Winter Witch Read Online Free Page A

The hut trampled the men into bloody ruins with its scythe-like talons as it strode to the next cottage.
    A dark square on the ground caught Ellasif’s eye. She stooped to pick up a wooden shingle, larger than those on the village homes. She sniffed it. It smelled of cooking smoke and herbs, old blood and the skin of reptiles. It smelled exactly how Ellasif imagined a witch’s hut to smell.
    She broke it in two and tossed one half onto a smoldering wolf carcass. The shingle flared into light, just as any ordinary bit of dry kindling might do.
    Ellasif ran to Jadrek, who was stitching a deep gash across the face of Ivanick, his father. Waving the shingle as she ran, she shouted, “It’s wood! Baba Yaga’s hut is wood!”
    The boy scowled and reached for a flask of vjarik. He poured some onto a rag to clean the wound.
    “It’s wood,” Ellasif repeated. She threw the shingle at Jadrek.
    He batted it away. “So? What else would it be?”
    “Woods burns,” she persisted. “The fire arrows can’t get past Baba Yaga’s magic. None of our attacks can get past. But if we send fire into the hut in a different way, we might surprise it.”
    Ivanick considered her for a moment, his blue eyes peering out from a mask of blood and matted pale hair. Then he took the flask from his son and removed the cork with his teeth. “I will try.”
    The warrior snatched a torch from a nearby stand and strode toward the walking hut. Before he could get close enough to throw the torch, the hut snatched him up in one mighty talon and flung him atop the nearest cottage. The hut tilted precipitously at the motion, and through the flapping shutters of a window, Ellasif glimpsed a strange sight. In the center of the hut, bound to a plain wooden chair, sat a tiny white-haired doll. Silver-blue eyes and a porcelain face were all the detail Ellasif saw before the hut righted itself, scratching up deep furrows in the frozen ground with its gargantuan chicken talons.
    Dry thatch exposed by the hut’s explorations caught fire. Ivanick staggered to his feet, limned with blue vjarik flame. He ran along the wooden roof ridge, flaming brighter with each step, and hurled himself at the hut.
    He caught the edge of a shuttered window, lost his grip, and slid down the shingled wall. Somehow he found a handhold, and then another. How, Ellasif could not say. The fire surrounding him blazed furiously, its greedy flames devouring his clothes and gnawing at the flesh beneath.
    The hut whirled and spun, trying to throw the man off, but Ivanick clung like a burr despite the flames surrounding him. The wood beneath his burning body blackened in the shape of his shadow.
    Ellasif reached for Jadrek’s hand and gripped it hard. “He’ll fall,” she cried, half hoping that he would.
    The burning man pulled a dagger from his belt and drove it through the sleeve of his other arm, pinning himself through flesh and bone to the smoldering wall. Almost immediately he slumped, overcome by flame and smoke.
    Still the hut did not burn.
    Ellasif ran to Red Ochme and seized her arm. “Lamp oil!”
    Understanding widened the old warrior’s eyes. She shouted the order. Several women came running with vessels and hurled them at the hut. The pottery shattered against the hut’s magical shields, but some of the oil splashed through. Flames licked at the hut’s shingles and sped upward toward the thatch. The hut twisted away and ran, flaming, toward the river. It plunged over the steep bank and disappeared with a great splash, then bobbed to the surface, a halo of flame around the crest of its roof.
    It disappeared again. A flicker of orange light touched the surface a moment later and then vanished. The villagers watched for another emergence.
    It felt to Ellasif that the entire world held its breath.
    Vapor burst from the gulley in a hut-shaped cloud and soared off toward the east. The storm clouds fell in b e hind it like obedient hounds following their master home. Hail and