more and more completely with the mudjhik. He had thought they were close before, but this was overwhelming, as if the mudjhik were using him, not the other way round. It was a good feeling. He embraced it. He felt the Vlast itself, and all its authority and power and inevitability, flowing through him. He was not a single person any more. He was history happening. He was the face of the hammerhead, but it was the entire force of the arm-swing of the hammerblow that drove him forward. He didn’t have questions, he had answers. And, at last, after uncountable days of arduous marching, the onward flow of angel-sanctified history and the piece of angel stuff he held in his hand like a thread brought him to the isba.
The mudjhik was restless, knowing its quarry was close. It wanted to wade in and crush his skull and stamp his ribs in. Now. Even in the dark it would not miss. But Safran was tired after the long days of marching. His hands trembled with cold and fatigue. He would not fail, he could not, yet he knew the dangers of overconfidence. Once again he surveyed the lie of the operational zone.
The isba stood, stark in the moonshine, on a slightly raised shoulder of ground in a clearing about a hundred yards across. On the far side of the clearing from where Safran stood some kind of canal or nondescript river was running. With the mudjhik’s senses, he could smell its dark, cold and slow-moving current. On every other side of the isba there were thickets of thorn and bramble and low trees, cut through with narrow wandering pathways. Safran was satisfied that the targets could not escape. They could not cross the open ground without him knowing. In daylight, if they tried, he could cut them down with the Exter-Vulikh before they reached the cover of the trees. But in this light? The cloud cover was thickening, the last moonlight fading.
Working only by feel, Safran stripped down the Exter-Vulikh and reloaded the drum magazines one more time.
Wait. Let them sleep.
74
Lom was dreaming, dark, ugly, disturbing dreams of gathering hopelessness and death, and when the giant woke him he found them hard to shake off. Slowly he focused on the giant’s heavy hand on his shoulder, the huge figure leaning over him, the dim face close to his, the deep soft voice whispering in the stove-light.
‘The enemy is come. Wake up.’
‘What?’
‘You must go quickly. Both of you.’
‘What? I don’t…’ He struggled to separate reality and dream.
‘There is a hunter outside in the trees. A killer. An enjoyer of death.’
‘Yes,’ said Lom. ‘I know.’
And he realised that he did know. He’d felt the presence of them in his dream, and he could still feel it now.
‘There are two of them,’ he said.
‘He has a follower with him. A thing like stone.’
A mudjhik? Could that be?
Lom, fully awake now, climbed down from the bed on top of the stove.
‘You must make no noise,’ said the giant. ‘They listen hard.’
It was viciously cold. Lom stood as close to the stove as he could. He had the slightly sickened feeling of being awake too early. Maroussia was preparing with pale and silent efficiency.
‘My cloak?’ whispered Lom. ‘Where is it?’
Aino-Suvantamoinen had it ready and handed it to him. Lom wished he could have felt the weight of the Zorn in its pocket, but that was still somewhere in the Lodka, presumably, where Safran and the militia would have left it when they brought him down. He’d lost his cosh too.
And then they were ready. But for what? He found he could sense the hunters outside in the darkness. They were out there watching. Waiting for dawn, presumably, a better killing light, and that would come soon. Lom considered their options for defending the isba, or getting to their boat, or escaping into the woods; but without weapons there were none. They were caught. Helpless.
Aino-Suvantamoinen stepped across to the great iron stove, pressed his belly against it and, stooping slightly, embraced it. The isba filled with the smell of damp wool singeing as the giant grunted, lifted the entire stove off the ground, spilling red embers against his legs, and carried it, staggering, a few paces sideways. The stove had been standing on a threadbare rug with an intricate geometrical pattern, much worn away and scarred by spills of ash and charcoal. The giant kicked the rug aside to reveal an area of rough planks. He