of the knights' feet almost upon them, Ivan simply raised his arms straight above his head and slipped out of the robe, the linen undergarment and all. Once again, he was as naked as the day he arrived there. Only this time he didn't give a damn about that. At least he was leathershod - he'd be able to run much better this time without every pebble or twig slicing at the bottoms of his feet.
"Look at the coward!" said one man.
"Father Lukas has plucked his feathers - now to get him on the spit for roasting!" cried Dimitri.
But their good cheer evaporated quickly when they realized that Ivan was twice as fast as any of them, laden as they were with weapons, and untrained for speed. He reached the woods long before they were even close. Good thing none of them has a bow, he thought.
An arrow twanged into the trunk of a tree ten feet from his head.
All right, so they had a bowman. Just not a good one.
Ivan dodged among the trees, taking care to put as many trunks as possible between himself and his pursuers.
"He won't get far in the woods!" shouted Dimitri. "Where are the dogs!"
The tumult continued, and Ivan heard some crashing in the underbrush far behind him, but he couldn't make out any more words.
Maybe the king would call off the search before it got too far, Ivan thought as the branches again whipped and sliced his skin. He couldn't go full speed in the woods. Worse yet, he had no idea where he was going. Katerina had not led him on a straight path coming here, and everything looked different in this direction, anyway. It was uphill, too - but Ivan was used to that on his daily runs back in Tantalus. In the future, to train for this, he'd have to run naked with two assistants alongside, whipping him with wands and switches every few seconds. He wondered if there was any chance of making that an Olympic event.
Katerina came outside the house to find the village in an uproar, everybody running toward the west, calling out that Katerina's husband was running away. Katerina did not join the general pursuit. Instead, she took a circuitous route among the houses, entering the woods well to the south of where Ivan had gone in.
Sergei watched her go, unable to keep up, and not particularly interested in trying. It was all out of his hands.
Still, he was curious, so he limped along the grassy main street until he came upon Father Lukas, who was grumpily coming the other way. "Foolish business anyway," he said. "That snot-faced little girl you call 'dewdrop' caught on that it wasn't you in the robe and wouldn't shut up about it."
"Dewdrop?" said Sergei. "Dewdrop is dead. She died when I was only nine years old."
Father Lukas glared at him for a moment; then the expression gave way to something else. Fear? Not Father Lukas, surely.
"Never mind," said Sergei. "We know the Widow uses us like sheep, shearing us or skinning us at her pleasure."
"A girl about this tall?" asked Father Lukas, still trying to make sense of things.
"Yes, yes," said Sergei. "But it wasn't her. There's been no resurrection, Father Lukas. It was the Widow, as I said."
"Making us see a little girl?"
"Why not? She showed herself as an old woman before she burned down the church this morning," said Sergei. "She wants this Ivan dead, and she's going to keep trying till he's filleted and roasted."
"Not those stories of her eating her captives again," said Father Lukas.
"They say she does."
"Who says?" said Father Lukas. "Who is it who saw her eating, but she didn't eat them!" He held out the robe and undergarment Ivan had been wearing. "Now you can have these back."
"What's Ivan wearing?" asked Sergei.
"What Adam wore in the garden," said Father Lukas. "What Noah wore when he was drunk in his tent after the flood. What David wore when he danced in triumph in the streets after his victory."
"Naked come we into the world," said Sergei, getting into the spirit of things, "and naked we go out of it."
"Well," said Father Lukas, "naked except for boots."
Sergei took the clothing. "The robe is mine, all right," he said. "But the linen is his."
"He's running at full speed through the woods," said Father Lukas. "You're welcome to follow him and return it." With that, Father Lukas passed him and headed back toward the king's house.