Brother Gottfried didn’t suggest a reason why, but after wearisome hours listening to Baba Yaga’s schemes of vengeance, Dieter Balke suspected he knew well enough. He could also see what might happen if their search was successful. Not only the old hag’s plotting, but the far more elaborate and important designs of the Teutonic Order, could all be brought to nothing.
There was no swift way to warn either Grand Master von Salza or even Baba Yaga herself, because there was no Gate within the walls of Burg Thorn. For caution’s sake, Balke had constructed the Thorn Gate in a stand of birch trees well out in the forest, where its presence was hard to find and easy to deny. It was an hour’s ride from the castle, and almost four times that if a man walked on his own legs as he would have to do. From the tone of Kuchmann’s letter, that time was best not wasted. He would have to find and kill the Tsarevich personally, and Baba Yaga’s thirst for revenge could go be damned.
Balke looked at his hands, feeling the clamminess of sweat on them, but when he spread their fingers wide he smiled, because despite the sweating they were steady again. He opened his merchant’s satchel and pulled out a rumpled, dog-eared sheaf of notes, scribbled on odd bits of parchment or vellum tied together with a leather thong run through the corner. After consulting first one page then another, he made changes to the circle with quick, confident sweeps of his brush and watched a faint distortion rise like heat-haze from its centre as the Gate opened again. There was a brief snatch of birdsong.
He reached into the satchel, and this time drew out his beloved Turkish mace. It was a horseman’s weapon with a haft as long as his own arm, and its ponderous striking head – enclosed for safety in a leather casing like a falcon’s hood – was as big as his clenched fist. He’d heard all the mocking comments, both kindly and coarse, but his sole response had been to point out that a phallus with thumb-long spikes on it was no substitute for anything.
Dieter Balke hefted the mace, swung it once or twice to check the familiar balance, then rested it on his shoulder and stepped through the Gate into the Summer Country.
*
The Summer Country
“…I told you before, Summoning isn’t a spell to use if you want the Firebird to be friendly. Which we do.”
“At least a Summoning’s quicker than this.”
“Maybe, but I’d prefer the Firebird helped us of its own free will, rather than because we used the same crude compulsion as Baba Yaga…”
Wrangling amiably and assisted by occasional side-comments from their respective mounts, Prince Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna rode through the forest glades of the Summer Country. The air had that stillness and close warmth of a sunny late afternoon, and where the golden light of the westering sun couldn’t reach the forest floor, it set the foliage ablaze with shades of luminescent green.
“Are you in such a hurry,” said the Grey Wolf sardonically, “to get back to the winter blizzards waiting for you in Russia? I can oblige, if you want.”
Mar’ya Morevna laughed. “I don’t want,” she said, “so you keep out of this.”
“Ah,” said the Grey Wolf. “A private fight. I see.”
The forest had been opening out around them, and now the ground fell away to the west down the slope of a small escarpment, flowing out into sweeping meadows like the wide Ukrainian grasslands beside the River Don where Sivka had grown up. The meadows – they were too well-cultivated to be called steppes – were dotted with little stands of trees like beech and linden, planted for no other reason than because they looked pleasing. As the sun slipped lower in the blue sky, white and golden clouds began to rack themselves up in the western horizon as though the impending sunset had been choreographed for magnificence. Set snugly in the curve of a river not very far away, the red walls of a small kremlin glowed warmly as they reflected the evening light. Newly lit lanterns twinkled in the shadows cast by its towers, and over the distance the sound of a church bell rang sweet and clear.
Ivan glanced back at Mar’ya Morevna, smiled gently and shook his head in disbelief. “This,” he said, “is becoming ridiculous. An itinerant ballad-singer would be embarrassed to describe it.” He swung his leg over the Grey Wolf’s shoulder and slid down to the ground, folded his arms and leaned back against the furry ribs to watch what looked set to be the sort of sunset that only existed in noble old byliniy epics.
A kestrel-hawk cried kee-kee-kee high in the air above the ridge as it broke from its hovering station and came slanting down to see whether the riders had disturbed anything small and tasty. The bird’s shadow flicked across the meadow, briefly darkening the grass and the scatter of small yellow flowers that grew among it, then halted, a little cruciform blot of blackness, as the kestrel reached a warm updraft rolling off the face of the scarp and hung high above their heads on tapered wings that barely fluttered to support it on the rising air.
Ivan looked up at the bird, smiled again, and thumped the Grey Wolf on the shoulder in a friendly fashion like the backslap exchanged by bogatyr warriors, nothing at all like a man patting a dog. The wolf grunted, then lay down with shaggy head resting on huge paws and made a reasonable pretence of going to sleep. Ivan walked over the springy grass and gave Mar’ya Morevna his hand to help her down from Sivka’s high saddle; not that she needed the assistance, but the courtesy was what mattered. She leaned her head against his shoulder and they watched the sunset side by side.
Sivka, a realist like most horses and not over-impressed by any sunset when there was grass as good as this to eat, lowered his head and began grazing. Then he snorted, put his ears back and stamped.
The kestrel hadn’t shifted from its place three hundred feet straight up, but its shadow was moving. So were the shadows of the scattered trees at the edge of the forest, sliding off across the grass in long stripes of darkness and extending down the slope towards the setting sun. Ivan stared at them for a moment before his brain realized the wrongness of what his eyes were seeing. Shadows in the evening pointing towards the sun? It suggested a source of light as bright as that same sun at noon, and the suggestion was correct.
Even so high overhead, the Firebird’s wings made a rhythmic whining hiss like those of a swan as it flew swiftly across the deepening blue vault of the sky. Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna had to squint before they could see more than a single intolerably bright bead of light. For his own part, Ivan half expected that the Firebird would leave a trail across the heavens like that of a falling star, but the only trail it left was a glow of unnatural violet and orange inside their eyes, a track that flared with renewed brightness for many minutes afterwards whenever they blinked. The shadows of kestrel and trees and even individual blades of grass slewed as it passed, until by the time the Firebird’s brightness was swallowed by the greater glare of the setting sun, everything was once more as it should have been.
“No, not Summoning, I think,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “When I speak to something like that, I’d prefer to have it reasonably well-disposed towards me.”
The Grey Wolf woke from his doze with a snap. Halfway to his feet before he was fully awake, he looked hurriedly from side to side to see what he’d missed.
“Up there,” said Ivan helpfully. The Grey Wolf looked, bristling and showing a hint of ivory under lips beginning to curl back from his huge teeth; then he saw what Prince Ivan was pointing at and immediately relaxed again.
“A Firebird,” he said, and returned to snoozing with a determination worthy of a cat on a cushion.
“Not the Firebird, then?” said Ivan, trying not to sound too disappointed. The Grey Wolf opened one eye, looked at him for a count of three, then closed it again and produced a deliberate snore.
“Hardly,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “You’ve travelled to the country where the Firebirds live. What makes you think the first one you see will be the one you want?”
“Luck?”
“Hah. Funny man.”
“Let’s see if you find this as funny: where do we intend to sleep tonight?”
With th
e sun dropping behind ever thicker layers of cloud so that darkness spread like ink from beneath the shadows of the forest, Ivan’s question wasn’t funny at all. He wasn’t the only person thinking of the enormous lynx-cats the Grey Wolf had mentioned, and for all its beauty in broad daylight he didn’t want to find out if the Summer Country was as pleasant for unprotected travellers once night had fallen.
“What about that kremlin yonder?” said Sivka. Ivan looked at the big black horse and grinned; Sivka was by no means finished with eating – no horse ever was – but out in the open after dark there were more important things even than food.
Safety, for one.
“Do any of you know good stories?” asked the Grey Wolf, awake again.
Mar’ya Morevna looked blank, but Ivan said, “A few, but mostly gossip.” Then he began to grin. “Like the Firebirds. Is a piece of juicy scandal really enough to get us a bed for the night?”
“A man riding a wolf and a woman on a talking horse?” said the Grey Wolf, and would have raised his eyebrows had he possessed any. “Bed and board, I should imagine, and as much wine as you want if the scandal’s sufficiently juicy.”
“Even though it has no relevance to anyone the folk in the kremlin might know?”
“Who cares about relevance,” said Sivka, “if the story’s funny and dirty enough? You should listen to your own grooms and stable-people sometime, little mast— Er, once-my-master-but-no-longer.” The Grey Wolf grinned toothily at Sivka’s hasty correction, but said nothing. “It doesn’t matter who the story is about, as long as it makes them laugh.”
“About me?”
“Ah now, Prince Ivan,” said the Grey Wolf, “would you ask a spy to betray his sources?”
“All the time.”
“Then I suggest you put a stop to it,” said the Grey Wolf, “or soon nobody will tell you anything.”
“Did I ask for your opinion?”
“No,” said the Grey Wolf, then generously, “but you can have it gratis.”
“If you two have quite finished,” said Mar’ya Morevna in a tone of studied patience strained to its limit, “I’d like to see if the good people of the kremlin will let us in.” She put foot to stirrup and rose into Sivka’s saddle, then looked at Ivan and the Grey Wolf. “You two can stay here and argue precedence all night, but Sivka and I are leaving.” She jabbed her heels briskly into the black horse’s flanks and cantered away.
Ivan stared after her for long enough that the heavy thud of hoofs on well-cropped turf had faded almost to silence, then said, “I wasn’t discussing precedence. Were you?”
“Not that I noticed. But the Princess Mar’ya Morevna is a most perceptive lady, and she may well know more about the inside of my mind than I do myself.”
Prince Ivan grinned at the Grey Wolf and laid one hand between the shaggy shoulders to better swing himself astride. “That,” he said, “wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Well, come on; are they going to beat you to the kremlin and the warmest place beside the fire?”
“Not while my four feet can run across the wide white world,” said the Grey Wolf, and took off in pursuit more swiftly than an arrow from a Tatar’s bow. Even though those feet of his were padded paws rather than shod hoofs, the Grey Wolf’s claws dug into the ground and propelled him so fast that Ivan’s hat flew off. Regardless of instruction, he sank his fingers into the wolf’s ruff and held on tight with all the strength that he could muster. They passed Sivka and Mar’ya Morevna a few seconds later, and skidded to a halt beside the red kremlin’s gate with enough time in hand for Ivan to regain his breath, and even restore enough order to his wind-tousled hair that he looked slightly respectable by the time the guards came running out to see what all the fuss was about.
But there was never any sign of his hat again, either then or later.
*
The Independent Tsardom of Khorlov;
1234 A.D.
“‘Don’t declare war until we get back’, he said,” muttered Tsar Aleksandr of Khorlov. “A pity my son hadn’t thought to give the same advice to,” he flicked through the sheets of seal-heavy vellum strewn across his desk, “Prince Yuriy of Kiev, the two Princes of Novgorod, and both Yaroslav and Aleksandr Nevskiy of Vladimir. Here’s formal defiance from every one of them.”
“It would appear, Majesty,” said Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin, “that a great many differences have been set aside on Khorlov’s behalf.”
“So it seems.” Tsar Aleksandr straightened the sheets and fingered a weighty ribbon seal as though the image pressed into the wax held some answer to his dilemma. “How many days have they been gone now?”
“Eighteen days, Majesty.”
“And still no reply?” Tsar Aleksandr had asked the question not half an hour before and both men knew it, but the High Steward bowed his grey head as though this was the first time.
“None, Majesty.”
“Outrage I could understand, yes,” said the Tsar, half to himself. “Especially if they’ve been given the heads of their spies as I’ve been given mine. But defiance, and the threat of a battle campaign in the deeps of winter? What are they thinking?”
“I can only speculate, Majesty,” said Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, “but Khorlov is not only the smallest of all these domains, but also the one most lacking in powerful allies. It may be that the Great Princes have resorted to their old stratagem, of using us as a common enemy for all the rest. And since – except for the accursed Tatars –campaigning in winter is unheard of, the battles will be small, fought only by druzhinya retinues and picked household troops.”
That was the custom: war was restricted to high summer, after the spring planting but before the harvest. Bolstered by peasant levies, an army could become two or maybe three thousand men, but it was a foolish Prince indeed who for the sake of fielding a great host risked all the vassals who would bring his harvest in. The boyar noblemen and bogatyr champions of his retinue might even overthrow him and set up someone with a better grasp of reality in his place. It had happened before, and would doubtless happen again. War was never undertaken casually, despite all the letters on Tsar Aleksandr’s desk.
“How many men does Guard-Captain Akimov have under his command?” he asked.
“Two hundred horse and foot in the kremlin garrison, Majesty,” said Strel’tsin, “with a further fifty in the Guard.”
“And the others?”
“At last report—”
“Before someone hacked the heads off our spies and sent them back to us!”
“Yes, Majesty. At last report the Great Princes had a similar number. Even Prince Yuriy has only three hundred soldiers altogether, and he would never dare to strip his kremlin garrison so bare as to bring all of them here. I would estimate that of the hosts of Kiev, Vladimir and Novgorod, each realm can spare no more than a hundred men to send against us.”
Tsar Aleksandr looked at his chief advisor and oldest friend, and gradually a wintry smile spread across his face. “Dry statistics. But no real concern that I can see. Does nothing ruffle that composure of yours, Dmitriy Vasil’yevich?”
“Inaccuracies, Majesty,” said Strel’tsin, quite straight-faced. “Also guesses without basis in fact, and accounting errors not in the Tsardom’s favour.”
The Tsar barked a short laugh. “And what would you presume that we should do now, with an estimated total of three hundred soldiers trudging through the snow towards this kremlin?”
“Prepare for a siege, but offer to talk first.”
“Will they talk?”
“Majesty, the Princes of the Rus aren’t Frankish knights, rushing headlong into battle because they can’t think what else to do. They’ll talk. It’s what comes after the talking’s done that we should prepare for.”
“If Vanya doesn’t return with the Firebird before then,” said Tsar Aleksandr sombrely, “there’ll be little point in his returning at all. Twenty days, you said?”
“Eighteen, Majesty. But his wife’s Captain of Guar
ds should be here before the twentieth day, with another hundred men. I venture to suggest, Majesty, that one hundred men from the army of Mar’ya Morevna is worth a great deal for their reputation alone. It might even give some of the less aggressive Princes pause for thought.”
Tsar Aleksandr Andreyevich rose from his seat and looked at his High Steward for a moment, then walked past him to gaze down from the window of the kremlin towards the empty snowfield beyond its walls. In a week three hundred professional soldiers would be encamped there, with five pugnacious Princes at their head and little intention of returning home again without something to show for their long march.
“I think, Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, that we need a more solid defence than mere reputation. We need proof of what happened here. We need my son. And we need the Firebird.”
*
The Summer Country;
The Hunting-Lodge of Countess Vasilisa Kurbit’yevna
Seen from under the shadow of its gate, the red kremlin was nothing like as imposing a fortress as Khorlov or Koldunov. Ivan dismounted from the Grey Wolf and looked up at the walls. They were low, the battlements more for decoration than for any martial purpose, and they were pierced by ornate windows of a size that would admit not only a besieger but even his horse. This kremlin seemed more like a country mansion tricked out with a fancifully military appearance than a citadel built to keep an enemy at bay.
Even the guards had been in no great hurry, despite the commotion of hoofs and wolf-paws outside the gate. They came out at a run, sure enough, but Ivan didn’t need to be a military genius to see they were motivated more by curiosity than by anything remotely fierce. Only two of the five were carrying weapons, and those were bardech axes so elaborate that Ivan was hard put to work out where the ornamentation left off and the cutting edge began. He got his next surprise when one of the soldiers saluted the Grey Wolf and addressed him as “Noble Sir”, enquiring after his health and in every way indicating the two were acquaintances at least and possibly old friends.
“You didn’t tell me you’d been here before, ‘Noble Sir’,” said Ivan between his teeth while maintaining a smile for the sentries’ benefit.
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