The Golden Horde (46 page)

He was relieved beyond measure that they’d succeeded last night in making away with the crowns. Probably while this butchery was taking place. And that too might explain why the three downstairs had died. The Dark One had vented his frustration that an unlatched door had been slammed in his face.

Then Ivan swore under his breath. If they hadn’t stolen the crowns, then this killing and the reason behind it would have been a perfect excuse to warn Batu Khan of what was trying to happen, and why each crown should go back where it belonged. But if the crowns had been in place, then the three
boyaryy
might have succeeded and there would be more to contend with this morning than just murder. There would have been Hell to pay.

Literally.

It was the sort of self-replicating conundrum that delighted Mar’ya Morevna, but it made Ivan’s head ache.

“Well?” From the sound of it Amragan
tarkhan
’s patience was wearing thin. Ivan tore his horror-fascinated eyes from the corpse on the floor and stared at the Turk.

“Well what? I didn’t do this either. If I kill a man, I do it quickly. Not …” he waved expressively at the floor and turned away.

Amragan followed him downstairs and out into fresher air. “I have seen you kill, so I know what happened is not your way. But you know other things, Ivan Aleksandrovich. Was this just a murder, or was it something more?”

If
he
already
suspects
,
then
this
is
the
perfect
time
to
tell
him
,
except
he
might
go
straight
to
the
treasure
-
house
,
and
then
…
oh
God
,
what
should
I
do
?

“I know a few other things, Amragan
tarkhan
. But not as many as my wife, whom you in your infinite wisdom sent off to Khorlov to fetch the Great Crown that should have come with us in the first place.”

“What?” The sudden attack took Amragan completely off-guard and off-balance.

“You had shamans with you. I know. I saw them. But what good were they? Not much!” Ivan shrugged flamboyantly. “So I’m here, and she’s somewhere between here and there, and I say this was murder, by men who lost family and friends to Tatar soldiers like the one they killed. If Mar’ya Morevna was here, she might tell you why they killed him that way. But she isn’t, and she can’t, so that leaves you with me or nothing.” He had intended to grin in triumph at the end of his little speech, but a spike of pain ran straight up from the nape of his neck to his temples and twisted the grin to a grimace.

Amragan
tarkhan
paid his discomfort no heed. “All right, Khorlovskiy. So this was a murder. I can accept that. Just. But what in Tengri’s name happened downstairs?”

“Maybe they were trying to make something like the Chin fire-pots shot from siege engines, and it backfired.”

“No. There was no trace of
fire
. If you ever saw one of those things in use, you would know what I mean. Once they got the mix right this house would be rubble and cinders, and even if not, the room downstairs would be charred.”

“Amragan
tarkhan
, I think you want me to say they were working some spell and I won’t say it, because I don’t know.” That was true enough. If Ivan’s suspicions were accurate, there was no spell involved. “You’ll have to wait for my wife to get back from Khorlov. Ask her.”

The sky flickered, and after several seconds thunder came rumbling in over the city, a long, sullen roll on the Drums of Tengri. As if in sympathy with the distant lightning, another silvery bolt of anguish drilled through Ivan’s head, this time severe enough that his teeth ached and even his hair seemed to hurt.

“Investigate your murder mystery all you like, Amragan,” he said, blinking the spasm away. “I’m going back to my house before the storm breaks. And if my head doesn’t stop pounding, I’m going back to bed as well.”

Once they were out of earshot of Amragan
tarkhan
, Volk Volkovich spoke for the first time and he sounded worried. “A headache? From when?”

Ivan’s brows drew together in a frown as he tried to remember, then deepened as the lightning flashed far away over the steppes and another jolt stabbed at the backs of his eyes. “I… I think in the house,” he managed eventually. “Upstairs.” He looked at the Grey Wolf through glowing red flecks that swam in his vision. “Where that Tatar was given to Chernobog.”

Volk Volkovich growled something savage low in his chest. “If the Black One’s involved, then the sooner we’re away from this vicinity the better. There’s a foulness lingering here from last night. You can feel it.
I
can almost taste it.”

Ivan missed what else the Grey Wolf said, because he was learning something he would have preferred not to know. Real, deep pain had a colour and sound all its own, a sickly glowing purple like the afterimage of lightning and a sound like sand poured on parchment. Volk Volkovich took him by the crook of the elbow to hurry him away, but after only a moment Ivan pulled free and stopped walking.

“It’s gone,” he said. and very, very carefully shook his head. “Completely. It didn’t fade away. It just, well, stopped.”

“That house,” said the Grey Wolf, looking back at it, “would be better as rubble and cinders. What happened in there was no way for any creature to die, even a Tatar. And as a sacrifice to Chernobog! Why would they be so foolish?”

Ivan explained the twisted plot as best he could. What with the echoes of that murderous headache and his own lack of any desire to be connected with their crazed scheme, he’d forgotten most of it, but he remembered enough for Volk Volkovich to grin scornfully at the thought of such amateur enchanters.

“A Russian god, to fight on behalf of Russia? It shows how little they really knew. If an entire race can’t lay claim to good or evil, how can that people’s gods claim it either? Chernobog’s no more Russian than sunlight. The Tatars know him too. They call him Erlik Khan, the Dweller in the Dark Gulf under the Earth, the enemy of light, Tengri’s eternal adversary. But a Russian god? Don’t make me —”

The blast from behind smashed both of them flat with a great blunt fist and slapped all the air out of their lungs. For just an instant all their senses were drowned out by a roar of silence and a vast lightless glare. They could smell cold, and taste darkness, and then the torn, tormented world came howling back to haunt them.

Ivan pushed himself up off the muddy street, half-stunned and trembling. “We were too late,” he said, almost to himself. “Too late, too slow, too close. We should have got those damned things out of the city no matter what.” He wiped a smear of dirt from his face, spat more onto the ground, then turned and wished he hadn’t. He had never seen Volk Volkovich afraid in all the years they’d known each other, but now the Grey Wolf was staring back the way they’d come with his face horror-pale under the spatters of mud, and despite his human shape he was cringing like a dog before a beating.

The house was gone, and in its place a great black column towered up into the stormy sky. But it wasn’t smoke. No smoke could just hang there as this was doing, rising so far and no further, spreading so far and no further. It was like a snake made of snakes, coiling sluggishly in and around itself, shadows within shadows. There was no heat, no fire, no rain of wreckage.

Just silence, and cold, and that pillar of darkness like a dagger nailing Sarai and every living creature in it to the dark, cold, silent earth.

The
Khanate
of
the
Golden
Horde
;

September
,
1243
A
.
D
.

The ground heaved under Sivka’s hoofs, making Mar’ya Morevna sway in her saddle and clutch the stallion’s mane or pitch headlong. It wasn’t a jolt but a smooth rise and fall like a wave on the open sea. Accustomed to such things as no mortal horse could be, Chyornyy and Sivka whinnied more in surprise than fear, but all the other animals, almost three thousand of them, squealed and reared and fought against things they could no longer trust. Tatar riders who had remained securely on horseback through countless bloody engagements went spilling to the ground, adding yells and curses to the uproar.

Mar’ya Morevna swore as well, and with more reason. She was better placed than anyone else to guess at what had happened, because the crown of Khorlov, wrapped and swaddled though it was, had gone so cold that it almost burned.

Moist Mother Earth rippled again, ponderous and slow, and she felt the fine hairs on her neck and arms stand up as she realized where she’d felt that same leisurely movement before. In bed, with Ivan at her side and no longer quite asleep, she’d felt the unhurried shift of living bone and muscle as he yawned and stretched himself awake. It was as if the earth itself was waking up.

Or something underneath the earth, down in the cold dark. Something that had slept for a long, long time, ignored and forgotten. And when it woke after so long, it would be—

Hungry
.

She looked around her at the Tatars, searching for the shrivelled old man with the wise, cruel eyes. Among a thousand men and three thousand horses, all reeling together in confusion, the task should have been impossible. But Beyki the shaman was easily seen, though he was down on his knees with a space around him growing wider by the minute as those nearby heard what he was chanting and fled for their lives and their sanity. One name and nothing else, endlessly repeated as he gashed his scrawny limbs with a knife, or bowed low to beat his forehead against the shivering ground.

“Erlik Khan! Erlik Khan!” Over and over again, but whether to call or to calm made little difference now, because the glitter of wisdom had gone out of his eyes like light from a snuffed candle. Wisdom, and sanity, and anything else that put a soul into meat. There was only the husk of an old man kneeling in the trampled dirt, chanting a name that meant nothing any more.

“So much for advice from you,” said Mar’ya Morevna between her teeth. “Sivka, Chyornyy – to Sarai and Ivan, as quick as you can. I’ve got to… Wait!” She tugged back on the reins, slipped to the ground and picked up a discarded bowcase with a full quiver of arrows hanging from the other side of its belt. She buckled it hastily around her waist and scrambled back into Sivka’s saddle, then pulled the short, heavy bow from its case and nocked an arrow to the string.

“Erlik Khan! Erlik Kha—!” The shaman looked down uncomprehending at the shaft driven to its fletching in his chest, and toppled over sideways.

“Why, little mistress?” asked Sivka.

“Mercy perhaps. Or revenge. I don’t know myself. But I’m sure of one thing. It wasn’t an accident.” She put the bow away. “Now get me to Sarai – and
move
!”

*

Sarai
,
capital
of
the
Khanate
of
the
Golden
Horde
;

September
,
1243
A
.
D
.

And
the
darkness
moved
upon
the
face
of
the
earth
,
and
saw
that
it
was
good
…

That and stranger things went tumbling through Ivan’s head as he and Volk Volkovich scrambled with silent determination through a crowd of shrieking people who had rushed from their homes, and were now rushing even harder to get far away from the thing they had come out to see. Ivan had wanted to hear the Tatars make that sound, the sound of terror they had visited on so many others, but now he heard it he wished it would stop.

As the street widened and the trampling confusion eased somewhat, he looked back again – then stopped and stared at the unbelievable. Not the vast darkness that was Chernobog or Erlik Khan, but at Amragan
tarkhan
, alive and tottering down the street, his clothing and armour in rags where it wasn’t white with a crusting of frost. The man was harder to kill than a cockroach.

There was a slamming explosion at Ivan’s back and a brilliant flare of light threw his shadow down the street, as long and black and sinister as the swirling tower of darkness that was Chernobog. “God damn it, no!” he snarled helplessly. “Not again!”

The screams redoubled their volume as people scattered in all directions, and there was a metallic hammering sound close behind him that he felt sure he knew. The sabre at his belt came from its scabbard with eager ease, and as he turned to face whatever had appeared this time, Ivan was already swinging the wicked blade to cut anything in his path. And then he was wrenching it to a halt less than a shuddering handspan short of Mar’ya Morevna’s leg.