The Golden Horde

by Peter Morwood

  And then there was the Summer Country. Even when things were worst, there was always the Summer Country. Ivan grinned at the Khan of the Golden Horde, at his leopards and tigers and eagles, and the Khan, not knowing his mind, grinned back.

  “The Great Ancestor Chinghis-Khan Temujin said that an empire was won from the saddle, but ruled from a throne. Hui! He did not say how much less of that empire you see from the throne. Put an old man back in his saddle, Ivan of Khorlov. Tell me a tale of adventure …”

  *

  There were three more Russian noblemen residing in Sarai. Ivan had heard the drums and trumpets sounding welcome while out riding on the steppe for the sake of exercise, and to take him out of the increasingly oppressive atmosphere hanging over the city of the Golden Horde. He’d watched their escort column wend its way down from the steppes and into the Volga basin, but the troop-leader commanding his own escort refused to let him any closer. It hardly mattered. He was considered harmless enough by now that it would be a simple matter of taking a quiet walk through Sarai’s muddy streets at some time or other when it wasn’t raining, or at least, since the autumn rasputitsa was here with a vengeance, picking a few moments when it was raining less heavily. There were never any escorts when he wandered about the city, since no man on foot could run far enough or fast enough to be out of reach before his escape was noticed. Ivan preferred that nothing about him be noticed at all.

  He didn’t trouble with the new arrivals that day, or the next, preferring to let them find out about his presence by other means. But on the morning of the third day a Russian that none of Ivan’s people had seen before presented himself at the door of the house, and was duly ushered into Ivan’s presence. The man was well dressed in the tall hat and long, flared kaftan of a highly-placed house-servant. They were dappled with rain and despite efforts to wipe them, his boots were muddy. But if he’d been dry and clean in Sarai halfway through a wet September, it would have been more cause for comment.

  “Well, fellow? You asked for the Tsar of Khorlov. Here I am.”

  The servant swept off his hat and bowed respectfully, with the easy grace that comes only with long practice. “Majesty,” he said, and Ivan hid a small smile of contentment at hearing the title so long unused. The man straightened up, returning the hat to his head and pulling a small, sealed scroll from the cuff of his glove all in the same elegant movement. “I bear an invitation from my master and his companions. They would deem it high honour if you would take wine with them.”

  Ivan said nothing at first. He broke the seals, none of which he recognized, and scanned the contents of the note. It said little more than the servant had done, except for giving him the names of the new arrivals, all boyar nobles, and those too meant little enough. “Um,” he said. “When would be felicitous for the noble gentlemen to receive me?”

  That a Tsar would even consider the convenience of mere boyaryy was high courtesy, and the servant flushed with pleasure on their behalf. “They said, Majesty, that the time is yours to choose.”

  “Indeed? Then the gentlemen must be thirsty, and would be remiss of me to keep them waiting.” Ivan stood up, grinning broadly and deliberately both to put the servant at his ease and to give him some information to bear back to his masters. Ivan of Khorlov was everything gossip reported about him, and perhaps a little more: he was too young to be a Tsar, foolishly amiable even to such lowly creatures as other people’s servants, he possessed no sense of his own lofty station, and he was always ready for a drink.

  Aleksandr Yaroslavich Nevskiy would have died before allowing such slanders to be associated with his name and reputation, but then Nevskiy was already safe enough, both in his own opinion and that of the Khan. He used Tatar soldiers as his own household troops without a second thought, and more significant still, they obeyed him. That, though he was too blind to see it, said more of what the Tatars thought of him than any number of well-edited histories and chronicles.

  And besides, these newcomers were offering wine instead of the interminable supply of kumys and vodka that was all the Tatars left him to drink. Even though Ivan made sure he spilled more from his windowsill than he allowed to pass his lips, something that tasted different to fruit-flavoured liquid fire or sour mare’s-milk would make a pleasant change.

  *

  “You haven’t bowed before the Khan in hope of gain,” said the boyar Stepan Mikhailovich.

  “Unlike Prince Aleksandr Nevskiy,” said the boyar Andrey Vladimirovich.

  “And thus we feel confident in asking you to join with us,” finished the boyar Mstislav Vasil’yevich.

  Ivan felt a chill run through him at the words. He took a small sip of wine that had suddenly lost its flavour, and looked at one then another of those eager, angry faces. The three boyaryy had been working up to saying something like this since he arrived. Ivan had been expecting it a lot sooner, since they obviously held him in as high regard as they disdained Aleksandr Nevskiy and everything the Prince of Vladimir represented. It made his skin crawl.

  Secretive little cliques were common enough among Russian noblemen. Those who weren’t part of a lord’s retinue formed mutual appreciation societies of their own, mostly as excuse for getting together in one or another’s home and having drunken parties. The main difference was that such groups were usually younger men whose lives weren’t yet weighted down with the responsibilities that plagued their seniors. Ivan had been one of those young men himself, not very long ago. Until now, with the exception of Konstantin bogatyr, the two children and Ivan himself, there were no Russians in Sarai under the age of forty – by which time Ivan hoped to have grown into something even Mar’ya Morevna might concede was sense.

  These three were showing no trace of that useful commodity. To condemn Nevskiy for collaborating so freely with the Tatars was tactless and might lead to a challenge if the Prince heard about it, but since none of the three were liegemen of the principality of Vladimir, it was scarcely treasonable behaviour. But to assume Ivan was willing to fight against the invaders because he attempted to pass off a fake crown was both stupid and incredibly dangerous. Never mind what Aleksandr Nevskiy might be told. If this trio of hotheads tried anything more violent and Ivan was involved, if only by speaking to them beforehand, then he, his family, his friends and the entire domain of Khorlov could be obliterated.

  “Join with you?” he asked cautiously. “In doing what?”

  Stepan Mikhailovich looked quickly at the other two. “We were hoping, Majesty, that you might suggest something,” he said at last. “Swords are useless against the Tatars, and walled cities no more than a trap for the people inside them. But magic …” He let the sentence trail off and gazed expectantly at Ivan.

  “Magic?” Ivan repeated, wishing his ears were playing tricks and knowing that they weren’t. It sounded as if Batu Khan wasn’t the only one in Sarai to have heard about his reputation, but at least the Khan wasn’t expecting any more from it than a fund of stories. These men were looking at him as if he was some ancient hero like Il’ya Muromets, stepped from a legend to the defence of Mother Russia.

  It was ironic to sit around a table at the heart of the Khanate of the Golden Horde, fomenting what amounted to rebellion against the rule of that same Khanate, when what had brought these three here in the first place was the intention to, as Stepan Mikhailovich callously put it, ‘bow before the Khan in hope of gain.’ They weren’t merchants so trade wasn’t an objective, nor were they hereditary princes of any lands now held by the Khan. They were opportunists, here to petition for the right to rule one or other Rus domain whose ruling family had been wiped out.

  Opportunists? Hardly. They were scavengers like the crows picking over the skull-mound outside the ruins of Chernigov, and a lot less honest about their intentions. But Ivan suspected, from the moment he sat down and accepted a cup of wine from Andrey Vladimirovich, that he was already in too deep to say so.

  What he wanted to do was fling the wine in their self-satisfied
faces and get out of this stuffy room that stank of intrigue, a stink so obvious it must soon reach the nostrils of the Tatars. And that was just what he dared not do. He’d been in contact with the conspiracy, and like a contagious disease it had marked him for both sides to see. An abrupt departure or even a flat refusal to be a part of their plans – if they were asking advice on sorcery, those plans were already convoluted enough to strangle in – and these three would have no hesitation in killing him. He would be a traitor, a collaborator, a spy for the Tatars, or simply someone whose mouth needed to be shut. Ivan had been in checkmate before, but only on a wooden board. Never in reality, and never so completely as this.

  The alternative was to stay, to control the wilder flights of fancy with a splash of cold reason and, as the source of the magic they were so keen to use, be cautiously willing and carefully unable to do anything of the sort.

  The first thing was to tell them about the gathered crowns of the conquered domains, and why he’d put his life at risk trying to avoid handing over another, and after that… But there was no ‘after that’, because Mstislav Vasil’yevich actually licked his lips with anticipation at the thought of the massed power of two centuries and more of Russian rulers in Sarai under the Khan’s nose. “The damned Tatars don’t understand what they’ve got here,” he said.

  Neither do you, thought Ivan. I’ve been speaking for ten minutes, and not one of you has listened to more than you want to hear. “And I think that’s just as well, don’t you?” he said.

  The boyar looked at him sharply, then grinned. “Oh, indeed. But it’s like a mine dug under a city wall, waiting for a single spark to bring the whole thing tumbling down. Even if they knew what power was here, they wouldn’t know how to use it.”

  “Mstislav Vasil’yevich, what did I say that makes you think I do?”

  Ivan got another sharp look, but no expressions of surprise from the others. It looked instead as if they were silently congratulating him for not giving away any information without good reason. In fact it looked to Ivan as if these three, or the other two at least, would put their favourable interpretation on anything he might or might not do. “You’re widely known as a skilled sorcerer who slew Baba Yaga and Koshchey the Undying —”

  “In the first case she fell off a bridge,” said Ivan. That was ‘through’ a bridge, but who cared? His words came out a little too fast, and even in his own ears he sounded like someone making an excuse. “In the second, he was trampled by his own horse. Neither makes me a sorcerer.”

  “Perhaps not.” Stepan Mikhailovich sounded tolerant and understanding in the most indulgent sense of both terms. It was as if the boyar’s next action would be to reach out and pat him on the head for spinning a good yarn and if he did, Ivan decided he would break one of the man’s fingers to teach him respect. “But you can’t deny, as Aleksandr Nevskiy has done, that when you went up against the Teutonic Knights on the ice —”

  “I had a Firebird to help me. And if you paid proper heed to the old tales, you would know how little they care about the affairs of men. This one owed me a debt of gratitude,” he didn’t explain further since the affair was long past and none of their business, “but I wouldn’t summon one for such a venture as this.” Ivan hesitated, thinking of what he’d been told last time. “I wouldn’t care to Summon one at all. They don’t appreciate it, and compared to an angry Firebird you might find the Tatars preferable. Anyway, my wife is the sorcerer in Khorlov, and what little I know I learned from her.”

  The boyaryy exchanged more significant glances and muttered together for longer than Ivan liked, then Andrey Vladimirovich came out of the huddle and shrugged. “It’s a pity she isn’t here, Majesty. She would have been very useful.” Now it was Ivan’s turn to give the boyar a hard stare because he didn’t care for the man’s phrasing and was within a breath of saying so, except that Andrey was still talking – and one of the words he spoke drove any thoughts of insult out of Ivan’s mind.

  “Chernobog?” he said. “You want to summon Chernobog? Are you three out of your minds, or just drunk on too much wine and too many wild ideas? Chernobog… Do you truly understand what you’re contemplating?”

  Andrey Vladimirovich glowered at Ivan. “It might surprise you,” he said sullenly, “but I understand exactly what I mean. I wonder if you do, Majesty.”

  Ivan stealthily braced one foot against the leg of the table, ready to kick himself backwards, and transferred his wine-cup to his left hand so that the right was free for his sword. His right earlobe was throbbing with the memory of an old wound. Ivan had heard his title spoken in that tone before, and he’d killed the man who spoke it.

  “Explain,” he said. It wasn’t a threat, though if the three noblemen took it as such and calmed down as a result he had no objection.

  Stepan Mikhailovich did at least. Ivan didn’t see, but he heard as the boyar rammed his elbow into Andrey’s side. “Your pardon, Majesty, but we thought you would recognize we meant nothing but good.”

  “All right.” Ivan forced himself to be calm and listen to their reasoning. “Tell me how anything to do with That One can be good.” He realized too late that he should have nominated a spokesman, because the three-part harmony of comment and correction that seemed to accompany any decision made it difficult to hear.

  The trio, armed with dangerously shaky knowledge gleaned from ballads, myths and legends, had seized on what Ivan had said concerning the pre-eminence of darkness at this time of year. He, like Mar’ya Morevna, had meant it as a warning, but like many fanatics these noblemen had heard only of a potential force for destruction they could turn against their enemies. Their explanation had all the enthusiasm that led Western knights to go on crusade; but to Ivan’s mind it had been as carefully edited as one of Aleksandr Nevskiy’s court chronicles would be shorn of any mention of heroism besides his own.

  Chernobog was the Black God from a time before Russia became Christian, and though he had fallen from favour over the years he was still a Russian god, not one imported from outside. Since not just the people but the very land of Russia was under threat from the Tatar invaders, the three boyaryy had convinced themselves he would support those whose ancestors had worshipped him in olden times.

  “When the White Christ came,” said Stepan Mikhailovich, crossing himself, “the old gods were set aside. But they weren’t destroyed, and it’s said they haunt the shadowed corners of the world, remembering what they were. And if men call on them for aid, they listen.”

  “It is said” and “according to legend” were two phrases Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna despised, since they excused any failure to find out the truth. The Lord of the Dark Places might be less eager to help than these three conspirators believed. He’d read all about it in the book Enciervanul Doamnisoar, and since its whole purpose was to warn about the consequence of summoning demons, a long-forgotten god might have degenerated into something far from pleasant.

  “What about the God whose sign you just made?” he asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear Stepan say it aloud, and the tone in which he said it.

  “The people have been calling on God and Christ and Mary and the Saints to save them since the Tatars first rode into Russia,” said Stepan. “What good has it done them? They were told the Tatars are God’s Scourge on the unrighteous and all this is a punishment, without knowing what they did to deserve it! Only the bishops and the monasteries have profited, first from being paid to pray for safety, then by being exempted from the Tatar taxes.”

  What Ivan heard was regret, anger and frustration. What he didn’t hear, and was glad of it, was Stepan or any of the others refer to ‘the Christian God’ like something alien. He was half-hearted in his own devotions, but that would have been truly disturbing. He knew about the danger, at such a time as this when the structures of the world stretched thin, of a lack of something to believe in. It didn’t have anything to do with religion, neither the Christian Church, nor the Moslems, nor the Jews or even, he sup
posed, the shamanist beliefs of Tatars themselves. But without something, even so simple as the blind self-confidence of an undefeated bogatyr champion, there were things in the blackness of Beyond that would slip into an empty space like a blowfly into a meat-store, and leave all rotten in their passing.

  “All right,” he said, “if you want to call on aid from powers of long ago, then why not Belobog the White God?” He wasn’t expecting the looks of scorn from all three boyaryy.

  “Call on a bright power at the dark of the year?” said Andrey Vladimirovich. “What chance of success in that?”

  “Belobog was a sky-god,” said Mstislav Vasil’yevich, “like the one the Tatars bow to. How do we know he would help us and not them?”

  Stepan Mikhailovich said nothing at all. He just smiled, and his smile and the layers of meaning behind it soured the wine in Ivan’s stomach. He was more grateful than ever that he didn’t know how to help this madness, but it was clear that something would have to be done to put the crowns in the treasure-house beyond reach.

  And he didn’t know how.

  The three watched him slam his chair back from the table, stand up and walk to the door, all without making any move to impede him. But as Ivan shot the bolts back and flung it open, half-surprised the corridor outside wasn’t lined with Tatar soldiers sent to kill them all, Stepan called his name.

  “Tsar Ivan,” the man said, “we can rely on you to keep silent, I think. You’re one of us now, like it or not, and nothing you could say will make the Tatar khan believe otherwise. But just in case you think you might —”