The Ocean of Time (14 page)

I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s totally against the rules. And I know there’s a chance that she may even die as a reaction to the drugs. Only …

Only it’s my only chance of saving her. Without jumping back, that is. Without having to explain to Hecht just why I’ve got into this mess.

Quickly I dress her wounds, using special combat strips from a thousand years hence, and then I slump back, exhausted.

Resting my head gently against the cart, I realise that I’ve overdone it and that I need to sleep; my body is about to slip into unconsciousness. Yet even as my eyes begin to close I sense a shadow standing over me, and I wonder if it was all in vain.

It’s evening when I wake, and I’m surprised to find myself lying on a bed of furs beneath a bivouac, Katerina beside me. For a moment I think I must have dreamed it all, but then, as I try to lift my head, the pain reminds me it was real.

There’s the crackle of a fire nearby and the smell of something cooking, and when I manage – slowly – to turn my head and look, I see that it’s Lishka, sitting on a rock beside it, chewing on a piece of meat.

He looks across at me and grins his black-toothed grin. ‘Hungry, Otto?’

I swallow painfully. My throat is dry, my lips cracked. I really ought to see to my own injuries before I do anything else, but I’m curious. ‘What happened?’

‘Most of them ran off. The rest …’ Lishka draws an imaginary knife across his throat and grins. ‘I made sure they wouldn’t be a problem.’

Lishka’s face, I note, is a mass of bruises, but he seems happy enough.

I stare at him a moment, feeling a new respect for him, remembering the sight of him swinging his stave. Bakatin was right: Lishka
does
love a fight.

I get up on to one elbow, then carefully turn my head, looking down at Katerina. She’s pale still and her breathing is slightly erratic, but the bleeding has stopped and her brow when I feel it is cool, with no sign of a fever. The drugs are working. I take her wrist and feel her pulse – it’s good, strong and regular – and let out a long sigh of relief.

I get up slowly, then look about me.

‘You want the box?’ Lishka asks, and points to just under the cart where I see the medical kit.

‘Thanks, I …’

I look across at Lishka. He’s watching me very matter-of-factly as he chews on the haunch of meat. Finishing a mouthful, he wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, then says, ‘I kept one of them alive for a time. Asked him a few questions.’

‘Yes?’

‘Things I thought you might want to know.’

I nod, but I’m genuinely surprised. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s like I thought,’ Lishka says. ‘They weren’t from around here. They were from the south. Polovtsy.’

‘So why were they this far north?’

‘They were promised a lot of gold.’

‘By whom?’

‘The one I asked didn’t know.’

‘And where is he now? Did he run off?’

Lishka throws the bone into the fire, then breaks off another piece from the carcass on the ground beside him. ‘Like I said.’ And he makes the throat-slitting gesture again, only this time he gives a little laugh, like it was fun to do.

‘And the bodies?’

Lishka makes a gesture with his thumb, back into the trees.

I swallow, then kneel down by the kit and begin to rummage through. It’s only then that I remember. I turn and look at Lishka again.

‘Lishka?’

‘Yes, Meister?’

‘Where are the guns?’

Lishka stares back at me, then stands and, dropping the piece of meat, puts his hands to his waist and, like a gunslinger, pulls the two guns from his belt.

‘Here. I was keeping them for you.’

I hobble across and take them, nodding my thanks. But Lishka hasn’t finished.

‘Bakatin told me about them,’ he says, sitting again and picking up the meat. ‘He says he fired one of them.’

‘He did. It blew a tree into matchwood.’

‘Matchwood?’

Again, I realise that it’s not a concept they have in this time. Matches come later.

‘Into splinters,’ I say.

‘Bakatin claimed there was a great ball of fire.’

‘There was.’

‘Then ’tis a pity you dropped the fuckers before our friends attacked today.’

And he laughs, and after a moment – as much from relief as anything else – I begin to laugh with him.

A while later, after I’ve bandaged my head and taken a shot or two of various drugs, I sit with Lishka and share his meal, and we talk, and I begin to see this world through Lishka’s eyes.

The world of this age is vast. It has no edges to it. You can travel for long months and still not come to the end, even of Russia. Within it there is only chaos or, should I say, only the small, scant order that a single man can impose. There may be laws, but few men understand them, and in any case, justice is a thousand miles away out here in the wilds. Out here there are no hard-and-fast rules, only the law of survival. That’s why Lishka is such a good fighter. He has had to be. He could not have lived this long without being good with his fists. But that’s only a small part of it. I listen to all he’s done and seen, and though I have travelled the length and breadth of Time, I’d find it hard to claim that I have seen more than him of Man and his ways. Lishka expects both the worst and the best of every man he meets, and he is never disappointed.

‘Take you,’ he says. ‘You are the oddest of mixtures, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. Such gentleness and such savagery, and all in the same frame. Why, when you buried the hatchet in that fellow’s head, there was such a look on your face, you’d have thought the man had raped your mother!’

I give a short laugh. ‘Well, it’s like he
did
! He hurt my Katerina!’

‘You see!’ Lishka says, as if he’s made his point. ‘Another man would have saved his own skin and married again. After all, as the proverb goes, wives are like the fish in the river. But you, you risked all for her!’

I make to speak, then fall silent, thinking about what he’s said. Because it’s true. I could have jumped straight out of there at the first sign of trouble – yes, and almost did. Only now that I think of it, Lishka shoving me aside notwithstanding, I don’t think I could have. Not if it meant leaving her there. Not if it meant, even if only briefly, she might die.

Because
…

And now I face it. Now I stare directly at it and begin to understand.

Because I couldn’t be sure that I could save her any other way. Because if I went back, and Hecht said no …

I look down, and then I look back at him and nod. ‘I had to,’ I say, my voice quiet. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

‘I know,’ Lishka says. ‘I’ve seen it all along.’

We make up a narrow sled from interwoven branches and harness it to my shoulders so that I can pull Katerina along behind me. She seems much better now. Her breathing has regularised and her colour is almost back to normal, but the drugs have heavily sedated her and made her sleep.

I am a big man and pride myself on my ability to endure, but what with my own injuries, I find it hard to drag her weight, and though I’m willing enough, I find, after two hours toiling through the rain, that I have to stop.

Lishka eyes me strangely, confused. He is convinced – like Bakatin – that I am a sorcerer, and thus possessed of great powers. Yet my weakness in this instance disturbs him. He has seen me take potions from my magic box and heal both my own and Katerina’s wounds, yet he sees me struggling with the makeshift sled and cannot understand why I won’t conjure up some spell to ease my burden. Indeed, I could. There are drugs in the pack that would boost my strength and allow me to do entirely without sleep for several days. Only such drugs take their toll. I am only human after all, and I cannot risk collapsing two days hence.

So we stop again and camp beneath a ledge of rock as the rain falls steadily. It’s there that she wakes, and just the sight of her, looking up at me through the dark circles of her eyes, makes me feel that everything I’ve been through has been worthwhile.

She tries to speak, but I place my finger gently to her lips.

‘It’s okay. You’re better now. You just have to rest. Lishka and I are taking care of you.’

She gives the faintest smile, then closes her eyes again, the smallest flicker of remembered pain crossing her face. The wounds have healed nicely, but she’ll carry the scars all her life. Reminders of this adventure. Of what she went through just to be with me.

That makes me think. Makes me wonder yet again whether I was right to bring her. She almost died back there. Should have, maybe, from the wounds she got, the loss of blood. And there’s a paradox. For just as my presence here out of time has endangered her, so what I’ve brought with me – the drugs, the combat bandages – has saved her life.

And there’s one other thing – about the attack itself. They were upon us too quickly for it to have been the villagers – the fishermen – who set them on our trail. They had to have been waiting up ahead, ready to ambush us. Nor, when I think of it, could they have known about the guns. If they had, they would never – surely? – have attacked. That fits with them being Polovtsy – Cossacks – from the south. But who sent them? And how did they know where we were heading?

I am beginning to think that maybe the Russians know about me. Know where I’m heading and why. Only if that is so, why not just send in their own agents? Why go through this complicated charade, if all they want to do is kill me?

I chew that over for a time, and it’s only Lishka, reminding me that it will be dark in a few hours and we must decide whether to press on or camp here for the night, who breaks my reverie and forces me to act.

It’s time to take a few risks. To press on while we can. And so I take a handful of the small yellow tablets from the pack and swallow them down. Then, getting Lishka to harness me up once more, I look to him and smile.

‘Okay. Let’s get moving. I want to be a long, long way from here by morning.’

I wake to find Katerina sitting just across from me, watching me. She smiles. It’s night, the sky intensely black, dark, but her long dark hair shimmers with warm tints of gold in the light from Lishka’s campfire.

She reaches out and strokes my brow. ‘I wondered when you’d wake.’

‘Have I slept long?’

‘Not long. But you needed the rest. Your head …’

For a moment that seems strange, her worrying about me, but then I smile and, reaching out, lace my fingers into hers.

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s healing well.’

Her eyes look past me, and I realise it is Lishka, returning from finding provisions.

‘He’s awake then, is he?’ he asks gruffly, coming into view, then crouching to throw more logs on the fire. ‘I was beginning to think he was going to sleep for a month!’

I lift myself slowly, a faint wooziness making my vision swim. It’s the drugs.

‘Where are we?’

‘On the way to Rzhev,’ Lishka says. ‘Don’t you remember?’

I do, only—

‘I don’t believe what you did, Otto,’ Katerina says quietly, squeezing my hand gently. ‘Carrying me on your back like that for three days …’

I lean across and kiss her. She presses back urgently, pushing her tongue between my lips, and as we break from it, I understand everything.

I would have walked over burning coals for her. Through hell itself.

‘Lishka?’

‘Yes, Meister?’

‘Would you leave us for a while?’

Rzhev sits on the top of the hill like some ancient stone-age encampment, its huge earth ramparts giving it a look of great antiquity, yet the town is barely a century old and its importance as a trading centre is dubious, despite its position on the Volga.

It has taken us two weeks to get here, and it was a good thing Katerina could walk the last ten days, or we would still be back there in the forest.

Lishka stops me while we are yet within the trees and looks at me earnestly.

‘Don’t say
anything
,’ he says. ‘Leave everything to me. I know these people. They can be scoundrels. Worse than bandits.’ I clearly look confused, because he carries on to explain. ‘The Grand Prince’s officials. They are like a plague on all civilised men. But these are worse than most. These are Prince Alexander Iaroslavich’s men, and the prince serves the Great Khan.’

I am surprised Lishka knows this. But then, why not? If anyone knows what’s going on in this part of Russia, Lishka does.

‘Ah, yes,’ he says, noting my surprise. ‘The Horde’s influence stretches to Rzhev all right. And it will not be long before you in Novgorod feel it too. The Horde is hungry beyond the greed of many thousand men.’

‘Hungry?’ Katerina asks.

‘For tribute.’ Lishka indicates the cart. ‘It might be worth your while to hide most of that load. Bury it somewhere nearby and come back for it later, when you’ve found a boatman you can trust. I’ll help you there. I know these men.’

I smile. ‘Thank you, Lishka, but I’d rather keep my cart intact. Besides, I have the
tysiatskii
’s pass. They wouldn’t dare risk offending him by robbing me.’

‘No?’ But Lishka doesn’t push the matter. He merely stares at me a moment then, shaking his head, turns away. ‘Whatever … let me do the talking, Meister Otto. If one must deal with wolves, best leave it to one who knows their habits, eh?’

A steep path leads up the side of the hill to the main gate which is to the west of the town. Guards delay us while someone hurries off to fetch the steward. As we stand there, Lishka up front, Katerina, cloaked, her face concealed, a small crowd of inquisitive locals forms behind me.

Again, it’s my beard – or lack of one – that provides the talking point. Men and women stare openly at me and point, and some even laugh, as if I’m deformed. But they know what I am from a single glance at my clothes. A trader. A
Nemets
. And thus a rarity this far inland.

We wait almost twenty minutes before the runner returns, breathless. He says nothing, merely waits to one side, and after a moment we see a small procession coming our way between the shabby wooden houses, five or six armed men – militia, by their look – surrounding one particularly corpulent fellow, dressed in furs despite the warmth of the day. As he comes nearer he slows, taking on an air of importance, until, as he steps before us, you would have thought it was the Grand Prince of Kiev himself who was facing us. But he’s clearly a small man pretending to be big. He has a bony, hairless head, a cast in his left eye and heavily pocked skin, and I’d say at a glance that he’s been soured by his ugliness, made hard and cruel and self-important.