Afansy chokes, spits blood, regains his balance, and staggers onwards. The dawn wind blows snow and smoke into his face and makes his eyes sting. His lungs feel as if they're drowning.
Once he trips over the fallen body of Vadim; he sobs, curses, and keeps running.
His horse, Grusha, is screaming with fear where he left her, rearing up against the hitching post; she calms a little, however, as he snatches at her mane, bracing his weight against hers, lifts a leg over, and hauls himself bodily up into the saddle.
"Ride, Grusha," he whispers, weeping in agony and in shame. "Ride for home." He kicks his heels in, and Grusha takes off.
He clings to her mane for dear life, his head rested against her neck, eyes closed, trying to endure the pain in his chest and the nausea in his stomach. The fields fall away, and the snowy plains return; it's only now that he dares to glance back behind him.
Nobody is following him; the burning village is a distant cluster of shapes on the far horizon, left safely behind.
"Thank Ursun," he thinks. "Praise be. I made it. Even if-"
He stops himself from finishing the thought.
Beneath him, Grusha shivers; she lets out a sudden whinny of discontent, and her pace begins to slacken.
"Easy, now," Afansy murmurs. "A long way to go yet."
He kicks his heels in and the horse redoubles her efforts.
"The woman," he thinks. "She put a spell on me; some kind of curse that made me fail. I need to find an apothecary. I need to get help, before the sun falls-"
Grusha moans, and falters; Afansy cries out, but she's no longer listening to him, veering sharply to the right, galloping off the path, her hooves begin to tangle perilously in gorse and bracken concealed beneath the heavy snowfall. He yells out, kicking at her, stop, stop, turn back.
The horse's leg catches in a pothole; she tumbles forward, and down, tossing her rider high up into the air.
A horrid smack of mail and bone as Afansy lands; the air goes all out of him. He wheezes, chokes, and vomits up blood.
Grusha is lying on her flank, half-buried in the tangled thicket just a few feet away, moaning in pain. Digging his hands into the snow, he tries to get to his feet again, yearning to go to her and help her up and ease her suffering. He slips, his foot catching at an awkward angle in the thick bracken, and falls back.
Her massive black eyes stare helplessly back at him.
Her belly, he realises with a stir of horror, is massively distended, swollen as if from pregnancy or with fat. It's stirring; shivering; growing.
"Grusha," he whispers desperately, "Can you hear me, girl? Everything will be fine. We'll be back home soon, in a warm stable, and you'll have a chance to feed. Do you hear me? Good thick straw and a hot bath for me and-"
Grusha's stomach explodes. The skin bursts outwards in every direction, releasing a great slopping wave of pale and wriggling worms out in every direction, riding upon the horse's spilling intestines. Grusha howls and kicks out wildly, trying to get up, dying slowly and struggling with every passing second.
Afansy lies back and closes his eyes, trying in vain not to listen to the screaming. He feels light-headed; almost as if he should be laughing at this grotesque and inexplicable joke.
He can't endure the writhing sickness in his own belly any longer; the unnatural carcer that's spreading outwards through his entire body, conquering everything, rotting whatever it touches. If he had the strength, he'd lift the dagger from his belt and plunge it into his own heart; end it all now, before he has a chance to endure any more pain or suffer the indignity of bursting open like poor Grusha.
If he had the strength.
But alas, Afansy is not quite dead by the time the wolves come.