USUAL REMINDER: This is a long chapter, but it's only one part of a much longer story. If you're just looking for a helping hand, Chapter 2 is good for that. (IMO)
NOTE:"Egorri" is a common name for St. George. Russian folklore often links St. George with tales of wild animals.
ALSO: Please be aware this is only a 3rd draft of this chapter. You guys don't usually see anything until I've been over it six or seven [or eighteen] times, but we've been having a family issue, and I haven't had much time to write. I've kept you hanging for so long I figured you'd rather have a mostly-finished chapter than NO chapter. (Events are all here, but it's less polished than I'd like.) So, grammar gurus, kindly take it easy on my typos, but definitely let me know if you find anything particularly convoluted or confusing. Maybe I can cut down on my average number of drafts!
PS- You don't actually need to know this, but Maslenitsa is yet another pagan holiday co-opted by Christianity. Depending on one's degree of devotion to church or distillery, it's either a time of prayerful ritual preparation for Lent (which starts the following week), seven days of family fun and revelry, or a great excuse to get sloshed six nights in a row. Enjoy!!
--o----O----o--
The rain Troi had been expecting never materialized, but the cloud cover which had been looming over the valley crept eastward, gradually engulfing the mountaintops around Zamok Denova. The mist wasn't thick enough to truly veil anything but the fields, though wisps of it wrapped themselves around the trees at the edge of the taiga, obscuring those beyond. From a distance, the muffled thud of hammer blows punched through the dense, moist air.
Troi ignored the sounds. She assumed Argus and Nivid had begun repairing the door he crashed through in a temper, and tried to keep her mind altogether away from the subject.
"Do you want to see the wolves?"
She stopped abruptly, her eyes rising from the dark planks beneath her feet to fix on Talgut's face. They'd been meandering for a while, parading like gentlefolk of leisurely means around the gallery on the castle's second level. This was the first word either of them had spoken since leaving the balcony overlooking the valley floor, she realized.
"Well?"
Her eyebrows rose. "Da, of course!" Troi nodded eagerly.
Talgut slowed at the next corner and peeked around it, pointing to where a covered parapet led to a ruined watch-tower in the most ancient part of the castle compound. "Behind the rampart is an old stable," he whispered. "The roof's long rotted, so if you look over the wall, you will see straight down into it."
Troi nodded and stepped quickly sideways to go 'round him, but Talgut grabbed her arm. "They'll hear you coming, like as not..." he cautioned. "Don't be alarmed
to see one or two of the beasts leaping toward your nose. None of them jump so far as for you to be concerned." His mouth twisted into a wry smile. "I'd be no more if they were able."
She nodded and tugged her arm away, tiptoeing the last twenty steps to the near end of the walkway. She stayed to the left side as she ventured onto it. A few yards inside the tunnel-like passage, Troi turned and eased her way over to the wall.
Back at the corner, Talgut watched her rise to her toes, slowly leaning forward to peer into the stable. He waited for the explosion of snarls and yaps he expected to hear. Nothing happened.
"Dammit!" He frowned.
Where the hell were they?
Supporting her upper body on her elbows, Troi glanced over her shoulder as Talgut stepped out from behind the corner of the building.
He growled the question aloud to himself as he stalked in her direction. "Where did Nivid put them this time?"
He paused, thinking.
The old donjon, mayhap?
"Put what?" Troi asked, her voice low as she craned her neck to look back at him.
"The wolves, where'd he put the wolves?"
Troi sunk back onto her heels, her forehead wrinkling. "Talgut, they're right here. Don't you remember asking me if I wanted to see them?"
Talgut rolled his eyes, dismissing the statement as more of Troi's teasing, but went to join her anyway. When he poked his head over the edge, humoring her, the silent pack in the stable below exploded into a snarling, leaping mass of fur.
Troi shoved herself away from the wall with a yip of alarm. Even Talgut drew his head back, though he'd long since stopped being frightened of the wolves... so long as he was up here and they were down there.
Troi was glaring at him. "Egorri! Talgut, what'd you do to them? They HATE you?"
Befuddled, he looked from Troi to the irascible
wolves. When he'd first stuck his head over the edge, at least a third of the pack had been calmly gazing up at her, their ears forward, their mouths open, their tongues lolling happily outside the ivory fangs. He'd never seen them wearing an expression like it.
"It's not me," he finally replied. "This is how the demons always behave. Even Nivid doesn't truly trust the beasts."
Troi cast a skeptical eye at him and turned, after glancing down one last time at the two dozen leggy, slavering
creatures in the ruins of the stone stable.
-- o --
As Troi assumed, Argus and Nivid had begun repairing the wreck of the door that kept the pack from roaming unchecked through the halls of Zamok Denova. Talgut had rigged up a temporary barrier the night before, but it wouldn't stop the wolves for very long if they really wanted in.
After Talgut left in pursuit of Troi, Argus and Nivid hadn't bothered to divide their consciousness as they usually did, and the piece of his mind which Argus saw as his
self
was left wondering the same thing he'd been wondering earlier: when had they started pulling themselves apart in that fashion? Since neither was currently blocking, it became something of a one-sided conversation in two tones.
When had that stopped?
At the moment of the accident, they'd become one, inhabiting each other's minds as naturally as if their early, divided lives had been the aberration.
Both of us knew everything, all the time, because there was no "both." After only a day or two "he" and "me" became "we" and "I," because there was no difference, save in the food we ate and when the bodies slept. We perforce needed to remind ourselves there were two bodies requiring rest and sustenance, or we'd neglect to switch between them. We weren't tired then like now, because one of us slumbered always, and our minds were never split, except that tiny portion left behind to keep a sleeping man alive. Otherwise, there was no divide. We were one.
It had been years since either of them had referred to themselves in that manner.
When had it stopped?
When had one become two?
Argus fumbled the sledge he was using to knock the old door apart, nearly walloping his own leg. He cursed aloud. Working with one hand was more of a trial than he'd anticipated. He'd been bracing things with a foot or knee, but the maneuver wasn't overly effective. At this rate the door wouldn't be built soon enough to block next winter's snows. He cursed again and gritted his teeth, restraining a burning need to cast the offending hammer aside.
Sending subtle, calming thoughts toward his other half, Nivid lifted the end of the door and propped it on a log to make Vesa's task easier. He turned back to the fire, which was hot enough for him to start banging out the salvageable bits of hardware from the old door and fashioning new hinges. Smithing was work he enjoyed, and the contentment he felt while doing it would help soothe Vesa.
Vesa worried too much about things that meant nothing.
In Nivid's mind, Argus was never anything but "Vesa," the moniker he'd given his younger brother at birth.
The woman was safe. Everyone had been fed. The door would be fixed by nightfall, or mayhap the morn, and all would be well.
The flat steel bar in his hand was hot enough to work, and Nivid swung away from the fire to the anvil, letting his brother's agitated thoughts roll past the piece of himself he kept hidden. Besides being less apt to become anxious, that was another difference between them: Nivid held back a portion of his mind, keeping completely separate. His brother didn't have that ability. He could temporarily block Nivid during waking hours, but their memories would merge as soon as Argus slept. If an event was significant enough for Argus to remember, Nivid would wake with the knowledge in his mind.
This morning, when Argus opened, summoning him to the kitchen, Nivid had been hit by a wave of recollection and regret. Since kissing Troi, he'd been tormenting himself with the shame and guilt of his "betrayal."
In Nivid's estimation, the things Argus chose to brood about were past and therefore of no importance but, permitted to wallow, Argus would hang onto them until the end of time. Nivid didn't dwell on it, but for Argus' sake, he wished it weren't so, especially in light of their father's theory.
Before his death, the elder Denova had dedicated long hours to preparing his sons for their future, both singly and together. In discussing the curse with Nivid and his younger brother, their father had offered opinions and shared many speculations. When their minds merged after the accident and Nivid gained his brother's memories, he'd come to the conclusion that many of his father's carefully guarded suppositions were correct.
He hadn't shared the knowledge with his brother, nor any of the other beliefs he'd formed in the years since then. Argus already had plenty of things to fret about, and if Nivid and their father were correct, he had plenty of time in which to do it. Because one of the many things he and his father agreed upon was that the words "never to die" were used literally in the curse. Twenty years ago, he'd hoped to be wrong, but every sign since then had pointed the same direction.
Nivid didn't think Argus could live with looking forward to eternity.
He dipped the hammered piece of iron in the bucket at his side, quenching the metal.
Nivid kept these rare bouts of idle conjecture to himself, locked away the part of his mind Argus knew nothing about. It wasn't difficult: Nivid didn't speculate often. Living by instinct simplified things. If his belly was full, his bed was dry, and a woman was beneath him on occasion, all was well. Nothing else was of any consequence. That philosophy, such as it was, had been the sum of Nivid's existence for the past twenty-five years. He ate. He slept. He fought. He fucked. And that was that.
Until Troitsa.
Burying his first finished piece of hardware in a pile of ash at the back of the hearth, where it would temper as it cooled, Nivid chose another blank to heat.
