Help me, Iwa cried. But it was no use, there was no trace of her voice, scraped thin in the blackness, the words lost like snow in the wind. A beam of light broke through a crack in the world. Iwa’s head throbbed so that she moved through a wall of numbness and pain, her limbs disjointed as if carved from wood.
Around her the world was blurred, a shaft of light splintering through the blackness, so bright that it stung her eyes. She tried to move, fighting down a wave of nausea as the world drifted back to focus. The darkness became a hastily constructed wall, through which the sun dripped lazily onto a dirt floor. So she was in the hut again, her hands tied as before, but at least the spit had been lowered so that her feet touched the ground. At least I’ll make a comfortable sacrifice. Her heart sank, part of her still looking for a trace of the glade, but there was nothing, not even a sprig of myrtle. If only she could go back and find that dream.
‘Yaroslav,’ she hissed but, on the other side of the hut, the figure didn’t move. They’d taken away the tarpaulin and there was no hint of a guard, but she kept her voice low all the same. ‘Yaroslav,’ she whispered again, but still he didn’t move.
‘So they did not kill you then.’ It was Katchka who spoke, her head bowed as she came into the hut. ‘Those woyaks were so scared that they almost didn’t wait for the sacrificial preparations. I thought they’d gut you right there on the shore, if it hadn’t been for that idiot priest.’
‘I’ll be sure to thank him when the time comes.’
‘I wouldn’t be too hasty.’ Katchka hobbled nearer, a bowl of water slopping in her hands. ‘The woyaks are scared, many of the women too: even now some of them plan to rip you to shreds rather than wait for Piórun’s pleasure. Only Wislaw holds them back.’
‘So that he can kill me later?’
The old woman shrugged. ‘Life is life: I am sick of it. Soon I will join my beloved Baptcha in the spirit world. The best days have already passed.’ Katchka spat on the floor. ‘I have no stomach for those that are to come.’
‘Did you see the demon?’ Iwa asked as she looked round for some form of escape. The crowd was ready to rip her to shreds. The world came hazily to her, through a dulled numbness. At least that served to smother the pain. Carefully she moved, testing her legs, half scared at what she might find. Maybe she could twist free of the bonds, but what then? Would she even be able to walk?
‘What time have I for such foolishness? Tomaz has a fever and I was with him most of the night. But I have grown so very old of late and had to give the child over to Maleva to nurse. Things are worse for her; she still has a husband out there in the forest, much good it does her. But I have nothing to live for. What do I care for demons? Let it rip my blood from my bones for all I care.
‘But you should thank the gods that the demon does not come every night, as it did at first, or else the crowd would have torn you to shreds in their eagerness to please this foreign god. I do not know what it is that these wretched men have dragged into the forest with them, but maybe it would have been better for you if the mob had got its way.’
‘So Wislaw has something special planned for me?’ Iwa looked round at the ropes that bound her firmly to the stake. Some of her vision had returned, but that only brought with it another sharp stabbing sensation. At least her limbs appeared to be working, but she had been badly battered.
‘He loves ceremony, that one; with him all is show. He has set the woyaks to build a stone altar in front of Krol Gawel’s ship, and a pyre too.’
‘And this will appease the thunder god?’ Iwa asked, as she tested the knots.
‘Who am I to say what will or won’t appease the gods? But I do not think Wislaw cares either, as long as there are woyaks to jump to his voice.’
‘So I am going to die to make him feel important?’
‘That and…’ Katchka paused mid breath, her mouth hanging open, but it was too late to take back the words. ‘That fool priest mutters in his sleep and I have heard him. He thinks that you have a way with the craft. By sacrificing you he imagines that he will be able to suck up your magic and draw it into him.’
Slowly the old woman hobbled into the back of the tent. Was Yaroslav still there? Why was he so still, so quiet? If only she could see him. There was the sound of the cloth dipped into water and then, as it was pressed wet against his face, he moaned.
Straining, Iwa hung, a dull ache creeping along her arms. What had happened to him? She had to see. With a wince she tried to turn. A sharp stab of pain burned along her neck and along her forehead. She could just about make out the form of the old woman as she daubed the wet cloth against his face. There was something terrifying about the old woman now. Before, she had always seemed to be a fixed point: Katchka the wise, growing neither older nor younger. Now she limped on bad feet and the breath wheezed through her lips as she wrung out the cloth
