Day Watch

And then I thought: Ah, what the hell!

I closed my eyes and focused on searching for Power… and I sensed an almost inexhaustible source right there-the portal that was still open.

Well, well, how simple everything was, really! It would take no more than a few seconds to restore the Power I'd expended on Strastnoi Boulevard. And the fact that it was a Light portal didn't bother me in the least-the nature of Power is similar in any case.

I began drawing in the Power of the portal. Taking it slow, so that the Light Enchantress wouldn't immediately realize what was going on.

The first thing I tried was to shift the weight off myself slightly-I managed that okay, and I can't say it was really too difficult. Then I enveloped the thing underneath me in a cocoon and stuck it inside my sweater, still fumbling about on the floor. I thought the enchantress was begi

I was all set to stand up, but then Gesar came back; he was radiating white light, just like a peasant's idea of an angel. With one hand he was clutching the shoulder of the Viking who had fled. One step, then another, and he dropped the limp, submissive fugitive beside his comrades, like a rag doll. But what I saw on Gesar's face was not joy, but something else.

"Where's the Talon?"

He glanced briefly at the enchantress, who pulled her head back into her shoulders in alarm-I sensed her sca

Oh no, my girl! You won't break into my cocoon.

And Gesar won't break into it either. I can tell you that for sure, from the height of the next step up the stairway.

But Gesar wasn't wasting any time. He came straight up to me.

"You again…"

I didn't catch any hint of hate in his voice. Only infinite weariness.

I stood up and dusted my clothes off for some reason.

"Me."

"You amaze me," Gesar confessed, drilling right through me with his glance. "Amaze me one more time. Give back the Talon."

"The Talon?" I asked, raising my eyebrows expressively. "What are you talking about, colleague?"

Gesar gritted his teeth-I distinctly saw the muscles at his temples twitch.

"Cut the comedy, Dark One. You've got the Talon, there's nowhere else it can be. I've stopped sensing it, but that doesn't change matters. Now you're going to give me the Talon and clear out of Moscow forever. That's the second time I've told you-and let me tell you it's the first time I've ever given anybody a second chance to leave in peace. The first time in very, very many years. Am I making myself clear?"

"Nothing could be clearer," I growled, weighing up my own strength and deciding that it was worth going for it.

I mentally reached out toward the enchantress, who wasn't prepared for anything bad to happen, and drew as much Power as I could from her before she realized what was happening. Then I added some from the portal, and all as quickly as possible.

I opened my own portal directly under my own feet, and at the same time I emerged from the Twilight.

The effect would basically have been the same if I'd been standing on the manhole of a sewer and the cover had suddenly disappeared. I just fell through the floor, as far as Gesar and all the others could see. Fell straight through the floor and disappeared.

I hadn't dared try drawing Power from Gesar-something had told me it wasn't worth tangling with him yet.

You can create a cocoon that Gesar couldn't see into without special preparation, you can steal energy from an enchantress who's very probably going to be a great enchantress-that's all pure childish mischief and it will only work once. But it's a bit too soon for you, Vitaly Rogoza, Dark Other, to get involved in an open fight with the chief of the Night Watch.

Just say "thank you" that got you away in one piece.

I said "thank you" and fell straight into a snowdrift from a height of several meters. It was dark all around. Or almost dark. Just the moon overhead. With a forest stretching out on both sides.

I was in a clearing in the forest, a clearing as straight as Lenin Prospect in Nikolaev and very wide, about fifteen meters across. There was a blank wall of forest on my right and a blank wall of forest on my left, and straight ahead, hanging above the silvery strip of untouched snow, there was the moon. Almost full.

It was beautiful, incredibly beautiful-the moonlit clearing, the night, the snow… I could have just laid there and admired it.

But I started feeling cold.

I scrambled out of the snowdrift with a struggle and looked around. The snow still looked untouched. But somewhere in the distance I could hear the distinctive hammering rhythm of the wheels of a commuter train.

Hmm. Some great magician I was. Lord of the Dark portals.

I'd opened a portal all right, but I hadn't bothered about where it would end. And this was the result: Here I was all alone in the winter forest in nothing but my sweater-no jacket or hat.

Furious with myself, I felt the long, hard object under my sweater, decided not to remove the cocoon yet, and set off toward the moon, across the miraculous virgin snow of the moonlit forest clearing.

I soon realized that walking through snowdrifts was a very dubious pleasure, so I veered toward the forest, having sensibly decided that there ought to be less snow near the trees.

To my own amazement, I was proved right twice over. First, there were indeed no snow drifts at the edge of the forest, and second, I found a narrow path, pretty well trodden. I simply hadn't noticed it before in the shadow.

One of the ancients once said that roads always lead to the people who built them. And anyway, I had no other option. I set off along the path. First I walked, and then I started ru

"I'll run until I get tired," I decided. "And then I'll enter the Twilight… to warm up."

I just hoped I'd have enough strength for ru

I ran for about fifteen minutes: There was absolutely no wind, so I actually did manage to warm myself up a bit. The clearing went on and on, an unbroken stretch of silvery, glittering snow. I wasn't the one who should have been ru

Almost as soon as I thought about the wolf, I heard barking from somewhere on my left. Dogs. A wolf's bark is different. And they don't bark in winter.

I stopped and looked. There was a warm orange glow flickering through the trees. In addition to the barking I could hear voices-people's voices.

I didn't waste much time thinking. I walked forward a bit until I reached the path branching off toward the campfire and turned onto it.

Soon two dogs came bounding toward me-a white Karelian Laika with a tight coil of a tail, almost invisible against the background of the snow, and a shaggy Newfoundland terrier, as black as pitch. The Laika was yelping in a voice that rang like a sleigh-bell and the Newfoundland was barking gruffly: "Booff! Booff!"

"Petro! Is that you?" someone asked from the campfire.

"No," I replied regretfully. "It's not Petro. But can I warm myself up a bit?"

To be quite honest, the first thing I wanted to do wasn't warm myself up, but find out where I was, so I wouldn't have to go wandering through the forest at random, but could go straight to the suburban railroad.

"Come on over here! Don't worry about the dogs, they won't touch you."

And the dogs didn't touch me. The little Laika ran around me cautiously at a constant distance of about four meters, and the Newfoundland simply came skipping up to my feet, sniffed my shoes, snorted, and ran back to the campfire.

There were more than ten people sitting by the campfire. Hanging on a long chain, thrown over a thick horizontal branch of the nearest pine tree, there was a big pot, with something bubbling promisingly inside it. The people were sitting on two logs. I could see metal mugs in most of their hands and somebody was just opening a new bottle of vodka.