were screaming, children crying and men shouting. Every dog in the village was howling and the other animals were bleating, lowing and rushing around, trying to get away from the force that was trying to get in.

"Weapons, everyone, whatever you have! They're ramming the gate!" Roslaw shouted.

Javor clung to the palisade, peering into the night, but no matter how he tried he couldn't see anyone, let alone an organized army battering the log walls. Another impact knocked him onto his back.

Photius strode to the gate, his cloak billowing behind him, showing his armour and long sword. His walking staff was glowing again. "Lift me up to the top of the stockade!" he shouted. The villagers hesitated. "Help me up!" he commanded, and men rushed to stack up benches against the wall. Javor stood behind Photius as he climbed the makeshift structure, ready to catch the old man at the next impact.

Photius raised his staff and the light at the top grew blinding. "Begone!" he shouted. "You cannot come in. Your master is destroyed. Leave this village now! Begone!"

Everything stopped then, all movement, all sound, as if in expectation. Photius' staff glowed like daylight, but no one dared to look over the palisade. Then another crash shook the walls, the logs of the gate splintered, and despite the villagers standing behind him, Photius fell back onto the ground. The wind came again and extinguished Photius' light. There was another rushing sound from beyond the palisade, a sound like something big and heavy retreating, moving back to the forest. Slowly, life seemed to return to normal. Someone rekindled the campfires and torches.

Javor was immediately at Photius' side, helping him up. "Are you hurt?"

"No, no, I'm fine. Thank you, Javor."

"Who was it, Photius?" It was Roslaw. "More raiders?"

"No, not raiders, but another fiend from the same hell as Ghastog. Rest yourselves for now—it won't be back tonight. I made certain of it. You all should get as much rest as you can, tonight."

No one slept the rest of that night, but it was quiet. The clouds parted from the moon, then disappeared. The wolves were silent. The villagers huddled around their fires, not speaking other than to comfort their children. Together, they waited long hours for a cold grey dawn.

Javor and Photius hunkered down apart from the villagers. "How do you feel, my boy?" the older man asked. He offered Javor more of his wine.

Javor couldn't find his voice, so he nodded. He still felt breathless. Finally, he croaked out, "Was that the same dragon from the mountain-side?"

Photius nodded. "Another of Ghastog's lieutenants, I think. That means we have drawn two of them here after us, and I don't think they're as anxious for simple revenge as you were, Javor. They want something."

"My great-grandfather's amulet."

"Or the dagger. One or both of them hold great power, my boy, something these monsters fear a great deal. Let me see the knife."

Reluctantly, Javor drew the dagger from its sheath. Making a dim light with his staff, Photius squinted at the markings around its edge. "Hmm. Runes," he said, pursing his lips. "I'm not certain what they mean; they're of an unfamiliar form, perhaps in an ancient Asian language. You say your great-grandfather brought it back from the Caucasus?"

"Yes, that's what my mother said. He slew a giant and took it and the amulet from its hoard."

"Hmm. Let me see the amulet." Just as reluctantly, Javor took the amulet from under his tunic and took the chain off his neck and handed it to Photius, who inspected it closely, running his fingers over the runes carved around its outer edge. "If your great-grandfather found these in the Caucasus, then this amulet and this dagger could have originated even farther east, or south. I am not certain, but these markings on the amulet seem to be an invocation against evil, a protection for the bearer. And these," he pointed to marks on one side of the dagger, "are similar to others I have seen before, which usually signify that only those who are worthy may wield the blade. That's why it has an affinity for you, Javor, and why the amulet of its own accord left the grasp of Ghastog for yours."

"But if it's a protection _against_ evil, then why do the monsters want it?" Javor asked.

"Ah!" Photius held up one finger, as if about to impart a lesson. But he failed. "That is a very good question, but for now I do not have the answer. Suffice it to say, though, that the monsters do want it, and obviously it's very important that they do not get it. Ghastog had been hunting this for many years, Javor; it moved into this region decades ago and has roved around here, spreading destruction ever since. As for why, I do not know. I have colleagues, however, in Constantinople who may be able to decipher this mystery. But for now, let us rest." Photius' staff dimmed again. He settled against a tree stump. "I'll let you take the first watch, Javor. But I have the feeling that if anything happens, you won't need to wake me." He fell asleep.

Javor watched Photius close his eyes and fall asleep almost instantly. _How can he look so peaceful, so quickly? How can he sleep after all that's happened?_

Too much. It's too much.

Maybe I have already gone crazy. Maybe I am imagining all of this—the dragon, the monster. Maybe if I close my eyes, I will be back in my bed.

He tried it, but when he opened them again he did not see his mother in front of the _plescha,_ did not hear his father snoring on the next mat. He was still slumped in the middle of the village, looking into a small fire. Another villager looking at him would have seen a slack, blank look, eyes staring sightlessly into the flames. They would have thought Javor was exhausted beyond sleep, beyond thought. And they would have thought, as they had many times before, that he was a strange, somewhat addled young man who never seemed to be paying attention to the world around himself.

They would have been wrong, as usual.

Javor kept his armour on through the night, dozing in turns next to Photius, but he didn't sleep much. In the morning, Roslaw brought Photius and Javor bread and water. With him were a group of other men of the village, including Borys, Mrost and even Javor's uncle Bogud. "We've gathered some food and other supplies for you, not a lot but enough for a few days, at least. For both of you."

"Why?" asked Javor, but he knew the answer already.

"We think—all of us, Javor, even your aunt and uncle—that it's best if you, if you ... if both of you leave as soon as you can. I'm sorry, boy, but I have the whole village to think of, not just one person. Like it or not, these monsters appeared soon after you did, Photius, and we all think that the sooner you go, so will the monsters. And I'm sorry, Javor, but you seemed mixed up with this traveller and his enemies, too. If you leave soon, you should be able to put a lot of distance between yourselves and whatever that was in the night."

"A lot of distance?"

Roslaw nodded, but Mrost spoke up before he had a chance to say anything. "Three monsters in five days, and they're after you. The farther you go, the safer we'll all be," he sneered.

"So now you say they're after me—and now you're afraid to be near me. Who's the coward now, eh, Mrost?" Javor said.

Mrost spat on the ground. "That's what I think of you fighting anything. Just get out, Javor."

In a single fluid motion, Javor grabbed Mrost's wrist, twisted it behind his back and kicked his backside. Mrost fell face-first in the dust. " _You_ get out, Mrost. My parents are dead and I don't feel like hearing your voice anymore."

Someone touched his arm, and Javor spun, whipping the enchanted dagger out to find himself holding it to Roslaw's throat. "Now, now, Javor," the older man sputtered, trying to sound conciliatory but trembling with fear. "There's no need for fighting among ourselves, especially when we're surrounded by as many enemies as we are."

"He is right, Javor. Put away your weapon," said a low, calm voice. It was Vorona. As usual, she had come into their midst without their notice. She wore her plain grey hood and cloak, but just looking at her made Javor hold his breath. "You have proven yourself in battle, Javor, and you have been anointed. Now you are ready."

Javor put away the dagger. "We've prepared enough food for you and Photius for some days. Perhaps you should say goodbye to your friends and leave early, so you can make some distance and perhaps find some shelter before dark."

Javor looked at Photius, whose face was unreadable. But the old man nodded.

"All right," Javor said slowly. "I'll go right now."

Just inside the gate, the elders of the village—those who were left alive, such as Roslaw, Borys, Bogud and a few other men—had prepared a backpack for Javor. "It has your things from your parents' house," said his uncle. Photius was ready to go; he wore his cloak and wide-brimmed hat, and a full pack on his back. On the ground were also some bags of food that Javor and Photius could carry over their shoulders. Behind the men, the rest of the villagers had gathered in an uneasy mob.

Hrech came out of the crowd with tears in his eyes. He hugged Javor so tightly that Javor had trouble breathing. Javor squeezed back and patted his shoulder until Hrech let go and, head low, turned away.

Javor went to Elli, who stood with her friends. She drew back, looking around for help. Javor had imagined making a grand speech, but now he couldn't think of anything to say. "Good-bye, Elli," he said, awkwardly, taking her hands in his. "I ... I'll miss you." _Stupid, that's not good enough! Do it!_ he thought. "I love you." Her eyes went wide and she shrank back again. Javor leaned forward to kiss her cheek, but Elli leaned back, whimpering, and Javor gave up. He turned away, picked up the back-pack and shoulder bags and without another word strode out of the _holody._

Photius fell into step beside him and together they turned south in the late morning sunshine. Neither spoke and neither looked back.

END OF PART ONE
