The Golden Horde (30 page)

“Did you call it here?” said Mar’ya Morevna, combining suspicion and resignation in the same short sentence. Nikolai and Anastasya shook their heads.

“No,” they chorused.

“But we could,” Kolya added hopefully. “Do you want —”

“No!”

“No need.”

Ivan twisted around to stare at the Grey Wolf, because there was an edge to his voice that turned his words into more than just an announcement. He turned fast enough that he caught one of the tall man’s ears twitch as it listened to a sound no one else could hear. Human shape or not, it seemed there were some aspects of the wolf-shape that remained besides his eerie eyes. Those eyes were gazing thoughtfully at the empty sky, not as if he could see something others couldn’t, but as if he already knew where to look.

Then Ivan heard it too. At first the noise was like a cloth bedsheet being torn in half, if one could imagine a bedsheet that big. Then the noise slurred, and slowed, and deepened, until it was no longer just the biggest bedsheet in the world, but the very canopy of the sky that was being ripped asunder right down the middle.

Why
wasn’t
there
a
noise
the
first
time
?
Why
didn’t
you
hear
something
? The answer was fairly simple, in fact brutally obvious if he thought about it at all: the Firebird didn’t want anyone to hear it that first time. They had seen it, though. And now Ivan saw it too.

The last time he had seen a Firebird fly free in the sky was almost eight years past. He and Mar’ya Morevna and the Grey Wolf had stood on a hillside somewhere in the Summer Country and watched one of the creatures flit across the peach and indigo heavens above a magnificent sunset. Ivan kept that memory safe and cherished in his mind, taking it out every now and again to admire and polish like a fine lacquer painting. Then and there it had seemed natural, because Firebirds belonged in the Summer Country.

Not here.

It appeared in the part of the sky where Volk Volkovich had been staring, high up and far away, riding the noise of its passage across the blue as foam rides the crest of a wave, the air tearing apart around it and slamming together in a thunderous roar all along its wake. That wake remained engraved on not only the ears but the eyes of everyone beneath it, because its passage left a bright track across the sky like a nail scratched across a piece of dull grey lead. At first sight the Firebird wasn’t a bird at all, just an unendurably brilliant speck of fire gilding the loose weave of the lofty clouds as it descended through them. Then huge wings unfurled from the centre of that incandescent speck, curbing its descent from an uncontrolled plummet out of the heavens to an even more ominous falcon’s stoop, and the sound became a high, shrill whistling of wind through white-hot feathers.

There were double shadows everywhere, those cast by the sun and those cast by the Firebird, but at least the common shadows remained in one place. The others moved across the steppe as their source moved across the sky, overlapping and parting like shadows cast by children making finger-play by lamplight. After only a few seconds they became impossible to watch, because their movement provoked a near-drunken unsteadiness as if the earth itself was moving.

It was easier to watch the expressions and reactions of everyone nearby; from Mar’ya Morevna’s astonished oath to the children yelling with delight and the Grey Wolf’s silent satisfaction, from the near-panic of the ordinary Tatars and some of the more susceptible Rus, to Amragan
tarkhan
’s glare laden with a shocked fury he dared not vent. Ivan kept his own face neutral, but inwardly he rejoiced. The Khan’s envoy needed an occasional one that he wasn’t dealing with the usual sort of Russian prince, and this reminder would do him no end of good.

The Firebird dropped vertically through the last thousand feet of its descent, braked almost to a standstill with three huge, heat-scented strokes of wings feathered with tongues of fire, then landed softly right in front of —

Nikolai and Anastasya.

“Hail, my friends!” it said in the hissing metallic voice Ivan remembered well, giving the flare of wings and crest and tail that was its version of a salute. “Greetings and well met. Be welcomed back into the Summer Country, you and all your …” The beaked head went on one side then the other as its hard raptor’s eyes took in the scene. “Guests.”

That it had greeted only his children came as no great shock. But the way it greeted them, and the place it evidently thought they were, was more unsettling.

“Hail, noble Firebird!” he said, drawing an immediate sharp-pointed predator’s stare. It was a relief to see recognition cool the hot, gold-rimmed black jewels of the Firebird’s eyes. This might not be the same Firebird he had encountered before – one flame-hot falcon with an eight-foot wingspan looked much like another – but all were inveterate gossips, and even if it didn’t know him, it had at least heard of him.

“The Tsar of Khorlov’s duties must have grown lighter at last,” said the Firebird, rather sarcastically. “My companions in adventure,” it indicated the two children with a jerk of its head while Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna wondered exactly how the twins had gained
that
particular title, “say constantly that you’re too busy to return to the Summer Country and exchange pleasantries with the friends of your youth.”

“Noble Firebird, the passage of eight years doesn’t make
Then
my youth and
Now
my dotage.” The Firebird looked at him and, though it didn’t actually possess any, Ivan had the distinct feeling it had raised its eyebrows. “But despite your welcome, this isn’t the Summer Country.” The Firebird gave him a long stare, glanced about, stared again and then produced a series of blinks that suggested bewilderment.

“But —” it started to say, then clattered its beak and fell silent. A Firebird struck speechless by surprise wasn’t something Ivan had ever encountered in his last dealings with the creatures, and it was worth seeing since they had views about everything under the arch of heaven and no reluctance about voicing them.

“Not the Summer Country,” Mar’ya Morevna repeated. “This is – was – lately the southern part of the principality of Peryaslavl and is now a province of the Khanate of the Golden Horde.” She managed by great effort to keep her voice neutral, though another twitch of its head and a snap of that hooked pickaxe beak suggested that the Firebird had heard what lay behind her toneless words and didn’t like it. “But it isn’t the Summer Country, and never was.”

“I was not Summoned.” It wasn’t a question, just a flat statement of fact which saved the twins from an unpleasant interview later. “I was in the Summer Country,” it said, the iron voice scraping harsh with anger, “and then… And then I was here!”

The Firebird spread its wings in sudden passion, lashing them though the air in trails of sparks while it gouged its talons into the dry grass of the steppe. Small fires sprang up, then choked in curls of blue smoke as they died for lack of the fuel their own brief fury had consumed.

Ivan sympathized with the Firebird, something he would never have dreamed possible until now. It had no enemy to strike at for this insulting behaviour, and while he definitely had enemies to hand, striking was out of the question. Their frustration was the same. “Apologies for the inconvenience,” he said weakly. “You’ll go home now, of course?”

He didn’t know whether he wanted it to do so or not, because from the appalled expressions on various Tatar faces, its presence might prove a useful club to beat concessions from the Khan. But it was also a liability, and an opinionated one at that. Natasha was tugging at his shirt with the probable intention of making him ask it to stay, but Mar’ya Morevna’s face suggested an urgent need for a few minutes alone to discuss the whys and hows of its being here in the first place, and preferably after it had gone back to where it came from.

“Is this, ah, change of scenery a trouble to you, noble Firebird?” said Volk Volkovich. He sounded more painfully polite than ever, and only those who knew the Grey Wolf well could hear the soft rumbling growl down in his chest, warning the irritable Firebird that any trouble it felt had better not be visited on his companions.

“No trouble, noble Wolf,” said the Firebird, staring at Volk Volkovich speculatively for such a long time that Ivan felt an overpowering desire to back away and leave them room to sort out their differences. A quick sideways glance showed that none of the Tatars, not even Amragan
tarkhan
, thought ‘wolf’ was anything more than a mild insult aimed at the magnificent cloak Ivan’s sinister henchman was wearing. “No trouble at all.” It scratched its beak briskly with one sickle claw, sending a shower of sparks skipping across the already-charred grass as if someone was sharpening a sword on a grindstone. It sounded like that too; in fact it sounded, with a high, steely singing, as though the sword was entirely too sharp already.

Then the Firebird flapped its wings once in a flurry of heat and sprang into the air. It hung there like a kestrel for a few seconds, hanging on the rising thermals of its own creation; then went spiralling upward in the same way as a dry leaf might escape from an autumn bonfire. As it rose, it flared impossibly bright until it was casting heat and light like the very sun itself, and once again two shadows instead of one went stretching out from everything on the ground. Abruptly the yellow glare surrounding it went blue-white, the colour of a lightning flash, and all the other colours of the world were bleached to black and white. Then light and heat and Firebird disappeared together.

Blinking and dazzled like everyone else, Ivan wondered if they shared his thought; that though the world’s colouring had returned, its tints and shades were somehow plain and common, grown more drab with the Firebird gone.

“Name of Tengri, man!” rasped Amragan
tarkhan
, sounding most satisfactorily appalled. “What under the Blue Sky was that?”

Ivan turned and looked him up and down, a slow, insolent stare that had the Turk not been so shocked he would have found insulting. “You know so much about me and my doings, Amragan,” he said. “That was just an old friend of the family. Surely you recognize a Firebird when you see one?”

“I …” Faced with the revelation that even Ivan’s children were acquainted with demons from the sky, and admitting he’d never seen a Firebird before, Amragan
tarkhan
fell silent.

Mar’ya Morevna had other interests, though from the sound of it, not very important ones. “How far from here to Sarai and the Khan’s court?” she asked, her voice only mildly curious. That lack of any excitement suggested the encounter with the Firebird was an everyday occurrence. Ivan smiled inwardly. Such a display of unconcern might not, and probably wouldn’t fool Amragan
tarkhan
, but he would wonder how much was real and how much pretence, and that would help keep him off balance until the time came to make his report to Batu Khan. It was fortunate that with the exception of the children and the various lesser dignitaries, Ivan’s people had remained calm and untroubled. That made the present display of nonchalance so much more convincing.

The Turk stared at Mar’ya Morevna for a few seconds and Ivan could actually watch the man pull his confused mind back into some sort of order. Amragan covered well, but Ivan had the advantage of having seen variations on this same reaction a dozen times: eyes shifting rapidly about as though checking the normality of the rest of the world; dry tongue licking dry lips on a sweat-damp face; hands clenched into fists to conceal their shaking. Ivan’s hidden smile grew broader. The envoy couldn’t claim he’d been threatened, far from it; but his own imagination was doing far more to encourage future respectful behaviour than any number of Rus soldiers armed with swords.

“We are …” The
tarkhan
coughed savagely to clear an unmistakable squeak from his voice, and tried again. “We are only three days’ march from the Golden Court. Maybe less if this camp is struck within the next hour!” He looked from side to side, glaring at his own Tatars in the way he no longer dared glare at Ivan and the others, “Get to it! We’re wasting time!”

He strode off, bellowing.

Ivan watched him go, then looked sidelong at Mar’ya Morevna. “How far to Sarai, eh? You don’t ask idle questions, even of Tatars – so what was that about?”

“Use your brains, my dear.” Mar’ya Morevna gave her husband a sour little smile, but no hints. “You don’t usually ask idle questions either. At least you ask less of them than most people.”

“It’s about the crowns?”

Mar’ya Morevna nodded. “The Firebird thought it was still in the Summer Country,” she said. “It felt nothing during the transition – and when it left us, you saw how that transition usually looks and sounds and feels.”

“Not quite,” said Volk Volkovich. “That Firebird wasn’t in the best of tempers, although they seldom are. What you were seeing was like a door being slammed.”

“When I want your opinion I’ll ask for —”

“Then you’d never get it. Noble Lady, this matter has gone beyond your – I beg pardon –” and the Grey Wolf gave her a bow worthy of a courtier, “
our
petty differences. You know things I don’t, but I know things you don’t – and if you constantly refuse to listen, how will you learn what those things might be, or if they might be useful?”