"But you like to eat. And winter will come, and you'll wish to be nice and fat, won't you? Be a dear, and kill at least a few of them tonight."
"Do you really, truly want me to?" asked Bear.
"Oh yes, I do."
"And may I really, truly choose whether to eat them now or not?"
"Of course! It wouldn't be entertaining otherwise."
"Then I choose to take a nap. If you want to eat them, go ahead, but I'm not interested in doing your bloody-handed work right now."
She almost said the words that would compel him to obey. But instead she laughed. "Play your games with me, my pet. There's one enemy I think you'll want to kill."
"Which one is that?" he asked.
"Why, the one who took your eye," she said.
And she was right. That one he would gladly tear to bits. "When will I have him?"
"As soon as their little army moves against us," said Baba Yaga. "Soon. Now take your nap, my dear."
Chapter 17
War
They held a council of war that night, all the soldiers, all the elders of the villages of Taina, Father Lukas, and King Matfei and his family. No one questioned Ivan's right to be there, but he was wise enough to speak only when spoken to. His prestige was high right now, but few would take him seriously when it came to any aspect of war but bombs and Molotov cocktails and the ungainly hang glider they were already building.
It was unnerving to have the king so silent. But every word he did not say was a reminder of Dimitri's treason, so Dimitri, at least, was not the one to fill the gap. Instead, Katerina quietly led out in the conversation, calling upon each man for counsel who seemed to want to speak, and then deferring to her father whenever a question was raised. He wrote his answers to her in a tray of dirt that rested before him on the table, but his writing was slow and inaccurate, for literacy was only somewhat within his grasp.
Of course the command was reorganized, with those most loyal to Dimitri replaced by those most loyal to the king. Everyone understood, and beyond that there was no punishment or recrimination. It's not as if the peasant portion of the army would be expected to stand against anything but other peasants, while knights would fight only other knights.
Then it was time for Ivan to explain what his new weapons could do. To his surprise, there was vehement opposition to the use of fire against men. At first Ivan thought it was some misguided notion of chivalry and fair play that was causing the druzhina to object. Then he realized that the problem was using peasants to attack knights. They didn't like the precedent.
"The weapon is terrible," Katerina admitted, "but remember that we're outnumbered greatly. Our hope is that the grenades and cocktails will terrify the Pretender's peasants into running away. They have no love for her anyway. And as for their knights, putting his weapon in the hands of boys and old men helps redress the balance between her swordsmen and ours. I will give you spells and charms, and so will she, but hers will be more powerful. Shouldn't we use whatever magic we have to counteract her strength?"
When they saw it as magic against magic rather than peasants against knights, the opposition melted away.
The next morning, Father Lukas led the women in carefully loading gunpowder into as many canisters as the smithy could produce. Sergei supervised the boys in making Molotov cocktails, which did not require as much care to avoid blowing off a finger or a hand. And Katerina and Ivan worked with several of the more skilled woodworkers and seamstresses to make the hang glider.
By afternoon, they had something that would fly; but it would not bear much weight. This meant it could only be Katerina who would fly in it, and not in the voluminous clothing she normally wore, either. She carefully announced to the women that in Ivan's world, there was special clothing for those who flew. She would have them make the women's version of that clothing - which consisted of slender trousers, which differed from a man's only in not having an opening through which a man could urinate. Since trousers were not widely accepted as a part of the male costume yet, no one questioned her declaration.