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 merchants were being delicately herded to a spot on the border of the principality of Seversk. The area was hardly settled at all, thanks to Polovtsi raids as much as anything, and the actual border was somewhat disputed. Shea’s plan required however that Igor claim the spot in question.
It was the logistics of getting the merchants there and no further, protecting them from raids along the way, and pretending all the time to have no connection with the prince, that was making Shea and the other men Igor had sent curse, sweat, and ache. The strain of holding back the “in the prince’s name” they were accustomed to use soon had the soldiers beginning every sentence with an obscenity.
A few of the merchants too poor to afford horses or mules, tried to make do with oxen. They held everyone back so much that Mikhail Seigeivich finally ordered them to the rear, to keep up as best they could, for the caravan could not be held to their pace. The merchants howled, they offered bribes, they threatened to protest to the prince.
Mikhail Sergeivich and Shea ignored them.
They couldn’t ignore one peddlar who’d been too poor even to buy an ox for his cartload of hides. He’d stolen two, and the owner came after them.
The guards couldn’t formally arrest him, but Shea gave him a persuasive lecture about mercenaries needing to stay on terms with Igor much more than they did with thieving peddlers. Igor’s arm was long and his justice swift and stern. The thief already owed fine of a grivna apiece for stealing the oxen. What else was he prepared to risk?
The oxen were returned, leaving the peddler sitting disconsolately on top of his cart in the middle of the steppe.
Then there were the merchants with expensive horses who needed cut fodder and few scruples about where they cut it when their bagged supply ran out. There were the merchants who didn’t hobble their ponies and mules properly when they turned them loose to graze, so that Mikhail Sergeivich had to send out search parties for the strays, risking warhorses breaking legs in rabbit holes and lurking bandits picking off the riders. There was the cart that broke down so that it blocked the only strip of dry ground for half the caravan; it eventually ended in the bog.
There was enough trouble so that Shea was actually glad Reed Chalmers was not with him. The older psychologist was not the world’s most easygoing traveler, and on a journey such as this they’d have given each other migraines, if not ulcers.
It surprised Shea that men who supposedly traveled for a living would make so many simple mistakes on the march. Shea wondered if most of the merchants were actually accustomed to selling their wares locally. If they were traveling now to avoid paying taxes later, they were certainly paying the penalty.
The biggest problem, of course, was keeping everybody from too much sampling of the main cargo. Shea didn’t want to place aversion spells on it, not when his plan depended on free swilling by the right people. He had to fall back on persuasion.
By itself, that would not have been too demanding a job. Mikhail Sergeivich, and Shea as his nominal second-in-command put on a convincing mean captain/nice lieutenant act, which kept the soldiers and most of the merchants in line, most of the time. Once Shea had to draw his sword on a merchant’s servant, and a few other times it took Mikhail Sergeivich and his biggest men cracking a few thick heads to quiet things down.
Fortunately that happened after they were far enough out on the steppe that deserting the caravan wasn’t a good idea. The owners of the cracked heads stayed in the ranks. But Shea and the soldiers walked with eyes in the backs of their heads and their hands close to their sword hilts for a day or two, and went about in pairs after dark.
And everything from sweet reason to cracking heads had to be done during and after days in the saddle, short of sleep and struggling with thirst. As the days dragged on, Shea began to dream about adventuring in a world based on a work written by some cloistered nun a thousand years and a thousand miles away from the actual events. No long trips, no saddle sores, no reeking horse-barbarian camps, no subtler reek of blood from executed traitors!
“How far have we come today?” Shea asked Mikhail.
“A third less than we should have, so far.”
“The devil fly away with this step!”
“Speedily a tale is spun, with much less speed a deed is done, eh? Well, by midafternoon tomorrow we’ll have to send out scouts, anyway — and messengers.”
The messengers would be riding to Igor’s column, well to the rear, Chalmers was traveling with it as a closely watched prisoner, doubtless in no great comfort. But there was nothing Shea could do for his colleague except bring this off.
Over the next few days, Shea found that, this trip anyway, the steppe had no power to hypnotize him. The merchants were settling down for the most part, but the steppe made trouble on its own. A wolfpack stampeded some mules one night, and on another morning, short of water, they reached a spring only to find a dead aurochs in it. That was the longest day of the journey, it seemed, and before they reached the next water source, boredom was the least of Shea’s worries.
They saw no Polovtsi, but endured enough else to test everyone’s alertness to the limit. Even Shea’s dreams of Belphebe grew faint, which he soon realized was just as well. Seeing Belphebe again depended on getting Doc Chalmers out of this jam, and if he’d stopped to think about it, instead of just doing it, he might have convinced himself that it was impossible.
The scouts had gone out as planned, and they brought the good news that the Polovtsi were approximately where they were expected to be, and in about the right numbers — several bands of various sizes. It was another two days before the scouts could, without being detected, pass between the Polovets bands and find the slave caravan.
“Good smiles,” Mikhail Sergeivich said on the ninth day, after hearing the latest report, “The slave train’s heading for Krasni Podok at about the pace we expected. But the two largest bands are coming our way. We’d best have the trade-truce banner up before dawn tomorrow. Oh, and send word back to our friends — they also have to move the way we planned, or they’ll miss the party.
“The party” was crippling the Polovtsi by getting most of them incapably drunk. That was Shea’s job, with Mikhail Sergeivich to lead the mopping-up operations. Another column was to drive through to round up the unprotected slave train before it reached neutral territory, and a third was a reserve.
Thanks to their care in not mentioning Igor’s name, no one had yet connected them with Seversk’s ruler. Some merchants thought the mercenaries might be the last of Sviatoslav Borisovich’s household, fleeing an appointment with the headsman.
“Better hope the weather holds,” Mikhail concluded. “The autumn rains have been known to come this early.”
“I told you. I have no weather magic,” Shea said irritably. “We’ll just have to hope that the water doesn’t come until the wine is gone.”
At dawn the next day they raised the trade-truce banner. At noon a party of eighty to a hundred Polovtsi rode in. The smell was as overpowering as ever, even though this time it was only the men, not the campsite as well. Shea briefly imagined conjuring up a gigantic bathhouse, large enough to clean the whole Polovtsi nation — or deal with them permanently, as Olga had done with her husband’s murderers.
Mik
hail Sergeivich left the negotiations with the Polovtsi to a senior member of the vintners’ guild. They came to terms with a minimum of insults, and half the Polovtsi rode away. The merchants started setting up booths and stands, but kept looking nervously over their shoulders at the Polovtsi wandering about.
“These sons-of-bitches,” Mikhail told Shea, “are bad enough when sober, How do you plan to control them when they’re drunk?”
“That’s the point, to get them drunk,” Shea replied. “I’ve been meaning to ask: what does trade law require them to do?”
“To pay for anything they want or break, and to observe the three-day limit. And even then one band once claimed they’d spent a whole day drunk before they looted a border household, so they’d forgotten where they were.
“That only involved maybe fifty Polovtsi. By the time all our friends’ friends get wind of the party and come, we’ll have half the steppe on our hands!”
“What happens when they have something to sell?” Shea asked.
“They stay sober then, and haggle like everyone else. They generally insist on selling first. Then, as often as not, they’ve been known to claim that the coin was bad, or the trade-goods worthless, so they can steal instead of buying in turn.”
“If this works, they’ll actually be falling down. Tell the soldiers to stick to water tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do about the merchants.”
“True” said Mikhail, and went off to give the orders.
* * *
Shea was up before dawn the next morning. Sure enough one of the Polovtsi had made a nuisance of himself last night, insisting on having his cup filled again and again and never offering to pay. The merchant involved seemed more resigned than angry, and Mikhail told Shea (after saying “I told you so”) that the guild would cover his losses out of total profits, if any.
The rider had thrown the cup away after emptying it the seventh time, and Shea had retrieved the leather vessel. The Polovets had been satisfyingly drunk, too, but in this matter of life or death Shea intended to hedge his bets.
Concealed among the wagons, and as close to the sleeping Polovtsi as he could stand, Shea held the cup in one hand and gestured with the other. He didn’t quite sing, but a melody lurked under his intonation.
“They’re Polovets riders who’ve lost their way,
Da! Da! Da!
Goats who have gone astray.
Da! Da! Da!
Lousy barbarians out on a spree,
Doomed to get drunk until they can’t see,
And the Rus will make prey out of all they see,
Da! Da! Da!”
Then he crept back to the trade area proper, and unstoppered a leather flask. It was filled with a mixture of ale, kvass, mead, and wine, and the thought of drinking the concoction was enough to make Shea turn Prohibitionist. Again holding the flask in one band, and gesturing with the other, Shea chanted:
“All liquor in the cask and tun
And every barrel on this ground,
You mighty waters old and young
In which our senses oft are drowned;
From strength to strength let every drop
Proceed, nor let that power fail,
Let kvass be strong, the limbs to stop,
Nor be there weak nor watery ale.
Let mead o’ercome the will to move,
And wine be poured that blood not flow,
And every drop a Samson prove
And twenty men or more o’erthrow.”
They’ve been warned, he thought, as be curled up under the nearest wagon and tried to get a nap in before the action started. He wasn’t sure just what the strengthening spell had done, but he wouldn’t have touched a drop of liquor in the camp.
As dawn lightened the eastern sky, the camp began to stir. The night guards came in, the day guards went out, the merchants lit fires and prepared meals. The wiser ones, Shea noticed, had all the old men and young boy’s out of sight and were offering food to the soldiers. The soldiers ate, and repeated their warnings about drinking only water today.
Mikhail added, “Put the best drink out first, to put them in a mood to pay.”
Shea didn’t really care if the Polovtsi were in a mood to pay. All he needed was Polovtsi in a mood to drink.
* * *
The first Polovtsi rode in shortly after sunrise, and they kept coming steadily after that. By midmorning the camp was surrounded by the steppe horsemen, and the stench was something one could almost reach out and pluck from the air in handfuls.
The riders needed no encouragement to drink, and some of them even had the courtesy to pay — at first. After the fourth or fifth cup, they seemed to forget that there was such a thing as money. Shea could see the merchants gritting their teeth as they watched their stocks disappear, without any reasonable amount of silver appearing in return.
There was also a little trading in dry goods. The psychologist saw an occasional Polovets festooned with wooden trinkets or woolen cloth, But balancnng debits and credits (Shea was the son of a bookkeeper), he doubted that the merchants guilds would show a profit today.
Shea was starting to wonder if his strengthening spell had worked at all, and if instead he should have tried turning the mead to whiskey. The amount the steppemen could get through, on empty stomachs too, gave him the feeling of lice in his pants (at least he hoped it was only the feeling).
But by noon, Polovtsi were falling down and crawling around like cockroaches. They couldn’t walk, but they could still drink. If they couldn’t get to the barrels, they could send friends who were still stumbling instead of crawling.
Shea watched one Polovets give friends his short sword, his metal cap (it looked like something captured from a long-dead Rus), his shirt (complete with lice), and his trousers, all to trade for more wine. They came back with the wine, all except one man.
The last friend came back empty-handed, just as the now practically-naked warrior was finishing off the wine. He glared at his friend.
No friend of mine you are. Buy wine — with my trousersh — then drink it yourshelf.
“Ho, I did —”
“You did.”
“Did not.”
“Did!”
“Did not!”
“I’ll take — your trousersh —”
“No, you won’t!”
The warrior on the ground suddenly developed the ability of a leopard. He gripped his friend by the ankles. tumbled him off his feet, and began pulling at his trousers. The other struggled, kicking at the first man’s face.
A foot connected with the first man’s jaw. His head snapped back and to the side. He rolled over on his side, then onto his back. A moment later he began to snore.
His friend lurched to his feet and staggered off, He staggered straight into the wheel of a cart, then reeled back, rubbing his nose.
“No brawl, my chief,” he said. “Nothing — like that, Just a bet between friendsh. Jusht a . . .” His voice trailed off. Having lost his vision, the Polovets now lost his balance. He gripped the iron rim of the cartwheel, but that only slowed his fall. In another moment he was as soundly asleep as his friend, the only difference being that the second man was facedown.
Those two were the first Shea saw go down from drinking too much breakfast, but they weren’t the last. Between them, breakfast and lunch took out a good half of the visitors.
By early afternoon, they were coming in dribs and drabs instead of whole bands. Some bought drink and rode off with it; Shea hoped it would at least knock the fight out of them.
A Polovets lurched up, his arm around a merchant’s apprentice and brandishing an empty cup in his free hand.
“More wine! This — hish mastersh a pig. Won’t — no more.”
“You’ve had enough, friend,” the young man said.
From his voice and breath, Shea thought that the apprentice could also skip the next few cups. But the spell was working on both of them; they were going to drink themselves under the table, under
the wagon, or wherever else the drunks were ending up.
Shea personally refilled their cups. They emptied those cups twice before reeling off, thanking Shea with embraces that left him badly wanting a bath. Drunken Polovtsi were adding assorted stinks to a camp already ripe from the horde of sober ones.
Good thing I didn’t turn the mead to whiskey, Shea thought. I wasn’t planning to kill the Polotsi from alcohol poisoning. Now, if the drink just holds out —
It did. A few Polovtsi seemed to realize what was happening, and tried to mount and ride off. Most of them fell right back off, and none of them got more than five hundred paces from the camp.
A few also didn’t survive the afternoon — brawls, falling into streams and drowning, breaking necks falling off horses or wagons, and so on. Even that didn’t sober up their surviving comrades.
Shea had seen alcoholics, people who couldn’t stop drinking, and they weren’t a pretty sight. Neither were the Polovtsi, as his spell drove them to pour more and more down their throats.
He reminded himself that Chalmers being executed or Florimel spending her life In some potentate’s harem would be a much uglier sight.
By the time the sun was halfway down the sky, the work was done. Mikhail Sergeivich leaped on a wagon and waved his sword over his head three times, the agreed-on signal for the soldiers to set on the Polovtsi. Then he jumped down, joined Shea in pulling a sheaf of rawhide thongs from their baggage and went to work.
Not all of the soldiers had obeyed orders to avoid the liquor, and those the two leaders left lying where they’d fallen. A few drunken soldiers didn’t make much difference, anyway. The Polovtsi were either sprawled flat or sitting slumped against something, and none of them could have stood unless tied to a tree. As for fighting, they were so obviously past it that in a few minutes the sober merchants came out and began helping the soldiers bind the prisoners.
A few of the Polovtsi who’d been sleeping off their breakfast woke up before they were bound. They only stared dim-eyed at their captors; Shea wondered how many of them (especially the ones who’d drunk kvass or mead) would be paralyzed by hangovers.
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