The Golden Horde (33 page)

“Their commander isn’t half as orderly as our Amragan,” said Mar’ya Morevna, watching the distant horsemen break out across the plain whatever way they chose. “I wonder how long they were waiting.”

“Waiting for us?”

“Certainly. I don’t believe that much in coincidence.”

“Just for the sake of showing off,” said Ivan, putting his finger with remarkable exactness on the flamboyant way the other Tatars were behaving. They had closed the distance that transformed bright metallic specks into mounted men in a matter of half a minute, although those men often weren’t mounted at all. Several hung down from their saddles on the right side, that being nearest to Amragan
tarkhan
’s staid, slow-moving, disciplined formation, and took half-a-dozen huge, bounding strides alongside their racing ponies before swinging astride again without slackening their headlong pace.

“Nothing but noisiness and flash,” he said dismissively, sounding just like Guard-Captain Akimov, who being a Cossack could have shown these Tatars what real flamboyant horsemanship was all about. He heard Mar’ya Morevna emit a small, stifled explosion of laughter, but it was the children who made him realize what he’d done. Neither of the twins saw any reason to moderate their mirth just because the person speaking in silly voices was their father. It probably encouraged them in their eye-rolling, thigh-slapping extravagance, something with no real place in a child’s laughter except to stretch the moment of amusement as far as it would go.

“All right, you two. Enough. Behave.” The voice this time wasn’t a comic imitation, but their father’s own, and its tone was one which indicated there would be no repetition of the order. There was no more uproar after that, and Ivan ignored the occasional outbreak of muffled giggling when either Nikolai or Anastasya caught the other’s eye, and had to resort to knuckles stuffed in mouths if they were to observe the letter of the law.

Ivan paid no heed. Mar’ya Morevna’s laugh was like a loaf of bread to a starving man, real amusement for the first time in far too long rather than the brittle sound that was the audible equivalent of a mask. His own displays of ‘humour’ had probably looked and sounded much the same to her, because he remained as nervous as a kitten in a kennel full of hounds at the prospect of finally meeting Batu
Sain
Khan, and learning his ultimate fate. The possibilities were all too various, and few of them pleasant.

Ivan the erstwhile Tsar of Khorlov might remain the ruler of his own domain, but with one or all of his family held back as hostage in Sarai against his good behaviour and that of his subjects. Or he might not be allowed to return home at all, and he and his wife and children would remain indefinitely as ‘guests’ of the Khan while some figurehead was appointed to act in his name. Worst of all, the Ilkhan Batu might simply set up a
daru
-
gashi
governor to administer the wringing of taxes from his newest fiscal district, then dispose of the Tsar and all related to him as he might throw away worn-out garments.

All those prospects had been lurking at the back of Ivan’s mind as if they were the shadow of a kestrel and he was a field-mouse in an open meadow. Small wonder his temper had been none of the best and his tongue had developed an indiscriminate razor edge. It would be ridiculous to assume that the same fears hadn’t been haunting Mar’yushka’s thoughts and darkening her moods, but he was honest enough with himself to accept that nineteen times out of twenty he’d been to blame for any harsh words. To hear a genuine laugh, no matter how brief, and know that Mar’ya Morevna could still produce such a sound and mean it, took a great weight off his shoulders. Perhaps it was only optimism as foolish and groundless as his previous gloom had been, but Ivan found himself daring to hope that everything would be all right.

*

There were no crowds lining the streets as Amragan
tarkhan
’s troops rode into Sarai. Perhaps it wasn’t the Tatar custom, but more probably his mission simply hadn’t been important enough to justify any public celebration. The few women and children who ran alongside the silent files of horsemen were so obviously wives and children of the Tatar warriors they shouted for that their reception didn’t count as more than the most private sort of welcome.

Ivan caught Mar’ya Morevna’s eye and jerked his head towards Tsarevich Nikolai. Their son was staring from side to side like his sister, but instead of Anastasya’s delight at seeing so many strange new things, Kolya was glowering and his mouth was fixed in a pout of annoyance. Being ignored, even by the enemy, wasn’t something Nikolai enjoyed. Being cheered would have been pleasant, even at second-hand as part of Amragan
tarkhan
’s triumphal procession. Being derided as prisoners in that same procession would have been less agreeable, though it was something that had to be expected. But to be glanced at and then dismissed as being of no importance was clearly not to Kolya’s taste.

For his part, Ivan was content enough. It gave him a chance to study his new surroundings, rather than play the part of an important guest or a haughty captive. It also meant that nobody was paying enough attention to notice that his attention was more on the possible ways out of Sarai than any grandeur it might have possessed. There might be no point to knowing the escape routes, but that was no reason not to take note of where they were.

When the squad of guards assigned as escort turned to one side and off the muddy thoroughfare that did duty for Sarai’s main street, Ivan discovered that another false notion had been grounded in his own self-esteem. He had assumed that after so long a journey he and the rest of the Khorlovtsy would be taken straight to Batu Khan, but was informed that as one more ex-lord of a domain now under Tatar rule, he could wait his turn with the others.

Others
? That was when Ivan started to look around him with more interest than mere curiosity. There was nothing to see that he hadn’t seen already; but the blaring horns of Sarai would warn him when to look for new faces among those he knew already, and that warning would give him and the rest of his party the opportunity to recognize any other Russians who might arrive.

The group of houses set aside for their lodgings were well-appointed places and comfortable enough, for with such riches as the Khan had at his disposal, even the kennels for his dogs were examples of luxury for lesser monarchs to aspire. But those houses weren’t in the least defensible.

Ivan had hoped they might be installed in one of the massive Kashgari dwellings that were nothing less than self-contained citadels, for long years of apprehension had left every Rus fond of thick walls when there were Tatars about. The possibility of needing a last-ditch refuge against some attack or other had flashed through his mind when he saw those thick-walled houses, but it had been a foolish concept that skittered around inside his skull like a drop of water on a hotplate.

Defence against what? The Tatars, at the very heart of their Khan’s own realm? If Batu Khan decided he had no further use for the Tsar of Khorlov, then walls however thick would only delay the inevitable. It was best to avoid that inevitable whenever possible.

Ivan found that avoidance halfway down a bottle of very fine blackberry syrup mixed with triple-distilled wheat vodka. It wasn’t the alcohol which calmed him, though an outsider might have thought so from the way each small frost-coated silver cupful went down in a single swallow. Anyone not knowing a Rus might have suspected the young Tsar was trying to drink himself into a stupor, and would have been surprised that his eyes remained bright, his speech didn’t slur, and his mind stayed as sharp as a razor. But the squat stoneware bottle and its partners were quite small, despite being bulked out by a crust half an inch thick of clear ice from some pit filled in wintertime with stamped-down snow. The Ilkhan’s own private glacier, thought Ivan, drowning a chuckle with another swallow of the excellent spirit.

The vodka was so heavy with the flavour and scent and sugar of the fruit, and so thick with cold, that it flowed from the bottle like syrup. It smelt of the warm autumns of years ago, when there had been no Tatar invaders and no need to reach accommodations with the powers of life and death. It tasted of fresh fruit at the end of a long day, and the slow burn of a low sun in an azure sky, a burn that flowed like a sweet hot acid down inside to light some fires and quench others that were less healthy.

And it looked…

Ivan stared down into the silver cup he’d brought from Khorlov, because in all their lootings the Golden Horde could never have found a thing so fine, and swirled the three fingers’ depth of icy liquid from side to side.

It looked like blood.

“Four days, Vanyushka,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “Four days they’ve kept us cooped up here, and never a word from the Khan or even from Amragan
tarkhan
.” She slapped the table so that the vodka-bottles jumped and rattled together, spraying ice-splinters from the wide, deep tray intended to contain their dripping.

“Not quite cooped up.” Ivan looked up from the vodka cup as his mind re-focused rapidly. His left hand, the one without the vodka-cup in it, flicked out with startling speed and control to catch the outermost of the three bottles just as it pulled free of the bed of crushed ice that formed the floor of the tray and began to topple down towards the floor. He twisted it back into the socket made by its own meltwater, and saluted his wife with the still-brimming and quite unspilt cup.

Mar’ya Morevna’s eyes flicked from it to Ivan’s face to the tray and its three bottles, then narrowed as they went back to his face again. “If you’ve got another cup,” she said, sitting down, “I’ll have some of that.”

There was indeed another cup, no bigger than a lady’s thumb, blue and white Khitan ceramic ware so fine that when the deep red drink went into it, the colours changed to pink and purple. Ivan poured vodka from a bottle held more than a foot above the fragile vessel’s rim, all without spilling a garnet drop, then twisted the bottle sideways to catch any drips and returned it to the ice.

“Can’t waste this on Tatars,” he said, saluting her again before snapping his wrist to send the cup’s contents down to keep the others company. “They wouldn’t appreciate it. There isn’t one among the few brave enough to come with me that I’d share it with, not even Konstantin Il’yevich; and the children are still far too young.”

“Oh indeed? I sometimes wonder about that.”

“As long as they look seven, they’re too young for this stuff.” His grin was brief, and despite his words it wasn’t the loose, sloppy grin of a drunk though it would have taken one who knew him well to know the difference. Mar’ya Morevna knew, and betrayed none of it by even the merest flicker of a facial muscle. “Their hard luck. That leaves just you and me.”

Mar’ya Morevna sipped her berry-fire, made a wordless sound of approval, and flicked the rest of the cupful past her teeth and down to where no Tatar could get at it before holding out the Chinese thimble for a refill. “As you say. Their hard luck.” Her voice dropped to a murmur no louder than the tiny tinkling sound as more vodka trickled into a cup as thin as a premature eggshell. “Playing some game?”

Ivan nodded, making the movement of his head a part of what any spy with one eye to a peephole would now think was part of the Rus ritual of getting drunk together.

“Um. I see.” Mar’ya Morevna dipped the top joint of her left little finger into the cup, then licked thoughtfully at the deep red drop of vodka beading it. “Drunken despair? Or dignified resignation?”

“I’ll tell you the name when I know the game.” Ivan leaned closer, the conspiratorial huddle of a man in his cups. “S’all right,” he said, as loud as anyone confiding secrets when too far gone to care, “they don’t mind. Old Khakhan Ogotai liked a drink as well. Died of it. But that din’t – didn’t – matter. S’on – it’s on – record.” The latest cup of vodka went the way of all the others.

“The Great Khan was a drinker of wine and
kumys
,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “He died an old man, after many years of active life. Too much of this,” she lifted one of the vodka bottles and shook it disapprovingly, “and old age will be the least of your worries.” Her face froze momentarily as Ivan’s chair abruptly scraped backwards, but then his hand made a little gesture that she knew well enough from innumerable weary sessions with Khorlov’s High Council.

After their initial scandal at having a woman foisted on them, the councillors had bored her along with everyone else, and she and Ivan had developed a series of hand-signals when one or the other left a meeting for five minutes’ relief with the handiest drink of tea or wine or even water, or just a breath of air free of seventy-year-old opinions.

So the old men would always have to treat them as equals when one or the other took a break for cover, the little hand-signals meant things like ‘
accept
with
reservations
and
enumerate
them’, or ‘
deny
this
absolutely’, or ‘
be
slowly
swayed
by
reason
,
your
choice
of
speed
and
form
of
reasoning
.’ Things like that could be disguised as something so simple as a rub at the nose or a quick scratch.