Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [90]
“Can’t better those,” Romanovitch said, with a nod of approval. “You might not believe it, but they’ll wear like iron. Now, the Queen said to provision you well, lad, so put this inside your tunic—” And he handed Sasha a coin pouch so fat it barely jingled.
Sasha took it with astonishment. “But I didn’t—”
“’Course you didn’t ask for it. That’s why you got it. Now go on with you! Take that tunnel there. It’ll open out facing east. Just keep going east and you’ll strike the sea.”
Sasha nodded, and took himself out, leaving the manservant and the old man deep in a discussion of just what drink the manservant was going to supply for losing the bet.
This last tunnel was mercifully short, and ended in a massive door. For a moment Sasha wondered how he was going to get it open alone, then he shrugged and tugged at it.
It swung inside silently, with scarcely any effort at all on his part.
He stepped out into the sunlight; the door swung shut again behind him, and when he turned around, he could not tell where, in the rock of the mountainside, it was.
Face east, and keep going.
He stood on a small ledge; a gravel-covered slope lay before him. He had emerged well above the tree line and, as he had expected, the sea was nowhere in sight. The Queen’s idea of what was within reach and a mortal’s were apt to be different. It looked as if his little sojourn with Baba Yaga had taken him far, far out of his path. But there was no hope for it, and the journey was not getting any shorter for standing there.
The slope was quite slippery; he had to descend it by moving obliquely across the face of it, which was pretty much adding three times as much to the distance between him and the tree line. And what he was going to do when he got there—
Make camp, I suppose, he thought dubiously, looking at the sun. If I don’t do so before I lose the light, it’d be awkward to try to find a place to hole up in the dark. The saints only know what’s in those woods, or out of them for that mat—
And then, he froze, as the howl of a Wolf echoed across the face of the mountain.
He looked frantically in all directions, but there was only one place where there was any cover at all—the forest down below. If there was a hunting Wolf out here, he needed to get somewhere that he could get out of reach. In a tree would certainly be his first choice—
Throwing caution to the wind and with his heart pounding wildly, he began a precipitous run down the mountainside, boots slipping and sliding in the gravel. The Wolf’s howl followed him; it was definitely at his back and closing.
Closing fast, by the sound of it.
He wouldn’t look back. His heart raced, and his vision narrowed. He concentrated on the tree line. The Wolf might be getting nearer, but so were the trees. If he could just make it—
A heavy, hairy body slammed into his from behind, and involuntarily, he screamed as he went face-down into the gravel. An enormous paw flipped him over onto his back—
And a tongue the size of a cow’s slapped into his face and licked him from chin to hairline.
The Wolf stood with both forepaws on his shoulders and grinned down at him, tongue lolling. “I knew if we stuck around this mountain long enough, you’d come out,” it said, its hot breath washing over him. “Was the Queen nice?”
“The Queen—oof—was very kind indeed. And if you’d get off my shoulders so I can get up, I would be a lot more comfortable.” The Wolf leaped lightly back, and Sasha sat up. Fortunately, he had not actually hit the gravel with his face, but his healing bruises were telling him a sad story indeed. “I’m very happy to see you, Wolf. I take it the lady of the unusual hut was unable to persuade you to enjoy her hospitality any further?”
“Fortune was all against her,” the Wolf said mockingly. “On her way home, before she even managed to fetch her mortar, she got into a quarrel with a leshii, and she now has quite enough to worry about. True, she is Baba Yaga, but he is the master of the forest, and it’s two bulls locking horns, is what it is. She’ll win in the end, but it will cost her.