III
A FULL moon stood aloft in a frosty ring. Few stars shone through its brightness, that turned hoar the treetops around the lake and tinged each wavelet with silver. A breeze bore autumn’s chill and rattled leaves which were dying.
The vodianoi rose from the bottom and swam toward shore. He grew old when the moon waned, young when it waxed; this night he was in the flush of power and hunger. The bulk of three war horses, his body, on which grew moss and trailing weeds, was like a man’s save for thick tail, long-toed feet, webbed and taloned forepaws. The face was flattened, with bristles around its cavern of a mouth. Eyes glowed red as coals.
When belly touched ground, he stopped. Through the murk below the trees there reached him a sound of brush being parted and footfalls drawing near. Whatever humans wanted here after dark, maybe one of them would be careless enough to wade out. The vodianoi moved no more than a rock. The ‘iJ:rgent ripples he had raised faded away.
A shape flitted out of shadow, to poise on the grass at the water’s edge: upright, slim, white as the moon. Laughter trilled. “Oh, you silly! Let me show how to lurk.” Wind-swift, it swarmed into an oak nearby. “Let me feed you.” Acorns flew, to bounce off the monster’s hide.
He grunted thunder-deep wrath. These past three years the vilja had teased him. He had even wallowed onto land a few painful yards, seeking to catch her, gaining naught but her mirth. Soon she must leave the wood, to spend winter beneath lake and stream, but that availed not the vodianoi. Though cold made her dreamy, she never grew too unaware or too slow for him. Besides, when she was not actually rousing him to fury, he knew in his dim-witted fashion that it was unlikely he could harm such a wraith. The only good thing was that in that season she merely greeted him, like a sleepwalker, when they met.
“I know,” she called. “You hope you’ll grab you a fine, juicy man. Well, you shan’t.” With a gesture”she raised a whirly little wind around him. “They’re mine, those travelers.” Her mood swung about. The wind died away. “But why do they fare at night?” she asked herself in a tone of bewilderment. “And they bring no fire to see by. Men would bring flre—would they not? I can’t remember. . . .”
She hugged her knees where she sat on high, rocked back and forth, let her hair blow cloudy-pale on a breeze that hardly stirred the locks of those who approached. All at once she cried, “They are not men-most of them—not really,” and climbed higher to be hidden.
The vodianoi hissed after her, hunched back down, and waited.
The mermen came out of the forest. They numbered a score,
led by Vanimen, naked save for knife belts but carrying fish spears and hooped nets. Ivan Subitj was among the half-dozen humans who were along to observe. Guided through gloom by companions with Faerie sight, they had made stumbling progress, and blinked as if dazed when suddenly moonlight spilled across them.
“Yonder he is!” Vanimen called. “Already we’ve found him.
I thought an absence of flame would aid us in that.”
Ivan peered. “A boulder?” he asked.
“No, look close, espy those ember eyes.” Vanimen raised steel
and shouted in his own tongue.
The mermen splashed out. Bellowing in glee, fangs agleam, the vodianoi threshed after the nearest. The fleet creature eluded him. He chased another, and failed.
Now he and they were swimming. The mermen closed in, jeered, pricked with their forks. The vodianoi dived. They fol-lowed.
For a minute, water roiled and spouted.
Silence fell, the lake rocked back toward calm, heaven again
dreamed its icy dreams. A soldier’s voice was lost in that im-mensity: “The fight’s gone too deep for us to see.”
“If it is a fight,” a companion said. “That thing’s immortal till Judgment. Iron won’t bite on it. What hope have those hunters of yours, lord, witchy though they be?”
“Their headman has told me of several things he can try ,” Ivan answered. He was not one to confide in underlings. “Which is best, he must find out.”