And that left them simply terrifying. Tsarevich Ivan constantly reminded himself that he was here as an invited guest, but to be the guest of a lash of the Scourge of God meant only that he was in the presence of that Scourge by sufferance instead of suffering. In the long run there was uncomfortably little difference.
As he took his seat at Manguyu Temir’s right hand and faced the fortunate south, Ivan discovered yet another truth in the many useful things that Captain Akimov had told him. A man can only be scared of nothing for so long; after that, either something happens to justify his fear, or he gradually ceases to be frightened. That was happening now. For all his apprehension of the company and his surroundings, these Tatars had offered him no violence. Indeed, quite the reverse: his wounds had been cared for, he had slept safe in their khan’s own tent, and now he’d been invited to share dinner. The piper hadn’t yet demanded payment, and until then Ivan Aleksandrovich decided to enjoy the tune.
He knew the rules about speaking to Tatars encountered unexpectedly: never ask them ‘From where?’, or ‘Where to?’; never ask them ‘How many?’ or ‘For how long?’; and most of all, never ever ask them ‘When?’ It made for stilted conversation at best, and there was less talk than expected even between one Tatar and the next, as if every word spoken was given thought and scrutiny before its utterance. The reason was simple: none of the Tatar officers except perhaps their khan were sure how much of their language Ivan understood. It was easy for a man to claim ignorance of a certain subject, but to such masters of dissimulation as Tatar captains-of-thousands, the claim and the actuality might be as far apart as sun and moon.
Only Manguyu Temir said much to his guest, and that dealt with insignificant matters like the quality of Ivan’s horse and the care given by Doctor Juchi or, strangely like a Rus, complaints about the past bad weather. They spoke also about the food, when not engaged in eating it, and Ivan was glad he could give it honest praise.
Inwardly he was glad he liked the taste of mutton, for each and every one of the dozen sheep he had seen killed was on the table in some form or another, whether roasted, fried or boiled. The most curious dish, and the most entertaining to a stranger, was served in its separate parts of a bowl of sharp hot sauce and a platter of thinly-sliced raw meat for each diner, and several deep pots filled with savoury stock. Each pot had a chimney rising from its centre, with the stock as a moat around it – and a fiercely bubbling moat at that, kept at the boil by hot coals in the thick base of the chimney. Each man spiked his chosen slice of meat on a skewer and cooked it as he liked, then dipped it in the bowl of sauce and ate it with whatever vegetable or rice took his fancy.
Being Tatars, Ivan’s companions had to improve on it, and the improvement was a forfeit: if a man lost his slice of meat in the pot while it was cooking, he had to drink a cup of kumys for everyone sharing with him. At some tables the loser was swilling down ten cupfuls one after another.
Ivan watched the increasing rowdiness and made certain, since he shared his table and the bubbling stock-pot with Manguyu Temir and eight other captains, that any meat on his skewer stayed until he pulled it off himself. At last, judging he had remained long enough for manners, he pleaded pain and weariness to take his leave despite the glances of contempt from officers who understood his words, men wouldn’t have let so trifling a matter interrupt their feast. But then he was just a weak and half-grown Rus, whilst they were Tatars and the accredited Scourge of God.
Ilkhan Manguyu looked up from his contemplation of nine brimming cups of kumys, the consequence of misplacing his last slice of mutton in the seething savoury depths.
“I have made my choice, Prince Ivan,” he said tipsily, because that lost slice hadn’t been the first. “From this moment you are no longer a hostage. I know the Rus of old; a ridiculous people who never know when they are properly defeated. Unless I surround you with soldiers, you would escape. Or be killed in the attempt. Either way I would lose your ransom, or lose the use of whatever soldiers were needed to guard you. Too much trouble just now. You are free to go. Urrrp!” The khan’s eyes widened momentarily as a monumental belch erupted from his gullet. “The order has gone out. You will be neither halted nor hindered by any in this bok, once you choose to leave. Now stay a while. We have plenty left of food and drink!”
Ivan bowed low, thoroughly relieved and genuinely grateful but also slightly insulted to be set free just because his nuisance value outweighed any other. The thought of trying to escape from the midst of this horde of enemies had hung from his shoulders like a lead weight, and now he felt pounds lighter – but not so much that he wanted to freight his stomach with more kumys and mutton. “Thank you, lord, but no,” he said. “I bid you and all your officers a pleasant night, and a clear-headed morning.”
Manguyu quaffed the contents of his sixth cup and grinned at Ivan over its rim. “And you, Tsar’s son Ivan. Be safe. Be well. Grow rich. We want to capture you again when we finally decide to conquer Khorlov…”
The burst of coarse laughter that went with his words, first from the khan himself and then from all his officers, made Ivan sure that he hadn’t heard policy or threat but just a nasty jest. With that in mind, he joined them in their laughter.
Then he went back to his tent and lay open-eyed and hating on the couch until sleep crept up unawares.
*
Ivan woke next morning with only the back-taste of sour milk to remind him of the Ilkhan’s dinner party, but the Tatars were already up and about, taking down their camp. Yurtu tents were disappearing into improbably small packages, first the felt coverings, rolled and tied into tight cylinders, and then the cane or wicker frames. Ivan had passed the night in Manguyu Temir’s own yurtu again, that very first one where he had been brought with spear-wounds underneath each arm, and he’d been untroubled by anything, either the tent’s owner or other Tatars or even dreams; just a memory of rapid hoofbeats in the early morning that had roused him when it was still too dark to see.
Those hoofbeats had likely marked the arrival of a courier, and he was watching the result of the courier’s message. Groups of horsemen were already moving eastward, ten by ten by ten in the Tatar way. Others were bringing up the two-score yokes of oxen needed to pull the great cart-yurtu. When he saw that, Ivan dressed as quickly as stiff joints and a sore head would let him. His own coat was useless, its fabric from armpits to waist stiff with a wash of old blood, but either Ilkhan Manguyu himself or someone acting on his orders had added a new coat to the pile of Ivan’s clothes. It was rich scarlet furred with black fox, and its embroidery was thick gold wire pure enough to take the indentation of a fingernail.
Unsure where his horse and the rest of his gear had gone, Ivan emerged from the cart-yurtu just as the oxen began to swing it around and onto the line of march. The thing turned clumsily, it could have flattened every lesser yurtu around it, and he was so busy watching its careful manoeuvring that he was almost trampled by the arrival of his missing property.
The Tatar who led Burka was none other than the bagatur captain-of-ten who had captured him only the day before, and despite his flat impassive features he still clearly conveyed his thoughts about Ivan going free without anything as crude as snarl or oath. Ivan simply smiled, and caught Burka’s reins when they were flung at – not to – him.
“When we come to Khorlov,” said the Tatar, “it will please me to sit you on a spear.” He wheeled his horse about and galloped away.
That captain was the only one among the three-thousand-strong host who gave Ivan more than an incurious glance. The rest were more concerned with riding or driving as swiftly as they could in the wake of the early-departing vanguard. Manguyu Temir was nowhere to be seen. Probably, thought Ivan, he was leading from the front, holding his head and wishing that the good God had created a breed of horse that walked more smoothly than the rest, for mornings just like these.
Tsarevich Ivan watched until the last yurtu had been dismantled, and until the last squad of riders w
ent thudding away into the brightness of the sunrise. Then he crossed himself three times and muttered a small prayer of thanks for deliverance. After that he hobbled Burka so the horse could graze but not wander far, rummaged in his gear until he found his own bedroll and blanket, then lay down on the ground and deliberately went back to sleep.
*
Ivan woke up again in full daylight, more refreshed by three hours of sleep in the fresh air than he had been by an entire night in the confines of the yurtu. He had no intention of going further east until tomorrow, to give the Tatars a full day in which to draw away. Whatever warning, command or instruction had arrived with the pre-dawn courier, Prince Ivan wanted no part of it, but a day doing nothing was a day wasted from the few he had to spare.
He smiled slightly at the thought. A year ago he’d given hardly any thought to what might be involved when at last he began to search for a bride, and certainly never dreamt that time or the lack of it would play a part. But every day of idleness, every day in which Khorlov remained a realm without an heir, was one more day in which the Great Princes of Novgorod and Kiev might decide their patience was at an end.
That idle day, uneasy though it was, went by more quickly than he would have thought. Ivan hadn’t really been idle: he had crisscrossed the Tatar encampment on horseback just to get a feel of its sheer size, but it had felt strange to ride about without continuing in one direction for hours on end, and stranger still to finish more or less where he had started. There had been little else to do, or look at. When the Tatars moved out they had thriftily packed up every last pin or comb or broken knife, and taken them for re-use or repair.
When at last Ivan set off in the wake of the small Tatar army, he moved at a slow and cautious pace. He had no intention of overhauling them, and no desire to be caught by their outriders a second time. If that meant moving with the caution of a nervous virgin at a spring fair, then so be it. One afternoon of spear-points jabbing underneath his arms was enough for any single lifetime.
And yet, despite his care, Ivan did indeed catch up with Manguyu Temir’s host more suddenly than he intended.
He saw the smoke from a long distance away, dark streaks rising straight up into a clear sky above the flatness of the steppe. It was strange smoke, too dense for cook-fires yet – his mind hesitated over the conclusion – not thick and heavy enough to signal a sacked town. But a village or a monastery was another matter. He regretted he hadn’t taken his mother’s advice. The Tsaritsa Ludmyla had said that if he took a shirt of mail, he would never need it, though she had been mistaken when she said the same about his rainproof cloak.
Ivan reined Burka to a halt and made ready for whatever adventure the good God might send. He loosened both his swords in their scabbards, and unslung the shield that had been jarring his shoulder-blades all the way from Khorlov. He exchanged his riding-whip for the flanged pernach mace that hung from his saddle, and made sure that his cased bow and arrows were close to hand. Then he considered what to do next.
The choices were limited: go on, go back, go around or stay where he was. None of them were appealing, but playing the craven appealed least of all. Tsarevich Ivan took a long, deep breath that shuddered only slightly in his throat, and rode on.
It seemed as though Moist-Mother-Earth was holding her breath. Without the constant breeze that had sighed on every other day across the steppe, the beating of Ivan’s heart and the hoofbeats of his horse were an intrusion on the silence of the world. The mace hung heavy from its strap around his wrist, a constant reminder that he might have to raise that weight and bring it down on another living being. He sighed; in the old tales no bogatyr was ever so reluctant to fight his enemies, even though they were meant to behave with forbearance to all the world. Ivan hadn’t realized it could be so hard to play the hero of his childhood dreams.
Then all the dreams were shattered by the hammer of approaching hoofs. Ivan ducked behind his shield, and without thought the mace was already poised to strike. He looked just once at the wicked flanges of its striking surfaces, shivered deep within himself—
But when five wild-eyed Tatars galloped frenziedly towards him, he exchanged no more than two clanging strokes before they were past and gone.
Burka reared and danced, squealing, pawing the air, as eager for combat as his master was reluctant. Ivan fought his mount back down and stared in utter confusion at the five distant riders. He had never heard of such a thing, that five Tatars should meet a single Rus and not attempt to capture or to kill him. There was more: in the brief glimpse as they thundered by he had seen blind terror on each face. Prince Ivan was not at all sure he wanted to meet anything that could put such fear into a Tatar; they were wary of their Khan, and frightened of thunder, but of nothing else in the wide white world.
Ivan’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a grin without humour. He had already faced that question and made his own choice to ride on, to meet the adventure and be as brave as the Tatars. He could see what they had seen – and if necessary he could also run away.
The land beneath the towering columns of dark smoke was less flat and featureless than other places. It was dotted everywhere with lumps and bumps and tussocks, as if low bushes had been seeded broadcast all across it, and it had a fuzzed look as if barley had grown between the bushes. Between the stark emptiness and this low vegetation, it was the perfect place for an ambush, and Ivan felt the old familiar tension gathering in his stomach, fluttering like the wings of trapped sparrows. There was no sign of any other Tatars and though he had slowed Burka to a walk, he knew he might be moving deeper into someone’s trap. Then the horse jolted to a stop, snorting, and refused to take another step.
Tsarevich Ivan couldn’t blame his noble steed for that, because he was looking at the Manguyu Temir’s horde, three thousand Tatar horsemen less five, and every one of them was dead.
There were no tussocks or bushes, and never had been. Only corpses. They lay where they had fallen like peasants taking their ease in a field of barley. Ivan turned his head from side to side, struck shock-still astride his stock-still horse. Those barley-stalks were the shafts of innumerable arrows, and the barley-heads their fletchings, standing tall across a field well ploughed by the scrabbling fingers of dying men and richly watered with their blood. The smoke that billowed upward from the blackened skeletons of burning cart-yurtuy was freighted with the heavy smell of scorching horsehair felt, a fitting monument for many, many murdered towns.
Ivan looked at the devastation, and he felt…
Nothing.
Ivan had never seen death close to, either in family or friends, and even the judicial executions that happened so rarely in his father’s Tsardom took place far off in the square. These Tatars were the ancestral enemies of the Rus, but even so he might have regretted Manguyu Temir killed in falling from a horse: the khan had been kind to him when there was no reason to act so. Doctor Juchi dead of the extreme age he wore like a badge of office would have made him sad. But this – this could not be grasped, either by the mind or the imagination. It was too vast.
If you must do murder, he thought, do it on a scale like this. Or even bigger. Then no one will believe it really happened.
Yet this wasn’t murder but the aftermath of battle. It was described in byliniy, epics made in the courts of lords and noblemen whose warriors had seen the reality of war, and smelt it, and wiped it from their swords and armour. Peasant skazki tales ignored it, pretending that such things never happened, that all battles were a glitter of steel and a sheen of gold. As he closed his eyes and muffled his nose in his kerchief, Ivan wondered why.
Everyone bled when they were cut, peasants and lords alike, even though the great princes chose not to accept that view any more. Not since they had begun to use their peasants as foot-soldiers. He swallowed, and was grateful to whichever god, old or new, who had made him follow the Tatar horde so soon. Ivan had heard what battlefields could be like in summer when the freshness was gone from them, and th
e crows and wolves and blowflies had become intimate with the unburied dead.
Who did this? The unvoiced thought rattled through his head like dice in a cup. The general who had bested such a foe in open battle was someone to befriend or someone to avoid, and until he knew which action was appropriate, Ivan was at a loss.
“Who did this?” he repeated aloud. Burka flicked his ears, but didn’t venture any further information. At last Tsarevich Ivan stood up in his stirrups and shouted the question at the top of his lungs, the only sound to be heard all across that desolate field. “If anyone still lives, tell me: who defeated Manguyu Temir, and vanquished this Tatar horde?”
No one spoke that he could hear, and nothing moved that he could see, until a spearhead tapped him on the shoulder. For an instant the blood froze in his veins. Ivan held out his hands, open and empty, then turned about to look at the ten warriors behind him with swords drawn, or spears poised, or arrows on the string.
Their captain saluted with the spear that had touched Ivan’s shoulder, then looked from side to side across the field and stared at Ivan long and hard. “Your question has a simple answer,” he said. “These Tatars were vanquished by our liege lady Mar’ya Morevna.” The captain paused, and his spear dropped from the salute. It didn’t point at Ivan, nor did it point away. “And you will come with us to meet her.”
“Then bring me to her presence.” Ivan looked at the other weapons, then at the spear, and brushed it aside as coolly as a Tsar’s son should. Falcon, Eagle, Raven, oh my brothers, he said inwardly to men who weren’t there, you told me I would meet this lady! But I wish you’d told me when and where and how!
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