Russka (22 page)

‘Tonight, you mean?’

Shchek frowned. What did he mean? There were a few trees nearby and some clumps of tall grasses; he watched them waving in the slight breeze. Were there Cumans lurking in there? ‘Yes. Tonight, tomorrow, every night.’

Was this half-empty town perhaps a trap, a lure? He did not trust the Cumans: he hated them. Four years before, they had killed his little wife and one of his four children. They had been killed for sport. It was another reason why he had begged his Lord Ivan to take him along.

What is it you fear? he asked himself again. He did not know. But he was certain he felt it, a pervasive sense of danger, something treacherous in the air.

The battle did not last long. The town was a large, rectangular enclosure with low walls of baked earth and clay. The army drawn up before it must have been a fearsome sight. The Cumans appeared on the walls and fought well; but they were horribly mauled by the volley after volley of arrows that poured from the men of Rus. By mid-afternoon, though they had scarcely lost any men, the Russians saw the gates open and a parley party coming out, bearing gifts of wine and fish.

The city had been partly emptied but even so, in the low rows of
clay and wooden houses, they found quantities of fine silks from the orient, gold and gems, and wine from the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus Mountains. They feasted that evening, both inside the city and in their camp, which they pitched before its walls.

It was just as the sun was sinking that Ivanushka, together with Shchek and the Khazar boy, rode away from their camp. They traced the path of a little stream and made their way slowly round the city. The boyar was riding Troyan; the Khazar also had a fine, black horse; Shchek a more modest beast.

It was by the cemetery of the Cumans, on the far side of the city, that Ivanushka paused.

The graves of the Cuman warriors were marked with strange stones: they were four, even six feet high, and carved in the shape of men – with round faces, high cheekbones, short necks, broad mouths, flowing moustaches and thin, basin-shaped helmets on their heads. Their eyes mostly seemed to be closed. Their carved bodies were distorted, with wide hips and shortened legs; and their arms, unnaturally long, were bent at the elbows so that their hands were clasped either at their midriff or between their legs.

Though unnatural in shape, these thick, stone figures had an extraordinary life to them, as if they had been temporarily frozen, dreaming while they rode upon some endless journey across the steppe.

Ivanushka turned to the young Khazar. ‘They are dead. Do you fear death?’

The young man visibly braced himself. ‘No, lord.’

Ivanushka smiled. ‘And you, Shchek?’

‘Not much. Not these days,’ the widower said glumly.

Ivanushka sighed, but said nothing. Yet silently to himself he admitted: I fear death.

Then they rode on.

It was the dead of night. There was a quarter moon in the sky, but it had not risen very high and was frequently obscured by the long, ragged clouds that passed overhead from time to time. A light breeze stirred the reeds that fringed the little stream. Apart from that, there was silence over the steppe. The whole camp appeared asleep.

The three Cuman figures made almost no sound at all as they waded carefully through the shallow stream. Now and then, a light
splash or the noise of drops falling from an arm on to the water’s surface might have been heard. But the bank of reeds muffled these sounds. They carried swords and daggers. Their faces were blackened.

When they reached the place where they meant to climb the little bank, they paused for some time. Then, very slowly, parting the reeds less than the breeze might have done, they slipped through them and out on to the bank. And they might have given no sign of their coming had not one of them, whose expertise was widely acknowledged, foolishly made an answering call to a frog.

Shchek froze. He had been only half asleep. Immediately his heart began to race. There was no animal in forest or steppe whose call he did not know. Even the most perfect animal call from a human was immediately recognizable to him. He sat up and stared towards the reeds, straining his eyes in the darkness.

They watched him. One of the three, the leader, was already on his belly some twenty feet across the grass, and only a dozen paces from where Shchek sat.

He got up. He touched the Khazar boy lightly, to wake him, then taking a spear in one hand and a long knife in the other, he started to creep cautiously towards the reeds. The Khazar boy wanted to go too, but Shchek impatiently waved him back. ‘Stay with Lord Ivan,’ he whispered.

It was this sound that woke the boyar.

Ivanushka saw the peasant creeping towards the reeds. He started up. And his mind, too, worked quickly.

‘Shchek, come back,’ he hissed. He reached for his sword. But Shchek was already a dozen paces away, intent upon his task.

He never saw the Cuman at his feet. He was aware only of a blinding, searing pain in his stomach, as though a huge serpent had suddenly reared up and buried its fangs just under his heart.

He gave a loud cry, and observed to his surprise that his arms had suddenly become quite useless, while the stars were unaccountably falling from the sky, taking him with them to the earth. Then something else happened. Then redness. Then, strangely, a great cold whiteness, shining like the morning mists.

The other two Cumans had rushed forward while the first, having struck Shchek, had leaped like a grey wolf towards Ivan and the Khazar boy.

The boy struck at him, but the Cuman easily sidestepped him
and swung at Ivanushka with a curved sword. Ivanushka parried. The Cuman moved swiftly in a circle around him, cutting cleverly at his legs. The Khazar boy shouted. His voice echoed round the camp. One of the Cumans swung his sword and, by good fortune, the boy managed to parry. He shouted again.

And, to his surprise, the Cuman hesitated.

He struck at him wildly, felt his blade just graze his shoulder, struck again. But the fellow was gone. At the sound of other voices around, he and his companion were running lightly back to the reeds.

He turned. By the moonlight, he could see Ivanushka and the first Cuman locked in combat. It was impossible to see who had the upper hand.

At last, he thought, I can prove myself. And gripping his sword tightly, he rushed at the assailant.

And then, to his amazement, this one too turned and started to run.

He hurled himself at him, caught his sleeve, and as the man staggered, reached for his legs. Only to find himself held in a vice-like bear hug, from behind, as the Cuman made his escape.

How strange. The arms holding him were the Lord Ivan’s.

‘I had him, lord,’ he protested. ‘I had him. Let’s go after them,’ he pleaded.

‘In the dark, like this?’ Ivan still held him. ‘You’d get your throat cut. Let them run. You can kill Cumans tomorrow.’

The boy was silent. He supposed Lord Ivan was right. The arms slowly released him. ‘What cowards these Cumans are,’ he muttered.

‘Perhaps,’ Ivanushka said drily. He turned. ‘They’ve killed my poor Shchek though,’ he added mournfully.

It was true. The boy looked at the sturdy old peasant who now lay still, his blood making a black patch on the moonlit grass.

But neither then, nor later, could he understand why Ivan had let the last Cuman go. Nor did Ivan ever tell him who his attacker was.

They found the main Cuman force a few days later, drawn up beside a river. Ivanushka and Vladimir ran their eyes along the huge, dark, menacing line. They had drawn themselves up well, on a slight slope that favoured them. To the right, their carts and
light chariots were set in two enormous circles into which they could, if necessary, retreat.

It was the biggest force that Ivanushka had ever seen – line after line of mounted men in leather or light armour with lances and bows, who could charge, wheel, or fly across the steppe like so many falcons.

‘I can count more than twenty princes there,’ Vladimir remarked. He knew the Cumans well.

‘And Boniak?’ Boniak the Mangy, the most terrible, the most ruthless of them all.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Monomakh cheerfully, ‘he’s there.’

The two armies faced each other in silence.

It was then that Ivanushka noticed something. It happened gradually, softly, so that even the sharp-eyed Monomakh had not at first perceived it.

The wind was changing direction.

He reached out, touched the great prince on the arm, and nodded at the swaying grasses.

‘Look.’

Monomakh looked.

‘Praise God.’

The wind would carry their arrows towards the enemy. God meant them to punish the pagans.

The battle that took place that day lived long in the memories of the men of Rus.

‘Our arrows floated on the wind,’ Ivanushka told Emma afterwards. ‘They sailed like swallows.’ The slaughter was terrible, for Monomakh, though generous in peace, was terrible in war. His contempt for Cumans, whom he often accused of breaking their oaths, was complete. No Cuman who came within his reach could hope for the slightest mercy. ‘They tried all their tricks,’ Ivanushka said of that day. ‘They even pretended to run away. But we stayed put until we could trap them against the river.’ The victory was total.

But there was one event of which Ivanushka never spoke. It took place a little before the end of the battle and was seen by nobody else.

He had scarcely thought of his brother during the battle; there was no time. But suddenly, glancing to his left, he saw a single
Russian boyar surrounded by three Cumans, who were hacking at him with their curved swords, and instantly knew it was Sviatopolk.

He did not trouble to think, but spurred away from his sons towards him. They had backed him against the river so that his horse’s hind legs were already digging feverishly in the crumbling earth of the bank. As they closed, he valiantly lunged forward, knocking one of the Cumans from his horse. Then, as one of the attackers slashed at its nose, Sviatopolk’s horse reared and he fell, over the steep bank into the swirling river some ten feet below.

Ivanushka caught one of the Cumans from behind, killing him with a single blow; the other fled. But by the time he looked down into the river, Sviatopolk was already several yards out into the stream. The water was moving fast. Half stunned for a moment, Sviatopolk was struggling now to reach the bank, but his chain mail was dragging him down. He looked up hopelessly at the bank above, then seeing his brother, turned away his head. Then he sank.

For a moment, Ivanushka hesitated. The water was deep. Sviatopolk had vanished. If he went in, his chain mail would probably drag him under too. The words of the Old Testament story suddenly flashed through his mind. ‘Am I,’ he murmured, ‘my brother’s keeper?’ And for the first time in many years, as he gazed at the water, he knew fear.

‘Am I to give up my life for the brother who tried to kill me?’ he asked himself. He looked around. The battle had moved away towards the wagons. It was strangely quiet there. Then he took off his helmet and dived in.

No one else ever knew how close he came to death that day.

As the cold waters closed over his head, he felt himself being dragged down by two forces – the strong river current and the weight of his mail. It took all his strength to fight his way to the surface, to gasp for air and dive again.

But he found Sviatopolk. His face was already grey; he was tangled in some river reeds that seemed to wrap themselves round him like insistent, importunate
rusalki
. How Ivanushka got him free, he hardly knew. But somehow he did, and drifted with him down the stream until he could pull him to the river bank. There, turning him over, he forced the water from his lungs.

Together the two brothers lay exhausted on the bank. For several minutes neither spoke. The sun was high in the sky. Birds were flitting curiously over the long grass around them. The sounds of battle had entirely died away.

‘Why did you save me?’

‘You are my brother.’

There was a pause. Ivanushka could feel Sviatopolk preparing himself for the next question. ‘But … last night. You knew?’

‘I knew.’

Sviatopolk groaned. ‘And now I must bear the burden of your forgiveness too.’ It was said without rancour. Sviatopolk sounded infinitely weary.

‘You forget,’ Ivanushka calmly reminded him, ‘that I, too, sinned. Perhaps more than you, when I was wandering and I stole. I returned with nothing, yet our father forgave me and took me in. Tell me now, my brother, what it is that drove you to such a thing?’

It seemed to Sviatopolk that he could hate no longer. For hatred, feeding upon him year after year, driving him forward like a cruel rider pushing his horse, hatred and misery had finally worn him out. Slowly, a few words at a time, staring straight up at the blue sky, he told his brother the whole story.

‘You had only to ask me for help,’ Ivanushka reminded him gently.

‘But what man can ask?’

‘You are too proud,’ Ivanushka said with a smile.

‘It has brought me despair and death,’ his brother sighed.

‘The preachers tell us it does,’ Ivanushka replied drily.

And that summer, having at last visited the great River Don, he paid his brother’s debts.

They had returned in triumph. Yet in the long warm days of autumn, that very year, the sage counsellor of great Monomakh, for the first time in many years, gave all Rus the chance to say: ‘Ivan’s a fool.’

He decided to build a church.

That would have been normal enough for a rich boyar, but he decided to build it in stone. Even that, if extravagant, might have been thought handsome had he decided to build it in Pereiaslav, or even perhaps in the fort of Russka.

But he did not. He decided to build it outside the fortress walls,
on a little rise overlooking the river towards the village on the eastern side.

‘And since I see now that, without help, all men are lost,’ he declared, ‘I shall dedicate it to the Mother of God when she begs Him to forgive the sins of the world.’

So began the construction of his little church which was dedicated to the Virgin of the Intercession.