Excerpt

I needed to be Princess Olga.  Her people had followed her into battle when she ruled Rus three hundred summers ago.  I, on the other hand, couldn’t even talk my townswomen into evacuating before the Tartar siege.

Avdotia, a serf’s widow, was the eighth woman I had visited today.  Just like the other seven, she bowed, offered me my favorite teamint with raspberry jamand refused to respond to my request directly.  A serf never says an outright no to her liege.  If anyone asked me what failure smelled like, I would’ve told him, “Like mint and raspberries.”

“Will you go, Avdotia?” I asked for the second time.  “My father’s men-at-arms are freezing their feet outside.”  I didn’t want to contemplate what my father would say when he found out I had failed him.

Avdotia did not meet my eyes.  Instead, she studied a plaited lapot shoe, which she was weaving from linden bast fibers.  The flame from a clay oil lamp made her skinny, long shadow tremble on the log walls.  Her one-room, semi-dugout hut smelled like wood smoke and straw.

Finally, she said, “I dripped a candle for you, Princess Yaroslava.  It don’t look good.” (Author’s note: In the XIII century, Rus (now Russia) was divided into many city-states that were ruled by princes who engaged in frequent warfare with each other.)

I listened to the blizzard that wailed like a chained hound at the door.  I stroked my cat Polosatko’s stripy fur.  I asked Christ for patience.  “With the Tartars only a day or two away from Yelnik, whose fate would look good?”  I didn’t want to hear Avdotia’s dire predictionsthe upcoming siege was dire enough.