The Golden Horde (16 page)

“Yes,” said Mar’ya Morevna.

That was all. Ivan wished she wouldn’t do things like that, wished she would understand that there were times when he wasn’t up to thinking for himself and was more than willing to let ministers and stewards and councillors – yes, and wives too – do the thinking for him. Now was one of those times. He’d put up with Dmitriy Vasil’yevich and his blasted paperwork since sunrise, he faced tuition in the drearier aspects of the Art Magic later in the afternoon, and now here were the Tatars on top of all.

What Tsar Ivan of Khorlov really wanted to do was to spend an hour or so in the company of a flask of vodka and a bottle or three of white wine cooled in the ice stored underneath the kremlin palace, an hour in the bath-house taking strong steam, and then the rest of the day behind locked doors with Mar’ya Morevna, making a determined attempt to father some more children. Not that the children mattered overmuch, two were enough for now – especially when those two could sometimes seem like many more – but Ivan found the prospect of the attempt distinctly appealing.

“Well?” Mar’ya Morevna asked.

“Well what?” Ivan dragged himself out of a very pleasant daydream and glowered at her. Mar’ya Morevna in the daydream had been just as demanding, but not in quite the same irascible way.

“Vanya, haven’t you realized yet what I mean about the band?”

For a few seconds he hadn’t an idea of what she was driving at until some wicked spark of intelligence came to his rescue. “You mean, that we can hear the instruments? Military signals, surely. They carry well.” He smiled slowly. “Was that all? I’d started to think it might be something important.”

Mar’ya Morevna, Tsaritsa of Khorlov and fairest Princess in all the Russias, stared at her husband with an expression that managed to suggest that had there been anything worth throwing, she would have thrown it. Then she returned his smile with a crooked grin. “Important enough,” she said. “If we could persuade our people to use the Tatars’ own battle skills against them, we might stand a chance of defeating the bastards.”

Ivan didn’t return the grin. Instead he shook his head sombrely. “If we could
have
persuaded
,” he said, correcting the tense with heavy emphasis, “we might have stood a chance. But we left it all too late. As usual.” Mar’ya Morevna opened her mouth to say something, but Ivan gestured her to silence. “I’m not being a pessimist. I’m being realistic. Practical. The way you used to be.”

“Before these barbarians stamped our country flat.”

“Yes. But what they did is past, and can’t be changed. Ogotai Khakhan might have succeeded anyway, but we should have made him pay more dearly for the victory. Except that you know as well as I that not one of the lords of the Rus could agree with any others for long enough to do anything worthwhile. So let it be, Mar’yushka. There may be something you, or I or all of us, can do before all this is over, but now isn’t the time. Now is the time for making the best of things.”

“Like a woman being raped, you mean?” Mar’ya Morevna’s voice went suddenly harsh. “Just because you can’t change it, you might as well enjoy it?”

“No. I didn’t say enjoy. Enduring is something different. If you endure, and live, then maybe you can do something to make a difference afterwards. But you can’t endure if you’re dead, like everyone in Ryazan, or Vladimir, or Chernigov, or Kiev, or… Do I need to go on? If you’re dead, there’s no afterwards. I’ve been saying that for years. Only the places that offered no resistance have survived – and now we’ve started to blame each other for surviving. That ought to amuse our new overlords.”

“I…” Mar’ya Morevna stared at him for several seconds, then lowered her eyes. “Vanya, I’m sorry for what I said. I wasn’t thinking. I was sounding just like those stupid
bogatyri
heroes who still just want to fight. No matter what they’re told, no matter how many times they’re told, as soon as they’re confronted with an adventure they jump at it, no matter who they leave behind.”

“But I was the one who asked for this adventure in the first place, remember? All those years ago, when I was bored with being just a Tsar… Now there’s a joke.”

“You’re still Tsar, so don’t fret too much about your joke. Do you want to hear a better one? If they wanted to be really legendary heroes, and we could build them a big enough coffin, they could all play at being Svyatogor. I’d nail the lid down myself.”

According to the old
bylina
tale, Svyatogor the Giant had never seen a bed, chair or anything else big enough to fit him until he found a coffin which was just the right size. Refusing all warnings in the face of such a strange adventure, he climbed into it, pulled down the lid which promptly locked… And that was the end of him, a pointless end which did nothing to aid his companions, and to Ivan, Mar’ya Morevna and others was a demonstration of nothing but stupidity and stubbornness on an epic scale. But to the
bogatyri
it was an example of perfect heroism even in the face of death, and they loved it.

Ivan laughed out loud at the image her words conjured up. “You, sound like a
bogatyr
? I don’t think so! Not now – and not then. I thought you were sounding like the great commander, the woman whose army smashed Manguyu Temir’s horde. Like the woman I married. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes.” Ivan paused, then quirked one eyebrow at his wife. “I couldn’t marry a
bogatyr
on the longest day I lived. Archbishop Levon wouldn’t let me.” He smiled very slightly and lightly touched her face. “Besides, I don’t like my lovers to have hair on their faces.”

“Neither do I.” Mar’ya Morevna reached out and stroked disapproving fingers through the carefully-trimmed beard that covered her husband’s chin. “I’ve said so often enough, if you remember. You do remember, don’t you?” She closed finger and thumb and tweaked hard enough to make Ivan wince. “Or weren’t you paying attention?”

“Ouch! I was, I was!”

“So when will you shave it off?” Mar’ya Morevna examined her fingertips, then blew lightly and watched as a few golden strands of hair drifted free.

Ivan rubbed at the plucked place on his chin. “Soon.”

“How soon?”

“When I don’t need it.”

“You’ve been saying that for years, too. When exactly?”

“When that collection of old fools in the Council and the
druzhinya
are convinced I’m old enough to be their Tsar. A six year reign isn’t enough for them.”

“Vanya, if you want to wait that long you might as well just wait until you’ve outlived them all. You’re the Tsar of Khorlov. You can do what you please!”

“Can I? Or didn’t we already have this,” he considered his choice of word, “this
discussion
?”

“That was about the throne.”

“Not the throne, Mar’yushka, the Chair of State.”

“No matter. Crown regalia is one thing – your choice whether or not to wear a beard is something else entirely! Well, isn’t it?”

“The Tsars of Khorlov have always been bearded …”

“If you’re teasing me, it’s not funny. And if you’re not teasing me, it’s even less funny. Ivan, this isn’t just about your beard, or about the throne, or the chair, or the crown. You’ve been Tsar for six years, and in that six years you’ve been fair, and just, and passed good laws, and kept Khorlov from being destroyed by” – she gestured expressively towards the Tatars, still far away among their dust and their fierce music – “by our… visitors. Yet in the little things, the things that matter just to you – and to me – you still let the councillors from your father’s time tell you what to do. Even how to look!”

“Nobody ever told me to wear a beard!”

“No? But when your wife asks you to shave it off, you don’t. It’s not even as if you like it. I could understand that. But you don’t. You wear it because you’re expected to, just as you’re expected to sit on carved chairs without cushions to make that sitting comfortable. Just as you were expected to wear the old, heavy crown.”

“Not any more.”

“You see? That changed. Other things can change. You don’t need to change the world, or the laws, or the traditions that have some point to them. But after six years it’s time you started to tell, not ask. Do you rule Khorlov and the people in it – or do its old men rule you?”

Mar’ya Morevna often made her views known on all manner of subjects, but seldom on this one. She had been lord of her own wide domains before ever she met and married Ivan, but seemed to feel it wasn’t her place, or that of anyone else except ministers and stewards appointed for the purpose, to tell any Tsar how to govern his realm. Ivan knew her well enough to understand it was no feminine reticence but courtesy from one prince to another. Where Mar’ya Morevna was concerned, if reticence was nourishment she would starve. She had given advice to Ivan, and to Tsar Aleksandr before him, but only when asked. Even though she never raised her voice above the level of ordinary conversation, this intense and unsolicited outburst impressed itself on Ivan more than if she had screamed at him and slapped his face.

He stared silently at her with an expression glittering in his pale eyes that wasn’t reflected sunlight. It might have been amusement, or resignation, or the beginning of anger, or a mingling of all three. Tsar or Prince, few things abraded Ivan’s temper more thoroughly than the feeling of being pushed into a decision against his will. Then he blinked and the ominous glitter was gone, replaced by a much more wholesome squint as he peered out across the dry expanse of steppe at the approaching Tatars.

“How long before they reach the gates?”

Mar’ya Morevna narrowed her eyes, studied the specks wavering in a haze of heat, then at the noon sun overhead. “If they keep to their present pace, twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour.” She looked at Ivan, and raised an eyebrow. “Long enough to get rid of that beard, if you’ve made up your mind to do it.”

“Not long enough for a six-years-delayed razor burn to fade,” said Ivan, and smiled ruefully. “The Tatars will think I’m a picture of pink-cheeked health.”

Mar’ya Morevna flexed her fingers so that their jewelled rings sparkled, and there were more sparks clinging to her fingers than light reflecting from faceted gemstones. “I didn’t say anything about razors.”

“If I spend the rest of the day smelling of burnt whiskers …”

“I doubt you’ll even notice,” said Mar’ya Morevna, and gestured at Ivan as though to cup his face in her two hands.

Ivan did notice. His face stopped itching and began to tingle, then a sensation like a splash of impossibly icy water, water so chill that it felt scalding hot, rushed from throat to cheekbones. There was no mirror to see what was happening, and probably nothing to see in any case, but in his mind’s eye he could visualize that carefully trimmed beard and lovingly cultivated sweep of golden moustache go flaring past his nose and ears in streamers of cold blue fire.

After a few seconds of silence while he got his breath back and considered – then prudently abandoned – several scathing comments, Ivan ran the tips of his fingers warily over skin that hadn’t been so smooth since before he’d ever started to shave at all. The skin stung as though it had been mildly sunburned, so that with every wince away from a tender place he felt, and probably looked, more like a man probing himself for unsuspected wounds than one examining the work of his barber. “You might at least have given me enough time to say whether I preferred a razor,” he said accusingly. “It was
my
beard, after all.”

“This way was quicker,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “And I don’t have much opportunity to work the smaller spells any more. Or the larger ones, if it comes to that.”

“Oh, indeed?” Ivan felt a little spasm jolt him in the stomach, a reaction that was close kin to the feeling he might get at any small accident barely avoided. He didn’t know whether to smile or frown, and settled for neutral annoyance instead. “So you could have scorched my eyebrows off for want of practice… Well, madam, I find that most reassuring!”

“Don’t be silly.”

Motherhood
has
definitely
done
things
to
your
vocabulary
, thought Ivan, and this time the smile came easier to his mouth.
You’d
never
have
settled
for
something
as
weak
as
silly
before
.

“I’m a better sorceress than that,” Mar’ya Morevna continued, massaging one hand against the other to ease where the force of the spell had shocked her finger-joints. “And what if I
had
scorched your eyebrows off? I could always have conjured them back. Or maintained an illusion of eyebrows, anyway. At least until the Tatars left.”

“If that was intended to reassure me, my dear, then you need to try a good deal harder. I think I’ll let the court barber use his razors next time. He might cut my throat by accident, but he won’t make me look ridiculous.”

“I don’t think you look ridiculous,” said Mar’ya Morevna. She gave him a look that was at once sleepily heavy-lidded and speculative, the sort of look that was commonly described as smouldering. Mar’ya Morevna smouldered very well. “I think you look like the energetic young Prince who spent so long in my tent all those years ago. I should have taken your beard off when the thought first crossed my mind to do it, but I was so patient, so restrained, and now I don’t need to be either any more …”