R1 - Rusalka by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

Pyetr in a shirt, himself in only the lightest of coats—Sasha kept reproaching himself for the horse blankets and the extra clothes they might have brought, if he had had his wits about him and not thought only of running—
     
    Or there was the food he might have had in his pockets, if Pyetr had only said, plainly, Let's run away, once and for all…
     
    Pyetr was chilling now that they had stopped walking. The night cold came on the edge of a wind, and the wild grass was the only blanket he could think of.
     
    "Good boy," Pyetr said between chattering teeth. "Good lad.—More sense than 'Mitri and that lot ever will have…"
     
    Sasha pulled weeds until he was sweating, until his hands felt raw, and built up a bank beside Pyetr, higher and higher, until he could lie down and rake the weeds over them both.
     
    He was warm, at least. He burrowed under the weeds, opened his coat and put himself up against Pyetr chilled body.
     
    "Wish us a warm day tomorrow," Pyetr muttered. "Wish us a horse or two while you're about it. And the tsar's own carriage."
     
    "I'm wishing you to
live
," Sasha said, and did, as hard as he had ever wished for anything. He was trying not to shiver, up against Pyetr's chill side as he was, but it was not the cold, it was fear.
     
    "Good," Pyetr said. The shivers were down to little ones now. "I'm glad you're minding the details."
     
    A moment later, Pyetr said, with a small shudder, "But do spare a wish for a horse, two of them—fast ones, if you find the time. I've always fancied black, myself."
     

     
CHAPTER 5
     
    « ^ »
     
    "N o horse," Pyetr complained, in the morning—a frosty morning, Sasha found, in which it might be a great deal warmer to stay where they were, but fear of the thieftakers and the sting of Pyetr's ridicule made it unlikely he would rest.
     
    "No horse, no coat, no carriage," Pyetr said. "I expected the tsar for breakfast. For supper tonight, do you think?"
     
    Sasha got up, picked weeds out of his hair and felt bits of them go down his collar.
     
    "No sense of humor," Pyetr said.
     
    One could be very angry at Pyetr, except he tried to move and sit up, and it hurt him, so that he caught after the branches of the bush and stabbed his hand on the thorns. Sasha winced, himself, while Pyetr just drew back the bleeding hand, shook it and sucked the blood with a weary, aggrieved frown—and held it up then, still bleeding, with: "Do you do
small
cures, perchance?"
     
    "No," Sasha said sorrowfully, and came to help him up. "I truly wish I did."
     
    It took a bit to get moving, cold as it was, but it was the only help for a stitch like that, just to work it out by walking, the boy trying to help him the while.
     
    "It's better," Pyetr said, finally, when moving and the warmth of the sun on his back had helped what it could. And, his wits being a little clearer, he thought that the boy was very quiet and very unhappy this morning. "Cheer up," he said. "We're away, we're not on the main road, we'll come across it again, eventually, beyond any distance they'd search for us…"
     
    "But what town are we going to? Where does this road go? Don't they say—don't they say east is the way to the Old River, don't they say—people don't go that way any more? Only outlaws—"
     
    "What do you suppose we are?"
     
    "But—" Sasha said with a distressed look, and seemed to be thinking about it.
     
    "But?" Pyetr said, and when Sasha said nothing to that: "We'll follow the river south," Pyetr said. "There has to be a road. Or the river itself. We can build a boat of sorts. It goes all the way to the sea. It'll carry us to Kiev. People are rich in Kiev."
     
    Sasha trudged beside him, arms wrapped around his ribs, hardly looking confident.
     
    "So serious," Pyetr said.
     
    Sasha said nothing. Pyetr clapped him on the shoulder.
     
    "It'll be all right, boy."
     
    Still there was nothing. Pyetr shook at him. "No wishes?"
     
    "No," Sasha said in a dull voice.
     
    "No