‘Nobody would have blamed me if I’d run away. Such prints, larger and deeper than any I had ever come across, and you know how bad I am with a spear, but I couldn’t let you die. And I can’t now. You must forget me, live for my sake. I cannot come with you.’ His voice was close to tears. ‘Our paths must separate, until we meet once again in the ancestor world. I shall keep a place for you there, only try not to greet me too soon.’
Iwa winced as the ropes still bit into her flesh, but they had loosened. Then she stopped. A figure stood outside the hut. Suddenly the skins were flung aside and Grunmir strode through.
‘So how are you, little Rusalka? Has the old woman given you enough to eat?’
‘Untie me and I’ll feel even better.’
‘So you still have spirit.’ Grunmir cast his eyes over the ropes. ‘That is good; I wouldn’t like you to have given up on life just yet.’ He must have noticed that she’d been trying to loosen them but obviously had decided that tightening them was a waste of time.
‘No, you’d just leave that for Wislaw to accomplish.’
‘Perhaps,’ Grunmir said slowly. He hadn’t replaced the curtain and she could see into the centre of the camp. In front of Krol Gawel’s ship the woyaks had placed a rough stone altar, behind which the wooden statue of Piórun glimmered, but it was the iron cross behind that caught her eye. Dominating the scene, it reared up as high as four fully grown men, its shadow cast deep across the altar.
‘This is how Wislaw plans your end,’ Grunmir said, as he closed the curtain. ‘It is a trick he has picked up from the northern men. You will be hung on the cross and gutted. Your flesh will be stripped from your bones and your lungs parted and placed on the cross so that you will form a blood eagle. Those who come from the northlands are well versed in such, though even they think that such a fate is too grim for one such as you.’
‘And that will please Piórun?’ She slumped against the spit. She had to get her father out of here, the sooner the better before his spirit was completely broken. Is this all the woyaks can bring, nothing but death and destruction? All about her, she could sense the fear running like mud after the spring rains.
She had no idea why Gawel still clung to the idea of a kroldom, or Grunmir even. Not that she had much of an idea about what a kroldom was, but she knew that the woyaks were on the verge of death. It wouldn’t take much for them to turn on one other.
‘Much is done in Piórun’s name, but I do not think that Wislaw cares much for that god. There are darker forces at work here, little Rusalka, and you appear to be at the centre of them.’
‘Then why not let me go?’ Suddenly a new hope dawned. If Grunmir hated the old priest so much then why not? Surely anything would be better than giving Wislaw what he wanted, and nobody would dare suspect the krol’s commander. ‘I could leave here and never come back, you’d be rid of me forever. What would your priest do without his sacrifice?’
‘Do not think that I have not considered it. I have seen many men die, but I have no taste for this. Neither do most of the woyaks, but this demon has cast fear into their hearts.
‘Even Krol Gawel has grown afraid. Ah, if only you had seen him in the Battle of the Mounds. He was a different man then, when he led the duke’s war band, his battle helm glimmering. I thought the Avars would have us that day and so it should have been, but for him. Ha! You should have seen the horse lords turn tail before his sword. That was a great day – a day of booty, a day of victory. The Avar Khan fled before our spears, running off like a cur with his tail between his legs and his men left to kneel before our battle standard.
‘Yes, I can still see the krol as he shared out the booty to each according to their merit. He spared the prisoners too, settled down to cups with the rebel duke and the Avar lords, those who’d survived. In the morning he let them go, gave them food and horses and sent them back to the khan. I doubt there are many who were ever as merciful, or as terrible in war, but this place has sapped the life from him.’
‘He has my sympathy,’ Iwa whispered, ‘though he could always go back to the mounds.’ She tensed and half expected to feel Grunmir’s fist. Maybe if he got angry he would leave and give her the chance to escape, but the old woyak just laughed.
‘You are quite a one to keep your humour in such circumstances. There are many who would cower before such a fate as yours. It is a pity that you are no woyak. Perhaps there is courage in you after all.’ He could not help but run his hand over her cheek. Yes, this was a girl he might have grown to respect. ‘But now you are about to die and there is nothing I can do for you.’ His hand dropped as he looked at her, careworn eyes searching across her features.
‘Then why waste your breath?’ She was too tired now to think of much else apart from her plan for escape. If only she could get rid of the old woyak, there was still a chance that she might free Yaroslav and make her way out of the camp.
But even as the old woyak turned away with only the slightest stiffness about him, a plan had begun to form. Somehow she had to keep him there. He was ready
