The Golden Horde (41 page)

“All right.” Ivan forced himself to be calm and listen to their reasoning. “Tell me how anything to do with That One can be good.” He realized too late that he should have nominated a spokesman, because the three-part harmony of comment and correction that seemed to accompany any decision made it difficult to hear.

The trio, armed with dangerously shaky knowledge gleaned from ballads, myths and legends, had seized on what Ivan had said concerning the pre-eminence of darkness at this time of year. He, like Mar’ya Morevna, had meant it as a warning, but like many fanatics these noblemen had heard only of a potential force for destruction they could turn against their enemies. Their explanation had all the enthusiasm that led Western knights to go on crusade; but to Ivan’s mind it had been as carefully edited as one of Aleksandr Nevskiy’s court chronicles would be shorn of any mention of heroism besides his own.

Chernobog was the Black God from a time before Russia became Christian, and though he had fallen from favour over the years he was still a
Russian
god, not one imported from outside. Since not just the people but the very land of Russia was under threat from the Tatar invaders, the three
boyaryy
had convinced themselves he would support those whose ancestors had worshipped him in olden times.

“When the White Christ came,” said Stepan Mikhailovich, crossing himself, “the old gods were set aside. But they weren’t destroyed, and it’s said they haunt the shadowed corners of the world, remembering what they were. And if men call on them for aid, they listen.”

“
It
is
said
” and “
according
to
legend
” were two phrases Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna despised, since they excused any failure to find out the truth. The Lord of the Dark Places might be less eager to help than these three conspirators believed. He’d read all about it in the book
Enciervanul
Doamnisoar
, and since its whole purpose was to warn about the consequence of summoning demons, a long-forgotten god might have degenerated into something far from pleasant.

“What about the God whose sign you just made?” he asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear Stepan say it aloud, and the tone in which he said it.

“The people have been calling on God and Christ and Mary and the Saints to save them since the Tatars first rode into Russia,” said Stepan. “What good has it done them? They were told the Tatars are God’s Scourge on the unrighteous and all this is a punishment, without knowing what they did to deserve it! Only the bishops and the monasteries have profited, first from being paid to pray for safety, then by being exempted from the Tatar taxes.”

What Ivan heard was regret, anger and frustration. What he didn’t hear, and was glad of it, was Stepan or any of the others refer to ‘the Christian God’ like something alien. He was half-hearted in his own devotions, but that would have been truly disturbing. He knew about the danger, at such a time as this when the structures of the world stretched thin, of a lack of something to believe in. It didn’t have anything to do with religion, neither the Christian Church, nor the Moslems, nor the Jews or even, he supposed, the shamanist beliefs of Tatars themselves. But without something, even so simple as the blind self-confidence of an undefeated
bogatyr
champion, there were things in the blackness of Beyond that would slip into an empty space like a blowfly into a meat-store, and leave all rotten in their passing.

“All right,” he said, “if you want to call on aid from powers of long ago, then why not Belobog the White God?” He wasn’t expecting the looks of scorn from all three
boyaryy
.

“Call on a bright power at the dark of the year?” said Andrey Vladimirovich. “What chance of success in that?”

“Belobog was a sky-god,” said Mstislav Vasil’yevich, “like the one the Tatars bow to. How do we know he would help us and not them?”

Stepan Mikhailovich said nothing at all. He just smiled, and his smile and the layers of meaning behind it soured the wine in Ivan’s stomach. He was more grateful than ever that he didn’t know how to help this madness, but it was clear that something would have to be done to put the crowns in the treasure-house beyond reach.

And he didn’t know how.

The three watched him slam his chair back from the table, stand up and walk to the door, all without making any move to impede him. But as Ivan shot the bolts back and flung it open, half-surprised the corridor outside wasn’t lined with Tatar soldiers sent to kill them all, Stepan called his name.

“Tsar Ivan,” the man said, “we can rely on you to keep silent, I think. You’re one of us now, like it or not, and nothing you could say will make the Tatar khan believe otherwise. But just in case you think you might —”

Ivan stared at them coldly. “I don’t like threats,” he said. Stepan Mikhailovich shook his head.

“We don’t threaten, Majesty. We promise. Because we know the Tsar of Khorlov has a wife, and a son, and a daughter. Good day to you, Majesty. Close the door as you leave …”

*

Volk Volkovich strolled through the shadowy streets of Sarai. Sometimes he ambled on two feet, and at other times he trotted on four; but nobody challenged him either way. Even with his drooping false moustache, this time made of his own hair and much superior to the last one, he would never have passed for a Tatar or one of the squat, bandy-legged Chingisid Mongols. But even without it he was already lean-faced and long-jawed enough to pass for a Blue Turk from the high steppes, and one of particularly nasty disposition. There was less risk of a challenge here than there had been in the siege-camp outside the walls of Ryazan six years ago. Only in the smallest tribal
bok
might one man know the names and faces of all the others, and Ilkhan Batu’s city of the Golden Horde was far too big for that. With a constantly changing population that never fell lower than eighty thousand, and any given fifty thousand of those the five
tuman
divisions at the Khan’s disposal, there was no way anyone he might encounter could know every other.

He had prowled around in one form or another for almost two weeks now, first shadowing the column escorting Tsar Ivan from Khorlov then later simply lurking in the vicinity of Sarai to see what could be seen. He hadn’t been missed by Amragan
tarkhan
and the other Tatars of the escort, who might even think he’d been killed by the wolf that had been tracking them. But he’d kept clear of Ivan and all the other Khorlovtsy Russians as well. Pretending to be one Tatar among so many thousand others was a simple matter, but being one Rus among twenty, unable to come and go as he pleased, would curtail his activities as Ivan’s spy in the enemy camp.

The Grey Wolf preferred his natural form, which he adopted on the quieter streets. That wasn’t just because he found walking upright as uncomfortable as a man would find stumbling about on all fours, but the wolf-shape had added advantages. He could no longer see a full range of colours, though after nightfall that was small loss, but he could see in darkness that would rob human eyes of more than just colour, he could hear farther than most humans could see in better light than this, and what he couldn’t see or hear, he could smell. And he was so much quicker, stronger and more agile in his true shape that not even Tsar Ivan could hope to understand the difference.

Just because the streets were quiet didn’t mean they were empty, and with him prowling through them, they were most certainly not safe. The whole city and everyone in it felt uneasy. Volk Volkovich knew it wasn’t because of him, since he’d taken pains to ensure nobody knew he was here. But there was a tight, hot sensation in the air that left the Grey Wolf feeling uncomfortable all the time. In wolf’s shape he was itchy, as if his fur was inside-out, and in human form he had skull-splitting headaches. The whole of Sarai felt like a pot come to the boil and about to overflow, but that there was a weight on its lid, holding all that pressure back until… What?

Until the heat beneath it died away, or the lid was lifted and the pressure released?

Or until something blew that lid clean off and whatever seethed within came out in a searing rush?

He’d been spotted two or three times now, a furry shape fading into the broken shadows beyond the doorway lanterns. There had been some slight bewilderment, but so far no alarm. The few men who had seen him were just common soldiers of the Khan, Mongols, Uighurs and the like. Steppe nomads all their lives, they had been city-dwellers for the past few years, still amazed by living among the buildings their Ilkhan chose to build rather than destroy. Their eyes told them they’d seen either a wolf or one of the big herd-dogs that were no more than a well-fed generation removed from wolves. It was very much like Ryazan all those years ago. This was a city, so what they’d seen
couldn’t
be a wolf, and therefore
had
to be a dog.

A bloody big dog, but just a dog after all.

Volk Volkovich pricked his pointed ears forward and listened to the slurred mumblings of the man who reeled along the street ahead of him, unaware of the fanged grey bulk lurking in the darkness at his back. He was one of the burly, short-legged Uighur tribesmen, and though he was mumbling to himself, it was some Turku-Mongol dialect that made no sense to his unseen listener. Not that it was anything a spy could have used, since of all the smells that hung in the air the sharp buttermilk tang of
kumys
was predominant. With enough fermented mares’-milk on board, a steppe Tatar might see wolves anywhere, even when there wasn’t one close enough to take out his throat with a single leap-and-snap. The Grey Wolf grinned, curling back his lips in a leer that exposed teeth like an ivory picket-fence.

It was tempting. Very tempting. Granted, the Tatars weren’t a clean people, but it wasn’t the thought of stained clothing or grubby skin that was making the Grey Wolf’s mouth water. There was warm, savoury stuff inside the dirtiest wrapping that…

Volk Volkovich closed his teeth silently on the desire to snap them shut and see the Tatar jump out of clothes and skin together. There was a time and a place for everything, and this was neither.

But there would be other times.

The Grey Wolf whined softly at the back of his throat and resumed man’s shape in a hurry. It might be weak and gangly, with feeble teeth and a feeling of having wool wrapped round its senses, but right now it had fewer temptations to master. He heard another voice further down the street, louder and more coherent than that of the drunk soldier he’d been tracking, and it said something in Turki. Volk Volkovich pulled his grey wolfskin cloak around his shoulders then up around his neck to better hide his face, and walked quickly and quietly in the opposite direction. Even though he was dressed to look like a Turk and could recognize the sound of their language, he could neither understand nor speak it and made a point of avoiding those who might. If a man who presumed they might both be of the same tribe tried to start a conversation, the sinister looks and ill-tempered snarls that helped maintain his disguise would only go so far.

The voice, having no success with Turki, shifted to Farsi and doubled in volume.

Volk Volkovich smiled thinly and kept walking. He knew the sound of an officer bawling out a subordinate for drunkenness well enough. A troop-leader commanding one hundred of the Khan’s own guard was outraged to find one of his own men staggering tipsily through the street, not because he was drunk, since all Tatars from the late Khakhan Ogotai on down were great drinkers, but because he was supposed to be on duty at Khan Batu’s treasure-house.

Treasure
-
house
?

The Grey Wolf froze and flattened against the nearest wall, listening as well as those feeble human ears would let him. The officer’s infuriated bellowing helped considerably. He was a junior commander whose idea of a dressing-down wasn’t just to list the penalties he intended to award, but the duties that should have been performed by the transgressor and which would be doubled to help him remember next time.

Volk Volkovich had no difficulty committing them to memory the first time, and felt gratitude to the man for finally giving purpose to all his creeping around Sarai. If a collection of stolen Russian crowns wasn’t being kept in the Khan’s own treasure-house then he would be very surprised.

Finding the place would be easiest of all. Still yelling obliging explanations of what he was doing, the commander dragged his swaying soldier towards where the man was supposed to be on sentry, declaring he would stand sentry even if he had to be spiked upright to the door. Volk Volkovich grinned nastily, knowing the officer was both capable of doing it and well within his rights. Discipline in the Golden Horde was brutal. In an army of barbaric savages whose response to any opposition was force, superior force was all they understood.

Neither of the Tatars heard the faint sound like an intake of breath as the Grey Wolf returned to his preferred shape. He drifted along with no more disturbance than a curl of smoke, and that sharp-fanged smile never left his muzzle the whole time.

It wasn’t fear of the threatened punishments which sobered up the would-be sentry, because he’d not been sober enough to hear them in the first place. But the intermittent shaking that played punctuation to some particularly inventive unpleasantness, and the constant dragging through the dark, wet streets of Sarai, and the tumbles into puddles of standing water and less savoury stuff, all helped restore coherence to his speech and movement.