7
Sheep and Wolves
For the next few days Peter worked hard, chopping and delivering as much wood as he could before the snows really bit deep. On about half the days he managed to get his father to help him. The rest of the time Tomas sat by the stove in the hut, drinking his way through a small cask of slivovitz that he’d bought with the money Peter brought back from his last trip to Chust.
Late one morning, as they were chopping logs from the lumber pile, Tomas dropped his axe. Not for the first time Peter noticed his father’s hands shaking. Tomas bent to pick the axe up from the snow but dropped it twice more before he began to swing it again.
“Get on with your work, Peter,” he said gruffly, seeing his son staring at him.
Peter didn’t move.
“It’s cold out here, isn’t it?” Tomas said, pausing. “Can’t keep my damn hands still.”
“Yes, Father,” Peter said. “The wind’s cruel today.”
But later, back in the warmth of the hut, Tomas’s hands were still shaking.
Peter and Sultan made a dozen trips around the village, their battered cart laden and creaking through the snow. Most people had good stores of seasoned logs already, but no one would refuse another delivery; you could never be sure how hard the winter might be. The difficult thing was getting people to pay for the wood straightaway, but nevertheless Peter came home most days with coins to put in the tin under the loose stone in the corner of the hut.
One day, Peter came home with more than money. Stories were flying around the village, and Peter brought some of them with him too. He led Sultan over the bridge onto their island and hurriedly fed him. While the horse ate, he threw two blankets across the beast’s back. He dragged a bucket through the channel that joined the two arms of the river, and poured water into Sultan’s trough.
“Drink it before it freezes, boy,” Peter said, shutting the stable door. He felt strange calling the horse “boy.” Sultan was older than him, and somehow, Peter knew, much wiser, but that was what Tomas often called him and it had become a habit. “One day, I really will get you some beet.”
Peter found his father inside, as usual. For once, though, there was no drink in sight, and there was a pot bubbling on the top of the stove.
“There’s all sorts of commotion in the village,” Peter said, before he had even closed out the cold.
“What?” Tomas asked, looking up from stirring the pot.
“Sheep have been attacked. In their sheds. Cattle in the pasture too.”
“So the wolves are getting hungry,” Tomas said. “What of it?”
“It’s not wolves. Well, that’s what they’re saying in Chust.”
“So what is it then?” Tomas asked.
“I think you know what they’re saying,” Peter said.
“Pah!” Tomas spat on the floor. “Idiots! And you’re an idiot too for listening.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard,” said Peter. “That’s all. You know the miller who died last month? Willem? His widow says he visits her in the night.”
Tomas said nothing; he turned his attention back to the pot on the stove.
Peter kept going, for once seeing the chance to actually get his father to talk.
“She says he’s been visiting her for a week now. She’s very ill. Pale and won’t eat.”
“So what? She wouldn’t be the first silly old woman to say that! That snooty girl of yours. Agnes.”
“Yes?” said Peter angrily. “What about her?”
“They told me in the inn yesterday that her mother’s been saying the same thing about her husband.”
Peter looked at his father.
“They said what?”
“You heard,” Tomas said.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Tomas whirled around, sending the pot of stew flying to the floor as he stormed over to Peter, who flinched, convinced his father was going to strike him.
“No,” Tomas shouted right into his face, “I didn’t tell you, because it’s all nonsense!”
Peter stood, breathing heavily, trembling. The stew was spreading across the floor. He looked back at his father, determined to hold his gaze.
“I’m going to see Agnes,” he said quietly. “I’m taking Sultan. I’ll be back late.”
Peter strode out of the hut and with a silent apology to Sultan put the horse’s saddle and bridle on again. He galloped into Chust, fuming about his father as he rode, happy to let him have to clear up the spilled stew.
In the hut, Tomas stared at the mess he’d made.
He got on his hands and knees and tried to scrape what he could back into the pot, but all he managed to do was fill it with a muddy slop. He took the pot outside and threw its contents into the river, then swilled it out and went back indoors. He threw sawdust over what was left on the floor.
He stood, breathing in quick gulps of air. His eyes fixed on the barrel of slivovitz, but he forced them to move on, and found himself staring at his bed.
He glanced at the door, but he knew Peter was way into the village by now. Nonetheless he threw the bolt and went and knelt by his low cot, as if he were about to pray.
Instead, he rummaged with both hands under the mattress and pulled out a long, flat wooden case.
He let the mattress fall onto the bed again, and placed the box on top. He waited for a moment or two, catching his breath, as if scared of what he was about to do.
The case had a simple catch and no lock, and was rather plain, made of a dark-colored wood, so unlike the pine and birch of the Mother Forest. Tomas looked behind him once more, at the door, hesitating still. Then he took a deep breath and raised the lid, and from inside he lifted a strange and beautiful object up into the flickering orange lamplight.
It was a sword, and it was as frightening as it was beautiful, and as foreign as the sun in winter.
Its slim but lethal blade curved back halfway along from the hilt, widened out for its last third, then tapered to a fearsome point. The hilt itself was sheathed in horn, glossy, gray and mottled, and the crosspiece was an elegant brass creation.
The blade’s surface was completely smooth, though a strange device was engraved in the steel by the hilt. Two triangles interlocked, forming a six-pointed star, between each arm of which was a small circle. In the middle of the star was a seventh circle, and around the outside ran two concentric circles, keeping everything in order.
Tomas held the sword, not by the hilt, but with its blade resting gently on his palms. He seemed hypnotized by it; even his breathing appeared to have stopped.
The only things that moved in the whole hut were the flames dancing in the stove and the tear that fell from Tomas’s cheek onto the blade.
Memories flooded his brain, unbidden and uncaring. Suddenly he snapped from the reverie, roughly put the sword away in its case, and rammed the case under the bed, as if it were worthless, though nothing could have been further from the truth.
He grabbed a mug from the table, filled it to the brim with slivovitz, and began to drink, trying to wash the memories away.
Outside, there was a noise. Footsteps sounded on the log bridge to the island.
“Peter?” Tomas called, unsettled by something he could not place.
But Peter was by then knocking on the door of Agnes’s house.