The Exotic Enchanter (5 page)

The first Polovtsi rode in shortly after sunrise, and they kept coming steadily after that. By midmorning the camp was surrounded by the steppe horsemen, and the stench was something one could almost reach out and pluck from the air in handfuls.

The riders needed no encouragement to drink, and some of them even had the courtesy to pay—at first. After the fourth or fifth cup, they seemed to forget that there was such a thing as money. Shea could see the merchants gritting their teeth as they watched their stocks disappear, without any reasonable amount of silver appearing in return.

There was also a little trading in dry goods. The psychologist saw an occasional Polovets festooned with wooden trinkets or woolen cloth. But balancing debits and credits (Shea was the son of a bookkeeper), he doubted that the merchants' guilds would show a profit today.

Shea was starting to wonder if his strengthening spell had worked at all, and if instead he should have tried turning the mead to whiskey. The amount the steppemen could get through, on empty stomachs too, gave him the feeling of lice in his pants (at least he hoped it was only the feeling).

But by noon, Polovtsi were falling down and crawling around like cockroaches. They couldn't walk, but they could still drink. If they couldn't get to the barrels, they could send friends who were still stumbling instead of crawling.

Shea watched one Polovets give friends his short sword, his metal cap (it looked like something captured from a long-dead Rus), his shirt (complete with lice), and his trousers, all to trade for more wine. They came back with the wine, all except one man.

The last friend came back empty-handed, just as the now practically-naked warrior was finishing off the wine. He glared at his friend.

"No friend of mine you are. Buy wine—with my trousersh—then drink it yourshelf."

"Ho, I did—"

"You did."

"Did not."

"Did!"

"Did not!"

"I'll take—your trousersh—"

"No, you won't!"

The warrior on the ground suddenly developed the ability of a leopard. He gripped his friend by the ankles, tumbled him off his feet, and began pulling at his trousers. The other struggled, kicking at the first man's face.

A foot connected with the first man's jaw. His head snapped back and to the side. He rolled over on his side, then onto his back. A moment later he began to snore.

His friend lurched to his feet and staggered off. He staggered straight into the wheel of a cart, then reeled back, rubbing his nose.

"No brawl, my chief," he said. "Nothing—like that. Just a bet between friendsh. Jusht a . . ." His voice trailed off. Having lost his vision, the Polovets now lost his balance. He gripped the iron rim of the cartwheel, but that only slowed his fall. In another moment he was as soundly asleep as his friend, the only difference being that the second man was facedown.

Those two were the first Shea saw go down from drinking too much breakfast, but they weren't the last. Between them, breakfast and lunch took out a good half of the visitors.

By early afternoon, they were coming in dribs and drabs instead of whole bands. Some bought drink and rode off with it; Shea hoped it would at least knock the fight out of them.

A Polovets lurched up, his arm around a merchants apprentice and brandishing an empty cup in his free hand.

"More wine! This—hish mastersh a pig. Won't—no more."

"You've had enough, friend," the young man said.

From his voice and breath, Shea thought that the apprentice could also skip the next few cups. But the spell was working on both of them; they were going to drink themselves under the table, under the wagon, or wherever else the drunks were ending up.

Shea personally refilled their cups. They emptied those cups twice before reeling off, thanking Shea with embraces that left him badly wanting a bath. Drunken Polovtsi were adding assorted stinks to a camp already ripe from the horde of sober ones.

Good thing I didn't turn the mead to whiskey
, Shea thought.
I wasn't planning to kill the Polovtsi from alcohol poisoning. Now, if the drink just holds out—

It did. A few Polovtsi seemed to realize what was happening, and tried to mount and ride off. Most of them fell right back off, and none of them got more than five hundred paces from the camp.

A few also didn't survive the afternoon—brawls, falling into streams and drowning, breaking necks falling off horses or wagons, and so on. Even that didn't sober up their surviving comrades.

Shea had seen alcoholics, people who couldn't stop drinking, and they weren't a pretty sight. Neither were the Polovtsi, as his spell drove them to pour more and more down their throats.

He reminded himself that Chalmers being executed or Florimel spending her life in some potentate's harem would be a much uglier sight.

By the time the sun was halfway down the sky, the work was done. Mikhail Sergeivich leaped on a wagon and waved his sword over his head three times, the agreed-on signal for the soldiers to set on the Polovtsi. Then he jumped down, joined Shea in pulling a sheaf of rawhide thongs from their baggage, and went to work.

Not all of the soldiers had obeyed orders to avoid the liquor, and those the two leaders left lying where they'd fallen. A few drunken soldiers didn't make much difference, anyway. The Polovtsi were either sprawled flat or sitting slumped against something, and none of them could have stood unless tied to a tree. As for fighting, they were so obviously past it that in a few minutes the sober merchants came out and began helping the soldiers bind the prisoners.

A few of the Polovtsi who'd been sleeping off their breakfast woke up before they were bound. They only stared dim-eyed at their captors; Shea wondered how many of them (especially the ones who'd drunk kvass or mead) would be paralyzed by hangovers.

They'd run out of thongs and were raiding the leather merchants' stores for more material, when Igor rode up at the head of his warriors. The prince stared at the acres of helpless Polovtsi, and laughed so hard that anyone but a Hero would have fallen off his horse. Then he dismounted and embraced Shea.

"You are a
bogatyr
like none ever named in song or story! The Polovtsi are finished and Rurik Vasilyevich has his life, by all the saints!"

"Did you capture the slave train, Your Highness? And what of that other wizard? And Yuri Dimitrivich's family? And—?" Shea hoped his day's victory entitled him to a few straight answers.

"We captured it, all right," the prince interrupted. "Word of your drinking party reached the guards, and half of them rode off to join it. They are out there," he added, waving a hand at the field of drunks.

"The rest seemed to suspect something, but we had a scout who knew a ford across a little stream that they counted on to protect one flank. We had our men on foot right into the camp before the guards knew anything. Then the horsemen charged before the Polovtsi could so much as draw a sword!

"We had the camp and the caravan under our hands in less time than it took one of those wretches to drain a cup. Yuri Dimitrivich's family and household, those who survived, are free."

"What did you do with the rest, Your Highness?"

The prince replied cheerfully, "They are on their way to Krasni Podok, and this vermin will join them. Don't worry about any blood prices, Egorov. The
grivnas
from that sale will more than cover the price of a few wounds."

Igor lowered his voice. "I think I really will raise the liquor tax. If these merchants will go to so much trouble to supply drink to Polovtsi, perhaps I can persuade them to take as much trouble for their prince. Speaking of which, I could use a drink right now."

"Ah, Your Highness, if anything is left, it would leave you flat alongside your enemies. In fact, I'd not offer anything here to anyone but an enemy."

The prince looked around, then headed for the spring. He gestured for Shea to follow, which the psychologist did, telling himself that his dreams of freeing all the slaves in the train had been a few centuries too early. But what about—

"Florimel, Your Highness! Was she freed?"

"I gave Rurik Vasifyevich permission to look for her, once we'd taken the caravan," Igor replied. "He will be coming in with the rest of my band. Oleg Nikolaivich will take the caravan to Krasni Podok and bring back my profits." His smile grew a trifle cruel. "I will also find out who has been depending on Krasni Podok to supply his needs, at the expense of his fellow Rus."

That should help a bit
, Shea thought.

Near sunset the rest of the party rode in, including Reed Chalmers. Never was there a more truly named Knight of the Woeful Countenance.

He was still guarded, but Shea could see that the guards were now superfluous. Reed slumped in the saddle so that it was a wonder he didn't fall. There was no sign of Florimel.

Shea helped his comrade down, and wished he had a drink to offer him. The best he could do was privacy, so he took Chalmers to the outskirts of the camp.

"What happened?"

Shea was relieved to see a trace of life in Chalmers' eyes, even if it was only frustration. "I—I don't know."

"Can you tell me what you saw, at least?"

"What—how can that help?"

Florimel is gone again
, Shea thought, Aloud, he said, "We never know what won't help. Besides, we kept our promise to Igor. He owes us something. Even if I can't help—"

"All right."

Chalmers described a search of the slave caravan, wagon by wagon and tent by tent, him and four guards. (Not just to keep an eye on him, either; suicidal last-ditch attacks were a Polovtsi specialty.) There'd been hundreds of slaves, some more wretched then others, but none of them as happy as Chalmers had expected to find them, now that they were free.

"One man was bold enough to explain that Yuri the Red's household had been freed but no others," Chalmers said. "He asked if this was a true prince's justice. One of my guards knocked him senseless."

Chalmers kept his anger on a tight rein until they came to the last tent. It had some sort of warding at the entrance, that kept Chalmers and his guards from going in.

The warding did not keep the psychologist from seeing Florimel, standing with Malambroso in the far corner of the tent.

"It should not have kept her from seeing me, either, but perhaps it did. Certainly she showed no signs of recognition. She looked like a sleepwalker."

Then Malambroso began making passes with his hands. Chalmers knew there was only one thing to do: break the ward, then negate Malambroso's spell.

He tried three times to enter the tent, using three different verses (and Shea couldn't have remembered what they were to save his life). The warding stayed firm, which was more than could be said of the guards. Igor's orders or no, two of them ran off.

The other two remained in sight, but at a safe distance, as if fearing Chalmers might Durst into flames at any moment, like a pot of Greek fire.

In the middle of Chalmers' fourth attempt, Malambroso and Florimel vanished.

"I'm sure I did everything correctly," Chalmers concluded. "Any one of those spells should have stopped him." His voice was tight with rage and grief. "And what has he done with my wife?" His voice rose to a shout. "Where has he taken her?"

Shea mentally cursed the whole continuum, starting with Malambroso, going on to the Polovtsi, and not stopping there. He didn't dare curse out loud, but right now he would knowingly have accepted a drink from the caravan's remaining stores.

The day was ending even worse than it had begun, and Shea hoped that Chalmers didn't want any company, because he himself certainly didn't. With a farewell grunt to Chalmers, he stumbled, half-blindly, back toward the center, where fires were beginning to glow.

Shea had to swing wide before he'd gone more than a few yards. The sober merchants had pulled their wagons into a tight circle, in case any sober Polovtsi wandered by. The drunken Polovtsi covered as much ground as ever, although some of them were awake enough to groan and a few were struggling against their bonas.

The psychologist was passing a wagon with a cover of smelly furs tied to poles, when one of the furs flew out and hit him in the face. Before he could react, a human figure leaped after the fur.

The attacker landed on Shea's back, and the Ohioan felt the pressure of a knife seeking to pierce his armor. He tried to keep his balance and draw his sword, but did neither. He went down, his sword caught under him and the attacker on top of him. Shea felt another stab, this time higher up. He tried to free one arm to draw his dagger, because he had the feeling that the third time his attacker stabbed, the knife wasn't going to hit armor—

Something cracked, something else thumped, and a third something went
wssssh
. The attacker let out a scream and released Shea. The psychologist rolled clear, drawing his sword as soon as his right arm was free, then leaping up ready to go into action.

He didn't have to. The attacker, a thickset man with a Rus robe and a scarf over his face, was sprawled on the trampled grass. Reed Chalmers stood over him, with a long pole from the wagons cover in one hand.

Shea took a deep breath. "Thanks, Doc. You're improving."

"I thought of killing him, but I suspect he may have something to tell us."

Definitely improving
, thought Shea.

The scuffle had drawn the attention of the guards, and the prisoner was soon dragged to the center of camp and stripped of his scarf and headdress. In the light of fires and torches, it could be seen that in spite of his Rus merchant's dress, the prisoner had Polovets blood in him.

Chalmers looked closely at the man for a minute, then frowned.

"Do you know this man, Rurik Vasileyevich?"

Igor had come up, although both of die psychologists were too numb to notice. Chalmers stiffened like an icon. Those words were all too clearly etched in his mind.

"Yes, Your Highness," he said. "This is the man who approached me in Seversk."

"Doubtless a spy," Igor said. "But if I find out he had the cooperation of the merchants' guilds, they will pay."