Letting Go
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Boyar Vratislav gave a heavy sigh as he sat back on a rickety wooden chair, propping his bandaged leg up on a stool with a pained grimace.
With the overcast skies the manor seemed a damp, drafty maze of shadows filled with the smell of mildew, sweat, and blood. Lady Nesha gently unwrapped the sticky cloth bandages from her husband’s leg to reveal an ugly slice that ran along his thigh lengthwise - exposing gray flaps of muscle and fat.
“Easy, woman!” groaned Vratislav as his wife exchanged the ruined bandages for a new set that lay soaked in a bowl of wine. As the boyar’s agonized groans filled the shadowed great hall Vasilisa saw the eyes of the other peasants were fixed on the ground, or elsewhere about the nooks and crannies of the room, but never looking her straight in the eye.
Besides Boyar Vratislav and Nesha, there were seven others who had managed to escape the pillaging of Yerkh - the rest had either fled into the woods to escape the outriders, or burned alongside their homes. At Nesha’s call, Marmun set aside his hand-plow and waddled over to help hold her squirming lord husband in place as she tightened the wine-soaked bandage around his injured leg. The large man who had been ready to cave Vasilisa’s head in earlier could now scarcely meet her eyes as he stepped past her - treating her as a Grand Prince’s daughter even as she sat at the longtable in torn rags sullied by blood and the dirt of the road.
Eventually Vratislav was able to set his newly-bandaged leg down, his brow soaked with sweat.
“Gatchisk?” said Nesha as she wiped her hands clean with a wet cloth. “The city lies a day’s ride east of here, perhaps less.”
“Aye, but that was before this slaughter,” interjected Vratislav. “With bandits roaming and burning half the damn country, the city might as well be on the other side of the world. You wouldn’t make it far.”
The attack on the village once called Yerkh had come at night. The raiders - clad in heavy maille, iron helms, and mounted on coursers - had moved so quickly that by the time Vratislav’s soldiers had managed to get their armor on, half the village was already set ablaze. In their sally out, the boyar’s guards were picked off by arrows as they struggled to bring peasants into the manor. At the gates, Vratislav himself took an arrow to the hand and a sword cut to his leg before Marmun and the spear-carrier Rudin dragged him inside.
It was only thanks to the raiders’ hurry that the manor and those inside remained unburned - their leader judged the manor too fortified to attack in their swift raid, and the riders disappeared left one of the household guards out in the courtyard as a warning before vanishing into the night.
“Those weren’t no bandits, m’lord,” spoke Valishin - one of the younger farmers who sat to the side of the longtable with his wife. “I seen one of ‘em waving a banner when they charged - never heard of bandits carrying banners into a fight.”
“Bandits also don’t wear armor.” piped up Gastya, a smaller man who frightened off one of the raiders with a sharpened sickle.
Rudin scoffed. “Anyone can wear armor, stupid. Just because they wore armor doesn’t mean they weren’t bandits.”
“So you’re saying they were bandits?”
“Enough,” grumbled Vratislav. “Bandits or not, they’re armored and mounted. And they’ll certainly be looking for easy pickings on the open road.”
“Staying here won’t do us much better.” Yesugei rapped his knuckles on the longtable as he looked around the hall. “Those riders could come back anytime they feel like finishing the job, and you have barely any food here. Pretty soon you’ll be starving.”
“You don’t know that!” The cry came from Khavel, a mason’s apprentice from Gatchisk who was sent to work on the manor’s outer wall. It was his cousin Doru who had stood against them in the courtyard with pickaxe in hand. “Prince Gvozden can’t ignore this! His druzhina will wipe away this bandit filth in a few days, and then we can go wherever we need to. But until the druzhina comes, we should stay!”
“Even you don’t believe that,” said Doru, who gave his younger cousin a cuff on the ear. “The Khormchak makes a good point - I’d rather we hit the road and try to get a sturdier set of walls between us and these killers instead of starving here.”
“Or we end up running into them on the road by fate’s wretched will, and then we all get killed.” pointed out Gastya. “They have armor, we don’t. They have spears and bows - only Rudin and m’lord have real weapons.”
“Better than starving while waiting for help that might not even come!”
“What are you, a death-seeker?”
“What are you, a coward?”
“I’m the coward for trying to keep us alive?!”
“Alive long enough to starve to death!”
The mens’ voices rose as each tried to shout over the other, drowning out Vratislav’s weak call for order. The horror and anger of last night reared its head in every man’s exhausted eyes, and their words were laced with the bitter venom of those who had lost everything - family, home, and fortune, entire lives set to torch in a single night.
They’re not even trying to figure out what to do next, Vasilisa thought as the yelling continued back and forth between the men at the table. Their argument went in circles - stay or leave, who was the coward, who was the idiot - before devolving into nothing more than petty insults. Yesugei sat quietly with his arms crossed, unsure of what to say. Vratislav and Nesha had lost all control over their subjects.
“Everybody, listen!”
Her own voice barely pierced the din of the shouting men, only adding to the noise. A sharp pain throbbed in her head, and Vasilisa thought of her father - whether he had to deal with the same strife between the merchants and landowners of his court. The memory of the noble court - the soft torchlight, the scent of the carved wooden beams - all of it now felt like a distant memory that only brought sorrow. Perhaps it would all remain just a memory - if what the boyar had said was true.
They say Belnopyl is gone.
From Vratislav’s talk, it had been a week since Chirlan had stolen her away. According to a merchant who passed through, Belnopyl lay in ruins, sacked by Khormchaks. The fate of the Grand Prince, his wife, or any of the gathered druzhinniks or boyars at court was unknown, for none had dared to venture into the destroyed city. Without the city isolated boyars, like Vratislav, likely clung to their fortified manors, cut off from news or aid, unwilling to risk sending out runners in a countryside teeming with murderers and bandits.
Sorrow at Belnopyl’s memory then turned to anger. Chirlan’s smirking face taunted her mind, and she wished she could have killed the sorcerer herself. But he was dead - and in dying, he had cursed her forever. His followers had turned her entire world upside down within a day, conjuring legends and magic that stole everything she held dear.
Yesugei knew the full truth; she was reluctant to share the same details with Vratislav, who would likely laugh her out of his manor if she filled his head with tales of talking snakes, stone-skinned monsters, and floating bone cleavers. The world, beyond what she and Yesugei had seen, remained ordinary—magic, a distant art of priests and eastern sorcerers, monsters no more than midwives’ tales.
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She thus remained mostly silent, listening to the confused, fragmented recollections from the villagers - scrambling to make sense of the past even as they struggled to comprehend their future without home and family. At first, she had been glad to remain silent while Vratislav and the peasants spoke. But now, as arguments erupted and with Vratislav hopelessly overwhelmed, her silence became untenable.
This can’t go on forever.
She took a deep breath, trying to remember her father’s booming voice which he had used so often on the battlefield and in court to bring men into line. Then she stood up from her seat, and spoke again - not as Vasilisa, but as the Grand Prince’s daughter.
“Everybody, shut it and hear me!”
Her voice rang through the hall, silencing the peasants, who turned to her in shock. The room fell so quiet she could hear the whistling of the wind as it blew through the gaps in the old manor’s wooden walls.
She scanned each of the peasants’ faces - covered in soot, raw with loss and anger. “I know all of you are angry and hurt, but the more time we waste fighting like children, the less likely we are to make it out of this mess alive - and who will bury the dead if not their kin?”
“What do you suggest, my lady?” asked Marmun, his beady eyes meeting hers. “You heard what m’lord said - trying to get to Gatchisk on foot or by horse is certain death with those riders about.”
“That is why I say we don’t get there by land,” she replied. She recalled the last time she and her father had traveled to Gatchisk - how Prince Gvozden had boasted of his city’s renewed wealth from trade along the Cherech, Gatchisk’s lifeblood and much as Belnopyl’s. “We get there by river, along the Cherech. It flows through Gatchisk, does it not?”
She looked to Rudin, Valishin, and the others. “When my father and I last visited these lands, Prince Gvozden had some of his boats sail us south - we made port at some small town-”
“Balai!” exclaimed Gastya. “We sell our harvest there!”
“Do they have ships of their own?”
“Yes, big ones!” continued Gastya. “Big enough to bring cattle and grain up to the city.”
“They have walls as well,” Doru added. “I worked for two seasons on the boyar’s towerhouse there - you’d need a big and proper army to take that hold. We’d be safe there…or at least safer than here.”
“Balai’s closer than Gatchisk,” said Marmun, nodding along as if he had just uttered something profound. “Before, we used to drop off the harvest, get some roasted fish, and make it back home all before the evening.”
But that was before, Vasilisa thought. Before, you probably had a well-fed horse, a sturdy wagon. And of course…
She looked to Vratislav. In the darkness of the manor the young boyar looked half-dead already, barely able to support his own sitting weight. His leg, gray and smelling of pus, was no doubt infected - and it would only grow worse without a proper healer. Some part of her was tempted to leave the boyar in his home, but she chastised herself out of the notion: it was only thanks to him that she and Yesugei had avoided getting hacked apart by the mob. Besides that, she still needed his word if others were to question her identity - not all of the boyars in Gatchisk knew her as well, and for now she resembled the peasants of Yerkh more than any noble lady.
“We should still travel along the forests to get to Balai - mounted riders don’t do well in dense woods.” She gave Vratislav’s story of the attack on the manor some more thought. “If they’re so concerned about remaining fast, they’ll steer clear of the deep forests anyways - there’s more loot to be had attacking merchants on the open roads rather than poachers or hunters along the game trails.”
Even Khavel, who had been the staunchest advocate for staying in the manor, began to relent, swayed by the villagers' agreement and their enthusiasm for cover behind stronger, taller walls.
“What about the boyar?” asked Yesugei, speaking for the first time since the argument began. “Look at him - we can’t sit him atop a horse.”
“Well’ll have to carry him,” she replied. “Two of us can take turns if needed.”
“When a farmer was injured by a boar last summer, we carried him out on a litter,” Nesha said. “Rudin, Marmun—you remember. We’ll do the same. I’ll cut up one of the curtains with Valka.”
“You speak as if I’m not here!” Vratislav exclaimed. “I can still stand, still fight.” He attempted to rise but collapsed back into his chair, his face flushed with fever and embarrassment.
“You’ve done enough getting these people to safety,” Nesha said gently, holding his uninjured hand. “Now do your duty as a husband and stay alive for me.”
Vratislav grunted reluctantly, and Vasilisa nodded to Nesha. Another sensible woman—why is it always the boyars’ wives?
Yesugei stood up from his chair as well, then rounded the longtable as he grabbed Marmun, Rudin, and Gastya. “You three are with me, help me grab whatever supplies we’ve left. Leave the killers nothing but rats and mold to take if they come back. The rest of you, I leave to the princess.”
Chairs scraped as the villagers dispersed: Valka and Nesha to prepare a litter, Yesugei and his group to gather provisions, and the masons with Valishin to scout the woods for any signs of the raiders.
Vasilisa breathed a sigh of relief as everyone began to set off. Yesugei gave her a small, approving smile before disappearing into the kitchen.
Soon, only she and Vratislav remained - then the boyar said, “Your father taught you how to command well - far better than most princes would care to teach their noble daughters.”
“He didn’t teach me formally - but I learned enough by watching,” Vasilisa replied. “I hope to thank him myself when I make it home.”
“You think your lord father and mother are still alive?”
The question weighed heavily on her heart. But then she thought of the small crystal pressed into her hand - and the promises for answers left unfulfilled.
She remembered the last time she had seen them both - her mother and father stood tall against Chirlan and his silver-masked guards, more noble and brave than the rest of the Klyazmite lords put together. More noble and brave than anyone.
“They have to be.”
***
The gray clouds parted as they set out from the village, and Vasilisa saw the sun god Xors was already three-quarters through his journey across the sky.
She had wanted to walk along with the others, letting the Khormchak stallion carry someone else more tired than her, but with her status both the peasants and Vratislav had insisted she ride. It struck her as strange how strongly they adhered to the norms and rules even when their entire world had fallen apart around them - though perhaps it was an anchor of sorts, a way to pretend things could still return to normal.
But could they? Would they? She had asked as much to Vratislav before they set out, and the boyar pondered the question as he was picked up in his litter by fat Marmun and Gastya. How do you return to normal when you’ve lost everything?
Vratislav found his answer as they passed through the gates of his manor.
“I only had sixteen summers under my belt when the nomads burned and raped their way through this very land,” he said to her. The memories of the invasion were clear in his eyes when he paused, but then he blinked and lifted his head to continue. “I was eighteen when Gvozden had raised me to boyar, when he told me to rebuild. It can happen, my lady. Slowly, surely, but people return.
“When this war ends it might take a year. It might take ten years. It might even take twenty, as it did for me - but we bury the dead, and we rebuild. And once our wounds are healed and become scars, we keep on living. Those who survive have to keep on living, otherwise hatred eats you alive. And then, well…then you have less than nothing left."
His words echoed in her mind as their ragged band crept silently through the ruins of Yerkh, with Yesugei and Rudin scouting ahead for game trails. Once they were beyond the bounds of the village, the peasants turned for one last look at their destroyed homes. The plumed of smoke had begun to fade, but the charred buildings and bodies remained for the carrion birds. Marmun and Rudin watched in silence, while others, like Valishin and Valka, wept openly, whispering farewells to the dead and vowing to return.
She could not fathom how anyone could rebuild after such destruction, after such loss - how anyone who had lived there before could stand the memories etched into the earth itself. She sensed the spirits that lingered in the fields and the streets, and shuddered before she turned her horse to trail after Yesugei.
How do you live after this?
By the time she had worked up the will to speak with Vratislav more, he had already fallen into painful, unconscious sleep in the litter. Perhaps it was for the better - in sleep, even restless, it would be as though he was transported by magic to the safety of Balai. She and the others would have to bear the struggle and misery of the road, dogged by ghosts and the lingering smell of burned flesh that hung over all of them long after Yerkh had disappeared behind the foliage.
How do you keep on living?
How do you rebuild?
How do you let go?