The Golden Horde

by Peter Morwood

  The city hadn’t been built so much as it had grown – like a poisonous fungus, he thought – on the old Bulgar lands near the mouth of the Volga, eighty miles upstream from where the river poured into the waters of the Caspian Sea. Once it had been no more than just another bok, a vast trading camp whose walls enclosed hundreds upon hundreds of hunched felt tents, whose magnificence rested solely on the plunder strewn haphazardly here and there as magpies might strew shiny gewgaws.

  That had changed. Ilkhan Batu of the Golden Horde wasn’t known as Sain Khan for nothing. His splendour in dress, his fondness for jewels and adornments, his extravagant generosity when giving feasts for his commanders and lieutenants, all that had gained him the title ‘Splendid’; but it was what he had done to Sarai that confirmed it.

  Amragan tarkhan had related all that, in the friendly and slightly relieved fashion of a man glad to be home after a task which had turned out more difficult than at first suspected. Ivan had smiled and nodded thanks for the information, as he had nodded and smiled almost all the way from Khorlov, with just enough vinegar spiking the honey to make the Turkic envoy appreciate what a quiet, well-behaved hostage he was all the rest of the time. Hostage, not guest. He made sure to remember the difference even as he took pains not to show it. If any man had the wealth of empires at his disposal, and the slaves taken from those empires to do his bidding, and enough constructive stirring of his imagination to want to live in something other than a felt yurt, then that man could make a city like Sarai.

  It wasn’t a compliment.

  Sarai was still a trading camp, just as it had been in the days of the Volga Bulgars a hundred years and more ago. It was still an infestation of tents encircled by a wall, and even at this distance Ivan could smell it. The city stank as badly as every other Tatar camp he had ever encountered. But now, after four years of occupation by Batu Sain Khan, four years of backbreaking work by only God knew how many slaves, it was more than a mere bok on the steppes.

  The walls were no longer sun-dried mud bricks but worked stone, an elaborate ring of fortifications, battlements, ramparts and ditches surrounding buildings of half a dozen styles from half a dozen conquered countries. Ivan had seen none of those styles in their proper place, but he had read Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin’s chronicles and studied their tiny, beautiful illustrations. Even from where he sat he could recognize curved, peaked, red-painted roofs from Kai-ting and Tung-huan and the other fallen cities of what had been Sung China. Here was elaborate latticework in carved brick and inlaid patterns of blue and turquoise tiles from Bokhara and Samarkand in Khwarizmid Persia. There were low, blocky, ponderous houses, each one its own fortress, like the caravanserais of Kashgar and Khokand in the Syr Daria at the Roof of the World.

  Ivan knew them all, the strange names from the strange places; places as far away as last night’s dream, places he’d wanted to visit, places with names like strange jewels, capable of creating their own bright images from mere black letters and coloured inks on a sheet of parchment. Names to conjure with, and make a far more wholesome magic than the jarring syllables of true sorcery. Images like the fortress of the Bala Hissar and the great port at Basra; the weavers of Isfahan and Tashkent, the swordsmiths of Nishapur and Khandahar; the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the crags of Koord-Kabul, the ship-lined curve of the Golden Horn beyond Byzantium, and the gleaming spires of the Hagia Sofia.

  Ivan drew in a deep breath and sighed, frowning as the heavy stench of Sarai filled his nostrils. Long ago, before the realities of being a Tsar’s son had begun to weigh upon him, he had wanted to be a bogatyr. Not one of the wretched self-seeking political creatures who now made up the greater part of his druzhinya retinue, but a true hero-knight, a wanderer, a journeyer to the far places of the world.

  And now they were here before him.

  But not really here, because they had been built by men whose minds and bodies had been stolen from where they belonged, so that the buildings they made were no more than a cheat and a deception, like false, cheap jewellery of paste and coloured glass. Tsar Ivan Aleksandrovich of Khorlov hadn’t been stolen like the slaves and artisans. There were no ropes binding him, no chain shackling him like a leashed dog to Amragan tarkhan’s saddle. He had come and would enter as he had been invited, freely and of his own will.

  Ivan smiled, a smile that was mere skinning back of lips from teeth in a way Volk Volkovich would have been proud of. Once invited within those walls, so the old legends said, he would be like one of the oupirchiy, those who once were dead and now were risen again – and that at least was true enough, thanks to Koshchey the Undying. He would be free to come and go as pleased him; to do what pleased him; to visit whatever mischief as seemed right and proper on the people there…

  He smiled again and leaned forward in his high-peaked saddle, gazing down on Sarai through eyes narrowed by more than the glare of the sun as its light pierced like a sword-blade through the western clouds, and entertained the thoughts of a Tatar voevoda who would see not a city but a nest of ants. As he stroked the lashes of his riding-whip slowly through his fingers, he dreamed a secret, ugly dream from long ago, of his boot-heel coming down, and down, and down again until that nest and all the ants within it had been stamped from the face of the wide white world. Sarai, and Khanbalik, and even Karakorum on the high steppes of Central Asia; all of them, and all their people, no more than a bloody smear on the crushed wet earth.

  Ivan played with that for a few moments, then his mouth twisted in distaste as a shudder ran through him. He could do all those things in a red rage; but coldly, methodically, in the Tatar fashion …?

  No.

  Keeping the screams of afterwards out of his dreams was a trick he hadn’t yet learned, and he was in no hurry to learn it. A good conqueror didn’t make a good Tsar, and he had no wish to be remembered as Ivan the Terrible. Someone else in later years could have that title, and be welcome to it. The word grozniy had many layers of meaning in Russian – menacing, threatening, awe-inspiring – but none of them were kindly meant. Only someone ruled by the useless, short-lived passions of an adolescent, like Aleksandr the Great, who had been Ivan’s hero until he learned the truth behind the glittering legend, could truly do what needed to be done and still have any hope of sleeping at night. Because he didn’t truly understand or care about what he was doing; because everyone but his own people were just nests of ants…

  And did crushing one nest bring another back to life?

  No.

  So why bother? Surely it was better to hold back and watch that nest go about its business because you, and you alone, knew you could have flattened it, and held back because you were so much better, stronger and wiser than the ants who called themselves the rulers of that nest.

  Except that killing was easier, destruction was simpler, and it was more easily understood by more people than any amount of grand, merciful gestures they would only see as weakness. Ivan grinned down at Sarai, a horrible, humourless grin like any one of the thousands of skulls piled up outside Chernigov, and wondered who would understand what in a thousand years. Who would really care? He shrugged, and dismissed the matter from his mind.

  Broken clouds like great grey sailing ships were sliding heavily across the sky. Ivan watched them with gloomy indifference. They’d been threatening rain all day, and already a thin drizzle was sweeping over the city, hanging from the lowering heavens like a skein of fine grey silk. Such showers marched now and then across the steppes, barely enough to lay the dust, but that would change. Rasputitsa, the time of bad roads, was on the way. The autumn rains were overdue, and they would be excessive when they arrived. Right now there was a certain fitness to the concept of Tengri the Blue Sky hiding his face and weeping heavy tears on Sarai.

  “A pity it’s no more than drizzle,” said Mar’ya Morevna behind him. Ivan hid a start of surprise as best he could, so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard her approach, and twisted around in his saddle.

 
“You want to get wet?”

  “Never mind the wet. I wouldn’t object to a good thunderstorm.”

  “Bored with the rain already? God, what will you be like when it’s been falling non-stop for a week?”

  “Vanya, I …”

  “What?” Ivan saw her shoulders slump in a sort of reverse shrug, and bit his own lip as he realized why. His immediate, unthinking sharpness had been part of an unfortunate family characteristic he shared with his sisters. In the right mood, any of the Khorlovskiy could cuddle a domestic disagreement like children with a favourite toy. Now that they were in sight of Sarai, all the fears he’d hidden so well were beginning to surface and Ivan was in that mood. The true annoyance came from knowing it, knowing how to prevent it, and still displaying an instinctive talent for saying the wrong thing in the wrong tone at just the right time to be most hurtful.

  Mar’ya Morevna had tried to patch up the squabble, and his thoughtless response only served to make him feel worse, more irritable, and more inclined to continue it until matters could be resolved on his terms instead of hers. Small wonder that all Tsar Aleksandr’s children were known for their peaceful family lives, free of petty frictions that plagued ordinary folk. They avoided cause for discord as a reformed drunkard tried to avoid the bottle, because quarrels of the intensity they could maintain for days at a time might lead to actual bloodshed. Ivan muttered an imprecation at himself under his breath.

  Like Mar’ya Morevna about the Grey Wolf, simply saying I apologize was a more difficult task than he could face right now. They knew each other that well at least. The apologies would be made sooner or later, and they might have more value later than not. Hastily saying nothing but the words – just making the proper noises at what seemed the proper time – counted for nothing unless they were meant sincerely, and that sincerity wasn’t for public display. Later, perhaps. Somewhere behind closed doors. He could think of nothing worse than baring his soul in plain sight and hearing of the entire caravan, because it seemed that he and his wife were the focus of attention for every idler and for a good number of those who should have had better things to do. Ivan had never been one for wearing his heart on his sleeve, but Mar’ya Morevna was the only woman he’d ever met in all his life who could tear that heart right out of his chest and leave him unharmed.

  “Start again, Mary’ushka,” he managed at last. “And try to forget” – and forgive – “everything I said.”

  Mar’ya Morevna gazed levelly at him with those blue-grey eyes, and Ivan felt as he’d often done before, that she was looking right inside his head and reading the unspoken thoughts from the very surface of his brain. If that was so, then surely she’d also seen what he would have said had they been alone, in some private place where a Tsar could be just another man. And perhaps it was true after all, because the cool sadness in her eyes thawed like ice in sunshine, and though she made no mention of it, Ivan knew his hard words had been forgiven.

  “I was wishing for thunder,” she said as though merely continuing an interrupted conversation. “Since we’re going to be rained on, we might as well have some drama to go with it.”

  “Indeed?” Ivan looked at the heavy sky, then back at Mar’ya Morevna, and raised his eyebrows slightly. “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  “Tengri’s displeasure.”

  “Displeasure about us? What are we to a Tatar god, or him to the Rus?”

  “A token of warning, maybe. According to what few sources I’ve been able to question, thunder’s the only thing the Chingisid line are afraid of. Chinghis-Khan Temujin was supposed to have some especial reverence for the Blue-Sky god. Any sign of irritation from Up There was taken personally, and Ilkhan Batu is the old butcher’s grandson.”

  “I see,” said Ivan, and did, for once. “If we rode into Sarai to the accompaniment of a good roll on Tengri’s drums, and some juicy rumour was planted to get to Batu’s ears, then it might give us some extra weight during whatever bargaining needs done later.”

  “Or it might just get us all killed out of hand,” said Mar’ya Morevna dryly, though from the sour smile that accompanied her words, it didn’t look as if the threat concerned her much.

  *

  Even when the rain died away, and with it any chance of what Ivan had called the Sky-god’s drums, there were drums enough to keep their ears occupied for the next while. The Tatar band had been busy this past few minutes, unwrapping their instruments from the oiled silk that protected them from inclement weather. Now there were shrill squeaking noises as reeds were checked for damp and sullen rumblings as the heads of the great naccara kettledrums were re-tensioned, then in eerie silence, directed by nothing more than movements of Amragan tarkhan’s yak-tail standard, the column closed up from its straggling line of march into tight military formation.

  Finally the Turk gave a signal for it to advance beyond the crest of the escarpment and into plain view of Sarai, where the silence came to an end. The band played, as it had done during the approach to Khorlov: a squeal of shawms, a rumble of drums, a brazen shout of trumpets. But this time, there was a reply.

  When the first flare of music from the marching column died away and only the distant twinkling spearpoints of the sentries moved along the ramparts of Sarai, there came an answer from the mighty horns and drums of the Court of the Golden Horde. That sound, scream and thunder blended together in one single awesome blast of noise, was both terrible and splendid. It rolled across the flood-plain of the river Volga, was caught and channelled by the valley carved through centuries from the face of Moist-Mother-Earth, and smote like a physical force against those who approached the city of the Splendid Khan. It was a sound of welcome in the ears of the Tatars who had gone forth and returned, but an ominous warning of power beyond human comprehension to those who came to bow and ask for favours.

  Only those who were too young to understand the layers of meaning behind it could truly enjoy that huge magnificence, and there were only two such in the entire caravan. Nikolai and Anastasya Khorlovskiy had been allowed out of their wagon and onto horseback for the entry into Sarai, and now they bounced in the saddles of their small ponies, clapping their hands in wonder at the sights and sounds laid out before them.

  Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna looked at one another across the heads of their children, and though no words were spoken, their quarrel wasn’t merely forgiven but laid aside once and for all. It was as if the awesome sound of the Khan’s music had reminded them of how insignificant their own disagreement was in the face of such an adversary, and the subject of that quarrel hadn’t ridden with them this two days past.

  Amragan tarkhan passed no remark about Volk Volkovich’s absence. The Turk had made little enough comment about his presence that it was likely all Russians looked the same to him, and one more or less was unworthy of his attention. At least, he’d said nothing about the man. However, Amragan and several of his Farsi-speaking lieutenants had been cursing the presence of a ‘damned big wolf’ this two days past. One of the column’s outriders had failed to appear the morning after his night on duty. For some hours there had been little concern; even a Tatar pony could miss its footing at night, and on a couple of past occasions the night-picket had come trailing in near noon, bruised and muddy, leading a limping horse.

  But not this time.

  There had been a search, and someone had stumbled across marks in an area of soft earth. Both sets of tracks had been made by creatures running at full speed, and the unshod hoofs of the outrider’s horse were distinctive enough. But beside them were the pawmarks of a wolf. That was all. There was no sign of a scuffle, no blood, no discarded clothing and not even a drag-trace to indicate that the missing remains of man or horse had been taken away. Just the double line of tracks that ended with shocking abruptness two full strides short of the end of that betraying bare ground, almost as if some hand had reached down from the sky to snatch up wolf and horse together, if any hand would dare to snatch up the wolf that left
such tracks as these.

  Its pad-prints could barely be spanned by a full-grown man’s fingers spread as wide as they would go, something demonstrated several times by several different people, each of them more nervous than the last. That was indeed a ‘damned big wolf’, impossibly big, because those tracks meant it stood maybe four feet high at the shoulder. It was a good guess. Both Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna knew exactly how good, and took malicious pleasure in speculating just how much bigger than the biggest guess this wolf might really be and thus how unlikely it was that the maker of those tracks had been ‘just’ a wolf. Every Tatar in the column, and most of the Russians as well, had been in a state of apprehension bordering on terror for the past two days.

  Only Ivan, his wife and his children were unconcerned, and all of them knew better than to say a word about it. The missing Tatar outrider, or what was left of him, was probably in the Summer Country by now, and so was Volk Volkovich, with clothing and a mount that wouldn’t mark him out as Russian. The Grey Wolf hadn’t confided what he planned to do to anyone else, but Ivan was sure it would prove…

  Interesting.

  He bowed low in his saddle, and with a courtly gesture to Mar’ya Morevna, invited her to ride beside him down to Sarai and into the Court of the Golden Horde.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sarai, capital of the Khanate of the Golden Horde;

  September, 1243 A.D.