The Golden Horde (7 page)

“And?”

“And the army stays right where it is. At least we know the Tatars haven’t been waiting for us to freeze, and we know that they’re outnumbered, even if not outmanoeuvred. But if they’re using the route I think they are, we may be able to move the trap around the prey rather than have to entice it in.”

“That depends on how well you know this area.”

“Remember my map?” Ivan nodded; it was hard to forget a piece of cartography that could draw, correct and then re-draw itself as a landscape was described. Useful enough, but unsettling until one got used to it and Ivan hadn’t, not yet. “I studied that map before we left Khorlov, so I know the Principality of Ryazan well enough to suspect they’re using the rivers.”

“Rivers …?” echoed Ivan, not seeing the connection for an instant. Then it hit him. “Of course! A city has a river running near or through it, and with the ice this thick, the Tatars might as well have a paved road laid for them. And it’s a road that goes around the hills and through the forests.”

“There. I was right. I’ll teach you to be an officer and a tactician one of these fine days.”

“Hah. But what I can’t understand is why they haven’t tried a winter raid before, if everything’s so convenient? Tell me that, teacher.”

Mar’ya Morevna shrugged elaborately, as if it was expected. “I would if I could, but I can’t. Maybe it never occurred to them until now. Maybe there’s some new small khan with new big ideas. Maybe Tatars don’t need to keep warm in the winter as much as they used to. Take your pick.” She stalked towards the gaggle of captains, nodding acknowledgement of various salutes, and threw back her hood before settling her helmet – kept comfortably warm beside the brazier – back onto her carefully-braided hair. “Before I come to any theoretical conclusions I’m going to see for myself.”

“So am I,” said Ivan, reaching for his own helmet. The prospect of spying on a Tatar war-band was no less unnerving than standing and waiting for them had been, but with one vital difference: he would be
doing
something. No sooner had the words left his mouth than a bulky figure in furs and armour left his place beside the brazier and placed himself politely but firmly between Ivan and where the horses stood blanketed among the sheltering trees. Ivan finished the awkward task of buckling his helmet’s chin-strap without taking off his gloves – kept warm by the heat of the glowing charcoal or not, he knew better than to touch bare metal with bare skin in the middle of winter – then smiled quickly at Petr Mikhailovich Akimov. “Coming with us, Captain?”

“I may, Majesty. You, however, may not.” Akimov was to Khorlov and Ivan what Fedorov was to Mar’ya Morevna: Captain of the Kremlin Guard, personal bodyguard, aide, adjutant, confidant and friend. He was also, Ivan noted as he moved sideways and Akimov followed suit, an obstruction.

“Would you like to explain that, Captain? While you help me into the saddle?” He sidestepped, and was blocked again.

“Majesty, there’s no need for you to go on this, this sight-seeing expedition, and no advantage gained by your presence.” Captain Akimov folded his arms with the sort of finality that was meant to indicate the matter was closed. “Therefore you may not go.”

“May not?”

Akimov looked uncomfortable, but the big Cossack’s jaw set in a stubborn clench that Ivan recognized only too easily. “Then must not, Majesty.”

Ivan stared at his Captain-of-Guards, but even though his temper was frayed, losing it at Akimov would be shooting at the wrong target. He suspected he knew the right one, but shooting at that would have to wait until he returned to Khorlov. “
Must
is not a word addressed by any Captain to his Tsar,” he said. “Who authorised you to use it?”

“First Minister Strel’tsin, Majesty.” So the suspicion had been right. “He told me that… That you are Tsar of Khorlov, and may not place yourself at hazard for adventure’s sake as if you were some private person.”

“May not, again. If it comes to that, then what about the prince I was two years ago? The prince who was heir to the throne and just as irreplaceable? Don’t be ridiculous, man. Nobody – not Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin, not even my own father – spoke to me like that before I went to the Summer Country, or went to stand with the men of Khorlov when they faced the Teutonic Knights. And nobody will do it now. Get out of my way!” He barged past Akimov, and this time the Guard-Captain didn’t attempt to block his path. Ivan took a couple of strides further through the snow, then hesitated and looked back over his shoulder. “Or better still, get yourself onto a horse.”

*

It was easy to follow the route of the Kipchaq scouts, because Torghul and his companions hadn’t exercised much woodcraft in their flight from the Tatars. Ivan knew from personal experience that it was hard to travel at any speed through deep snow and heavily laden branches, and impossible to do so without making a trail so plain a blind man could follow it. The Tatars would have had no difficulty tracking the Kipchaqs – unless they didn’t want to.

That also made perfect sense. If they were attempting a surprise assault on the city of Ryazan, then any turning aside from their line of march, any delay at all, would increase the risk of their being spotted, the city warned, the gates shut and the ramparts manned by the time they reached their target.

If there was no possibility of an attack on the attackers, Ivan had decided what to do: pull the army back into cover of the gulyagorod’s armoured wagons until they were at a safe distance from the Tatars, then return to Khorlov as soon as Mar’ya Morevna could open a spell-Gate. After that he could send couriers by the same means to all the cities at risk, because if the Tatars failed in their attack on Ryazan they could break out with all the frightening speed of those tough little horses and be pouring through the unaware, unbolted gates of Suzdal, Rostov, or even Moscow if even Tatars wanted to waste time on such an insignificant pest-hole.

“So what do
you
think?” asked Ivan as they trudged through the churned snow. Mar’ya Morevna looked at him, then let her answer drift away from her mouth in a grey swirl of breath when she saw the question hadn’t been addressed to her.

“I think my hoofs are frozen off at the fetlocks, little master,” said Ivan’s huge black horse in his deep voice that an
oktavist
great-bass singer would envy. Sivka shook his mane and snorted smoky disgust. “Further, I think this is a fearful time of year for making war, and a habit you should break. Last time Khorlov went to war it was wintertime as well, and I think you above anyone else would prefer to be somewhere warm and comfortable.”

Ivan cuffed the stallion amiably on the neck, thumping against the massive slabs of muscle with as much effect as if he’d hit Khorlov’s kremlin wall. “I ask an opinion, and I get a lecture. Do you spend time with Strel’tsin when I’m not watching?”

“He brings me apples,” said the horse, “and we talk about things.”

Ivan heard Mar’ya Morevna snigger into her gloved hand and shot her a quick glare that was as usual entirely wasted. Sivka, and Chyornyy his brother, had both come from the horse-herds of the witch Baba Yaga, which in the view of many made them magical enough; but they also spoke the speech of men with more intelligence than some supposedly-educated people that Ivan had met, and when pressed for speed could gallop into the worlds beyond the wide white world of Mother Russia and emerge at their destination without covering the distance between two points on the map. They were also, and Sivka especially, eager and quick to learn from any and every source, whether it be swearing from the stable-lads, court gossip from the grooms, or a long-winded style of speech from Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin.

Reining Sivka a little slower so that the others of the party – Mar’ya Morevna, the two Guard-Captains and a dozen mounted men-at-arms and
bogatyr
heroes – could draw out of earshot, Ivan leaned forward in his saddle and said, “What sort of things does the First Minister talk about?”

“The world,” said Sivka, his tone suggesting that none of Strel’tsin’s choices of conversation held much interest. “The Tsardom. The Tsar …” The horse flicked one ear and turned his head to see Ivan’s face a little better, then produced the whickering sound that passed for laughter. “Not to worry, little master. You’re a good Tsar, he says.”

“I sometimes wondered.”

“So did he.”

“That isn’t so —” Ivan stopped, conscious of a strange sound so low and indistinct that he didn’t know when it first became audible, but now so all-pervading that the air throbbed with it. Up ahead in the lee of a small stand of pine-trees, Mar’ya Morevna and the rest of the scouting-party were dismounting, tethering their horses and transferring cased bows and quivered arrows from their saddles to the proper loops and hooks on their swordbelts. Suddenly the views and opinions of Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin weren’t important any more.

Captain Fedorov trudged over to him through snow lying almost hip-deep where the Kipchaq horses hadn’t trodden it down. “Best that we walk from here, Majesty,” he said. Ivan nodded, though ‘
wade
’ was more accurate than ‘
walk
.’ Torghul and his Kipchaqs had come to the same conclusion, for the tracks leading onward from this same group of trees were those of men, not horses. He kneed Sivka forward to join the others, slipped from his saddle to check his own weapons, then listened to the sound again. It was clearer now, unmistakable to anyone who had ever heard a mass of horsemen on the move. There was a booming quality to the noise, a reverberation from the crust of ice that in warmer weather was the river Okya, thundering under the advancing Tatars as if they rode across the skin of a gigantic drum.

“Shall we see what we came to see?” said Ivan. He glanced at his wife, at his captains, and at the warriors of his retinue, and found it no great comfort to observe that every one of them, even the senior captains Fedorov and Akimov, looked no more eager than he did. He eased his sword a little way from its scabbard, making sure that he could draw it in a hurry, then took a breath he hoped didn’t sound unsteady and set off up the hill.

It wasn’t a long walk, but hard work for people wearing furs and armour and boots better suited to stirrups than the treacherous footing of frozen pine-needles underneath three feet of snow. Regardless of that snow and the chill striking through metal armour into their very bones, they completed the last distance to the crest of the ridge flat on their bellies, using their shields as sleds. Ivan raised himself up, peered over, snarled a single passionate oath and flopped back, swearing softly under his breath. When Mar’ya Morevna followed suit almost exactly, even to the foul language, Ivan lay there, heedless of the snow, heedless of the Tatars down in the river valley, just gazing at her face.

“I didn’t listen to your Kipchaq carefully enough,” he said finally. “What was it he said? ‘
ten
times
I
count
,
a
score
of
scores
,
ten
times
.’ I thought he meant four thousand men, counted ten times over to make sure. I was wrong.” Ivan slowly and sincerely made the sign of the cross on his chest, then looked once more down into the valley. “Was Torghul right, do you think?
Twenty
times
twenty
times
ten
times
ten
? Forty thousand? Or more?”

“It has to be more. The Okya’s wide enough here that we could see four thousand men all at a single glance. Whereas …”

Whereas the surface of the frozen river was invisible beneath the river that covered it, a river made up of men, horses, camels and the great domed wagon-tents, cart-
yurtuy
drawn by yokes of oxen. A mist hung over the Tatar host, formed of breath and body-heat and a haze of infinitesimal particles of ice and snow churned up by those hundreds of thousands of hoofs. Had the sun broken through the clouds those men and horses would have glittered, for there were more weapons and more armoured mounts and riders down there than seemed possible in all the world.

What was most terrible was the way they rode in their blocks of ten and one hundred and one thousand in perfect discipline and perfect silence. There was the bellowing of oxen, the blared complaints of camels and the occasional shrill neigh of a horse, but no horns, no drums, no singing such as accompanied a Rus army on the march. Just that unending rumble on the ice, a sound less like something made by men than some unstoppable force of nature.

“This,” said Guard-Captain Akimov, “is no raid. Look.”

“I don’t need to look again,” mumbled Ivan, still shocked by the thought he might have brought ten thousand men up here and the far worse thought of what would have happened to them. “The numbers alone are enough to tell me that.”

“Your pardon, Majesty, but you do,” said Akimov. “Both of you.”

They looked, and Mar’ya Morevna said something venomous in a language that was definitely not Slavonic and left her mouth on a curl of exhaled air that looked much more like smoke than seemed reasonable. Ivan was beyond swearing. One of the biggest cart-
yurtu
was making its laborious way along the ice right under where they lay, but it wasn’t the ostentatious drapes of gold-worked silk on its felt dome that struck him speechless. It was the standard swaying above it. A tall spear-shaft decorated with cross-pieces from which hung nine white plumes, it looked unimpressive by comparison with some of the embroidered banners used by the Rus Princes; but Ivan, and Mar’ya Morevna, and all of the others who saw it, knew what that banner was, and what it meant.