This was the struggle, the reason of the bright fires, the bright colors, the noisy celebrations, the images of flowers and vines. Other cities round about might already have perished. No travelers came. But the soul of Moskva held firm, and their busyness about their own affairs saved them, because they refused to look up, or out, and their bright colors held against the snows, and their rough, man-made beauty prevailed against the terrible shifting beauty of the ice. Bravest of all in Moskva were those who couldventure outside the walls, who wrapped themselves in their bright furs and their courage and ventured out into the frozen wastes— the hunters, the loggers, the farers-forth, who could look out into the cold whiteness and keep the colors in their hearts.

But even to them sometimes the sickness came, which began to fade them, and which set their eyes to staring out into the horizons; for once that coldness did come on them, their lives were not long. There were wolves outside the walls, there were dire dangers, and deaths waiting always, but the white death was inward and quiet and direst of all.

Andrei Gorodin had no fear in him. Winter did not daunt him, and when the snows came and the foxes and ermines turned their coats to snowiest white, he was one of the rare ones who continued to go out, he and his piebald pony, a shaggy beast as gay in its coat as the city with its painting, looking out on the icy world through a shag of yellow mane and forelock that let all the world wonder whether there was a horse within it. Like Andrei, the pony had no fear, immune to the terrors which seized on other beasts allied to man, terrors which turned their ribs gaunt and their eyes stark, so that eventually they fell to pining and died. Not Umnik, who jogged along the snows surefooted and regarding the world with a seldom-seen and mistrustful eye. His master, Andrei Vasilyevitch Gorodin, returning home after a day's good hunt, rode wrapped in lynx fur, with belts and boots of bright embroidered leather; and about his face a flowered leather scarf, which Anna Ivanovna had made for him (who made him other fine, bright gifts, storing them up in a carven chest beneath her bed. . . she was his bride-to-be this spring, when spring should come, when weddings were lucky). A brace of fat hares hung frozen from his saddle. His bow, from which gay tassels fluttered, hung at his back; and from his traps he had a snow fox which he planned to give Anna to make her an edging for a cape. He whistled as he rode, with Umnik's breath puffing merrily on the still air, with the crunch of hooves on crusted snow and the creak of the harness to keep the time. He had a flask with him, and from time to time he drank lightly from it, warming his belly. About him the snow gleamed pure white, for clouds veiled the sun, and he had no present need of the carved eyeshields which hung about his neck, and which, worn with the flower-broidered scarf, made him look like some strange bright-patterned beast atop a piebald shaggy one. It was one of the rare calm days, so quiet that he and Umnik seemed alone in the world; and when he stopped the pony to rest, savoring the quiet air, he could hear the crack of ice in the cold, and the fall of a branchload of snow in the lightest breath of air. He listened to such sounds, and just a slight touch of the silence came into his heart, which was dangerous. He gathered his courage and whistled to the pony, urged him on. He began to sing, louder and louder in the vast silence of the white world, and Umnik moved along right merrily, flicking his ears to the song.

But the song did not last, and the silence returned, seeming to muffle even the crunch of ice under Umnik's hooves. And all at once Umnik stopped, and his head turned to the north: his ears pricked up and his nostrils strained to drink the air. The pony began to tremble then, and Andrei quickly slid his bow from off his shoulder and strung it, and took a red-fletched arrow from his broidered quiver, then looked about, north, at the white vastness and its gentle rolls, south at the edge of pine forest beside which they rode. The pony looked fixedly toward a narrow view of the open land beyond two hills. He stood rigid, his mane lifting in a little cold wind, gathering crystals of blowing snow in its coarse yellow hairs.

There was nothing. Andrei tapped Umnik with his heels. Sometimes horses saw ghosts, so the old hunters said, and then the wasting began, and they would die, but this was not like Umnik, a plain-minded beast, not given to fancies. Umnik moved forward feather-footed and skittish. Andrei believed the horse, which had never yet played him false, and he kept his bow in hand and an arrow on the string, his eyes toward the north, as the horse gazed while it moved, though its course was westerly and homeward.

For a moment the gray clouds parted and the sun shone through, gilding the drifts with flaring colors. Umnik sidestepped and shied, throwing his head. A white shape was in the glare, slow and slinking. . . a wolf, white as a winter wind. Andrei's heart clenched; and he raised and bent his bow, between fear of it and desire for its beauty, for he had never seen such a beast The arrow sped as horse and wolf moved, and the wolf was gone, over the rim of a drift. He clapped heels to Umnik's sides, once and again, and the brave pony went through the drift and off the way, reluctantly and warily. The clouds had closed again, the sun was gone, and a sudden gust of wind whipped off the snows of the right-hand hill, carrying stinging particles into his eyes. Umnik shied, and Andrei reined him around, patted the pony's shaggy neck and rode him back again. There was nothing, not wolf or so much as a footprint or the tiny wound of an arrow's feathers in the snowbanks. He cast about for the arrow, trampling the whole area with Umnik's hooves, for it was a well-made shaft and he was not pleased to lose it, or to be so puzzled. He thought perhaps it had gone into a deep drift, and surely it had, for try as he would he could not turn it up. He gave up finally, turned the pony about and set him on his way, trying to pretend that nothing had happened—the sun was always deceptive, and he had looked with eyes unshielded, never wise; he might have dreamed the wolf. But the arrow itself was gone. As he rode, the world seemed colder, the snow starker white, and now, like the piebald pony, he longed for the city and the bright and busy streets of human measure. He rode along with the frozen carcasses of his hunt dangling at his knee, now and again looking over his shoulder to mark how the east was darkening. He wished he had not delayed so long for the arrow, nor trifled with wolves, because it was a long ride yet.

He tried again to whistle, but his lips were dry, and the noise Umnik made in moving seemed muffled and not asloud as it ought. The wind gusted violently at his back. Snow began to fall, when never in the morning had it looked as if it could, so white the clouds had been; but the day had gotten fouler and fouler since he had delayed, and now he began to be much concerned. The wind blew, sighing, whistling, picking up the snow it had just laid down as well, to drive it in fine streams along the crusted surface and off the crests of frozen drifts. Umnik knew the hazard; the little horse kept moving steadily, but he threw his head as the wind seemed to acquire voices, and those voices seemed to howl on this side and on that of them.

"Go," Andrei asked of the pony, "go, my clever one, haste, haste," for the wind came now harder at their backs, a wind with many voices, like the voices of wolves. But the pony kept his head, saving his strength. Umnik passed the last hill, then, halfway down the downward slope, began to run with all his might, the homeward stretch which should, round the hill and beyond, bring them to the city wall. Howls behind them now were unmistakable, coming off the hillside on the left. Umnik cleared the hillside at an all-out pace, with Moskva now in sight, and Andrei lifted up the horn which hung at his belt and blew it now with all that was in him, a sound all but lost in the wind; again and again he blew. . . and to his joy the great wooden gates of Moskva began to open for him in the white veil of snow.