The Betrothed Sister (45 page)

‘This is
our
city and we do not intend leaving it to
your
plunder,' Anya said clearly in Russian.

‘You will die before my warriors' swords.'

She shook her head and said in Russian for all to hear. ‘We shall not surrender our city. We stand for all whom we protect. You would do well to broker peace with us because, otherwise, you will never use our great river for trade again.' For a moment she looked more regal than Thea had ever seen her appear. The Cuman khan spat on the ground and said, ‘So be it.' He said something else in his own language.

Any colour Anya had owned drained from her face. Her stance went rigid. Her horse pawed the ground. Her eyes blazed fury. She looked as if she were about to explode into flames as fierce as those the dragon fire they promised to deliver. The Cuman khan swept his party around and had trotted off the bridge by the time Anya appeared to recover her usual countenance. The parley was over. The battle for Pereiaslavl was about to begin.

When they had returned to Anya's apartments in the terem, Thea asked Princess Anya what the khan had said that was so upsetting.

‘He said he would take us into slavery.'

Thea felt physically sick when she learned that the khan would take the English princess as a junior wife because her hair, he could see, was the colour of flame. Thea swallowed her bile and glanced down at her swelling belly. She whispered another prayer to St Sylvester for deliverance.

34

Before midday, Padar and Argon, his stallion, clattered over the Dnieper Bridge, riding close to General Luke. He prayed to all the gods whose names he could remember for protection, crossed his breast, saying in English, ‘By Christ, we shall succeed.'

Chosen riders with calm horses carried the deadly substance, the mix of resin and naphtha, in small pots. These were secreted in the chosen riders' saddlebags along with flints. Since they planned to ignite them and cause chaos by throwing the small pots into the enemy they rode towards the front line. The idea was to drive the khan's horsemen first towards the river bank, then down river to the southern bridge close to where the ships lay waiting ready to let loose their streams of liquid fire. Padar glanced down the river. For now, the ships waited, hidden from the north by the bend in the river, by the southern bridge and the wharfs.

The khan's army had gathered on the Steppe to the east. They spread over flat, grassy territory north of the eastern valley cut. This was to General Luke's advantage. As long as his army could be disciplined enough to obey his orders when he gave the sound to retreat, there was a chance of success. The Cumans would hope to capture the southern bridge. Padar knew that his warriors must ride back to the North Bridge which was behind them and defended, once their commanders gave a signal by using two blasts of the horn. This would allow Padar's throwers to get their missiles into the ranks of the Cuman cavalry with minimal damage to their own ranks.

Padar glanced back. His fire-hurlers were riding close behind him, primed to act once he gave his command. His command was different to other commands. He had decided on a long wailing blow from his pipe, the sound so high-pitched it would be easily heard above the clamour of battle. He was convinced that it would work. In theory it should, but out in the midst of hurling spears, arrow fire and cutting swords this strategy had yet to be proved. It was their only hope of success. The enemy army was large. They also possessed siege weapons – mangonels and trebuchets ready to come forward to breach the city walls. It must not come to that. The time to destroy the enemy was now. Padar made another quick prayer to Woden and another to the Virgin, before he looked again and realised that he was looking into the enemy.

Within moments they were forming up in lines facing the khan's troops, at a right angle to the bridge. General Luke had wheeled them into a semi-circle that reached behind the Cuman army. No doubt, the khan gleefully thought this was madness. How could they defend the city's two bridges, if they permitted his Cuman warriors an advantageous position this close to the city between the two great bridges?

Lightly touching the padded scabbard that held his Frankish sword, Gabriel, Padar moved his horsemen into a front position on the army's right flank, close to their formation of foot archers. Drums banged, curses flew across from army to army. Pennants flew like colourful birds' wings, black, red, purple and a vivid yellow. These were ghastly warnings of impending destruction. As they flapped open and shut, Padar glimpsed parts of animal heads, wolves' ears, bears' snouts, lean cats that prowled the grasslands, crows and buzzards, hawks and falcons. The Rus banners were simpler. Their pennants depicted colourful castles, occasionally a hawk. Mostly they were similar to Norman pennants, since they were split into geometric sections.

There was a moment of eerie silence followed by the snap of hundreds of bowstrings. At once, a sound that began as a soft whistle of air passing through feathers became the rushing of a great Steppe wind storm. Arrows whipped in arcs through the sky. When they struck wood, they made a clatter against enemy shields. This was so loud it was as if Thor was throwing hailstones. Their fire was quickly returned. Two great storms of arrows reached the height of their trajectory before falling and striking targets. This happened several times over. The sun beat down relentlessly from the heavens. The two armies moved forwards and engaged.

‘Stay close,' Padar yelled to his men. ‘Keep me in sight until I gave the signal.' He felt for his flint. No one could create a spark as easily as Padar. Years of experience travelling the isolated and lesser known route-ways of England on secret missions for Harold Godwinson had given him much practice. Not only was Padar a skald, a storyteller, a harpist, and a merchant, he never forgot that he had been a spy and always a warrior. Momentarily, he thought of Gudrun and his daughters who had joined Thea in the fortress terem. He breathed in, exhaled and charged.

He passed through his own lines, avoiding arrow fire, lunging javelins and wide, deadly sword swipes. He glanced back. His men were leaning low over their horses, intent on following him. The wind of their movement caressed his face. He smelled the battle. They were in the thick of it. Around him he heard the noise of pain. Javelins came plunging towards him but he was small and fast and avoided their thrusts. Others were not so fortunate. Too soon the battlefield had become a weaving advance of swords, lances, battle-axes and deadly maces with spiked heads. Many fell about him. His horse reared and whinnied. He held fast. As the assault raged around him Padar, having regained control over Argon, criss-crossed his way towards the centre.

An enemy's horse screamed. An arrow had lodged in its neck. It bolted, reared up and tossed its leather-clad rider about in his saddle. The rider lost his conical helmet and his javelin as he attempted to rein in his mount. It was futile because it was catching. Other horses pursued the bolting creature, despite their riders' efforts to control their mounts. It was only a small incident in one small section of the battle but Padar took heart. The time had come to deliver more chaos. He whipped his delicate bone pipe from its wool-lined case, hung it around his neck, placed it to his lips and gave his signal. It was followed by General Luke's blast calling his men to fall back. Padar lifted his head and with great skill wheeled Argon around as if he were about to retreat. For a heartbeat he caught sight of a flock of geese fly southwards, crossing the blue sky in a neat formation, moving with speed, as if intent on escaping the killing field. He saw his men reaching for their missiles.

He turned forward, ducking enemy spears. Seeing his throwers spread themselves along the chaotic disentangling ranks of Cumans and Rus, before hurling their first missiles, Padar dropped his pipe, struck his flint, lit the cord that connected with the lethal, sticky mixture inside the pot and threw his fire into the heart of the enemy. As the missile exploded, the section of horsemen nearest Padar fell into panic. Horses reared as flames caught their horsemen. They bolted back through their ranks, creating more chaos as they threw their riders.

Ahead, Padar saw one rider frantically trying to beat off the flames. It was as much as he could do to keep control of his own horse. As he glanced from side to side he saw his companions courageously and systematically igniting and launching second and third missiles brought out from their saddlebags. Once these pots gained their marks it was as if lightning had descended from God's heavens to ignite a whole section of the khan's army. Padar's riders created turmoil. All at once the khan's army turned down river towards the southern bend. Commanded by experienced men, the Rus army moved forward again to pursue the Cumans forwards towards the southern bridge.

As he galloped, his sword now drawn and held forward in one hand, Padar allowed himself a glance upwards. The Wolf Tower loomed up from the river to his right. He was sure that by the battlements he could make out three mantles flapping in the wind. For the intake of a breath he could make out Gudrun with her gold hair, loosened from its plait, streaming behind her.

He felt a fierce renewal of his flagging energy. He was not only fighting for the survival of a Godwin princess, he was fighting for his own family's survival. He was fighting for the freedom to trade along the Russian rivers and he was fighting for a future in a new land. Most of all he was fighting for Gudrun and for their girls' birthright to live in peace. He plunged forward, but as the galloping horses in front of him approached the bend in the river where the ships were waiting, he signalled for his men to slow, fall back and let the Cumans, unhindered, approach the bridge.

Thea watched from the tower, standing alongside the governor, Michael, Anya, the patriarch, Katya and Gudrun. She saw the khan's army wheel around and race along the far river bank, galloping towards the bend. Through the flames from the thrown missiles that stretched plumes of smoke over the river she discerned movement on the dark waters below. She leaned over the parapet, peering through the smoke barrier, trying to see more clearly. The ships were ready. She glanced up at the sky. The sun was falling and sunset was almost upon them. Vespers had passed. Soon it would be the hour of Compline.

She watched the Rus ships sneakily glide across the water. Within moments, a cloud of arrows were flying from the ships into the midst of the fleeing army. It was the usual strategy of a Steppe army to operate a feigned retreat and wheel around again into a crescent to engulf the horsemen pursuing it. She watched for this. Before the Steppe horde performed such an operation their dragon fire must stop it. She grasped hold of Anya's hand and prayed that they could send out their Greek fire as soon as the enemy reached the river bend. Somewhere down there, on the ships, Edmund was in command. For a moment she thought she had glimpsed him. She prayed to St Theodosia. There was a gasp from Gudrun.

‘Look,' Gudrun cried out. ‘The dragon fire.'

The patriarch lifted his great jewelled cross high and shouted up towards the reddening sky, ‘May God destroy the infidels.'

Anya's steward, Michael, looking in the opposite direction, cried out. Thea turned about. He was pointing towards the north. Far in the distance she saw what appeared to be dust kicked up by horsemen riding along the wide river. They were so far away. She could not make out whose horsemen they were. If this was a second Steppe army, their own army would be caught in a trap. Her heart sank. Her optimism was shattered.

She turned southwards again. The Rus were falling back. Great billows of smoke rose from the fire that issued forth from the ships lined along the river. Ghastly flames of yellow belching fire had been launched from the prow heads of their ships. Within the time it took for a ragged-looking crow to flee overhead, fire appeared to be snaking along the ranks of the fleeing Cuman army. A moment later, smoke obscured the armies. Thea could hear a thunder of hoofs passing below the tower, the horses' neighing, agonised shouts, cries of the armies as the enemy tried to turn their horses away from the flames; the clang of their weapons as they sought blindly for their Rus opponents was terrifying. Thea could smell the khan's army burning. She watched, fascinated and terrified by the sickening noxious yellow flames that licked upwards, as if they seeped through fishing nets. She was glimpsing them through gaps in the dark smoke. The flames seemed to stretch along the length of the river. She drew her veil across her face in an attempt to escape the stink that rose up towards the very heights where she was standing. She watched the scene below obliterated by flame and smoke.

‘What must it like be down there?' Gudrun cried, coughing and clutching hold of Thea.

‘Victory for us. Defeat for them.'

Tears were streaming down Katya's face. Katya's lips began moving in silent prayer. Thea knew she was praying for both Edmund and Dimitri. There were no comforting words that she could lend. She glanced towards the wooded flatlands to the north where the air was clearer. The distant horsemen appeared to have paused, but ghostly ships seemed to be moving very slowly along the wide Dnieper from the northern horizon, still too far away to completely discern. Something uncanny stirred in her breast and her heart beat faster. What if Vladimir was coming to save them? Were the Sviatoslavichi moving south towards Pereiaslavl to help the Cuman army to destroy them? She shuddered.

Below her, momentarily smoke cleared again. Despite the launch of dragon fire through the prow heads of dragons, griffons and great bear heads, the khan's army were fighting back, launching an arrow attack on the ships. The sky that had been dark with smoke was now dark again, this time with arrows. She prayed that these arrows would not carry flames back onto their ships. If this happened the remaining siphons of dragon fire would ignite. All of hell would be loosened into a river of fire.

It appeared now that the ships were holding back the dragon fire. Instead, they were returning arrow fire. At last, the remnant of the burning army was racing towards the cut beyond the heavily defended southern bridge. Cuman ranks swerved. For a moment she held her breath. They might attempt a crescent. Suspense hung amongst the smoke. Then, the great burning army moved as one away from the river and the Cumans were galloping into the low hills to their left. Once their broken army turned into the valley, the Rus ships let loose another deadly round of Greek fire into the back of the retreating cavalry.