Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [42]
A new voice, male and husky and amused in the way that only somebody sure of his own strength could be, said, “That would be me.” By its location, the voice belonged to the biggest one of the lot. He was standing just right of center before her.
“Good.” A flick of the wrist brought Saint Methodia to her hand. Swiftly, before her opponent could move from where she’d seen him standing, Pepsicolova sent her flying straight and hard into his gut.
The man screamed and fell to the ground, blubbering and cursing. There was a ripple in the darkness as the others converged upon him.
“I’ll need my knife back, thank you.”
After a slight hesitation, somebody threw Saint Methodia to the ground at her feet. Pepsicolova picked her up, wiped her on the front of one trouser leg, and returned her to her sheath.
“Tell the Pale Folk that Anya Pepsicolova comes and goes as she pleases. If they want me dead, they can do the work themselves without involving the Dregs. But I don’t think they will.” She held up a pack of cigarettes. “Where do you think I got these?” Then she laid it down on the ground, and a second atop it. “This is my payment for our passage. Every time we pass through your territory in the future, I’ll leave another two packs.”
Pepsicolova picked up the lantern and opened its shutters, revealing a clutch of ragged figures desperately trying to patch up their fallen comrade. “He’s not going to survive a wound like that,” she said. “The best you can do for him now is to roll him over and stomp down hard on his neck.” Then, to Darger: “Let’s go.”
They walked down the center of the motorway away from the Dregs. With every step, she expected an iron pipe or a brick to come flying out of the darkness toward the back of her head. It was what she would have done in their circumstances. But nothing happened, and at last the sounds made by the dying man faded to inaudibility behind them. Pepsicolova released a breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding in, and said, “We’re safe now.”
She waited for Darger to thank her for saving his life. But he only said, “Don’t think I’m paying for those cigarettes. All expenses are covered by your salary.”
The three stranniks walked through the Moscow underworld as they would have the true Underworld—with their shoulders back and their heads high, secure in the strength of their own virtue and the unwavering support of a loyal and doting Deity. Because Koschei was the first among equals, he led. Chernobog and Svarožič followed a half-step behind, listening respectfully as he talked.
“When I was a boy, there was a metal girder sticking up out of the ground in the woods outside my village. If you pressed an ear to it, you could hear voices, many voices, sounding very small and far away. And if you closed your eyes and held your breath and concentrated as hard as you could, you could make out what they were saying. These were the demons and mad gods that the Utopians had in their folly created and released into their world-straddling web, of course, but the village brats did not understand that. They understood only that if you took a younger child there and forced him to listen, he would hear things that would terrify him. Often he would cry. Sometimes he would piss himself.
“Then, of course, they would laugh.
“I was a saintly child, obedient to my parents, uncomplaining at my chores, happy to go to church, devout at prayer. So it was with sadistic glee that these snot-nosed, plague-pocked, half-naked sons of Satan led me to the girder and shoved my face against it.”
“Children should be beaten regularly,” Chernobog said, “to control their unnatural impulses.”
Svarožič nodded in agreement.
“I did not want to do as my cruel and faithless sometime-playmates commanded, and so they hit me and kicked me with feet that had never known shoes and so