The Golden Horde (17 page)

Her voice had dropped to a soft murmur like the purr of a big, lazy cat, and as the mouse under scrutiny, Tsar Ivan was more than willing to be played with.

“You —” No purr there; Ivan discovered that his own voice had developed a slight tendency to squeak. Appropriate for a mouse, perhaps, but not a Tsar. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You do, at least until the Tatars are dealt with. If one of them is some sort of envoy from Batu Khan, he’ll have to be formally received at the gates, and after that, given an equally formal banquet tonight.”

“Good. Formal banquets take time to prepare.” Mar’ya Morevna favoured her husband with another hot stare, then turned her head and gazed irritably at the Tatar horsemen. “What’s taking them so long to get here?”

“They’ve halted to make formal ablutions,” said a voice from the rampart stairway, so unexpectedly that the sound of it made both Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna jump. “To go with all the other formality that’s being prepared in Khorlov.”

Volk Volkovich the Grey Wolf stood there in man’s shape, grinning a white grin in his brown, cruelly handsome face, and the human grin was no improvement on the wolf’s. Neither of them had heard him climb the stairs or knew how long he’d been there. From the gleam of wicked amusement in the wolf’s eyes that never changed from his true wolf’s shape, long enough to see and hear anything and everything that could be pleasant in private but embarrassing with a witness.

“Don’t
do
that!” snapped Ivan. “Must you always sneak everywhere you go?”

“No,” said the Grey Wolf, sauntering up from the wooden stairs to the wooden walkway without so much as a creak from a plank or a click from his grey leather boots to betray his passage. “I move quietly.”

Ivan couldn’t help but smile at such monstrous self-assurance. He shook his head, and let the breath he’d gathered for a lecture on the proprieties go hissing out between his teeth. Grumbling at the Grey Wolf about anything at all was less productive than beating smoke with a stick, and he’d long since giving up wasting his time.

“And you’ve been moving quietly around the Tatars, I presume?” said Mar’ya Morevna. “Why didn’t you report before now – or were you just too busy moving quietly around
us
?”

“Now, now, Lady,” said Volk Volkovich reprovingly, “I’m more than just another Kipchaq. For one thing, I’m doing this for amusement and as a favour, not because I’m in anyone’s service.” Mar’ya Morevna had the good grace to look slightly abashed, and it was enough to restore the Grey Wolf’s good humour at once.

“Your, ah, ordinary spies bring ordinary information, and if I’d come running back with them you wouldn’t know anything more than what you know already. But from me you’ve learned the Tatars have enough respect for the Tsar of Khorlov to pause and wash away the dust of their journey. Maybe even the top few layers of their personal grime as well – although I suspect they don’t respect even the Great Khan that much.”

He pointedly ignored the second part of her question, and, remembering the chilly glitter in his eyes which had been answer enough, Mar’ya Morevna didn’t bother repeating it.

“Do you know why they’re here?” asked Ivan. “We expected an envoy of some sort, but there are too many for just… just the usual.”

The Grey Wolf made himself comfortable, leaning back against the battlements with his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. It looked completely natural, but to Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna who knew his true form and nature, even that gesture had the studied air of a role being played for effect.

“Several times I was close enough to hear them talking,” he said, “but they never spoke Farsi.” His voice managed to suggest just how disobliging that had been to a hard-working spy. “Indeed, they never spoke anything other than Uighur and some other one of those Turku-Mongol dialects the tribes use to understand each other. Which I don’t.” He saw or sensed some shift in Mar’ya Morevna’s expression, and shrugged.

“Noble Lady, I recognize the sound of the language, but even when I’m close to a Tatar I’ve never asked what he was saying to me.” His grin displayed teeth suddenly more pointed and less human than they had been before. “Mother always told me it’s not good manners to talk with my mouth full.”

No matter how many times Volk Volkovich said things like that, Ivan had never grown used to them. It mattered little that the Grey Wolf had ceased to be a servant – his original service had been only for a year and a day, and that had expired long ago – because he’d remained a friend ever since. Of a sort, anyway. ‘Friend’ often seemed too… friendly… for some of the attitudes that the Grey Wolf took roguish pleasure in displaying, but ‘acquaintance’ was too cold and distant.

Ignorant of their Tsar’s struggle with the niceties of definition as they were ignorant of a great deal else, neither the Council nor the
druzhinya
knew Volk Volkovich as anything more than a somewhat sinister henchman who came and went as he pleased. In that ignorance, thought Ivan, lay not only a certain amount of advantage but a good deal of truth.

The shrill sound of children’s voices drifted up from the courtyard, mingling with small feet on the stairway that were moving anything but quietly. Nikolai and Anastasya bounded onto the ramparts and flung themselves at their parents, babbling gratitude for being summoned to see the parade.

“Parade?” said Mar’ya Morevna, her arms full of a seven-year-old daughter who was struggling to see over the battlements and quite possibly fall from them in an excess of enthusiasm.

“Summoned?” said Ivan, picking up Nikolai and tucking the boy under one arm for want of anything better to do with him.

Both of them looked at Volk Volkovich, who spread hands and shoulders wide in an eloquent shrug. “If you had sent for them already, what of it?” he said. “And if you hadn’t, then I was merely pre-empting your decision.”

“Oh,
were
you?” There was a definite edge to Mar’ya Morevna’s voice, though the Grey Wolf pretended not to hear it.

Having met Volk Volkovich for the first time in his true form, she’d been slightly uneasy about him since the twins were born and he’d begun – without invitation or encouragement – to act like an indulgent uncle. Mar’ya Morevna had pointed out rather sharply to Ivan that every one of their uncles was a shape-shifter, but this one, the one most frequently seen, was also the only one whose natural shape was a beast, rather than the reverse. It had taken Ivan several weeks to cajole the reason for her concern out of his wife. In the process he’d learned some disturbing things, and guessed at others.

Chief of them was that ‘uncles’ sometimes had an unhealthy taste for the children they visited – Mar’ya Morevna would say no more than that, though Ivan suspected he could deduce the rest – and that an ‘uncle’ whose true shape was a wolf might display a taste for children in the worst and most literal way. There had never been any sign of it, but as Mar’ya Morevna said, the first sign would already be too late.

Toughened perhaps by having to speak and repeat distasteful truths about policy to his councillors and retinue, Ivan had summoned up the courage to ask some equally unpalatable questions of the man – when he was a man – who best qualified as his friend.

There was one advantage. Like the black horse Sivka, Volk Volkovich the Grey Wolf disdained to indulge in the human vice of telling lies. At need he would stretch the truth out of all recognition but to those who knew, it remained identifiable as truth. That there should be worries about the consequences of his nature was something it seemed the Grey Wolf had expected. There was no twisting of truth this time, and no outrage or insult as there might have been with a human.

Instead he had promised that no harm would come to the children by him, either through action or inaction, and had grinned toothily at Ivan’s realization of just what had been given unasked. Not even the children of a Tsar of all the Russias, if the Princes should ever tolerate the creation of such a creature, would be able to boast such a protector and guardian. It had served to make Mar’ya Morevna a little easier about his presence, though as her sharpness had just demonstrated, not completely. Not just yet.

“The Tsar’s son was attending his class on Greek logic and thought,” said Volk Volkovich, “though not really attending to it.” Ivan laughed at that. He had enough memories of being Nikolai’s age and being in that same class and being just as bored. “The Tsar’s daughter was with the Mistress of the Kitchens, learning household accounts. I considered, noble Lady, that both these subjects could be continued later but watching the arrival of a deputation of foreign dignitaries happens once. Not even you would ask them to go out and come back in just for the sake of spectacle.”

“Just how long were you in that class on logic?” Ivan asked idly, then waved his hand to dismiss the need for an answer. “Never mind. They’re here now. They can wait with the rest of us.”

“Wait for what?” asked Nikolai, still inverted and enjoying it immensely.

“For the Tatars to make up their minds about when they want to come closer to the city, Kolya,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “They’re washing, apparently. Ivan, put the child down.”

“Oh,” said Ivan, and did. Prince Nikolai immediately made a dash at his sister, who was peering out from underneath the swinging shutter of an embrasure, and gave her just the merest suggestion of a push. It was enough to produce the desired impressive squeal, but before either parent could move or speak Princess Anastasya had recovered, turned with the speed of what had to be long practice and swung a vicious punch right at her brother’s nose. If it had connected, blood would have spilled – but she misjudged her distance, because Kolya simply wasn’t there. Without needing to dodge or duck, he was suddenly the handspan further away, which was all he needed.

“That boy is going to make a remarkable swordsman one of these days,” said Ivan with great satisfaction. “Assuming his sister doesn’t kill him first.”

He watched as Mar’ya Morevna and Volk Volkovich forced peace on the beginnings of yet another family feud by simply getting between the hail of blows, and observed that at least this time there was no complaining about the Grey Wolf’s presence. Especially as he was taking most of the punches. But there was an odd expression on his wife’s face that had nothing to do with that more commonplace concern, and it was made the more peculiar because Volk Volkovich was wearing it too. Ivan wondered, not for the first nor likely the last time, just what subtlety he had missed now.

The Grey Wolf and Mar’ya Morevna exchanged glances that had more in common than anything Ivan had seen for a long time, and both of them turned to him together. But whatever they were going to say was put aside by the same mutual agreement, forced to wait by the long, deep groan of a horn-blast from out on the steppe.

The Tatars were on their way at last.

CHAPTER FIVE

The
Independent
Tsardom
of
Khorlov
;

July
,
1243
A
.
D

Their delay might well have been as the Grey Wolf suggested, a pause to set things to rights after the long journey over the dusty summer steppes of Russia. It served equally well to give the people of Khorlov time to gather, which noble and common alike they did; to increase curiosity to fever pitch about this un-Tatar behaviour, which it did; and to give the musicians time to get their breath back, which they had very obviously done.

That was amply demonstrated as the column of men and beasts began to lumber up the long slope towards the city at the summit. It was difficult to describe the sound they produced as musical, at least to Rus ears, for it lacked most of what might normally have been called melody. Or pity, or mercy, or anything else remotely soft and gentle. But there was a savage power to it that was all Tatar. It was the music of a people who had conquered almost all of the known world in the space of thirty years.

The thudding rhythm of the
naccara
drums swelled and faded in rolls like the beat of surf on a rocky shore. That was the truest Tatar military music, since after the silent movement of flags and yak-tail standards, they were the principal signalling devices for each one-tenth unit of a hundred-thousand-strong army, from the ten thousand men of a
tuman
division right down to the ten men of an
arban
patrol.

The
naccara
resembled huge bronze cauldrons ornamented with pendant tassels and capped with drumheads of taut leather; slung to either side of stolid camels more capable of bearing their weight and less unsettled by their noise than horses. The accompanying cymbals and trumpets were larger and louder than seemed sensible, and it was obvious their sole function was to impress. The discs of polished brass large as a swordsman’s shield clashed and flashed in the sunlight, and the great horns that blared and groaned were as long as that swordsman was tall.

With a reeded scream of shawms cutting their high counterpoint through the sonorous marching music, its accumulated noise slapped at Khorlov’s walls like a physical force. Ivan, standing in the city’s gateway with his dignitaries and his guards in parade robes over their armour, hoped it might drown out any rumblings of rebellion still festering in his council’s collective breast. For reasons known to themselves the Tatars were making a more imposing display before his city than at any other, and he wanted to know why.