A small hut, little more than a hovel, stood on a snowy hillside in the midst of the woods. The woods, I think, may have been in Tver Oblast. A man came out from behind the little hovel with an axe. He was a large man, perhaps in his late twenties, with a beard of reddish-brown, and he wore robes like that of a monk or hermit. As he began to chop wood from a woodpile, another man, pale with black, curly hair, dressed in an expensive knee-length coat of modern cut, came walking up the path. The man in the robes stopped chopping and simply watched until the other man came up and spoke.
"So," said Giles in English.
"So," replied the other man in the same language.
"This is it," Giles said, looking around at the hovel, the woodpile, the trees.
"This is it," said the other man.
Something like a smile flickered at Giles's mouth. He continued to look around.
"I had a dream the other night. A dream, not the living nightmare under the Moon."
"And what was it about?"
"I dreamed that I was on my knees in prayer when suddenly the ground opened up beneath me to reveal the flames of hell. I simply stayed there, suspended, though. I looked to my left and I saw the devil. In his hands was the scroll, or rather one end of it, because the other end stretched away so far that it could not be seen. The tale of my sins, of course, the charges against me. But then I looked on my right and I saw the Virgin with her hand raised above of her head and a scepter or rod in her hand. And they were contending for my soul."
There was a long pause, and the other man said, "And that was it?"
"That was it," said Giles, who had begun to pace a little. "I woke before the decision had been made."
"What do you think it means?"
Giles continued to pace slowly. "Who knows?" he said at last. "Dreams are not like nightmares; they have no governing logic. Some residual de profoundis, perhaps, some memory of a long-forgotten miserere."
"Perhaps a part of you thinks you are still human."
"Perhaps," said Giles. "But I think it was just a flicker of a memory from a time when I was too inexperienced to know that I had already been weighed and found wanting." He took up a log and upended it, then sat on it. The other man did the same.
"How are you finding Russia this trip?" the other man said.
"It is much the same as it was. The last time I was here the major question was which Party official to bribe. It was usually quite clear. Now, however, one has to guess which businessman to bribe, and they are much more expensive. I suppose that is progress." They were quiet for a while.
"Bitka is dead," Giles said suddenly in Russian.
"Unfortunate," replied the other man, also in Russian. Then, after a moment: "Was it Jolie or Aveline?"
"Ava has many strengths, but she could never have outmaneuvered Bitka. Jolie cornered her in a warehouse. Quite brutal."
The other man shook his head. "Unfortunate," he said again.
"Yes," said Giles simply. "She was almost exactly right. Just a little too much Wolf and a little too much ice. And the centuries made her wilder and colder." There was silence for a while, then he shrugged. "Infima summis, summa infimis. She tried to kill me, too."
The other man looked at him shrewdly. "Am I to assume from your standing here that Jolie is dead, too?"
A brief smile. "The last pennies in the purse are suddenly precious. It just seemed...wasteful. Perhaps I am getting weak. Too much 'celibacy of fang', to use the phrase Jolie uses when she feels like insulting me."
"But you are right that there are not many."
"Not many at all." Giles sighed. "They all seem to break so easily, Usiaslau. And sometimes I wonder if we lost our opportunity, because every new Wolf seems worse. Weak of will, weak of character, fools who could never skin a rabbit but think they could be the fiercest wolf in the forest. There was a time when every single one was a possibility; now they come to us already useless."
"No discipline."
"Worse than that. We were all made to be creatures of reason and grace. You and I understand that. We were born to it, raised in it, taught it from the beginning. And we know that if one is gone forever the other has to be held at any cost. But how can you explain that to people who have never felt in the marrow of bones what either reason or grace are?"
"They do not know what has been lost," said the other, nodding slowly. "So they cannot understand what must be kept. Perhaps that is it. "
Giles nodded in turn, and they were again silent for a while. It was the other man who broke the silence first this time.
"How did you find me?"
He was answered with a small spread of hands. "Do you even have to ask? You hid well, but it was clear enough that Vsesalevich was not dead. The Moon kept singing about you. So I hunted, and soon enough found a Wolf in hermit's pelt."
"I assume Ivan is dead," Vsesalevich replied.
"You assume rightly; about three weeks now. He was one of Dmitry's. How did he slip past you -- us? He should have been killed three hundred years ago."
"I never met him in person."
"Lax."
"Tired of dealing with idiots," returned Vsesalevich.
"That I understand," said Giles. "But it is no excuse. You have had your little vacation. Now it is back to work, and with effort this time."
"And if I refuse?"
Giles looked at him sarcastically. "You know as well as I that the only 'No' I accept is my own."
"I could fight."
"You could. You probably need the exercise."
"You could just kill me."
"Your memory is going in your old age; we were just talking about how there are too few of the possibles. I didn't kill you the first time you were pretending to be dead because you were the first Wolf I had met who already understood what needed to be done and yet was able to do something about it. That's why I made dead Vseslav rise as new Vsesalevich. Why would I kill you now, after centuries have shown that you are still the only one to measure up to the task? You could kill me."
Vsesalevich was silent a moment. Then he sighed and said in English, "I could not rule them all. I can hear the Moon sing, but I cannot talk to her; I could establish nothing like the Will of Aegidius."
"Then we are stuck with each other, Charodey. Without me, the magic ceases; without you to share the task, the madness destroys. Our task is not done: Numquam purpuream nemus lecturus violas petas cum saevis Aquilonibus stridens campus inhorruit -- Aquilo trembles on the heath, my friend, and we have winter things to do."
There was silence again, both lost in thoughts, memories of endless centuries, perhaps, of people dead or of evils committed and endured. Then Giles rose.
"Come along," he said. "I have been lax myself, taking my time hunting you rather than destroying the remnants of Ivan's power base. There are Wolves who do not understand the importance of the Will of Aegidius. It will be like old times."
Vsesalevich stood looking at him a long while. Finally he sighed. "Very well. Where shall we start? There's bound to be a few in Novobirsk who need to be reminded."
"Novobirsk it is, then. The last time I was there I think there was a symphony hall or opera house or something, newly built, that I never managed to visit."
