The Golden Horde

by Peter Morwood

  Now the Grey Wolf lolled in the shadows of the gate, watching. No one paid him any heed except to remark on the size of someone’s dog, because the Grey Wolf was back in the shape he preferred best. Interpreting Tsar Ivan’s request about shape-shifting in his own way, he simply made certain that no one actually saw the change take place. After that, with his wolf-shape smaller than usual, it was easy.

  Every Rus from the youngest child to the oldest dodderer knew what a wolf looked like. But they also knew that wolves haunted the deep forests or the treeless steppes, like the one who had wreaked such destruction in the past few days. Wolves didn’t, ever, loaf on the shady side of a city square with their tongues hanging out, wagging their tails in a hopeful sort of way at passers-by.

  He even barked when the alarm-bell over the gate began a frantic clangour, although anyone watching closely might have seen that this dog was barking with the same awkward care as a man speaking a foreign language. Only a passing child noticed that at least once the barking dog cleared its throat and said, “woof!”

  Volk Volkovich the Grey Wolf was getting bold.

  If the guards on the ramparts had been warned to look out for a horde of warriors darkening the snow from one horizon to the other, they were disappointed. Only three riders came trotting slowly towards Ryazan, black and distinct against the snow, their spears reversed and wrapped from butt to hand-grip with green pine-branches, waving overhead in token of parley. But they were Tatars, not half-glimpsed shapes flitting along the skyline on their little horses but envoys who rode boldly up to the city gates, demanding entrance in the name of the Great Khan. They spoke neither Uighur nor Turku-Mongol, the two languages that might have been expected, nor did they speak in any of the Slavonic Rus dialects. The words were Farsi, the lowest form of trade-talk, and though it ensured their meaning was clear it gave another and insulting meaning to everything they said thereafter.

  The envoys were two men and a woman and except for white garments worn by the woman and drooping moustaches worn by the men, there was little to choose between the three. Except for their green-garlanded spears, none were armed. There were no cased, stubby bows of wood and horn and sinew that were as thick through the limb as a child’s arm, no quivers packed with iron-tipped arrows tempered in brine to better toughen them for punching through armour, no swords either straight or curved and above all, no armour. They wore only the conical, wide-brimmed Tatar sheepskin cap and two cross-wrapped coats laid fur-to-fur against the cold.

  Volk Volkovich sat more upright and watched as they were invited into the city of Ryazan, his head on one side and his tongue lolling for all the world like any other brainless hunting-dog. The envoys, he noted suspiciously, were all Mongols rather than Tatars, and he wondered if Prince Roman Ingvarevich knew or cared about the difference.

  Volk Volkovich knew. Though the Rus used Tatars as a convenient label for all nomadic raiders, they were only one tribe of the many absorbed into Chinghis-Khan Temujin’s empire. That these three were of the Khan’s race rather than some subordinate people made the hackles start to rise along his spine. Some cold intelligence beyond the distant hills was playing a game with live pieces. Volk Volkovich the Grey Wolf had never thought, during his dealings with Tsarevich and then Tsar Ivan, that he would find human-kind more savage than wolf-kind. He was learning otherwise.

  The envoys looked around at Ryazan and its breathlessly staring people without the interest of potential spies. Stocky, and made broader by those dense-furred coats, they had the flat, wide-cheekboned Mongol features and the slitted eyes that looked so sinister, but which the Grey Wolf knew from personal experience came from squinting into a winter gale on the steppes, where every gust of wind was like a handful of razor-blades in the face.

  His sharp ears heard the clatter of boots against the slabs of treetrunk that did duty for pavement on the street leading from the gate to the kremlin palace. Volk Volkovich swung his head around just in time for the wolf’s eyes that were so much keener than a man’s to catch a glimpse of Prince Roman Ingvarevich’s face. When the Prince reached full view of the people by the gate he was all smiles and amiable curiosity; but the set of his features when he was out of their sight had been very, very different. Roman Ingvarevich was flanked by his First Minister and his Captain of Guards, and talking hurriedly to both those worthies as he strode down from the kremlin. There was too much noise for even the Grey Wolf’s ears to sort out what was said, but the grim looks of approval prompted by those words didn’t bode well for the Tatars.

  Prince Roman Ingvarevich of Ryazan stopped well away from the three riders and planted hands on hips while his honour-guard took position all around the square and, significantly, across the gateway. The gates creaked then slowly swung shut, bars and bolts slamming into place with a heavy rattle and boom of metal against wood. One of the Tatars turned to watch, unconcerned by what he must have guessed was an ominous precaution. The Grey Wolf watched him in turn, feeling another shiver of apprehension. The man couldn’t be blind to what was happening, yet did nothing. That in turn had to mean he and his companions were expecting something of the sort. However far Roman Ingvarevich might go, they were prepared for it.

  “What do you want from us?” snapped the Prince of Ryazan, refusing to use Farsi and speaking instead in Russian. Nor did he trouble with the usual preliminary courtesies employed even to Volk Volkovich, that despised courier from the equally despised Tsardom of Khorlov.

  The Tatars gazed impassively at him, then at his Guard-Captain, his Minister, his soldiers and all the other people gathered around. It was the woman who spoke, and that was as much an insult to Roman Ingvarevich as her own failure to use a preamble of flowery compliments – or her continued use of Farsi when the very fact of her reply made it apparent that she understood Russian well enough.

  “Submission and tribute,” she said. There was a ripple of disbelief around the square among the people who knew what had been said. Among them was Volk Volkovich, who groaned inwardly and laid his head down on his paws, grateful more than ever that he wasn’t a human and a citizen of Ryazan. He wasn’t surprised; all of this matched what he knew already of Tatar diplomacy, but knowing and actually being there to see were two very different things. Especially when the diplomacy was being exercised on someone like Prince Roman Ingvarevich.

  That Prince went white, then red, at being addressed so by a Tatar and a woman, but managed to keep his voice more or less calm. “And who are you to speak to us so boldly?” he said, seeming to bite off each word and spit it out like bad meat.

  “I am shaman to clan Korjagun.” There was pride in the Tatar’s voice, whether from being a priest or because her clan had some importance. It mattered little to the Prince since now he had a third reason to be insulted.

  “A sorceress!” Roman Ingvarevich stared her up and down, curling his lower lip in a sneer, then turned to his citizens. “They send a sorceress, and a pagan sorceress at that, to treat with Christians!” He laughed derisively, and the guards and people dutifully joined in.

  “What I am is nothing,” said the Tatar woman, holding up a small metal plaque that hung on a chain around her neck, a paiza tablet of authority incised with the curling Uighur script. Even in the flat winter light its polished surface gleamed dull gold. “But I speak with the voice of the Orlok Subotai, who speaks with the voice of the Ilkhan Batu, who speaks with the voice of the Khakhan Ogotai, Khan of all Khans of the Mongols, who speaks with the voice of Tengri, God of the Eternal Blue Sky. Hear their words.”

  Prince Roman Ingvarevich looked like a man who wanted to utter a sarcastic remark, but the sonorous roll of all those names, at least some of which he recognized and feared, was enough to make him control his tongue. “We will hear them,” he said.

  “The Rus will make submission, and give tribute to the Khan of all Khans. The tribute shall be the tithe you give willingly to your Church: one-tenth of all things, be they slaves or grain or beasts. Your Church promises Para
dise in the next world. The Khan promises life in this one. Choose: bow down, or be destroyed.”

  “Those are the terms?” said Roman Ingvarevich, sounding as though he couldn’t believe the evidence of his own ears.

  “They are not terms. Terms may be negotiated. These may not.”

  “And your Khan sent you to tell us this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Three of you, alone, into our city, to tell us this?”

  “Yes.”

  “He must care little for your safety.” There was an unpleasant smile taking shape on the Prince’s full mouth, a smile that Volk Volkovich fancied had been seen before by the unfortunate Kipchaq, but the Tatars seemed indifferent to its menace.

  “We are the Khan’s hounds,” said one of the two men, speaking for the first time and using good Russian to do it. “When he tells us Come, we come and when he tells us Go, we go. And when he tells us to leap into the fire, we do as we are bidden.”

  There was a long silence after that; the Grey Wolf guessed it was mostly disbelief from listeners who could never imagine themselves doing any such thing at any lord’s command. They knew little about the Tatars.

  “We are the Khan’s arrows,” said the other man, also speaking Russian and as well as any of the various Rus who listened to him, “that he may let fly on a venture and not fear to lose, if that loss serves his purpose.”

  “If your Khan has no concern about your loss,” said Roman Ingvarevich, his voice taking on an ugly, husky tone, “then why should I disappoint him?”

  For the first time since Volk Volkovich had heard him speak, he forgot or no longer chose to use the plural of his princely dignity – and what that might mean, the Grey Wolf could only wonder. It was apparent from the man’s words that he had failed to hear the threat or promise in what the Tatar had just told him. Whatever he did now, unless to submit, would be fatally wrong.

  And being the sort of Prince he was, Roman Ingvarevich did it.

  “Seize them!” he yelled, as everyone including the Grey Wolf – and probably the Tatar emissaries – had been expecting since the conversation first began. Spear-butts swung and thudded and the three riders spilled from their saddles to sprawl at the Prince’s scarlet-booted feet. His soldiers leapt on them, lifted them, looped cords around their wrists and ankles, then jerked the knots brutally tight and let them drop back into the snow. Roman Ingvarevich of Ryazan looked down at them and smiled. “Now that,” he said, “is a better position to adopt when you speak to me. Have you anything else to say? Any other wise observations? Threats? Pleas for mercy?”

  If you’re expecting that, thought Volk Volkovich, scrambling to his feet and backing further into the shadows, then best not hold your breath while you wait.

  The Prince had just doomed himself and his entire city to whatever the Tatar army had been intending for it all along. The reason was obvious, made plain from the first by his treatment of the Kipchaq that Tsar Ivan had sent to warn him. Roman Ingvarevich was totally ignorant of the numbers he faced, because he didn’t believe what he’d been told could be the truth. Tsar Ivan himself teased his Kipchaq mercenaries for routinely doubling numbers encountered, or dangers faced, or hazards surmounted, all for the sake of more silver than he’d already paid them. But he believed them more often than not, rather than automatically dismissing every word as a lie just because of their race. The Grey Wolf suspected that the Prince of Ryazan habitually halved, and then halved again, whatever he was told by a Kipchaq. He might, just might, live long enough to realize what a fatal mistake that had been, and yield up the city before Subotai or Burundai or Batu brought their boot down and ground every living thing within its walls out of existence.

  Or then again – Volk Volkovich eyed the preparations being made – he might not.

  A prince acting in the heat of passion after an insult might have made excuses afterwards for having his guards decapitate whoever had offended him. The Tatars, themselves notorious cutters-off of heads, might have understood and forgiven if the prince in question grovelled properly before the Khan and banged his forehead against the earth in the approved fashion.

  What they would not forgive was the removal of their emissaries’ heads not with the quick sweep of sword or axe, but slowly under the teeth of a double-handed saw from the city’s lumber-yard.

  A block of timber was brought and the two male Tatars flung across it from opposite sides, with a broad plank laid flat from shoulder to shoulder across their necks to give the saw something to bite on before its blade reached flesh. At a gesture from Prince Roman Ingvarevich two guardsmen grasped the handles of the saw and went to work, until blood steamed in the cold air and sticky gobbets of flesh mingled with drifts of fresh pine sawdust and the heads rolled free at last. That messy execution had fewer witnesses at the end than at the beginning, for citizens at first fascinated and later nauseated fled in ever-increasing numbers.

  Even the Grey Wolf, his mouth watering as the scent of freshly-butchered meat filled his nostrils, regarded the proceeding as a pointless shambles. He had never taken so long over killing even armoured men, and while he could understand the Prince’s desire to strike terror into his enemies, it made sense only if the terror would do some good. No Rus could teach anything about inspiring dread to a host whose warriors, sixteen years past, had methodically, efficiently and systematically slaughtered the seven hundred thousand people crowded for safety behind the walls of the Persian city of Merv, just to encourage the next city on their line of march to surrender more readily.

  Prince Roman Ingvarevich looked on with an irritable air of vague dissatisfaction, vexed that from first to last the Tatars made no sound. There was little point in creating original methods of death when those who suffered them refused to show it.

  “And the woman, Highness?” said his Captain of Guards. The Prince broke out of some private dream and glanced at her, hoping for more reaction to the beheadings than he had seen in the men under the blade. He was disappointed.

  “Do your men want her?”

  “No, Highness.” The man spoke with urgent emphasis and Volk Volkovich, listening with pricked grey ears from well out of sight, lolled his tongue in a nasty grin. There were limits even to what the brutal and licentious soldiery would put up with, and now the deed was done they were beginning to feel the first tiny prickles of apprehension that it might have been excessive.

  “Then put her where she belongs.” The Captain looked blank for long enough to become a target for his Prince’s unfocussed frustration. “On the horse, you idiot!” The sound of the back-handed slap was louder than any other noise in the square since the soggy rasping of saw-teeth fell silent. “Do I – do we have to explain every attempt at wit before we get some sort of response?”

  The Guard-Captain shook his head, not in response to the question but to shift the stars floating across his vision. Cheated of pain from one source, Roman Ingvarevich did his best to create it elsewhere; the full weight of his arm and shoulder was behind that blow and for all his affected daintiness, the Prince of Ryazan was no scented exquisite. The Captain’s head was still ringing when he forced his mouth to say, “Shall we tie her in place?”

  “Yes. And tie that carrion to their horses as well. Then get them out of our city, and out of our sight.” Roman Ingvarevich turned away, nursing his knuckles because not even a Prince can box the ears of a man in a helmet and mail hood without suffering the consequences, then swung back with a grin tugging his lips back from his teeth. It was such a grin as men might have called wolfish, though not in the Grey Wolf’s hearing if they valued their lives.

  “No,” he said. “Take off her boots, put her in the saddle, then stitch her feet to the stirrups.”

  It was done eventually, using coarse twine forced through holes made with a bradawl, and though it took three men to hold the horse’s head, the Tatar woman herself made no more sound than her companions had done under the saw. Their headless corpses were slung unceremoniously over the
ir horses’ backs, strapped in place with stirrup leathers, and the severed heads were each tied to a loosely-flopping wrist with a braid of its late wearer’s own long hair.

  Volk Volkovich the Grey Wolf arose, yawned, stretched, and watched as the three horses and their grisly burdens were whipped away from the gates of Ryazan. He decided there would be one more big dog among the many lurking around the Tatar camp when they arrived, unnoticed for the same reason he’d gone unseen here. Tsar Ivan would also welcome a report of the past half-hour’s proceedings. But there was one place he was certain he didn’t want to remain, and that was within this city’s walls.

  Especially once the Tatars arrived…

  *

  For all it was closer than the Prince of Ryazan believed, Volk Volkovich didn’t go looking for the Tatar bok, an encampment large enough to be a city made of tents. Nor did he take even the little time that would have been required to make his report back to Tsar Ivan Aleksandrovich in Khorlov.

  But he did get out of Ryazan, and quickly. He had never seen a Tatar horde in action, but had read and heard enough before setting out on this dangerous duty to know how easily the fast-moving nomad horsemen could throw a circle of steel around their quarry, whether man or beast or city under siege. They practiced such manoeuvres in the hunting field, where the common soldiers could hone their skills with spear and bow, and the commanders of tens, of hundreds and of thousands could learn the art of tactical command.

  He also knew that retaining his proper shape of wolf, or at least of wolfish dog, was no guarantee of safety when – not if – the city fell. That dry stick Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin had personally warned him of it, driving home the message with a vigorous tapping on the page of one of his precious illuminated Persian chronicles. Chinghis-Khan’s favourite grandson had been killed during the taking of Bhamayan in Afghanistan, and in retaliation the Khan had obliterated the city so completely that when he was done with it, the site could have been ploughed and sown with grain. By his command, no head was left on any neck, neither the livestock nor the poultry nor even the dogs and cats which had survived being eaten during the siege. Even the corpses of the fallen were beheaded and their heads added to the appalling crow-haunted pyramid raised outside the vanished city as a memorial to that one young man.