The Golden Horde (3 page)

In the city-states of Kiev and Vladimir, the great families of Yaroslavich and Vsevolodovich had taken turns keeping the throne-cushions warm over something like fifteen years. The title of
Velikiy
knyaz
, meaning ‘Great Prince’ or ‘Grand Duke,’ had passed from father to son, son to father, brother to brother and finally back and forth between uncles, nephews and relatives of increasingly obscure degree like an overheated meat pie. Then Yuriy Vladimirovich, not even a distant cousin of either family, became Great Prince of Kiev almost by accident, slipping onto the throne while the other half-dozen contenders weren’t looking.

He had remained there for almost four years, something of a record since in the same time there had been not one, not two, but three Princes of Vladimir before
their
Prince Yuriy took the ruthlessly obvious step of arranging accidents for his most immediate potential rivals. It didn’t matter whether they were rivals in truth or not, the
potential
was reason enough. Their accidents weren’t fatal, of course: that would have been too much. Slaughtering peasants was an acceptable demonstration of noble annoyance, but slaughtering those of equal rank was considered boorish. Even so, those accidents were enough to take two of Yuriy’s own brothers out of circulation, along with Ingvar and Andrey Yaroslavich and five of their major supporters.

By the time they returned to court life, Great Prince Yuriy was firmly entrenched. He had bribed the unswerving support of every
boyar
not already aligned to someone else, and re-enacted the ancient Byzantine law that a liege lord must be sound and whole in all his parts. It excluded all who might have challenged him until injuries healed and scars were no longer visible, and the longer he went unchallenged the more secure he became.

Khorlov’s political life was boringly straightforward by comparison, or had been until now. Ivan stared through the vaulted shadows of the Council Chamber, studied the faces of
boyar
and
bogatyr
, nobleman and warrior, and began compiling a mental list of who spoke in his favour and who spoke against. It was reassuring to find the council equally divided, with little difference between one man shouting disapproval of the Tsar, and his neighbour shouting disapproval of
him
.

Almost all the
bogatyri
who had fought against the Teutonic Knights were on Ivan’s side, and that too was a comfort. He knew from tutoring in the history of the antique Romans that a man backed by the army could survive at least for a time without the Senate. Khorlov’s High Council was no Roman Senate, and its part-time army was no Praetorian Guard, but the booty earned from plundering the Teutons’ camp was as good as any Caesar’s bribe. The Knights of the Order were a great deal less austere than their image as crusader monks might have claimed, and the loot from their tents had paid the bride-price of several daughters and augmented the inheritance of several sons. It was those fathers and those sons who were cheering for Ivan now. Their cheers were strong and lusty, drowning out the reedy, reasoned cries of older men, and they would last…

…As long as the money did.

Ivan grimaced slightly, then forced himself to relax. He suspected he could already see what would happen when all the shouting and complaints died down. What always happened. Both sides and the undecided would sit down together and drink a great deal too much wine and vodka, then agree to differ, then do what Tsar Aleksandr had wanted all along even though they would do it for the good of the realm rather than at the Tsar’s command.

At least nobody had raised the subject of sorcery. For that at least Ivan was grateful, since it meant Khorlov’s Metropolitan Archbishop wasn’t in the Council Chamber. Had he been there Levon Popovich would never have let such a golden opportunity go by without expressing his views on Tsarevich Ivan and the Art Magic, on Mar’ya Morevna and the Art Magic, and on the Church’s view of them both.

It mattered not a whit to the Archbishop that it was mostly magic in the shape of the Firebird – together with courage, military skill and more than a little luck – saving him from being burned as a heretic when the Teutonic Knights and their inquisitors reached Khorlov. Ivan, his father the Tsar, Mar’ya Morevna and quite possibly Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin had all spoken to Metropolitan Levon, with varying degrees of severity and varying degrees of success. Those lectures changed only the way he spoke aloud, not the way he thought inside. It was an unsettling truth that the Archbishop of Khorlov and the Holy Inquisition could well have become fast friends when they weren’t busy trying to burn one another as heretics or lapsed schismatics, or using the rack and the boot and the choking-pear to reinforce their own opinions of some obscure point of doctrine.

Ivan shrugged inwardly. The Metropolitan Archbishop, whoever he might be, was just one more weight around any Tsar of Khorlov’s neck, and his father had successfully borne Levon Popovich – or should that be tolerated him? – for almost his entire reign. There was one comfort: the Archbishop was so advanced in years that he wouldn’t last more than a few into Ivan’s reign, then his replacement would be someone more sensible in the ways of the world or more amenable to the Tsar’s suggestions.

Someone younger, anyway.

Ivan was tired of old voices uttering old opinions, refusing to change them because, like the Archbishop, not one of the old men on the Council had enough expectation of life that any change would matter worth a damn. Ivan suspected they knew the way his mind worked, and why they were so reluctant to have a new Tsar forced on them by anything less permanent than death.

“Father,” said Ivan quietly under cover of three yelling councillors venerable enough to have better manners, “Father, this is, er, a great honour you want to confer. But could you not have asked what
I
thought before giving orders to the Council?”

Tsar Aleksandr glanced at the squabbling men in the chamber. Their argument, no longer anything to do with the succession, was spreading fast and becoming more partisan with every
boyar
and
bogatyr
involved. Then he swung around in his great chair and eyed his son from head to heels in much the way that Ivan had seen potential buyers eye their purchases. Speculative; wondering about the value; suspecting a waste of money. It made him feel like a slave on the bidding-block – much as the Tsar had often complained the responsibilities of the crown made him feel.

“No, my son, I could not. You might have refused the honour, and then I would have had to force you. This way, the councillors do it for me.”

Ivan was shocked at such duplicity. “Force me? What makes you think that I’d need forced?”

“That you haven’t accepted my bidding without question, for one,” said Tsar Aleksandr, a touch cool. “I didn’t think you preferred to become Tsar in the usual fashion. Are you so keen to see me in my grave?”

“Dear God, no! I just… I don’t want to be the Tsar of Khorlov until I have to, that’s all.”

“You have to do it now, Vanya. You’re my only son, and the child of my heart. But you’re also bound to obey the command of your lord. I say you will be Tsar, and so you shall.”

In the background the Council resolved its differences for the present, and as the noise in the hall died to a more normal murmur Ivan lowered his voice to an abnormally quiet one. “But why? You’re well, in good health, your …”

“… Mind is sound? Was that it?” The Tsar smiled faintly, the smile of a man enjoying a private joke. “Since you married Mar’ya Morevna and she brought her spy service as part of her dowry, your simple, trusting old Papa has known much more of what goes on in his domains and kremlin than he ever did before. I know what’s been said about my temper over the past year, but you – bless you, Ivan, you refused to believe it.” The smile stretched briefly wider. “Or at least you made sure nobody could report back that you
did
believe it.”

“You were testing me,” said Ivan slowly, feeling stupid that of all the possibilities this one hadn’t occurred. His eyes narrowed as he bit down on the surge of anger that left a taste like acid at the back of his throat. “You were putting me through an examination, to see if I was a suitable Tsar before I had no choice.”

“Yes.”

“Your idea?”

“Mine and Strel’tsin’s. But mostly mine.”

“Then damn you.” Ivan shifted his glare to Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, who met it with equanimity. “Damn you both.”

The High Steward bowed slightly as though complimented on some masterful piece of statecraft which, in a crooked way, it was. Both the Tsar and his Steward were well satisfied with what they’d learned about their Tsarevich, for all that he was bristling with outrage like a tail-trodden cat, otherwise he wouldn’t be standing here right now.

“Damn away, Ivan,” said Tsar Aleksandr, completely unruffled. “It won’t change a thing. At least you’ll have good and trustworthy advisors to help you. Dmitriy Vasil’yevich knows more about how this realm should be run than both you and I together, and your wife has reigned alone in Koldunov since her father died. Never feel so proud and confident that you don’t need their advice. You have another advantage: a better relationship with the other Princes of the Rus than I could ever gain.”

“Have I?” said Ivan, and laughed hollowly. “There’s no love lost between me and Aleksandr Nevskiy, and as for Kiev and Novgorod —”

“Peace, Vanya. I already told you I know more than I take credit for. Trust me on this. There’s a wariness among the other domains, but not the active dislike directed at me. You stood side by side with Yuriy of Kiev and the Mikhaylovichi of Novgorod in the battle on the ice, you were instrumental in that battle being a notable victory and regardless of how Nevskiy’s tame bookmen slant the history in his favour, they know it. They were there. In the marketplace of alliances, my boy, don’t sell yourself short.”

The Council Chamber was almost completely silent now, and not because the councillors and the
druzhinya
retinue were trying to listen in. They knew the murmured exchange between Aleksandr and his son represented a crucial turning-point in this whole affair, and they held still like men awaiting judgment in a court of law. Ivan leaned closer and spoke so quietly that not even Strel’tsin could hear it.

“One last question. Why now, and not later?”

It seemed as if Tsar Aleksandr hadn’t heard the question, because he stared not at Ivan but past him for several seconds. Then his eyes focused on those of his son, and to Ivan’s surprise and discomfort, their expression was one of shame. “I’m an old man, Ivan. One more old man among all these others. Khorlov will need a young man soon.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because you don’t have the Sight.”

Ivan understood. It was an ability that appeared now and then in the Khorlovskiy male line, just as some families occasionally produced children with red hair. Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin claimed to trace it back to the pagan priests of Uppsala, when all the Rus were just one tribe or clan among the North people, the Vikings.

Not that the Sight was any great use, to hear the stories. It didn’t help find lost things or see accurate events in the future, but it could cast a brightness or a shadow, an intimation of something good or bad waiting to happen. Even had it been more useful the Sight was no gift to wish on anyone. If one was minded that way it was possible to worry about what the impending light or darkness might mean to the exclusion of all else, including sanity.

That was the tale, anyway. If Tsar Aleksandr felt that a young Tsar was needed to face whatever might happen tomorrow, next month, next year or whenever, then even if his reasoning was almost impossible to explain, that reasoning would be sound.

Ivan felt his courage shrivel inside him as it sometimes did when he stood on the open brink of a tall place, but rather than step back he jumped. “I accept the charge,” he said, clearly enough to be heard all the way to the back of the Council Chamber, “and will be such a Tsar as my father would wish.”

The words were simple; generations of ritual hadn’t yet encrusted them with elaborate phrases of acceptance. But once those words were spoken, whether here and now in front of the Council and the
druzhinya
or more usually intoned softly beside the bed where the last Tsar lay newly dead, the Prince who uttered them was Prince no longer.

Ivan was Tsar, by birth, by decree and – after an uncomfortable few seconds of hesitation among the councillors and glances exchanged by the
boyaryy
and
bogatyri
of the Tsar’s retinue – by popular acclaim as they stood up and cheered. There was nothing else for them to do
except
stand up and cheer, except be declared a traitor.

Despite the warmth in the great wooden hall brought on by braziers and fur-wrapped bodies, the drops of sweat that formed and trickled down the hollow of his back felt cold. It wasn’t entirely the Council’s reluctance to see him as Tsar, though that had a part in it. But Ivan had been watching his father’s face as he took the plunge into the sea of monarchy with all its shallows, rocks and sharks, and the expression he glimpsed had brought the sweat and shivers to his spine.

Because there was
relief
on Tsar Aleksandr’s face, and it was a terrible thing to see.