Billi took Vasilisa in her arms and helped her out of the car. Ivan grabbed the gun and then shot one bullet through the radio transmitter and one in the radiator.
Billi carried Vasilisa to the van.
They drove on down a side road and away from the forest, trying to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the convoy. Ivan was up front with Olga, Billi in the back with Vasilisa.
“They will come after the Spring Child. The Polenitsy and the goddess,” said Olga.
“That’s what I’m counting on.” Billi got out the statuette and handed it over to Olga. “This is part of the meteor that struck Tunguska in 1908.”
One hand on the steering wheel, Olga inspected the small rock. “Yes. It was from this element that Baba Yaga was sent into a coma.”
“Sowe can use this against her. I just need to turn it into a weapon of some sort. A knife or something.”
Olga stopped the van. “I have something better.” She checked that the road was empty, then got out and climbed onto the roof and began unbuckling the straps holding the luggage on the roof rack.
Ivan and Billi came out and watched her.
“Vasilisa is bait,” said Ivan. “But that’s what you’re counting on, isn’t it?” He glanced back through the window at Vasilisa. The girl was under a blanket, staring out at the snowbound world.
Billi didn’t like the idea of using Vasilisa like that, but it was the only plan she had. “Yes. If anything happened to Vasilisa, Baba Yaga would just turn around. She’d send her Polenitsy after us, for revenge, but she wouldn’t come herself. This way”-she nodded in Vasilisa’s direction-“we force Baba Yaga to make a personal appearance. We want Vasilisa alive.”
Ivan looked up at the sky. “And tonight’s the full moon.”
“Help me,” Olga ordered. Together they lowered a heavy trunk to the ground. Billi and Ivan gathered around it as the old woman lifted it open.
“You like?” asked Olga.
Billi grinned. “Oh yes.”
Weapons lay neatly arranged in the trunk. Not guns or rifles, but swords, a bow and arrow, and suits of chain mail. All beautifully made and lovingly kept. It was like Christmas. Billi’s sort of Christmas.
First she took out the mail armor. The suit was knee length with sleeves that covered her to mid bicep. The links shimmered in the bright white light of the snow. The sword was a single-edged saber, an Ottoman cavalry sword. Billi peered at the Arabic lettering along its mirror-bright blade.
“What does it say?” asked Ivan.
Billi frowned. “Roughly translated, it says, ‘Eat this, you Christian,’ er, ‘seed-spiller.’ Or something.” She cleared her throat and slid the blade in to its scabbard. “It’s a religious reference. Genesis 38, I think.” Then she saw the Mongol bow.
It was black, made of wood and horn, and formed a curved C shape. Olga lifted it up and strung it.
“They called the Mongols the wolves from the east,” she said. “They ruled Russia for over two hundred years. The blood of the Mongols is strong in the Polenitsy.”
Billi lifted the quiver. The arrows were neatly arranged in two rows. Wide-barbed man-killers at the front, narrow-headed armor-piercing bodkins at the back; all with eagle fletching. Billi spotted a silver ring on a tassel off the side of the quiver. She put it on her right thumb. Olga handed her the bow, strung and ready.
The bow was a masterpiece.
“This will do,” said Billi.
They worked together to arm her. As Ivan laced up the mail shirt, Billi tucked in the sword and a long knife. Finally she threw the quiver over her shoulder and notched her first arrow, hooking the bowstring around her thumb, then pulling back, slowly letting her back muscles do the heavy work alongside her arms. The draw was powerful. They’d use the figurine to make arrowheads. She’d have no problem puttinga meteor-tipped arrow through Baba Yaga’s thick skull.
Olga stepped back and straightened Billi’s armor. “Maybe some Mongol blood runs in you, child. You are more wolf than you know.”
Ivan gave a low admiring whistle. “Now you are beautiful,” he said. He’d taken a mail shirt of his own and a plain, straight sword. But he seemed happiest with Olga’s big revolver and a fistful of bullets. “They will have the advantage out here,” he said, surveying the wild landscape. “They’ll come at us from all around. We need a better battlefield.”
“We’ll find one,” replied Billi. She took one of the mobiles they’d confiscated, and checked it. Barely any reception.
“Dad? Where are you?”
“Billi? Billi?”
“Dad, we’ve got Vasilisa.”
“Billi? Where are you?”
“We’ve got Vasilisa!” Billi shouted. Her dad sounded like he was shouting from the other side of the world. “Where are you?” Damn it! Billi stared around the road. To one side was a fenced-off stretch of woodland, picketed with spindly trees. Signs hung every thirty feet along the fence. They were all a trisected black circle on a yellow background: the international warning symbol for radiation.
“Where are you?”
Somewhere made of concrete and choked with pollution, a place where Baba Yaga would be weakest. Billi read the dented road sign up ahead.
“Chernobyl, Dad.”
39
THEY DROVE THE REST OF THE DAY, STOPPING ONLY to snack on dried meat, hard bread, and water. Olga said nothing, but each time she stopped, she spent the meal searching the horizon. But nobody came.
Using the toolbox, Billi disassembled the arrows. She cut the heads out and then, holding the Venus figurine between her boots, smashed it with a hammer. Vasilisa sat silently beside her as she chipped the shards of polished black stone into something that resembled arrowheads.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Billi handed her a rough triangle of meteoric stone.
“This is the meteoric rock from Tunguska I told you about. Your great-grandmother knew that it had injured Baba Yaga before.”
Vasilisa inspected the stone. “You think this will kill Baba Yaga?” Her voice betrayed her doubts.
“Bloody hope so.”
By the time they’d finished their meal, Billi had three decent stone-tipped arrows. She used up a tube of superglue to hold them into the shafts; they weren’t particularly well made and she would have liked to try shooting with them, to get an idea of how they flew, but time was too short; they needed to move.
The late afternoon sun hung low on the horizon, bathing the landscape with pinks and oranges. Sparse woodland gave way to overgrown and abandoned fields, dotted with crumbling old farmhouses and empty villages. The signs of humanity increased as the day wore on. They’d reached the outskirts of Chernobyl.
Chernobyl had been the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history. Back in the 1980s, a nuclear reactor had exploded and launched a huge radioactive cloud over most of south Russia and Ukraine. Tens of thousands of people had been evacuated overnight, taking only what they could carry. They’d never returned. It seemed like ancient history, but the town itself looked as though it could have been emptied yesterday. The cars, the buildings, parks, and gardens all remained. Not demolished, as they would have been in a war-just empty. Only the humans had left.
So this was the world Baba Yaga wanted.
Silent, gray tower blocks stood like titans guarding a city of the dead. A flock of crows launched themselves into a cloud of black feathers, cawing angrily at their arrival, their cries sharp and keen. Otherwise the streets were eerily empty. The snow-laden boughs of the trees lining the road sagged over them, their branches
