The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible (24 page)

38

‘Listen,’ said Nicholas urgently as they rode out of the ruined south gate. ‘Listen. I think you’ve forgotten something.’

Stanley slowed and looked at him, puzzled. ‘Go on.’

‘How many do you think the Tatars have lost?’

Stanley shook his head. ‘Fewer than a hundred. A handful to our ragged musket fire, the skirmishing. More who got themselves trapped and burned to death. In truth, hardly any. As Devlet Giray intended. For his remaining number – numbers are always exaggerated in war, but having seen the extent of his camp from the walls, this host of Devlet Giray numbers not less than fifty thousand, as is said. And fresh from victory razing Moscow, full of self-belief. They will not be expecting any counter-attack, it is true, and they do not form ranks. They remain light horsemen and steppe skirmishers still.’

‘So you think the old chieftain still lives?’

‘Devlet Giray? Of course. He is an old fox.’

‘No, the chieftain on the steppe. Who charged against us.’

The others stared. God they must be weary, thought Nicholas with impatience. My old Knights Companion look almost stupid. He punched Smith’s good arm in desperation. ‘You shot his son! That chieftain!’

It all seemed so long ago, though it was only a few weeks. ‘Aye, of course,’ Smith harrumphed. ‘Of course I remember.’

‘He still lives. And he still wants vengeance?’

‘And you want to ride after this vast army of Tatars,’ said Stanley, ‘and rescue your girl. I understand. I know your heart goes out to her. But Nick,’ he said gently, ‘life does not always work out as we want it. I think she is gone. I do not think we can ride after the Tatars. I pray she still lives’ – he was frank, but it had to be said – ‘and she probably does, she would be accounted fair by any tribe of men on earth, God knows. She will be a much-valued slave girl. But she might end anywhere. She might be sent back to Constantinople for the Sultan’s harem, kept by Devlet Giray himself, sold to Persia or China. My friend, forgive us, for we failed her. But I do not think you will ever see her again.’

‘Listen to me,’ said Nicholas, and his voice was urgent, his eyes blazing. They knew that fire, and it was contagious. Dangerously contagious. ‘The old chieftain still lives, he still wants blood vengeance on us—’

‘On me, specifically,’ said Smith with a certain pride. ‘No one else could have taken that shot.’

‘Well, on you. On all of us. Blood feuds are undying. Now listen.’

The Tatar horde moved east, slow and stately and magnificent as some great male lion over his domain, knowing he is the strongest on the plain, fearing nothing. They covered no more than ten leisurely miles a day, hunted much game, continued to pillage any of the scattered farms they came across. The grasslands were still rich enough for their tens of thousands of horses. They drank and feasted at night, enjoying their slave girls.

In one of the Tents of the Women, there was a stout Tatar woman called Babash, with a round, rosy face, tiny hands and feet, and eyes almost lost in her rolls of fat. She guarded a dark-haired beauty who spoke neither Turkish nor Russian. She spoke a few words in her ugly tongue and then refused to speak more. The other, older woman captured along with this one, buxom and flaxen-haired, had proved more amenable.

Babash pinched this young one’s arms and twisted her hair and threatened to send her to one of the generals, and this foreign vixen spat at her. So Babash laughed her high-pitched laugh and sent her to one of the generals, rejoicing to think how he would break her. And the vixen scratched his face so badly that the general sent her back! He was much mocked by his fellow khans for it, but he just
shrugged and said he did not want his balls bitten off, and there were easier swivings to be had. Did he not have twenty other new girls for himself anyway? None of them scratched.

Babash would have happily pinched the girl and burned her until she was broken, ready to submit herself to any man. But Devlet Giray himself had heard of it and laughed, and was intrigued that she spoke a language no one understood. He had come and looked at her naked one night – how she had fought as she was held down by six of the women and stripped! – and the vixen had looked straight back at the Great Khan with a burning fury, naked as she was born, and Devlet Giray thought that she was magnificent. Plainly still a virgin and like a ripe young fruit, sweet as a Kashgar apricot. He stroked her hair and ran his hands over her flesh and she yelled at him in her strange tongue, and he reckoned she might be worth as many as fifty horses. Fifty.

Such girls do not come along every day. And much as he loved women, and would have enjoyed breaking this one in and hearing her first little moans, no woman was worth that much. He told Babash to keep her intact and not to mark her or cut her, and he would find a buyer for her soon enough. Babash could certainly protect her from others. Devlet Giray had seen her use her little curved dagger, her fat fist moving in a blur through the air before men’s hypnotized eyes. None of his warriors would go against her. Two had died.

So Babash kept close watch on the slave girl, though she remained contemptuous of her. Because she herself had never been that beautiful, nor worth fifty horses, and because she knew that this virgin’s spirit was still unbroken, curses on her proud head.

Ivan Koltzo was talking to Petlin. Both were drinking heavily.

Koltzo said, ‘I see the way the wind is blowing. Do you not?’

Petlin nodded. ‘Aye, I see it. Moscow may be finished, but this is just a battle in the unending war between Tartary and Russia. And in the wind I scent the coming of Grand Tartary, not White Russia.’ He drank and swiped his mouth and added bitterly, ‘We Cossacks are on the losing side, right enough. We hadn’t even the strength to take the best of Devlet Giray’s baggage train.’

Ivan Koltzo glanced around to see if anyone was near, then said more quietly, ‘But why do we have to be the losers?’

Petlin’s eyes narrowed. ‘Dangerous words, brother. If I understand you right.’

‘But we are free men. If a Cossack is anything, he is free. We do not owe loyalty to the Czar or to Russia. We are free to choose our masters.’

‘You would ride with the Easterners?’

‘If they are to be the Lords of the Steppe once more, as of old, in the days of the Great Khan and the Golden Horde. If the future is to be theirs … would you not at least be tempted? Would not any man?’

Petlin said nothing but licked his lips.

‘Imagine,’ said Ivan Koltzo. ‘Instead of a band of three hundred, we ride perhaps as the privileged bodyguard at the head of any army of a hundred thousand. Moscow lies waste, its crazed Czar hanged from its walls, and then all of Asia is ours. A new kingdom arises in the East … the great capitals of Bokhara, Samarkand … would it not be a new life for us? Imagine the gold we would have! Imagine the women.’

Petlin smiled and chuckled and shook his head. ‘Dangerous words, and more dangerous imaginings. Yet you voice what has been in my heart, it is true. Nevertheless, I do not think I could simply ride away from my brother Cossacks. Not so easily. Not after all these years.’

‘Not after the way Stenka has treated you? Not after the way he has preferred those new English friends of his to you?’

‘He has not always treated me badly.’

‘But he has not shared the booty with you this time, has he? He has shared it with them instead.’

Petlin raised his head and stared at Koltzo. ‘What booty?’

The following night, Devlet Giray sat in his council tent with his greatest khans and his chieftains seated cross-legged on carpets around the side of the tent. In the centre, back to back, were roped two Cossacks. They had come riding straight into the camp of the Tatars unarmed, and demanded audience with the Great Khan himself. They had nearly been killed on the spot, for their horses were pleasing to the eye, but they had said with great vehemence that they had news for the Khan, Devlet Giray, that he would wish to hear, and killing them would be a terrible mistake. They had survived by a gnat’s wing.

Their news was of some interest: among their own Cossack brother­hood, they said, encamped now south of the ruined Moscow, was also that party of foreigners who had slain the son of Tokhtamysh Khan, when they fought that day on the steppe. They were fierce fighters, and had also fought in the gate of the city, and killed several fine warriors there. They were great Haters of Tatars.

Tokhtamysh said that he always believed it was so, but now he knew it. And behold, the foreign devils were delivered into his hands for vengeance.

Devlet Giray was cautious, but now there was sudden danger. His khans were against him.

‘Lord, what old Tokhtamysh says is true!’ said one sternly. ‘Honour is accounted more among the Tatar people than gold or even life itself. And if these two Christians are to be believed—’

‘We are to be believed,’ interrupted one of the bound men. He was struck with the butt of a horsewhip but did not cry out. ‘And we will lead you to them. The last thing they expect is that you would return and attack them. They think you are gone. Their defences are nothing.’

‘—if they are to be believed,’ the chieftain went on, ‘we must ride out for blood vengeance!’

‘And if you do not,’ said another, white-bearded, stocky, magnificent, ‘then I, Tokhtamysh, will ride out with my warriors and make war myself, for the sake of my slaughtered son. His spirit remains abroad, how can he rest unavenged? I see him on the steppe, still wandering. His footprints are bloody in the moonlight. And you, Great Khan …’ Old Tokhtamysh looked steadily at Devlet Giray upon his throne. ‘I, Tokhtamysh, will think you less a khan for it.’

There was a stir among the chieftains, but none said a word in protest, though this was a deep insult. Yes, it was a dangerous moment for Devlet Giray. More dangerous that anything he had faced before the walls of Moscow.

Grasp this moment. Rule this tent and these men, now.

He stood swiftly. ‘Hear me.’ Be lordly, not threatening, not petty. ‘Hear me, beloved old warrior, my brother Tokhtamysh. Have we not ridden out together these many years, have we not been horse-brothers, have we not fought and suffered together, longer than many men have lived?’

Tokhtamysh was not angry. Not yet. He said, ‘So we have.’

‘You know that I love you as a brother, as I love all my people. Devlet Giray hesitates for love of his people, not love of gold or love of womanish peace. I hesitate to trust these two unbelievers.’ He looked at the bound pair. Then he thought it politic to kick one of them, hard. ‘Why do you betray your Cossack brothers? I still doubt you.’

‘They betrayed me and they betrayed my family,’ said one of the wretches. ‘The tale sickens me, I will not recount it. But I owe them nothing. They who were my brothers are now my most bitter enemies. Unto death.’

‘And you would truly lead us to them?’

‘We would. And rejoice to see them slain.’

Devlet Giray brooded a theatrical moment longer, stroking his fine moustaches. Impressing his khans with his deep and far-sighted intelligence. Yet now it was action that would bind them under him again, and only action. He must take the risk. They were heady with victory, and all for more war.

He swept his arm high in the air, and said, ‘Then I say aye! I say they have been sent by the Sky God Astur, to lead us to another glorious victory!’ He laid his hand on Tokhtamysh’s arm and added more gently, ‘I say we are led by the Spirit, to exact just vengeance, and lay the sad spirit of your slaughtered son to rest.’

The old chieftains erupted in a roar, batting their hands in drumbeat against the taut side of the camelskin tent. Old Tokhtamysh wept and roared loudest of all.

39

Later that night, Ivan Koltzo lay in a wooden cage on the back of a wagon, crammed against Petlin. Though the Tatars had decided to trust their word for now, they were still treated like animals. Petlin managed to sleep, curse him. Ivan Koltzo lay looking out at the stars over the steppes, the wandering evening star a burning eye on the horizon. He was cold and cramped, and the danger was great, but his heart was exultant.

Two days later, on a grey, cool morning on the late summer steppe, the Cossack bands of Stenka and Yakublev, along with a small party from Moscow under Vorotinsky, crested a rise and looked over a steep downland slope towards a wide river.

‘So,’ said Smith. ‘This is where we will take our stand. Only a few days from Moscow, yet true wilderness.’

‘This is it,’ said Stenka. ‘This is where Ivan Koltzo will bring them back, hot for your blood.’ He sighed. ‘Why are we here? For Russia? Why for Russia? What has she done for us?’

‘For gold and glory!’ said Stanley.

‘Tch.’

A long curving valley, with the steep downland running along its north side, without trees, without cover. The river to the south, and one end enclosed in a natural amphitheatre, with no way out.

Smith said, ‘Only a fool would camp there.’

Stanley grinned. ‘That’ll be us then.’

‘I, Yakublev, will ride free with my men as roving cavalry, always beyond the reach of the Tatar, keeping them at bay, keeping them from committing all their numbers.’

‘And you, Prince Michael,’ said Stanley, ‘you will come over the rise to the north with two thousand Streltsy musketeers. If you have time, you may be able to put up palisades. But—’

‘But when will you come, exactly?’ said Stenka.

Vorotinsky shook his head. ‘That we do not know. But we must come. We must.’ He spoke with quiet passion, gripping his sword­hilt. ‘Moscow is burned, our empire is on the verge of ruin, and we are fighting now for our very survival. We do not simply want to win, we must. The Tatars must not dare to return again.’

Yakublev made an uncomplimentary noise. He had said before he thought this was a madman’s plan, with more holes in it than a moth-eaten silk. He would keep his men riding free, and not commit to that trapped valley.

Vorotinsky said, ‘Believe me, Cossack, I pray to every saint in Russia that I will be back with the Streltsy – with the Czar’s permission. It was only his suggestion that we might have them, remember. And two thousand horses to bring them, or we may be too late. But my fear is, he may have changed his mind, and demand they remain in Moscow for his protection.’

‘And what then?’

Vorotinsky did not answer. The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold …

He pulled his horse around and his party with him. ‘We go back to Moscow. We will return as fast as we may.’ And they were gone in a cloud across the plain.

‘Aye, aye,’ said Stanley, looking after them. ‘And the coming or not of the Streltsy is only one small imponderable among many in our little plan!’ He grinned with absurd, boyish happiness at the peril ahead. ‘God alone knows how this one is going to work out. Ingoldsby, I do hope you have not made us all fools.’

Nicholas grinned too. Rebecca was coming close, he knew it. She was coming back to him. That was all he felt. That, and the blood-hot danger of coming battle. But this time, unlike Moscow, there was no Ivan in command. There were Smith and Stanley, Stenka and Yakublev, and Prince Michael Vorotinsky. Stony-eyed veterans all. So what if they were still outnumbered ten to one? It was going to work. It had to.

‘So,’ said Yakublev, ‘you will draw the Tatars down into this shallow valley to your wagon circle, hold them off there, and then the Streltsy will come up over this rise and fire upon them and cut them down.’

‘It is the new way of war,’ said Smith. ‘It is ugly and it is ­mechanical, and a musket volley cuts like a scythe through mounted knights or steppe horsemen alike. Their age is done. This is the age of gunpowder. But do you want to win, as Vorotinsky says, do you want to save a Christian Empire from the Mohammedan, or do you want to look fine and gentlemanly on the battlefield?’

Yakublev looked unconvinced. He had never much thought of the Tatars as Mohammedan. He said, ‘And then we will all go home.’ He turned to his old comrade Stenka. ‘You will be like a goat tied up as bait for a lion. You are happy with that?’

Stenka bleated then roared with laughter. ‘Let them come and get Stenka the Goat! See how he butts!’

‘And you, young love-struck Englishman,’ said Yakublev, nodding at Nicholas, ‘you ride with handpicked men and get to the vanguard and the slave pens, and find these two captive whores of yours.’

‘Not whores,’ said Nicholas. ‘We’d say, womenfolk.’

Yakublev shrugged. He could see little difference. ‘This is another joke of a plan. After this campaign, the Tatar slave pens are the size of several markets. They have captured hundreds at Moscow. Naturally they will be guarded. How will you find your wh— your woman? By asking around courteously? I do not know how it is going to work.’

‘It’ll work,’ said Nicholas.

The slope was steep to ride down, and certainly too steep for any horseman to ascend. They leaned back hard in their creaking ­saddles and let their horses pick their way down as slow as they chose.

The wide, cold river below ran in deep channels and over shallow gravel, a tributary of the River Oka, its banks often uncertain, meander­ing into sedge and rush-grown bog. It made the place seem more louring and forebidding, and the summer sky was clouding over now, growing shield-grey and ominous.

‘How much time have we?’ said Stanley.

‘We do not know,’ said Yakublev.

They brought the ox wagons round the end of the valley and dragged them up. The ground was boggy, the oxen groaned, the huge eighteen-foot whips snaked through the air and bit into their tough old hides. Twelve wagons in all. They hauled them into a circle and tipped them over on their sides with mighty crashing, and lashed them together, leaving one narrow gap for now. Some rode out single file along the riverbank and found what wood they could, washed down from forests God knew how many hundreds of miles distant. They shaped stakes for palisades and made a wider circle outside. Prepared some food and tried to remain in good cheer. But all felt dread stealing upon them. They felt horribly trapped in this worthless and lifeless place. Goats for lions. Was vengeance for Moscow worth this much? Was Russia?

And how long could they stand the waiting? How long would the Tatars take to come back? They had no idea. The waiting was going to be torture. And many more doubts would arise, the men become restive in that inaction. What if Devlet Giray did not like the terrain? It was too obviously a terrain of ambush. What if he changed his plan, like all good commanders do? He must know there was still half a chance his two Cossack informers were duping him. What if they came behind, over the rise, and fired an arrowstorm down upon them from above?. Then they could do nothing but shelter in the cover of the tipped-up wagons and die one by one, stuck like pincushions. What if the Tatar horsemen found the Streltsy out on the open plain, no great horsemen but mere marching or mounted infantrymen? They would slaughter them all.

O, God, they prayed, Have mercy on our folly.

That night was silent and overcast. They lit a sparse fire and the lookouts sat their horses on top of the rise and looked east and shivered though the night was mild.

Hodge was arguing with Nicholas. ‘Course I’m coming with you. Unless you knock me senseless first.’

‘I just might.’

‘Just you try.’

A big Cossack guffawed. Andriushko. ‘I’ll come with you on your quest of the heart too, little English brother.’

‘I don’t need anyone else,’ said Nicholas. ‘Best if I go alone, as fast as possible.’

‘I too,’ said Chvedar the renegade priest. ‘You will need spiritual solace.’

‘And a couple of gallant knights,’ said Stanley.

‘You will be needed here,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m going alone.’

Three agonized days passed, and then early on the fourth morning, Nicholas was watching the hills, and suddenly one of the scouts was turning about and urging his horse down the steep hill as fast as he could without breaking a leg.

‘Stanley!’ he cried.

Stanley had already seen. ‘So they are coming.’

They watched the first scout, and then the other five of them all along the skyline, turn and make a dash back for the wagon circle. They were coming, sure enough. No escape now.

‘And no sign of the Streltsy?’ said Stanley.

No one answered. Hodge muttered, ‘Are you sure we’ve timed this quite right?’

‘Aye,’ said Stanley. ‘Those Tatars move fast, do they not? Guns at the ready, all of you!’

None dared say what they thought. The sky was more grey by the minute. If rain came, all their guns and muskets would be pretty much useless. So too would those of the Streltsy – if they came at all.

The scouts rode in gasping and the last wagon was drawn across. They fell from their horses and said that the Tatars were closing in on the end of the valley, and strung out along the riverbank beyond for half a mile or more. Their baggage wagons and their captives were left far back on the other side of the river.

‘How many have come?’

‘All of them.’

The smoke of matchcord. One fool letting his gun go off early, the drift of black powder smoke. A waterbird’s solitary cry from the river. And the terrible waiting.

Devlet Giray sat his horse and pondered. He must not show hesitation, his khans were taking it for weakness, yet he felt uneasy. The Cossacks had got wind of their coming, and pulled their wagons into a classic defensive circle. Yet he was reassured that they had got themselves trapped in such a place. Otherwise he might still have suspected some kind of ambush.

Then why not simply close up the mouth of the valley, roll their field guns off their wagonbeds at leisure some three hundred yards off, and blast the Cossack wagon circle to smithereens? After half an hour of such treatment, let the smoke clear, then ride in and ­finish off the few survivors where they lay, deaf and blind as newborn kittens.

Because, said his khans – Devlet Giray smiled a faint, disbelieving smile at their words – because that would not be the old Tatar way. Let this be an honourable victory for us. Let us have a charge!

Yet if he was to be pushed into this madcap second battle, then they must proceed with caution, not typical Tatar wildness. It was caution that had made him and kept him the Great Khan of the Crimea.

His warriors were so numerous, the valley so narrow and enclosed, they could not all attack at once. He would send in a force of only four or five hundred, to ring the Cossacks’ wagon circle and finish off those white devils. He eyed the heights to the north. They should be taken too, though the Cossacks were horsemen like themselves, and could hardly make use of such steep slopes.

He heard a rider behind him and turned. Even his heart flamed to see it. Old Tokhtamysh in his Tatar war paint.

At dawn this morning, Tokhtamysh had had his women paint a sun and moon and talismans of power upon his broad cheeks and forehead. He wore neither armour nor quilt, though the day was cool, but rode naked to the waist, for he was looked over by the sky gods, a man riding in just vengeance for the blood of his own son. He carried only a single knife at his waist, and with this he would kill that foreign blackbeard who had killed his son. Then he would rip off the man’s armour and his coat and bare his chest to the sun and with this knife, Tokhtamysh would cut out his heart and raise it up and drain his enemy’s blood into his mouth and drink it.

‘You want to ride arrowhead?’ said Devlet Giray quietly.

Tokhtamysh nodded, his mouth set grim.

‘You do not need to.’

‘The gods have willed it.’

To ride arrowhead meant to ride far out in front of your men, a clear target to your enemy. The position of greatest honour and greatest danger.

‘Old comrade,’ said Devlet Giray, and curses, he heard his own voice shaking with emotion. ‘If you do not return …’

‘Then I will ride this sunset on the plains of heaven,’ said Tokhtamysh. ‘With my son.’

The days of such things were past. It was the age of cannon and musket, and professional armies paid their wages by their king. But Devlet Giray knew there was a rare magnificence here still, that they would not see much longer.

‘Then ride out, old friend. Ride with Astur the Eagle.’