Page 13 of Tiger's Tale
Nik heard a soft gasp and fingers clasped his where he still held the knife, hot blood wetting his fingers. A body thumped to the floor, but it wasn’t as heavy as it should have been. Nik grabbed the stub of the candle and frantically relit it. The flame had sputtered out when he’d spun around. When he turned, lifting the meager light, who he saw on the floor was not the father who’d abused him all his life but the thin form of his nearly equally abused, once beautiful mother.
As she lay dying at his feet, hand stretched up to him with blood trickling from her lips, Nik tried to summon empathy for her, but found he had none. The only emotion he felt in that moment was sheer panic. He sat immobile, listening intently for the sound of his father’s waking, the man’s angry grunt as he roused himself from slumber. But all he heard was the deep, drunken snoring that soothed all of them enough so they could close their eyes, at least for a short while.
When the spark of life faded from her dull eyes, Nik thought, for just a moment, he glimpsed relief. The lingering tenderness he felt for his mother turned to stinging betrayal, as it often did. How could she? She was leaving him unprotected, again! Then he realized the only champion he had, the only friend he’d ever known, was gone forever, and it was his fault. Tears slipped down his cheeks as he inaudibly mouthed, “Mama! Don’t leave me! Please! I’m so sorry!”
His body heaved in silent shudders as he clasped her hands to his chest, kneeling next to her in the growing puddle of blood. Whatever mixed feelings he had about his mother, he’d loved her, and her death was something he’d need to atone for. Nik hoped wherever she was now, she could grasp on to happiness and somehow find peace. At the same time, Nik knew peace and happiness weren’t something waiting for him in his immediate future, not with the monster he’d soon have to face. Then a terrible thought came, one that would make him as terrible a villain as the one sleeping in the other room.
Gently, he folded his mother’s hands across her chest and bent to kiss her forehead, whispering an apology for what he was about to do to her children. He wasn’t asking for forgiveness, but just expressed his sorrow for what he viewed as unavoidable.
After packing a sack with the few foodstuffs they had in the house, Nik dressed in silence, taking the too-small clothing of his younger brother. He knew he needed to hurry. The babe would wake soon and demand his mother’s breast, which would rouse his father. Grabbing his rucksack, Nik said a silent farewell to his siblings and left, barricading the door behind him.
* * *
Later, Nik sat on the mare, considering his work as he watched the flames lick at the barn and the house. The screams had quieted long since. A storm was blowing in which would help cover his tracks. He didn’t think anyone would believe the fire had been intentionally lit, and they were isolated enough that it was unlikely the family would be found for quite some time.
Nik didn’t regret the deaths of his siblings. He surmised that they had now discovered the same peace his mother had found. In fact, he considered himself something of a hero to them. As he rode west, Nikolai vowed he would never let a man take advantage of him again. That was why he decided to join the Guard.
* * *
“Come on, Nik,” Veru said. “Snap out of it. Don’t you see I need you?”
Nik shook his head, relegating thoughts of his past to the past, where they belonged. “Forgive me,” he said, bowing his head deferentially. “What can I do to help?”
“Stacia is outthinking me. I need your brain.”
This was why he loved Veru. She was powerful and strong, but more than that, she was clever. He’d seen her handle all sorts of men, even men who were abusive like his father had been. Men like that made Nik’s blood go cold, but not Veru. She’d smile at them with cat’s eyes and bat her lashes, all the while she’d have a knife aimed at their ribs. No one would ever corner Veru. He admired that. She never gave up, no matter what. Sometimes he thought if he’d been a bit more like Veru, then maybe his mother...
Nik blinked rapidly. It was best not to let his thoughts drift down that road. “Tell me everything that has happened,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”
By the time he left, they had a plan. Stacia might have sent the Guard to the four corners of the earth, but he had a note from Tsarevna Verusha, one that would open doors for him anywhere and everywhere in the empire. And Nik knew places and people the Guard wouldn’t dare seek out. In fact, there was one man who immediately came to mind.
As he left, he reassured Veru that Stacia, for all her efforts, wouldn’t accomplish much on a crooked goat, managing to garner the laugh he’d been hoping to hear. He told her to rely on him, and he would find the one person who could fix everything. If he was right, Nik just might indeed be able to fix everything, setting himself and his tsarevna up for a future beyond even his own dreams.
Buoyed by her confidence in him, Nikolai mounted his horse and departed that very hour, setting down a path that would lead him to a dark forest rumored to be the home of an outcast monk who practiced a dark mysticism.
Some said he was a religious man, a healer. Others called him a monster who awakened the dead and refashioned them into monsters that terrorized the forest. Whatever the case, Nik knew the man’s powers were real indeed. For he had met one of the man’s monsters.
It had been his own father.
And Nik had been afforded the unique opportunity to take the life of his own father twice.
4
AN AFFECTIONATE CALF MAY DRINK FROM TWO MOTHERS
It had been about five years since Nik had barely escaped with his life, and only great desperation would make him seek out the man who nearly destroyed him. Years before, after watching his home burn, he had been traveling to St. Rostislav and passed through the small town of Pyrs, where he stopped for the night.
A kindly widow took him in, fed him a hot meal, and asked him to stay on for a few days during the harvest to help set her up before winter. In exchange, she would pay him in food; fit him with clothes left behind by her son, who had also joined the Guard but perished in a long-ago battle; and gift him with a heavy fur-lined pair of winter boots, made by her brother who lived nearby.
The work was easy. The town was small and sleepy. And the old widow kept his plate full of more delicious home-cooked food than he could possibly eat and his mug brimming with hot, sense-dulling, sleep-inducing drink every evening. Soon thoughts of joining the Guard became distant.
The widow was more than happy to keep him for as long as he wanted to stay. Having a son again filled her lonely home with happiness, she assured him, as she darned his socks, knitted him woolen caps, and began embroidering him a beautiful new tunic on crisp white linen should he be inclined to stay through the Christmastide season, long enough for the arrival of Grandfather Frost and his granddaughter the Snow Maiden.
Nik didn’t say as much, but he was inclined.
As the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, Nik’s gaunt frame began to take on flesh, and he noticed the cupboards were beginning to run low on supplies, especially with the way the kindly widow stuffed him with food. After feeding the humpbacked pony and milking the goat, he offered to go to town in his newly acquired fur-lined boots and trade for some items to get them through winter.
“Spasibo but nyet, my son,” the old widow said, setting down his heaped plate of breakfast and mug of goat milk. “I shall go myself when the mood strikes me.”
