First, though, he had to stay alive for the next hour.
Moving as fast as Igor, Shea dashed for the nearest stairway. He was too late. The inner gate to the courtyard flew open, knocking several defenders sprawling. What seemed like an army of men in Igor’s colors swarmed in.
Shea whirled and headed for the other stairway on his side of the courtyard. Whoever the new arrivals were, they weren’t friendly. Had Oleg Nikolaevich turned traitor?
As Shea took the stairs two at a time, an arrow whistled across the courtyard from the far wall. It stuck in his mail and only pricked his skin. He came down even faster after that, knowing that jumping down like Errol Flynn made a great movie shot but would probably sprain his ankle.
Several more arrows passed close enough to Shea for him to hear the whistle. Then the archer gave up, as if he couldn’t tell friend from foe.
Shea sympathized. He had the same problem. Everyone was in Igor’s colors, although one side was closer to the inner gate and one closer to the outer. Shea decided to assume the inner group was Igor’s men, the good guys. He also saw that they were outnumbered at least two to one.
He hurried toward them, joining their ranks just as the other group charged. None of the defenders turned to fight him, and he suspected why. With only a mail shirt, and no surcoat, he had no place to show colors, and his basket-hilted saber was now fairly well known.
What bothered him about the next couple of minutes was that none of the attackers seemed to bother with him either. Did they expect to find somebody dressed like him on their side, and if so, how?
Shea decided to settle that point right now.
“Forward, for Igor of Seversk?” he shouted. Several men around him took up the cry. Several others decided that he’d proclaimed himself an enemy, and charged.
The two groups collided. Shea found himself ducking under the swing of an axe. The axeman thought he was inside Shea’s sword’s reach and drew a dagger. Shea thrust clumsily but effectively upward, catching the axe-man under the chin. The wound made quite a mess and put the man out of the fight even if it might take a while to kill him.
Shea slashed and thrust his way back and forth across the courtyard, as vigorously as he dared. The two lines were breaking up and it was almost impossible to tell friend from foe even down on the ground. Everybody was now shouting “Igor of Seversk!” or some other battle cry; Shea began to think he might have made the confusion worse rather than better.
He got through several encounters with no damage to himself and some to his opponents, although he didn’t think he’d actually put anybody down for good except the first man. The saber wasn’t the world’s best armor-chopper, but it gave him a useful advantage against anyone who didn’t think of swords having points.
Working on that bogatyr reputation was all very well, but something smelled wrong. Something smelled magical.
Had someone put the see-the-expected spell on the gate and courtyard? And if they had could Shea break it in about two seconds, which was the longest interval he’d had between opponents? Otherwise he’d be the latest sorcerer to be run through for poor spelling.
Here came another man. Shea thought be saw Mikhail Sergeivich under the helm, but he’d already fought a couple of men who had the appearance of ones he’d sparred with in the practice yard.
“Wizard! This is your doing!” Mikhail’s voice, too — but the swordcut he launched at Shea wasn’t aimed at a friend.
Shea parried, the swords slammed together hilt to hilt, then the psychologist disengaged and opened the distance. He had reach and a point, and a fat lot of good either would do if they killed one of Igor’s captains!
Sparks flew twice more, before realization flickered on Mikhail’s face. He sprang back; Shea let him go; they both lowered their points and stood, staring and breathing hard.
“What’s happening? Who’s fighting whom?” Shea panted. He took another step backward and brought his heel up against a fallen body. It wasn’t the first one.
“Our men have gone mad! They fight each other.” From the dazed way he spoke, Mikhail Sergeivich hadn’t had time to think much.
Suspicion turned to blazing certainty in Shea’s gut and burned its way to his brain. “Mount guard,” he told the Rus. “I can stop it.”
He didn’t dare sheathe his sword, but kept his guard down. Gesturing with the sword in his right hand, he recited:
“O would some power the giftie gie us
To see the truth the spell hides frae us!
What friends, what foes do battle wi’ us
To us be shown!”
Shea could detect no change in the fading sun or clouds, but everything looked a bit brighter. He could see small differences in the appearance and the armor of the fallen. As he caught his breath and looked around, he saw the living change also. Some still bore Igor’s device on their shields, but others had their shields covered.
Mikhail Sergeivich looked a trifle less hostile. Before he could say anything a scuffle on the ramparts made them both look up. Euphrosinia Yaroslavena and a boy of about twelve, daggers in hand, grinned triumphantly at a prisoner between two guards.
Mikhail Sergeivich smiled too, or at least moved his lips. All around them the strange swordsmen were drawing back toward the outer gate.
A door in the wall between the two courtyards burst open. Igor charged through it at the head of bloodstained men moving too fast to be counted. The prince still wore his riding clothes, but carried his sword and wore a helmet at least two sizes too large for him. All were stained with blood.
The attackers recoiled from Igor. That left the prince a clear path to the gate. In a moment the last avenue of retreat was blocked — and a moment after that the strange men were dropping their weapons and lowering their shields.
Igor followed everyone’s glance at the ramparts. “Glory to God!” Igor exclaimed. A smile split his face. Then It vanished as he recognized the prisoner.
“Bring him down.”
While the guards did so, the prince looked around the court, apparently counting the dead. His own men cordoned off the prisoners. Shea wiped and sheathed his saber, but Mikhail Sergeivich stayed at his elbow, his longsword still in his hand.
The guards shoved the prisoner, his hands bound behind him, through the archway. The princess and Vladimir Igorovich followed. Igor hugged Euphrosinia tightly, and she didn’t seem to mind the blood.
Igor smiled at his son. “Did you capture him?”
“Well, I helped” Vladimir said. “I was in Mother’s outer chamber when he broke in. He kept trying to grab Mother, and I kept trying to stab him, and finally the guards came, If I’d had my own sword . . .” His voice trailed off.
“You shall have one, of the finest Frankish steel.” The pleasure Vanished from Igor’s voice as he stared at the prisoner. “Sviatoslav Borisovich! Rebellion? From you, cousin?”
The prisoner stared at his cousin and prince with a corpse’s eyes. “I thought to take Seversk by guile.” He stopped.
Prince Igor looked at the prisoners, then gestured at one. The guards brought him over. “What were your orders?” Igor asked.
“To seize the castle, most especially the inner parts and the armory, slay you and Prince Vladimir, and take the Princess Euphrosinia alive,” the soldier answered dully.
“You knew that this was treason,” the prince stated.
“He was our lord.”
Oleg Nikolaivich now entered the court, accompanying a man with a bloody bandage on his arm. “Sergei Ivanovich is one of the scribes assisting — who assisted — your steward, Your Highness. You should hear him,” Oleg’s voice was soft with tightly leashed anger.
In a low voice that grew stronger as he continued, Sergei Ivanovich told how the wagons supposedly bringing Sviatoslav’s taxes contained weapons and armed men. They had slain the steward, seized the storehouses, and opened the gate to the inner kremlin.
“I lay as if dead from a wound,” the scribe said. “The
boyar ordered that word be brought to him when Your Highness, Prince Vladimir, and the princess were taken. But he also said, ‘Make sure it’s Prince Igor’s men you’re fighting.’”
Murmurs and gestures of aversion followed this, but Igor paid no heed. “What demon possessed you, cousin? Even if You had succeeded, do you think the boyars of Seversk would have accepted you as prince? Or Vsevolod, or the Prince of Kiev?”
“I was told there was a man of power here, a bogatyr, who hated you. He would have given me your semblance until all enemies to my rule were either slain or won over.”
A good many stares showing both understanding and hostility turned in Shea’s direction.
“Not this man” Mikhail Sergeivich said. “He fought our enemies and broke the spell. I saw him.” He looked at Shea, “Where is Rurik Vasilyevich?”
“In our chamber the last I saw of him.”
“Bring him down,” Igor ordered.
“May I go up, Your Highness?” Shea spoke low, to keep his voice from shaking with the knowledge of what Chalmers had done. But Harold Shea would not desert him. Neither of them was Igor’s man, after all.
Igor considered “Disarm and bind him,” he ordered. “Let neither of them speak or act, and bring them both back.”
Mikhail Sergeivich unbuckled Shea’s swordbelt and tossed it to a guard. He gestured, and another guard came over, bound Shea’s hands with a rawhide thong, and gagged him with another. The two marched him off.
At the door of their chamber Mikhail marched him in, barely two seconds after his, “Open in the prince’s name!” Fortunately, the door was not latched.
Chalmers was sitting calmly, but he was obviously shocked at the spectacle of Shea In bonds. “Take them off?” he ordered.
Then he recognized Mikhail Sergetvich, and Prince Igor’s device. His shoulders slumped just a trifle.
That was enough to convince Mikhail Sergeivich. He grabbed Chalmers and tied his hands. Being out of rawhide, he took the gag off Shea and used it on Chalmers.
“Just cut that one’s throat if he squeaks,” Mikhail told the guard.
The augmented party returned to the courtyard, where, in addition to those they’d left, they found the Patriarch and a man who had to be an executioner; he held a huge two-handed sword.
Chalmers and Shea were shoved to the front rank of the prisoners. Mikhail Sergeivich exchanged a few words with Igor.
“Sviatoslav Borisovich,” Igor said, “do you know either of these men?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“Rurik Vasilyevich, do you know this man?” The guard removed Chalmers gag. “No, Your Highness,” he practically spat.
“Do you, Egorov Andreivich?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“Who told you then, that there was one here who would work with you?”
Sviatoslav was silent.
“Sviatoslav Borisovich, boyar of Seversk,” Igor pronounced. “You did not pay the tax due the prince of Seversk. For that, triple taxes will be collected from your estate.
“You caused the death of my steward, and thirteen of my guards. For that you owe a blood price of eighty grivnas for the steward, and forty for each guard. You also owe a blood price for every wounded man.
“Finally, you attempted to slay the prince of Seversk and his family. For this, your estates are forfeit, as is your life, if I see fit to take it.
“I shall not take your life, Sviatoslav Borisovich. Instead, you shall be blinded, Before you are blinded, you will see the deaths of the men you led into treason. That is the last thing you will ever see.”
The Patriarch said a prayer for those about to be executed, and two guards flung several bales’ worth of straw at the executioner’s feet. Fifteen times a man was forced to the straw, and fifteen times the executioner struck. He turned his blade and honed the other edge after the eighth man, but never missed his stroke.
Shea did not enjoy his front-row view of this expertise. The only things he could be grateful for were that this brawl had started well before dinnertime, so he had nothing in his stomach to lose, and that Mikhail Sergeivich was holding him upright. He got one look at Chalmers, obliquely away from him, and did not risk what composure he had left by looking again. He found an angle of the rampart he could focus on, and kept his attention there.
The blinding was worse. The bodies were removed, and the straw swept up and fired, along with some wood. Irons were heated, then taken out —
Shea kept his attention firmly on the rampart. He heard a gasp, then a throat-tearing scream that echoed around the courtyard and died away to whimpering. The smell of burned flesh joined the reek of blood. Mikhail Sergeivich’s hand trembled on his arm.
Sviatoslav was led out of the yard, still whimpering. Igor turned to Reed Chalmers.
“Fifteen men are dead, and one is blind, for which you hear some blame. Confess your part in this.”
Underneath his caution, Chalmers had courage. “A man, none of these, approached me and offered to return the Lady Florimel to me if I helped him. If not, he said she would be sold beyond the Volga and I would never get her back.”
Had Reed actually watched the executions?
“How do you know he was none of these?” Igor asked.
“He looked to have Polovets blood, Your Highness.”
“And you believed him?”
“I couldn’t take the chance that he was lying, Your Highness.”
“What did you agree to do?”
“To cast a spell, so that strangers could enter the palace without being questioned. Further orders would have been given me when the palace was taken.”
“You knew, then, that you were dealing with my enemies?”
“It was for my wife, Your Highness.”
From the look on Igor’s face, Shea knew he had better say something before the prince pronounced sentence.
“Your Highness,” Shea managed, hoping that Mikhail Sergeivich would keep his dagger sheathed, “I swear to you that Rurik Vasilyevich has done nothing out of malice to you, but only for the sake of his wife. Among us, the marriage bond is strong. A man who will not risk his honor to rescue his wife has no honor at all.”
“A man who will take the word of a Polovets also has no sense,” Igor said. “And with thirteen dead and more wounded men, it will be harder for me to rescue Yuri Dimitrivich’s household.”
Shea knelt, awkwardly because of his hands. “I beg you to spare his life, Your Highness. We can’t pay your blood price in grivnas, only in service. When we work together, we can do much more than either of us can alone. Won’t you spare him to recover your losses, if nothing else?”
George Raft could not have improved on the smile Igor’s face wore. “He stands condemned, but I will pardon him if you defeat the Polovtsi for me without more loss of men. Or, if men are lost, if you pay their blood price — in grivnas.
“I place no punishment on you, Egorov Andreivich. Mikhail Sergeivich bears witness that you fought for me, and you are free to accept or refuse for your comrades sake. If you succeed, he is free. If you do not succeed, and die in the attempt, his punishment stands but you shall have a warrior’s grave. If you do not succeed, and live, I can think of no punishment greater than that you watch your comrade quartered on the execution ground.
“Do you accept?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Free him.” Mikhail Sergeivich hauled Shea to his feet, and cut his bonds. “Take Rurik Vasilyevich to the penitents’ cells beneath the basilica. Keep him guarded, but I doubt he can work sorcery there. And Egorov Andreivich,” Igor concluded, “you will go to the barracks, where you can be watched.”
The royal trio swept off, and the rest began to carry out their orders.IV
Harold Shea swore as his horse shied from yet another balky mule. He had been in the saddle for what seemed like weeks, certainly long enough to learn the difference between riding with a war party stripped for action, and riding herd on a cavalcade of mercha
nts. The dust from a long line of horses, pack and riding mules, carts and wagons, and a fair bit of foot traffic kept his throat constantly dry. He was reaching for his waterskin just as Mikhail Sergeivich rode by.
“Drink up. We’ll reach a spring before noon,” Mikhail said. Like Shea, the Rus soldier wore the plain armor of mercenaries rather than anything with Prince Igor’s device.
“I swear, we seem to add more merchants every day,” Shea said.
“That ruse of yours worked a little too well,” Mikhail replied. “But I must admit it was clever.”
To get Reed Chalmers out from under Prince Igor’s death sentence, Shea had improvised a fairly desperate plan; hit the Polovtsi while they’re drunk. The prince had laughed aloud when the psychologist explained it, then had come close to him and sniffed.
“No, you are sober,” he’d said. “Eh, well, with you in charge it might work. But how will we get them drunk?”
That was the difficult part. They needed thirty or forty wagonloads of wine and mead, more if all they could find was ale and kvass. They also needed an excuse for the Polovtsi to all be drinking at a particular spot. Finally, Shea needed to spare Seversk’s treasury, or the plan would never go anywhere.
Remembering tales of moonshiners in both the old and new worlds of his own universe, Shea suggested that a rumor be circulated that the prince was planning to raise the liquor tax in kind, and that his agents would be starting their collections in the west very soon, He hoped that would put liquor merchants on the roads east, trying to dispose of their stocks before the tax collectors caught up with them.
The rumor succeeded far better than Shea, or Igor, could have believed. It was compounded by an even less pleasant one, that Seversk would face more frequent Polovets raids shortly. It was possible that some of the merchants were trying to turn goods into more easily hidden coin. Most of them, though, were probably just trying to evade their taxes.
The vintners and brewers were soon joined by all kinds of other vendors. Not the purveyors of luxury goods silk, fine glass, gold and silverware, anything whose primary market was in the city itself was not put at risk on the roads. But woodwork, cheap iron and tinware, woolens, rough-cured hides — everything that could be taxed in kind found a market on the roads and added to the sights (and smells) of the cavalcade.
The Exotic Enchanter Page 5