The Ocean of Time by David Wingrove

him round and speak roughly into his face that he acknowledges me.
    He makes some comment under his breath and his sons laugh. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll have the bastard, see if I don’t.
    While Katerina is among the trees, I stand there in the boat, looking from one of them to another, defying them to look her way. She’s not long, and when she climbs aboard again, Krylenko makes another of his under-his-breath comments, making his sons roar with laughter.
    I hear part of it this time; something about ‘the
Nemets
’ slut’.
    This time it’s just too much.
    ‘Krylenko, why are you such a pig?’
    He half turns and looks at me lazily. ‘I merely speak the truth,’ he says. ‘My wife, she’s a bitch, and my daughters and my daughters-in-law cows, all of them!’
    His sons laugh and nod their heads.
    Krylenko is smiling now, an ugly, sneering smile. ‘Women are good for three things only. Fucking, cooking and beating.’
    ‘You think I should beat my wife, then, Krylenko?’
    He nods slowly. ‘You should beat her while you fuck her.’
    His sons are giggling now, tears streaming from their eyes. I look from one to the other and wonder what I’d do if things got out of hand. The Kolbe is in my pack, easy to reach, and I could shoot them dead before they knew what was happening. Only then I’d have to explain to Katerina what the Kolbe was, and why it wasn’t magic.
    We’re barely halfway there when Krylenko calls it a day and moors the boat. It’s clearly a spot he knows well and that’s used by the river-men, for the edge of the forest here has been cleared and there’s evidence of many fires. The boat secured, we make camp.
    Krylenko tries every means to coax us ashore, and I know then for a certainty that he was hoping that we’d leave the cart unguarded on-board, and that had we camped onshore, he and his sons would have been away just as soon as they heard us snoring.
    As it is, I have a restless night, waking several times and starting up. On one occasion I notice Krylenko, seated by the fire, whittling a piece of wood and staring sullenly across at me, as if planning the best way of outwitting me.
    With the morning my spirits rise. It’s a bright, warm day and we will we be rid of the odious Krylenko by that afternoon.
    There’s a brooding silence as we set off on the last stage of our journey down to Surazh, and I begin to wonder if they haven’t concocted some scheme after all.
    I’d not put it past them to try to murder us and dump the bodies, then share out our goods, but as the hours pass and they make no move, so I relax. Besides, if Krylenko wanted to murder us and steal our goods, why not do it on the journey north, where the river traffic is less, rather than on this busier, southern stretch of the Mezha?
    Cowardice, that’s why. Simple cowardice.
    Surazh heaves into view just after noon, with the sun beating down from directly overhead. It’s the hottest day yet, and it appears that the rain that has swept across the land further north has left Surazh unscathed, for the earth between the ramshackle wooden houses is bare and dry with not a blade of grass to be seen. Even the trees – birch and cedar for the main part – seem to wilt in the excessive heat.
    Surazh is a proper town, not just a trading post, and as we drift in towards the main jetty, I note a dozen or more vessels tied up against the shore. Beyond the makeshift harbour, formed by a wide sweep of the river, lies the town itself, a sprawl of two or three hundred houses, set within a wooden palisade, and – that rarity out here in the wilds – a stone-built church, complete with a bright blue cupola. Seeing it, Katerina looks to me. It is two weeks now since her last confession.
    ‘Okay. But don’t be long. If I can find someone who’ll take us, it would be good to set out at once.’
    She understands and, even as we tie up, jumps onshore and, without so much as a glance back, hurries across to the shadowed