“Unless it slays his band,” a third man said. “What then?”
“Then we must abide here till dawn, when we can find our
way home,” the zhupan stated. “The beast can’t catch us ashore.”
“There’s other things as might.” The second trooper stared around him. Moonbeams glimmered in his eyeballs, making them blank.
Ivan raised a cross he wore around his neck. A crystal covered a hollow theren. “This carries a fingerbone of St. Martin,” he said. “Pray like true Christians, and no power of darkness can harm us.”
“Your son Mihajlo thought different,” a soldier dared mutter.
The zhupan heard, and struck him on the cheek. The slap woke
an echo. “Hold your tongue, you oaf!” Men signed themselves, thinking dissension boded ill.
Slow hours passed. Frost deepened. Those who waited shiv-ered, stamped feet, tucked hands in armpits. Breath smoked from them. Something white stirred restlessly at the top of a great oak, but nobody cared to peer closely after it.
The moon was sinking when a cry tore out of their throats. A blackness had broken the glade. A hideous shape moved toward them. It halted some distance off, near enough that they could see the mermen tread water to ring the vodianoi in.
Vanimen entered the shallows, stood up, walked to the humans. Wetness dripped from him like mercury. Pride blazed forth like the sun that was coming. “Victory is ours,” he proclaimed.
“God be praised!” Ivan jubilated. After a moment, warrior hardheadedness returned. “Are you sure? What did you do? What’s to happen next?”
Vanimen folded arms across his mighty chest and laughed. “We could kill him, aye. But on this very night of his greatest strength, we could outswim him. Our weapons gave pain. None of us did he seize, the while we tormented him till it grew beyond bearing. Also, we showed him how we take fish. In that, he cannot match us either. We can snatch them before he does, scare them off, leave him famished.
“At least we made him know, with the help of a spell for understanding, that we would do this as long as needful. Best he spare his own anguish and depart forthwith. We’ll escort him up the river, past your town, and let him go on thence, into unpeopled highlands. He’ll grieve you no more.”
Ivan embraced him. Men cheered. Mermen responded lustily from the water. The vodianoi brooded.
“Follow along the edge,” Vanimen advised. “We’ll keep in sight of you.” He turned to rejoin his folk.
The white shape flitted down through withering leaves. Many came along when it sprang from a lower branch to earth. “Ah, no,” it sang, “would you drive the poor old ugly hence? This is his home. The lake will be lonely without him, a wonder will be gone, and who shall I play with?”
Vanimen saw the form dance over glittery grass, the form of a naked maiden, lovely to behold but colorless, seeming almost transparent. No mist of breath left nostrils or lips. “Rousalka!” he bawled, and fled into the lake.
The being stopped. “Who are you?” she asked the zhupan in her thin, sweet voice. “Should I remember you?”
Sweat studded Ivan’s skin, he shuddered, yet it was with hatred and rage rather than fear that he advanced. “Demon, ghost, foul thief of souls!” he shrilled. “Begone! Back to your grave, back to your hell!”
He slashed with his sword. Somehow it did not strike. The vilja lifted her hands. “Why are you angry? Be not angry,” she begged. “Stay. You are so warm, I am so alone.”
Ivan dropped his blade and raised his cross. “In the name of the Holy Trinity, and St. Martin whose banner St. Stefan bore into battle, go.”
The vilja whirled about and ran into the wood. She left less mark by far in the hoarfrost than a woman would have done. They heard her sobbing, then that turned into laughter, then there was no more trace of her.
Bells pealed rejoicing till all Skradin rang. No person worked, save to prepare a festival that began in the afternoon and continued past sunset.
The sight had been awesome for those who were awake before dawn, when the vodianoi passed by under guard of the mermen. It was as if, for a moment, the world—castle, church, town, houses, fields, ordered hours and the cycle that went measured from Easter to Easter-had parted like a veil, men glimpsed what it had hidden from them, and that was no snug Heaven but ancient, unending wildness.