God Within Us

Boyar Vratislav gave a heavy sigh as he sat back on a rickety wooden chair, propping his bandaged leg up on a stool with a pained grimace.

With the overcast skies the manor seemed a damp, drafty maze of shadows filled with the smell of mildew, sweat, and blood. Lady Nesha gently unwrapped the sticky cloth bandages from her husband’s leg to reveal an ugly slice that ran along his thigh lengthwise - exposing gray flaps of muscle and fat.

“Easy, woman!” groaned Vratislav as his wife exchanged the ruined bandages for a new set that lay soaked in a bowl of wine. As the boyar’s agonized groans filled the shadowed great hall Vasilisa saw the eyes of the other peasants were fixed on the ground, or elsewhere about the nooks and crannies of the room, but never looking her straight in the eye.

Besides Boyar Vratislav and Nesha, there were seven others who had managed to escape the pillaging of Yerkh - the rest had either fled into the woods to escape the outriders, or burned alongside their homes. At Nesha’s call, Marmun set aside his hand-plow and waddled over to help hold her squirming lord husband in place as she tightened the wine-soaked bandage around his injured leg. The large man who had been ready to cave Vasilisa’s head in earlier could now scarcely meet her eyes as he stepped past her - treating her as a Grand Prince’s daughter even as she sat at the longtable in torn rags sullied by blood and the dirt of the road.

Eventually Vratislav was able to set his newly-bandaged leg down, his brow soaked with sweat.

“Gatchisk?” asked Nesha as she wiped her hands clean with a wet cloth. “The city lies half a day’s ride from here, perhaps less.”

“Aye, but that was before this slaughter,” interjected Vratislav. “With bandits roaming and burning half the damn country, the city might as well be on the other side of the world. You wouldn’t make it far.”

The attack on the village once called Yerkh had come at night. The raiders - clad in heavy maille, iron helms, and mounted on coursers - had moved so quickly that by the time Vratislav’s soldiers had managed to get their armor on half the village was already set ablaze by thrown torches. Leading a sally out, the boyar’s household guards were cut down by arrows as they emerged piecemeal trying to get as many peasants within the safety of the manor. At the gates, Vratislav himself took an arrow to the hand, as well as a sword cut to his unarmored leg before Marmun and the spearman Rudin dragged him back within the safety of the walls.

It was only thanks to the raiders’ own skittishness that the manor and those inside remained unburned - their leader judged the manor too time-consuming to assault for what should have been a lightning cavalry raid, and the armored riders disappeared into the night after leaving one of the household guards out in the courtyard as a final warning.

“Those weren’t no bandits, m’lord,” spoke Valishin - one of the younger farmers who sat to the side of the longtable with his wife. “I seen one of ‘em waving a banner when they charged - never heard of bandits carrying banners into a fight.”

“Bandits also don’t wear armor.” piped up Gastya, a smaller man who frightened off one of the raiders with a sharpened sickle.

Rudin scoffed. “Anyone can wear armor, stupid. Just because they wore armor doesn’t mean they weren’t bandits.”

“So you’re saying they were bandits?”

“Enough,” grumbled Vratislav. “Bandits or not, they’re armored and mounted. And they’ll certainly be looking for easy pickings on the open road.”

“Staying here won’t do us much better.” Yesugei rapped his knuckles on the longtable as he looked around the hall. “Those riders could come back anytime they feel like finishing the job, and you have barely any food here. Pretty soon you’ll be starving.”

“You don’t know that!” The cry came from Khavel, a mason’s apprentice from Gatchisk sent to work on the manor’s walls before the attack. It was his cousin, Doru, who stood against them in the courtyard with pickaxe in hand. “Prince Gvozden can’t ignore this! His druzhina will wipe away this bandit filth in a few days, and then we can go wherever we need to. But until the druzhina comes, we should stay!”

“Even you don’t believe that,” said Doru, who gave his younger cousin a cuff on the ear. “The Khormchak makes a good point - I’d rather we hit the road and try to get a sturdier set of walls between us and these killers instead of starving here.”

“Or we end up running into them on the road by fate’s wretched will, and then we all get killed.” pointed out Gastya. “They have armor, we don’t. They have spears and bows - only Rudin and m’lord have real weapons.”

“Better than starving while waiting for help that might not even come!”

“What are you, a death-seeker?”

“What are you, a coward?”

“I’m the coward for trying to keep us alive?!”

“Alive long enough to starve to death!”

The mens’ voices rose as each tried to shout over the other, growing louder and louder until even Vratislav’s weak calls for order were drowned out by the argument. The horror and anger of last night reared its head in every man’s exhausted eyes, and their words dripped with the bitter venom of those who had lost everything - family, home, and fortune, entire lives set to torch in a single night.

Gods, they’re not even trying to figure out what to do next, she wondered as the yelling continued back and forth between the men at the table. Their argument went in circles - stay or leave, who was the coward, who was the idiot - until it eventually devolved into a shouting match of hurled insults. She saw Yesugei sitting quietly with his arms crossed, unsure of what to say, then looked at Vratislav and Nesha who had lost all control over their meager band of subjects.

“Everybody, listen!”

Her own voice could barely rise above the din of the shouting men, and only seemed to make them grow even louder. She felt a sharp pain in her head from the overwhelming noise - and thought of her father and whether he had to deal with the same internecine strife between the merchants and landowners of his court. The memory of the noble court, the soft glow of the mounted torches, and the familiar smell of the carved wooden beams - all of it now felt like a distant memory that only brought sorrow. Perhaps it would all remain just a memory - if what the boyar had said was true.

They say Belnopyl burns.

From Vratislav’s talk, it had been a week since Chirlan had appeared in her father’s court and stolen her away. According to a merchant who had passed by Belnopyl on his way south to the Shipbreaker Tides, the city had been sacked and left in ruins by a band of Khormchaks - and no-one knew whether the Grand Prince, his wife, or any of the gathered druzhinniks or boyars at court had survived. Whatever boyars were not in court on that day were probably isolated much like Vratislav - stuck in tiny fortified manors and cut off from one another with no means of sending messages or receiving news besides runners, though traveling alone in such times was a deadly proposition if murderers roamed the Belnopyl countryside as they did in Gatchisk lands.

Sorrow at Belnopyl’s memory then turned to anger. Chirlan’s smirking face taunted her in her mind, and for a moment she wished he hadn’t died so she could have killed him herself. But he was dead - and in his death he had cursed her forever, and his followers had turned her entire world upside down within a mere three days - legends and magic come to life to take away all that was dear to her. Of those gathered in the hall only Yesugei knew the full truth - she was reluctant to share the same details with Vratislav, who would have laughed her out of his manor if she filled his head with stories of talking snakes, stone-skinned monsters, and floating cleavers made from bone and flesh. Despite all that had happened, the world beyond herself and Yesugei was still mundane and boring - magic was a distant thing to be practiced by priests or eastern sorcerers, and monsters such as the Apostles were solely relegated to midwives’ tales.

She had thus remained mostly silent as she listened to the confused, fragmented recollections and stories from the villagers - their minds scrambling to make sense of the past even as they struggled to comprehend their future without home and family. At first, she had been glad to remain quiet while Vratislav and the peasants spoke. But now, with the peasants screaming at one another and their boyar hopelessly overwhelmed, her silence became untenable.

This can’t go on forever.

She took a deep breath, trying to remember her father’s booming voice which he had used so often on the battlefield and in court to bring men into line. Then she stood up from her seat, and spoke again - not just as Vasilisa, but as the Grand Prince’s daughter.

“Everybody, shut it and hear me!”

Her voice boomed proudly from her chest, and the sudden outburst caused every one of the peasants to startle as they looked at her with surprise. Silence reigned at last over the hall, fallen so quiet she could hear the whistling of the wind as it blew through the gaps in the old manor’s wooden walls.

She looked at each of the peasants - ragged, covered in soot, and aching with the pain of lost home. “I know all of you are angry and hurt, but the more time we waste fighting like children, the less likely we are to make it out of this mess alive - and who will bury the dead if not their kin?”

“What do you say we do then, my lady?” asked Marmun, his beady eyes meeting hers at last. “You heard what m’lord said - trying to get to Gatchisk on foot or by horse is certain death with those riders about.”

“That is why I say we don’t get there by land,” she replied. Her mind raced with memories of the last time she and her father had traveled to Gatchisk - how Prince Gvozden had boasted of his city’s renewed wealth from naval trading with the south. “We get there by river, along the Cherech. It flows through Gatchisk, does it not?”

She looked to Rudin, Valishin, and the others. “When my father and I last visited these lands, Prince Gvozden had some of his boats sail us down to the south - we made port at some small town-”

“Balai!” exclaimed Gastya. “They have a market there where we sell our harvest!”

“Do they have ships of their own?”

“Yes, big ones!” continued Gastya. “Big enough to bring cattle and grain up to the city.”

“They have walls as well,” chimed Doru. “I worked for two seasons on the boyar’s towerhouse there - you’d need a big and proper army to take that hold. We’d be safe there…or at least safer than here.”

"Might be the others who ran also went there!" spoke the farmer's wife Valka, hope suddenly alive in her eyes. She looked at Vratislav. "The boyar would have to protect them, wouldn't he?"

Vasilisa saw the boyar suddenly look uncomfortable - he murmured something vague under his breath as he shifted in his seat. He would need to protect them...but men shirk duties all the time, even boyars. Some nobles would just as likely close and doubly-bar their gates to all outsiders the moment they heard of raiders roaming the countryside. She had heard stories of how in dark times, boyars would even turn out their own towns' weak and elderly to save food for the soldiers - peasants from another village over wouldn't even garner an afterthought.

“Balai’s much closer to here than Gatchisk,” said Marmun, nodding along with the others as if he had just uttered something profound. “Back before, we used to drop off the harvest, get some roasted fish, and make it back home all before the evening.”

But that was before, Vasilisa thought. Before, you probably had a well-fed horse, a sturdy wagon. And of course…

She looked to Vratislav. In the darkness of the manor the young boyar looked half-dead already, barely able to support his own sitting weight. The cut to his leg, gray and smelling of pus, was no doubt infected - and no matter how many wine-soaked bandages Nesha applied, it would only grow worse without a proper healer. Some part of her was tempted to leave the boyar in his home, but she chastised herself out of the notion: it was only thanks to him that she and Yesugei had avoided getting hacked apart by the mob. Besides that, she still needed his word if others were to question her identity - not all of the boyars in Gatchisk knew her as well, and right now she resembled the Yerkh peasants more than any noble lady.

“We should still travel along the forests to get to Balai - we will move a bit slower, but mounted riders don’t do well in dense woods.” She gave Vratislav’s story of the attack on the manor some more thought. “If they’re so concerned about remaining fast, they’ll steer clear of the deep forests anyways - there’s more loot to be had attacking merchants on the open roads rather than poachers or hunters along the game trails.”

By now even Khavel who had cried most strongly to remain within the manor had started to come over to her idea - if only because it seemed the other villagers were all in agreement, even enthusiastic about the prospect of getting behind even taller, sturdier walls.

“What about the boyar?” asked Yesugei, speaking for the first time since the argument began. “Look at him - we can’t sit him atop a horse.”

“You’ll have to carry him,” she responded. “Two of us, and we can take turns if someone gets tired.”

“When one of the farmers was injured by a boar last summer, we had to carry him out of the woods on a litter,” said Nesha. “Rudin, Marmun - you must remember at the very least. We can do the same - I can cut up one of the curtains with Valka.”

“You speak of me as though I’m not here!” exclaimed Vratislav. “I can still stand, I can still fight.” As the boyar spoke he slowly tried to bring himself up from the chair, but quickly fell back into his seat with a new line of sweat on his feverish brow, and his face red with embarrassment.

“You’ve done enough getting these people to safety,” Nesha gently spoke as she clutched Vratislav’s uninjured hand. “You’ve done your duty as a boyar - now do your duty as a husband, and stay alive for me.”

Vratislav gave a reluctant grunt of assent, and Vasilisa nodded appreciatively to Nesha. Another one with some sense - why is it always the boyars’ women?

Yesugei stood up from his chair as well, then rounded the longtable as he grabbed Marmun, Rudin, and Gastya. “You three are with me, help me grab whatever supplies are left in this place before we head out - leave the killers nothing but rats and mold to take if they come back. The rest of you, I leave to Princess Vasilisa.”

The hall filled with the sound of scraping wood on wood as the peasants slowly split off to their duties - the farmer’s wife Valka setting off with Nesha to make a litter, Yesugei’s men heading off to search for supplies, and the two masons accompanying Valishin to scout the woods just beyond Yerkh for any signs of the raiders.

Vasilisa breathed a sigh of relief as everyone began to set off . She saw Yesugei give her a small, impressed smile before he headed into the kitchens with Marmun and the others.

Soon, only she and Vratislav remained - then the boyar said, “Your father taught you the art of commanding men well - far better than most princes would care to teach their noble daughters.”

“He didn’t teach me formally - but I attended his court enough to learn by watching,” she replied. “I hope to thank him for his accidental tutelage myself, boyar. When I make it home.”

“You think your lord father and mother are still alive?”

The question weighed heavily on her heart. But then she thought of the small crystal pressed into her hand - and the promises for answers left unfulfilled. She remembered the last time she had seen them both - her mother and father stood tall against Chirlan and his silver-masked guards, more noble and brave than the rest of the Klyazmite lords put together. More noble and brave than anyone.

“They have to be.”

***

The gray clouds parted slightly as they finally set out from the village - and Vasilisa saw the sun god Xors was already three-quarters of the way through his journey across the sky.

She had wanted to walk along with the others, to let the Khormchak stallion carry someone else more tired than her, but with her status both the peasants and Vratislav had insisted she ride. It struck her as strange how strongly her newfound companions adhered to the norms and rules of society even when their entire world had fallen apart around them - though perhaps it was an anchor of sorts, a way to pretend things could still return to normal.

But could they? Would they? She had asked as much to Vratislav before they set out, and the boyar pondered the question as he was picked up in his litter by fat Marmun and Gastya. How do you return to normal when you’ve lost everything?

Vratislav found his answer as they passed through the gates of his manor.

“I only had sixteen summers under my belt when the nomads burned and raped their way through this very land,” he said to her. The memories of the invasion were clear in his eyes when he paused, but then he blinked and lifted his head to continue. “I was eighteen when Gvozden had raised me to boyar, when he told me to rebuild. It can happen, my lady. Slowly, surely, but people return. When this war ends it might take a year. It might take ten years. It might even take twenty, as it did for me - but we bury the dead, and we rebuild. And once our wounds are bound and have become scars, we keep on living. Those who survive have to keep on living, otherwise hatred eats you alive. And then, well…then you have less than nothing left."

Vratislav’s words repeated over and over in her mind as their ragged band crept silently through the ruins of Yerkh, with Yesugei and Rudin keeping ahead to look for the forest’s game trails. As they finally stepped beyond the bounds of the village she saw the peasants all turn to look one final time upon their lost homes. The plumes of smoke had begun to finally fade away, but the scorched buildings and bodies remained to be claimed by carrion birds as nests and food. Some of the peasants like Marmun and Rudin looked on in solemn silence, while others like Valishin and his wife Valka allowed their tears to fall freely as they said their farewells to the dead, and gave their promises to return.

She could not fathom how anyone could rebuild after such destruction, after such loss - how anyone who had lived there before could stand the memories etched into the earth itself. She sensed the spirits that lingered in the fields and the streets, and shuddered before she turned her horse to trail after Yesugei.

How do you live after this?

By the time she had worked up the will to speak with Vratislav more, he had already fallen into painful, unconscious sleep in the litter. Perhaps it was for the better - in sleep, even restless, it would be as though he was transported by magic to the safety of Balai. She and the others would have to bear the struggle and misery of the waking world, every step dogged by ghosts and the lingering smell of burned flesh that hung over all of them long after Yerkh had disappeared behind the foliage.

How do you keep on living?

How do you let go?