by Purple Hazel
“Ah, I see,” remarked the Khan to his guest. “So your family was one of those persecuted by the tsar. What a pity. And now you wish to serve me, do you?” asked the Khan suspiciously. However, Devlet was only testing the man. He only wanted to hear what the man was offering while not revealing too much about his desperate need for such information. After all, if he'd ordered the man tortured, his cruel bodyguards would make the man tell them most anything they wanted to know…and Tishenkov certainly had no doubt about that!
He replied, “Yes, Great Khan, if it pleases thee. I know of a way to Moscow my Lord…a way you can cross the Zhizdra River with your entire army…undetected. There's a ford along the river—to the west—one that is no longer being patrolled. I’m sure of it.”
The Great Khan smiled slightly, then made eye contact with the two Tatars flanking him. Ever so slightly, he nodded and glanced down at the kneeling man once more as if to indicate some subtle message to them. That was all they needed from their leader. They reached down and grabbed the man roughly, lifting him up by the hair and pulling his arms back. One pulled out a dagger and held it to the man's throat. Meanwhile, Devlet sat back down in his chair. The room fell silent, while the Great Khan pressed the fingers of both his hands together as though he was deeply contemplating the man's integrity.
Tishenkov closed his eyes for a moment and feared for the worst while he awaited his fate. Was the Khan going to order him killed? It might very well come to that. Off in the distance, he could hear Tatar warriors carousing and laughing. Another captured peasant girl was outside screaming, and apparently being dragged through the camp in terror. He could hear whips cracking and men jeering at each other…taunting and laughing at her. Despite the horrifying plight of the terrified woman outside, Kudeyar knew they'd do far worse to him if he failed to lead them across the Zhizdra without alerting nearby outposts. In fact, they might just execute him next morning, slit his throat, and dump his body in that very same river after he showed them the secret passage!
After a few moments, the Khan could be heard sighing. “Very well then,” he growled. “In the morning you shall go with my scouts. Show them this path—this secret ford of which you speak.” Then with that, the Khan gestured with his hand to have the traitor removed from his sight. Tishenkov was made to stand and then led by the two Tatar Warriors out of the giant palace of the Great Khan.
Outside they bound his wrists again and led him away briskly, once again through the campsites and the debauchery. He tried not to look up or provoke anyone. He tried not looking over at what was happening to the poor female still screaming and crying out nearby. By now her entire body was scarred from the hot iron rod they kept burning her with. Her legs were striped up and down. Her thighs and buttocks marked. She was now pleading with them to free her. Promised to do anything they wished. Promised to submit her body to them. He kept his eyes down and walked briskly past with his two captors.
He spent the night in a small yurt with those same two men, being fed some dried meat and given a cup of Airag (fermented mare's milk) to wash it down. The two men sat across from him and glared at him most of the night until he fell asleep. Tishenkov finally drifted off, exhausted from the day, yet awakened periodically throughout the night hearing the horrifying sounds of terror-stricken women enduring unspeakable torments in the camp outside. There was nothing he could do for those poor souls out there, he most certainly realized. And there was nothing—absolutely nothing left that he could do for himself either but carry out his traitorous mission the next day. Yet each time he stirred awake hearing the cries of some anguished woman in some far off tent and looked over at his captors, they were still awake or came to right when he did. They stared at him blankly, waiting for morning to come. They showed no emotion, of course, but the tall Russian wondered if they weren't just as worried as he was! Truly, if Tishenkov failed the next day, and his patrol was discovered, their throats would be cut right along with his.
In the coming days however, the ruse worked and the Russian traitor was indeed able to lead the Tatar allied army across the Zhizdra. Using a trail that Tatars had never learned of before, they quietly moved their entire force across the river and easily outflanked the enemy. Sentry troops along the rest of the Oka were quickly routed; and with no significant forces left to stop the invaders, the remaining Russian army retreated toward Moscow. In their wake, terrified Russian peasants, freedmen, and minor nobles fled to the city along with their families. The road to Moscow was now wide open.
Forty thousand Tatars advanced on the city; and yet in a bit of sheer irony, the traitor Kudeyar Tishenkov would never end up seeing his revenge on Tsar Ivan IV become a reality. It turned out that upon hearing of the defeat of his own troops under the royal ataman Yakov Volynsky, the cowardly Tsar fled from his palace in Moscow to Rostov, leaving the terrified citizens alone to fend for themselves.
Of course there were still a few gallant and brave souls left in Russia. Princes Belsky, Mstyslavsky, and Vortynsky dispatched Russian troops from Kolomna, and hurried desperately to get to the city before the Tatars besieged it. On May 22, this Russian relief army finally did arrive, and only one day ahead of the Khan's main force. The city was already swelling with desperate refugees when they got there; as Tatar raiding parties swept through the outlying areas around Moscow, pillaging towns, sacking villages, and capturing hundreds of slaves wherever they went.
Devlet Giray arrived the day after the Russian army and set up headquarters in the captured town of Kolomenskoye. Then, after directing half his force to go out raiding and rounding up captives, he ordered 20,000 of his horsemen to enter and set fire to the suburbs of Moscow. They overwhelmed the Zemlyanoygorod and began ravaging the city, capturing civilians everywhere they went and looting homes, churches, shops, and warehouses. That however was only the beginning of the disaster!
Fires set during the raids began to spread, and as the people of the city fled to the relative safety of the Kitaygorod, something truly tragic and even more unimaginably terrible happened. The winds came!
Indeed a strong wind came whipping through the city, stirring the fires set by the Tatars into a conflagration. It was such an enormous inferno that it quickly began to feed on itself and rose into a firestorm that sustained its own wind system. Such a phenomenon often occurs during forest fires, when oxygen is drawn in like storm force winds from every direction. In this case, it created a stacking effect, wherein the original fires set, drew in more and more of the surrounding air, causing the updraft to mushroom and strong inflow winds changed direction constantly, making the path of the spreading fire practically impossible to predict. Within only six hours the suburbs had burned to the ground and the frightened survivors fled toward the north gate of the city.
Unfortunately for most, there would be no escaping this holocaust. In a horrific scene of almost Biblical proportions, the desperate citizens of Moscow and refugees from outlying towns rushed to get up to the gate. They stood on top of each other. They ran over each other. They even stood upon the heads of one another to try and get up or over the walls to the Moskva River!
Surviving army units sent to defend the city were useless. Could never form ranks and face the enemy. They were merely caught up in the stampede of people and disintegrated into disorder right along with the fleeing refugees. Some people even fled inside stone churches to escape the flames, but they, too, perished from suffocation as the stone walls collapsed in on them from the intense heat. Many who finally did make it out of the city walls—those who could escape the flames that is—drowned in the Moskva River as the crush of bodies pushed them under the surface.
Even those lucky few who made it inside the Kremlin walls did not fare much better. The powder magazine there caught fire, and hundreds who were hiding under it in the cellars below, asphyxiated when the gunpowder exploded. Sadly, the valiant Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Belsky, heir to one of the most well-known ancient noble families was also killed in the massive fire, as h
e suffocated from smoke inside his own mansion inside the Kremlin. His tragic death finally brought to an end his family line; and Moscow seemed to die right along with the Belsky dynasty in an inferno of unimaginable horror.
All totaled, the death toll amounted to a staggering eighty thousand people killed during the six-hour-long disaster. For years, the city would be nearly uninhabitable and the fiendish Ivan IV refused to even live there. In fact, when he returned weeks later to view the scene in person, he ordered the burnt suffocated bodies of the dead to be thrown into the Moskva River. It was said later that the number of dead dumped into the river was so staggering, that it caused a damming effect on the river and the Moskva overflowed its banks—flooding the city for a while. Bodies were still being dug out of the rubble nearly a year later.
On May 25, after another day of looting and ravaging the city for anyone or anything still alive or of any value, Devlet Giray ordered his men to begin returning home. There was no reason to stay any longer he surmised. The Russian capital was now destroyed; and besides, as they drove south again, they could pillage town after town along the way back to their homeland. The Russian army was too small to face them out in the open; and could only tail them from a safe distance as they rampaged southward. Therefore, loaded with loot and over 150,000 captives, the horde headed back toward the southern steppes of the Crimea. They sacked and burned city after city as they went; and the Russian Army could do nothing to stop them. They ravaged Ryazan, burned Kashyra as well. And rumor now had it they were heading straight toward Belgorod.
* * * *
After Kashyra fell, that's when the people of Belgorod started hearing about the Tatars approaching from the north. Bogdan panicked. Everyone else in the town did, too! “They've burned Moscow!” people were saying. “The army is destroyed!” others were proclaiming. “Lord in Heaven, please help us!”
Women in the streets screamed in terror at the very thought of the advancing heathens. “They'll take us all, make us slaves, won't they?” asked a terrified teenage girl of one of the guards on the street one day. He spoke of it that night in the tavern to his mates. “I didn't know what to tell the girl, my boys. Yes, we'll fight them when they come, that's our duty. But let's face it gentlemen—how can we expect to stop them? There’s too many!”
My God! thought Bogdan to himself, If they could burn Moscow…if they could defeat the Russian army…why, they could bloody well take Belgorod fortress, too! He realized he needed to get his lovely daughter Tatyana out of that city…before it was too late.
Chapter 9
Captured
Ludmilla and Tatyana sat down with Bogdan at the long center table in the tavern after the customers left. Though everyone was exhausted from a long night of serving and cleaning; the stress and anxiety left over from earlier discussions among the many worried patrons had deeply affected Bogdan. It frightened him; and Tatyana had never seen this side of her father's personality.
He urged the young couple to face facts. His logic was quite simple too: the Tatars were now driving toward Belgorod, and whenever they arrived, they'd lay siege and eventually take the city. Belgorod would fall; there was no question about it given what had been happening to even bigger cities further north. “If that happens, well, the entire town would be razed,” he said. Buildings would be burned, churches looted, and any survivors would then be forced into slavery. Anyone resisting would be butchered on the spot. “There is no use staying here,” advised Bogdan, “you two might as well flee to the countryside.” In fact, he was quite specific.
“Why not go hide out on Lyev's farm?” he proposed. They looked at each other for a moment—the young couple did that is—and Tatyana smiled awkwardly. “But Father, what about you?” she asked, “Where will you go if the Tatars come?”
Bogdan responded dismissively, “Now let's not worry about your old Dad. I've got an entire storeroom full of vodka—thanks to Lyev here. I'll bribe my way into the castle; and ride out the siege just fine. Those heathens won't dare try storming that big fortress. Won't even consider it when they see those stone walls! They'll sack the city, sure. Burn everything they can't take with them…and in a day or two they'll be gone, just watch. But you two…you should go to Lyev's farm and wait until this blows over. A castle under siege is no place for a young farmer and an innkeeper’s daughter.”
Ludmilla and Tatyana agreed. It was the safest bet for their survival. In the castle during a siege, they’d assume Ludmilla to be an able-bodied warrior. She’d be given a weapon she had no idea how to use and expected to fight. Tatyana shouldn’t be in a situation like that either, tending to injured soldiers and having to see thousands of people being slaughtered—or worse, ravaged by the invaders—right outside the walls. No this was a much better idea. Hide out in the country until the whole thing blew over; just like a blizzard coming through in the dead of winter. Ride it out somewhere safe. Ludmilla and Tatyana decided that’s what they should do.
“All right then it’s settled, yes? You will go with Lyev to his father’s farm,” concluded Bogdan. Ludmilla nodded. Under the circumstances there seemed to be no better alternative.
Next day Ludmilla and Tatyana packed up a wagon with supplies and bid Tatyana's father goodbye. They rode out of town, amidst a sea of ragged, exhausted, terrified, and confused refugees. Some were going and some were staying, but in reality no one knew just where they could go to protect their families.
Panic was setting in. That’s what happens when frightened people believe there most likely is a solution to their plight, but they're not sure what that might be. Plus time was running out and they must do something quickly or suffer dire consequences! Their minds were overloaded with emotions and confusion. People started moving with the largest crowd they saw and hoped someone knew where they're going. That's what was happening in Belgorod. Nothing seemed like the safest option.
They certainly couldn't go north…the Tatars were coming from that direction already. They couldn't go south…that's where the Tatars were heading. And staying in the city was only marginally safe because there was but a small chance the Tatars would bypass Belgorod entirely and continue down the Muravsky Trail back to Qapi.
That's why Ludmilla and Tatyana were among some of the many who chose to flee the city and chance it out in the countryside. That morning they rode through choked streets; and over the course of the next hour finally made it through the crush of people to the city gates. It was madness!
But even amidst all the worried faces, guards operating the gatehouse happily waved them goodbye, quite honestly relieved to see them fleeing the chaos. Some were saying things like, “good luck out there!” and others were more emphatic, saying, “Yes, get out of this deathtrap…before those barbarians arrive!” A guard that Tatyana recognized; and one who’d already met Ludmilla, was even more unequivocal with his advice.
“You’re going? Good. This place isn’t safe, tovarishchi,” he said in a low voice so as not to be heard by the rabble of frightened people around him. “When they come, we’re retreating to the castle,” he added discretely, “These people you see here…if they haven’t already fled…will be captured or killed. All of them. Most everyone in the city right along with them. You won’t want to be here when it happens, I assure you. No…just get the hell out of here you two. Go!” And in response, Ludmilla shook his hand and bid him farewell. “Good luck, my friend,” she said as she urged her horse further through the chaos. Once outside the now-packed city, Tatyana and Ludmilla rode together on the long trip back to Father's farm—watching and listening intently for any activity that might indicate the Tatars were near.
Nonetheless after a while, they stopped worrying about it. Ludmilla concluded that the enemy must not be close to the area yet, or perhaps they went a different direction. Frankly, she didn’t really know what to look for! She was far more concerned about getting home to her father. It had now been nearly two months and the barley was likely getting close to harvest. He'd probably
been worrying whether she'd ever return. Ludmilla looked forward to surprising him with her new “girlfriend” as well.
Of course, it was quite easy to let her guard down a bit; and a big part of that was the company she was in. Tatyana was a rather pleasant distraction from all the fear and anxiety of that morning and seeing so many people so desperately unsure of their future—fearing for their lives and their families’ safety. But the other part of it was most certainly the relief she felt in knowing how happy her father would be upon her return. She imagined how pleased he’d be when she got there; and perhaps he’d grow to love Tatyana the way Ludmilla did. It was hard to say, of course. After all, this was a young girl Ludmilla was bringing home—not a husband—and Father would have no idea what a pretty girl was doing (alone) with Ludmilla. If father pressed her about it, Ludmilla had no idea how she’d explain it.
“She’s a friend, Father”—is that what she’d try to say? But she imagined Tatyana doing the work for her in terms of charming the old man. Tatyana always did that with everyone else, so why not this time as well? Best leave it to her new better half.
Ludmilla chatted about it with Tatyana during the journey—her anxieties about bringing a girl home—but mostly Ludmilla spoke about what her father was like. She filled in a few more details this time…more than when they were walking through the town together on buying trips to the market. After all, they had hours and hours together with nothing to do but talk and jostle back and forth next to each other as they rode through ruts in the road created by a hundred wagons before them. Ludmilla told Tatyana about Father and his tendencies: how to understand his habits and his manner. Ways to win him over. The long trip also gave her plenty of time to tell story after story about him, too, and what lessons she’d been able to glean from him over the years. Tatyana enjoyed the tales and after a few hours riding in the wagon, she was quite excited to finally meet the man.