Vraactan
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The town was as dark as pitch by the time everyone fell back to the boyar’s towerhouse to report their findings.
“Entire place is empty,” said Gastya as he and Marmun sat in the empty hall of the tower. “Not even any mice left scurrying about. It’s like everyone and everything just up and left. They still left their silver and other such things behind…”
“The big boats are all gone,” Khavel reported despondently. He and his cousin must have taken a dip in the water, because the two masons were dripping wet and shivering when they arrived.
“All’s left is a river skiff, down in one of the workshops on the pier,” Doru followed. “Looked like they were mending a patch in the hull and left it half-finished. I didn’t see any problems, but I dunno if it’s good for the waters if they didn’t bother to take it…”
“We can take a look at it come morning,” said Vratislav, seated at the boyar’s table alongside Vasilisa, Nesha, and Yesugei. “Valishin…you helped repair a fishing boat once, didn’t you?”
The young farmer woke up from his dozing with a start. “Wha-? Y-yes, my lord. Was my cousin’s before-”
“Good. Come morning you can take the others and see if you can’t get that boat sail-worthy. We either get to Gatchisk by boat, or not at all.”
The burning of the countryside meant there would be no shelter to be found along the roads - or if there was, their occupants’ willingness to host eleven travelers pathetically short of coin would be sorely lacking. And at their sluggish pace of travel towards Gatchisk, two days would easily turn into six - six days and nights sleeping in forests or plains, exposed to the cold nights and hard, rough ground.
Yesugei wondered whether it would be easier to leave behind the peasants - now that they were within the safety of the walls and well-provisioned, it wouldn’t be abandoning them if he and Vasilisa were to take off on their own. It would be easy to simply take their share of the supplies and head out - some of the peasants might object, but none seemed like they would try to stop them from leaving.
He gave Vasilisa a sidelong glance as she listened to Vratislav speaking. He had noticed Vasilisa’s growing attachment and sense of duty to the peasants even over their short travel to Balai, but something had changed in her demeanor after they descended from the tower’s roof. It was in her eyes - she no longer looked upon the peasants as merely subjects, but as companions - people to whom she owed loyalty, whether out of duty or out of honor as their liege lady.
Here’s hoping this new honor won’t get us killed, he thought as he studied Vasilisa’s thoughtful expression. Remember what’s at stake, Vasilisa.
The memory of the Apostle’s leering, empty-eyed visage still haunted him, as did the strange vision that were not his own, of the blindingly-bright spirit whose whispers shook the earth and brought nearly to tears. The two creatures could not have been farther from one another - yet were they both Apostles, or two different spirits, equally malevolent in their nature?
The disappearance of the townsfolk did not seem like the work of a helpful, kind entity - a strange sense of menace hung over the air in Balai, the sense of desperate whispers and smothered fear drenched in the paved streets and walls of every building.
If Sergen were still alive, he could have communed with the spirits of the land, or raised one of the western tengri for advice. But Sergen is dead, Yesugei thought as he caught himself. Sergen is dead, and there is nothing you can do about it. Move on.
The conversation in the great hall turned to the topic of the coming night. The gates to the town were sealed solidly, but there were far too few of them to man the walls along their entire length, much less keep a rotating watch throughout the night. Instead, Vratislav had advised them to hole up and guard only the towerhouse, whose ten-foot stone walls were short enough for two people to keep watch over the town from all directions. There was a single heavy gate to the east - reinforced by iron brackets like the outer walls - as well as a smaller postern door to the south hidden by foliage that opened to a dirt path leading to the pier.
Yesugei took charge of planning the watches for the night, setting Valishin, Marmun, Gastya, and Khavel to take two-man shifts. One man would always keep the horn close by to warn the others of danger, though Yesugei wondered what would come to pass if anyone did show up.
None of the peasants looked to be of fighting spirit, besides Rudin, and they still only had enough weapons to arm half of their number. Although it was easy to conclude that standing and fighting would give the whole group better odds of survival than routing, in practice few men were able to override their primal desires and terrors - especially if faced by trained killers while half of their own side wielded farming tools.
Still, the towerhouse was well-prepared to withstand a small siege if need be - an exploration of the battlements and barracks turned up piles of heavy stones, a large pot for pouring boiling water onto attackers, and several more arrows which sat forgotten in barrels along the wooden catwalks.
As they talked and Yesugei put together a small map to show the four watchmen where they ought to patrol, Rudin, Nesha, and Valka set about preparing the food they had gathered and poached for a late supper. The kitchens were blessedly left half-stocked, and so soon the smell of roasted goose and vegetable stew drifted up into the great hall. Yesugei felt his own stomach grumble from hunger, and he saw the prospect of a good meal had stolen away his men’s attention.
When the food was finally ready and carried up, the peasants all looked like starved puppies as the roasted goose passed them by. Rudin set the goose before Vasilisa first, before passing it along the boyar’s table and only then to the peasants. The fat bird was more than enough for everyone to get a piece - even so, Yesugei saw Vasilisa gingerly take only a small cut of meat for herself when the goose was presented.
Her appetite remained astoundingly little, but she didn’t relent even when both Vratislav and Nesha encouraged her to eat her fill to meet the day ahead. No-one else talked as much as they all ate, and Yesugei knew that even Vratislav and Nesha’s fussing was more a way for them to put off thinking about their own fates and futures than any sycophantry.
Everyone set off on their own separate ways once they all finished - Valishin and Marmun to the walls, Vratislav, Nesha, and Vasilisa to the upper chambers, and the rest of the peasants to the lower commons where the servants slept. Yesugei lingered alone for a little longer, savoring the greasy taste of the gooseflesh and the hearty stew before heading to the upper chambers.
When he poked his head inside, he saw Vratislav and Nesha already sound asleep. Unburdened from the stresses of the waking world, the boyar and his wife looked almost ten years younger. Within the clean walls of the towerhouse, Yesugei felt his skin crawl as his own filthiness, and resolved to find a tub of water, anything to clean himself before resigning to sleep.
When Yesugei found the bathhouse, Vasilisa was already there, halfway through lighting a fire beneath the heating stones. Her cleaver leaned against the wall, nearly toppling as he stepped inside. She turned, her face reddening.
“I’m setting a bath—do you mind? Wait your turn,” she snapped.
“You’ll turn the water black by the time you’re done,” he replied. “I’m not bathing in your filth.”
“Neither am I!” she huffed, turning back to the fire. “And you’re filthier—go last.”
While she focused on the fire, Yesugei silently slipped out of his boots and stepped into the tub, robe and all. The mud caked onto his robe instantly began to cloud the bath, followed by swirls of crimson blood. Ignoring Vasilisa’s muttered protests, he sank in up to his chin, savoring the soothing relief on his battered skin.
A splash broke the quiet as Vasilisa climbed into the tub with a shiver, shooting him an annoyed glare.
“You’re an ass, you know that?” the Grand Princess muttered as she pulled her knees up to her chest in the tub. The dust and dirt of the road slowly dissolved off her silk dress, and their combined filth and suffering mixed until it was indistinguishable. Blood and blood, dirt and dirt, grief and grief washed away bodily.
For a while - a long while - the two of them sat in total silence until even the slowly lapping surface of the bathwater stilled.
“What are we doing here?”
Yesugei’s question came softly as he stared up at the plain wooden ceiling of the bathhouse, slowly rapping his wrinkled fingers along the edge of the tub.
“What do you mean?”
“This…this whole mess.” He gestured with one hand about them, splattering several droplets of water onto the heating stones which gave a hiss. “How did we get here? Why us? Why you?”
“You know as well as I that I don’t know.” Vasilisa said. She curled herself up even tighter, causing her knees to pop up from the surface of the water like two small islands. “I-I don’t know. None of this should be happening, none of it.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Before all of this…” Vasilisa caught herself, and gave a small, rueful smile. “Ah…before all of this…I was afraid my parents were going to marry me off to some steppe khan. Maybe one of your brothers? Maybe even you.”
Yesugei stifled a chortle, not wanting to wake the boyar and his wife just outside. “Even me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” said Vasilisa, staring off to the side at the heating stones. “Just…couldn’t ever imagine myself being married off like that. My father pushed for it once, my mother didn’t care for it - perhaps she didn’t appreciate her own father giving her away, even if she did end up loving Igor of Belnopyl.”
“Your mother’s father…” Yesugei slowly mused. “Naizabai. He was my own father’s blood-brother once, you know?”
“I heard the story only one time from my mother, long ago. Your father and Naizabai fought…didn’t they?”
Yesugei snorted. “For nearly six years—and they dragged the whole Horde into it. I was a boy when it started and a man when it ended. My first kill in battle was one of Naizabai’s noyans.”
“Must have been an honor.”
“It…” Yesugei wanted to say it was an honor, to tell her of the great riches he plundered from the noyan’s tent, to tell her of the ferocious duel between himself and the grizzled warrior, but the memories felt hollow and blurred six years on.
What lingered was the image of an old, bearded man, bleeding out, his face twisted in agony as he struggled to push his guts inside. And the final cry of, “Wait!” Pleading for mercy, even when doomed.
“It was a struggle,” he finally said. By the time he led his own men, the Quanli were finished. The warriors he and his men had ridden down were not the seasoned veterans who carved a bloody path through Huwaq and the Sons of Al-Qadir, but conscripts exhausted and dying of thirst from days of forced marches across the White Pinch - a dreadful expanse of bleached stones and cracked earth. He had never learned why the noyan had taken his men on such a deadly journey, only that he had done so on Naizabai-khan’s own orders. Then he died.
“I thought Khormchak blood-bonds lasted for life,” Vasilisa said gently. “What could make blood-brothers war for so many years?”
“Bonds for life exist only in stories,” Yesugei replied. “My father and Naizabai both rose from nothing. Back then, the steppe had no wealth—only what you could steal and protect. Khormchaks sold their own kin to the Yllahanans and the Tan-Ninh, and kingdoms like yours kept us divided, meddling in every tribe.
“The Ormanli predicted my father and Naizabai would unite the tribes into one great ulus as twin khans. But the Ormanli didn’t understand our ways. For the Khormchaks, there would sooner be two suns in the sky than two khans sharing power. My father and Naizabai were young and foolish - I reckon they made their blood-pact never thinking they’d actually succeed. They supported each other, split plunder, and rose together in an alliance rare for the steppe.
“The Shaprats, the Qara-Isyqs, Qyzylkurans…if they all united, they could have wiped us out. Instead, they raided each other, ignoring the Qarakesek and Quanli until it was too late. My father rallied lesser tribes with promises of a better future, while Naizabai crushed dissenters by the sword.
“I think they both thought the other would just submit at the end of the day, when it was all over. But my father wanted us to grow wealthy from trade and tribute, to nurture what we had gained. Naizabai though…he only wanted war, more war, to unite not just the tribes of the steppe, but the entire world beneath a single ulus, a single Gur-Khan to rule the universe at the tip of a sword.
“With such ambitions…” Yesugei fell silent for a moment, wondering how it must have felt like - to call one’s oath-brother an enemy. He tried to imagine himself and Kaveh standing opposite one another at the holy Khurvan mountains just as his father and Naizabai had. Did his father feel any regret, any sorrow? He must have.
“With such ambitions, you can only stop a man like that by destroying him completely. My father took everything from Naizabai: his sons, lands, wealth, his honor.”
“But he didn’t take his life,” said Vasilisa. “Why did he leave him alive?”
“Because in the end, Naizabai gave up…he just broke. He and my father were both left hollowed, and their war had spilled more of their own people’s blood than the last three centuries of tribal squabbles. If they kept on fighting, there would have been no Khormchaks left to form the great ulus they both so desired.”
Now we do have a great ulus, a great horde. Yesugei thought, but a deep bitterness in his silent heart also spoke.
“Yes…now we do have a great horde, a great empire…but my brother is still dead, my friends are still dead, and old enemies of my tribe still lurk in every corner while new nightmares crawl out of the earth itself. What cruel gods ravage this world with one disaster after another, and use the ambitions of men to hold them as pawns?”
Suddenly, the waters overwhelmed him, and the crystal in his chest throbbed with pain, a sharp reminder of past agony. Sorrow spilled into his mind, and his head spun with the weight of it. Visions assaulted him—Kaveh’s face twisted in torment, flesh melting in black fire, and his own corpse, decayed and cursed, strewn across foreign plains.
“And me…what am I now?” he murmured. “Am I even still me? Or was I born again, out there in the Klyazmite plains?”
His thoughts spiraled into chaos, his mind searing as if melting. Feverish or cursed, he staggered to his feet, only to be struck by a wave of weakness that pulled him back into the water.
“I think…the water’s…” he slurred, his voice fading as a terrible hissing filled his skull. He sank lower under Vasilisa’s worried gaze.
“Vasilisa…”
***
“Yesugei!”
Vasilisa lunged, grabbing Yesugei’s clammy arms before his head could sink into the filthy water. As she pulled him out, she saw his eyes were rolled up into his head—unconscious. His breathing was low and shallow, and his wounds did not appear to have reopened. She sighed in relief - only exhaustion laid him low, not any curse.
As she propped his arms against the tub, something shifted at the edge of her vision—a shadow crawling across the floor. Turning, she realized it wasn’t a shadow but a serpent slithering over the wooden boards.
“You’ve grown bigger since we last met.”
The serpent, now thick as her arm, was quadruple its former size. Its iridescent scales seemed to have grown brighter and more vibrant with age. She detected the faintest flicker of recognition in its eyes from its otherwise expressionless face as the serpent rose up to glance at her. Despite Yesugei’s collapse, she felt at ease seeing an old, if brief, friend.
“I’ve been eating well,” the serpent replied its soft voice, its tongue flicking in and out as it tasted the air. “The predators here hunt their own kind, not serpents. Our kind slither by unnoticed, while the great beasts of the world clash.”
Vasilisa gave a grim smile, adjusting Yesugei against the tub before extending her arm. The serpent coiled around her forearm and was surprisingly heavy - she struggled to lift it to match her gaze.
“What do I call you now? You can hardly fit on my arm now - somehow ‘little serpent’ seems no longer apt.”
“You could always just call me ‘serpent’, I suppose.” The serpent slowly crawled around her arm, brushing its cool scales along her skin. The scales shifted in color and hue with the flickering light of the bathhouse fire. “We serpents do not usually keep names - our kind rarely care enough to give one another titles.”
“That seems a sad existence, not having anyone to care for you enough to give you a name.”
“Most serpents have none who care for them. But I…I had a name, once.” The serpent’s head rested in the open palm of her hand, and Vasilisa carefully stroked the top of its smooth, sleek head with her scarred thumb. The serpent gave a relaxed sigh.
“You did?” she asked curiously. “What made you lose it?”
“The only ones who called me by it disappeared,” replied the serpent, its eyes closed as Vasilisa continued to stroke its head.
Vasilisa let her finger smoothly play across the serpent’s head for a little while longer before asking, “I could call you by your name. It only seems fair - you call me ‘Vasilisa’, not ‘human’. What is your name?”
The serpent’s eyes opened slowly, and it turned its head to meet her gaze. “I think you might already know.”
Up close, she realized the serpent’s eyes were a deep black-and-purple color, tinged with veins of gold that reminded her of the twisting roots of a tree. Golden eyes…golden eyes…
She found herself sinking into the black and purple void, memories drifting by her as she saw the long-haired Chirlan’s eerie smile, his singer’s voice, his golden claws sinking into her heart. She remembered his soft voice whispering through the darkness as she faded away, whispering a quiet prayer.
Take within all you can bear,
No other soul the weight to share.
And gods of mine: fire, earth, and stars above.
Accept my blood, my spirit, and my love.
The pressure on her chest released suddenly, and Vasilisa gasped as her mind shot back into her own sopping wet body. She scrambled to pull herself up out of the filthy tub. As she regained her bearings, she realized she was alone in the bath - no sign of the serpent, nor Yesugei.
She felt a word - no, a name - tumbling around in her confused, groggy mind as she dried her dress off the best she could and placed her trembling fingers close to the fire of the heating stones.
In the flickering flames of the fire, the serpent’s name came into focus.
“Vraactan…” She whispered, her only audience the crackling flames.
One of the logs split apart, releasing a hiss as the fire spread over and consumed it whole.
The silence of the bathhouse was interrupted when she heard heavy, rushed footsteps coming from outside. The door to the bathhouse burst open, and Vasilisa spun around to see Yesugei standing in the doorframe, his bow and quiver in hand.
“Something’s wrong, someone’s coming. I warned the others but we need to move-”
Before he could say more, a sound came shuddering through the towerhouse. It was one of the peasant watchmen blowing on the hunting horn, sounding intruders. Sounding danger.
“Get up! We need to move, now!”
Vasilisa hurried to her feet after Yesugei, and snatched the giant Apostle’s cleaver from the wall as she trailed after the nomad. The horn blared again, and it sounded like death.