The Exotic Enchanter (2 page)

The servant led them back to the main building. Shea recognized the big, beehive-shaped stove in the corner; according to
National Geographic
, it was still used in the Russia of his own day. The benches and tables were of finely planed wood, and there was an icon on the east wall.

The building was well chinked and had only one window. Though warm, by Harold Shea's standards it wanted a good airing.

Dinner was smoked venison, more of the coarse bread, and plenty of mead, kvass, and weak ale. The cups and bowls were finely finished wood, and steel knives were provided. Shea had tasted worse mead, but this was much too sweet for his taste, so he only sipped.

While they were eating, the huntsmen trailed in, by way of the bathhouse. Each bowed to the icon and the prince before sitting down. Two joined the psychologists at Igor's table; they were introduced as Oleg Nikolaivich and Mikhail Sergeivich.

Apparently it was considered bad manners to speak with one's mouth full, but worse manners to have an empty cup. The room became loud with the sounds of cheerful drunkenness, the scurrying feet of servants and the stumbling ones of men seeking the privy.

Igor, and Mikhail, and Oleg after they sat down, watched the two visitors closely. As Shea and Chalmers did nothing more alarming than eat, the atmosphere at the table soon relaxed.

After the edge was off, Igor asked a number of shrewd questions about their origins. Shea left the answers to Chalmers, who said quite honestly that they were adventurers who had seen many a strange land.

"Indeed, Your Highness, we have seen the hippogriff, ridden a flying carpet, and drunk the wine of the gods! May I tell you about—?"

"Another cup, and you will have battled sorcerers and tamed werewolves," Igor interrupted. "Doubtless you also saw the firebird, and the Yaga in her hut, while you were in the forest. But tell me—by what road did you enter the lands of the Rus? Did you come from Galich, or by way of Polotsk?"

"Ah, we came the long way round, Your Highness. We were trying to avoid trouble."

"Wise of you. But this is not trouble; you have yet to meet that. Now, to get to the forest, you must have passed Velikaya Klyucheva. How fared the harvest there?"

"Really, I am not a farmer, Your Highness. I could see nothing wrong."

"Well, then, have you seen any burned or abandoned villages?"

"No, Your Highness."

"Any men mounted on small, shaggy ponies, riding without stirrups and often without saddles? They would be wearing ragged coats and trousers, caps and boots, and many layers of filth. Their weapons would be long knives and curved bows."

"They sound like folk one would not care to meet. Bandits?"

"Polovtsi. You saw none?"

"No, Your Highness."

"Did you even pass by any of their campsites? They are hard to overlook, for one can smell them three days' ride downwind."

"I am sure we passed nothing of the kind, Your Highness."

"Hippogriffs and flying carpets you have seen, but not the scourge of the steppes! And you call yourselves scholars! You did not need to come so far just to learn new tales to spin for your supper! So perhaps—"

At this point, to the psychologists' relief, someone struck up a
gusla
, an instrument that looked like a near ancestor of the balalaika. Then he started a song that had everyone lifting their cups.

As more of the men joined in the newcomers were able to hear that it was a listing of heroes; at every name a cup was drained. Igor and the rest drank to Sviatoslav of Kiev, Yaroslav the Wise, Mstislav the Brave, another Sviatoslav of Kiev, Vsevolod of Suzdal, and Yaroslav of Galich. But when a certain Oleg was named, Igor looked morose, and his cup lost its rhythm. Nor did he drink again, and the song faltered as others followed the prince. The player ended with a roaring paen to Vladimir the Great, then called for the singer's due. No few cups were set before him.

Igor muttered curses against another list, starting with Boris and Oleg. "They will do anything for silver," he growled. "And you, who have come so far, and seen so little, tell me—are you for hire also?"

Shea couldn't tell if they were being insulted or recruited. "We are pledged to return to our own lands if we live, but on a journey such as this, it is no disgrace to earn some extra silver."

Further aminadversions were interrupted by a servant who hastily passed the prince's table on his way to the door. "Your Highness, the princess' personal guard is here!"

The sound of hoofbeats and jingling harness now penetrated the noisy room. Igor woke up and so did Harold's curiosity. He had seen a princess or two in his travels, and wondered how this one would measure up.

When Euphrosinia Yaroslavna entered the room, all heads turned in her direction. Every man got to his feet and bowed as she saluted the icon. Igor left the table and embraced her warmly.

She and her escort wore the boots, trousers, and coats of hunters; the escort carried longswords and shields instead of spears, and wore mail. All had grim faces.

"The Polovtsi attacked Yuri the Red's estate at Nizhni Charinsk two days ago," she announced. "They wen
¹
rebuilding the palisade after it burned last month, and were caught completely off guard."

From the curses that rent the air, the psychologists drew two conclusions: the Polovtsi had raided a "safe" location, and they had no business knowing that the palisade was down. Sure enough, the word "spies" came up.

"Yuri's son Boris rode to Seversk to report," the princess continued. "The raiders took the entire household, including that young woman who is neither Rus nor Polovets nor Greek nor anything else we have been able to discover."

Chalmers' face suddenly matched Euphrosinia's for grimness. "Is she a small woman, Your Highness?" His voice didn't break. "Good-looking, very fair skin and brown hair?"

"It seems that you know her," Euphrosinia replied. "What is her name?"

"Lady Florimel, Your Highness."

"So is she named."

"What—?" Chalmers' voice did break.

"Can she—they—be ransomed or rescued?" Shea asked, noting that many far from friendly looks were now aimed their way.

"Perhaps," the prince said. "What is she to you?"

"She is Sir Reed's wife, Your Highness."

Shea didn't notice any warming of the atmosphere, but Igor suddenly gave a bark of laughter.

"So that is why you said so little! 'Reports to your superiors.' Pig swill! You're trying to find her! But how did you—what happened?"

"She was stolen by a powerful enemy, Your Highness."

"He must have been. You don't look it, but I'm thinking you are
bogatyri
yourselves." He grinned. "Perhaps you really have seen hippogriffs and the rest of it.

"Regardless, we now have a common foe. We must rescue your wife and Yuri's family before they go to the Krasni Podok slave market." He filled his cup with an unsteady but practiced hand and rose on still more unsteady legs.

"By Our Lord who saved us, His Mother who bore Him, the Saints who followed Him, the honor of Seversk, and my own honor as its prince, I swear that I will do all that may be needed, yea unto holding my own life as naught, until the Lady Florimel is rescued from her captivity among the Polovtsi."

Then he fell forward on the table and began to snore.

Chalmers looked stricken, but the other Rus at the table, after hearing the snores, paid no heed to the fallen prince. Shea took a close look and a strong sniff. "Just drunk," he reassured his colleague.

Euphrosinia Yaroslavna's handsome face looked thoughtfully at Reed Chalmers' hopeful one. "You should know," she said, "that by both the laws and customs of the Rus, no man may be held to anything he promises while drunk."

Shea thought that spoke well for the good sense of the Rus, but wasn't about to say so. "What says the law?" he asked, covering for Chalmers.

" 'If two men, both being drunk, come to an agreement, and after, when they have both slept their drunkenness off, one of them is not satisfied with the agreement, it shall be void.' " Her fluent quotation gave Shea some notion of how often it was cited. "By custom, no vow, contract, or promise is valid unless all parties are sober."

"There is reason to go after them," Chalmers said, his voice showing that he'd bounced back, for the moment. "Folk of the Rus were captured too."

The princess shrugged her elegant shoulders. She couldn't hold a candle to Belphebe were that lady present, Shea decided, but she definitely held the eye on her own. "There are boyars of princely houses in the tents of the Polovtsi at this moment. Yuri was a
muzh
, yes, but a border lord."

She looked directly at them; her words might give pain, but she didn't turn away from her victims. "Done is done. For now, it is more important to prevent further raids. The Polovtsi should not have been able to strike this close to Seversk."

In an academic setting, Dr. Shea might have appreciated her
realpolitik
. She showed more logic than most political commentators in the twentieth-century U.S. But thinking of Belphebe had triggered a gut reaction: if she were in a mess, politics could take a bath until she was out of it. And Reed Chalmers would back him up.

Ergo, since Florimel is in a mess, politics can take that same bath, and I will back Reed. QED.

Time for my realpolitik, Your Highness.

Shea's gut had also generated an inspiration. He looked in the kindling box (the prince's table was close to the stove). Good, it held unpeeled willow branches as well as birchbark. Now to unruffle the princess' feathers . . .

"If I may, Your Highness, I would like to return His Highness' hospitality by giving him a healing draught. He needs to be able to ride tomorrow, no matter where he goes."

"I will watch you prepare it, and you will drink it yourself before you give him any of it."

Shea had no problem with that, although he wished the samovar wasn't still a few centuries in the future. "Please ask your servant to boil water in a clean pot."

While that was being prepared, Shea stripped the bark from the willow branches, and cut about two dozen small pieces.

"What are you doing?" Chalmers murmured.

"Using your synthesis spell to make aspirin, Doc. Mark these, please; the formula is C
₉
H
₈
0
₄
."

Chalmers perked up and set to work with his knife, while Shea shredded the rest of the bark. The Rus were quiet, but Shea knew that if this didn't work, the trouble Igor had mentioned would come, with a vengeance.

A servant, his hands muffled in rawhide, brought in a pot of water. Shea indicated where it should go on the table, a fair distance from Igor. Then he arranged the marked pieces of bark around it, and dropped the rest of the bark into the pot.

Finally, he and Chalmers stood on either side of the pot, Shea reciting, the older man gesturing.

"When I consider how my life is spent,

The time ill-used, the wealth I fling askance

On fleeting follies tuned to my own bent,

Or joined with others, dance delusion's dance;

O Willow! Emblem of the soul's own tears,

O weep with me, a-pent in mine own snare,

Yet healing bring, lest prey to mine own fears,

I fall into the pit of black despair.

Although thy leaves our dreary truths bespeak,

Thy bark, now shredded,'s balm to make us whole,

This bitter draught gives strength, unlike the sweet

Taste of the mead, to which our strength pays toll.

Come, prince of drugs! Thy powers unseen, restore

To all who drink, sobriety once more."

The atmosphere in the lodge was anything but salubrious, but the spears remained stacked and the swords sheathed. Shea checked the pot; the bark had steeped. He wiped his cup and dipped some out.

Yeech!! It tasted vile, out warmed his stomach very nicely. In a few minutes he felt his incipient stomachache go away. His head felt clearer than ever.

He held out the cup to the princess. "The draught, Your Highness."

All heads turned to her again. She didn't hesitate. "Give him the draught," she ordered. "If he is harmed, you will both be flogged and your eyes burnt out with not irons before you lose your heads."

She gestured, and Mikhail Sergeivich raised the prince.

Shea was relieved to see that he was not unconscious, just asleep. He put the cup to Igor's lips; the prince swallowed by reflex. By the time it was empty he had opened his eyes.

"Gaaaah!" was his first sound, and "Water!" his first word. The water was hastily brought, and the hands which had tightened on swordhilts relaxed a trifle, but did not move. Igor downed a pitcher and part of a second, then looked around, cold sober.

The hands fell away from the swordhilts. The princess stared.

"Did you prepare this draught?" Igor asked the psychologists.

"Yes, Your Highness."

"It tastes like rotten maresmilk. You
bogatyri
have stomachs of iron." He smiled broadly. "Mine is only that of prince, but I owe you a boon. Ask what you will."

"Only that my wife be rescued, Your Highness," Chalmers said, before the princess could recover.

Igor repeated his previous vow, not as loudly but with more dignity, as well as several embellishments. By the time he had finished, half the room was cheering.

The prince was also beginning to find company in sobriety. Three or four of the men came up to the table and dipped their cups, and many a respectful, even awed, look was aimed at the strangers.

Princess Euphrosinia gave them a respectful nod, then turned to the prince. "Let us go to bed, my lord. The morning is wiser than the evening, and there will be much to do."

Igor offered his arm. "Gladly, my lady," he said, with more than a suggestion of a leer. He escorted her out.

II

Two days later, Harold Shea and Reed Chalmers were riding with Prince Igor's party eastward to the Don country. It was a fine day for riding, clear and neither too hot nor too cold. The trails, the occasional wide trail that deserved to be called a road, and the stretches of grassland they frequently had to cross were all firm beneath the horses' hooves.

"Just as well we're riding now," Oleg Nikolaivich remarked. "In another month, two at the most, this will all be mud."

Shea paraphrased an old description of a swamp. " 'Too thin to ride on, too thick to row through.' "

Oleg Nikolaevich grinned.

Shea found the high-cantled saddle comfortable enough, and was grateful to be in a dimension that had invented stirrups. The Rus were clearly equipped to press home a charge with lance or sword, as well as fight from a distance with a three-foot bow. Some of them also carried battle-axes; Shea had yet to see a mace. They all wore mail shirts, of varying lengths, some ring mail and some made of metal discs sewn to leather backing, or strips of metal and leather woven together. Their helmets were iron, open-faced, and pointed, with mail attachments to protect neck and throat. Their shields were kite-shaped, and the whole effect reminded Shea somewhat of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Except that no self-respecting Norman knight ever used a bow. The Rus might have equally grand notions of honor, but that didn't keep them from riding out equipped to pay horse archers back in their own coin.

Shea himself wore only a helmet and a knee-length mail shirt. He'd buckled on his basket-hilted saber and borrowed a dagger, but refused a shield.

"I am accustomed to fighting without one," he said, and his status as a
bogatyr
rose. So had Chalmers'; he wore a shorter mail shirt and a helmet, but carried only a dagger.

They were not actually headed for the Polovtsi camp—no prince of the Rus would do that unless he led a full war party. It would be prudent, Princess Euphrosinia reminded Igor, to see if the captives could be ransomed. So a negotiating party of forty men was headed for a neutral spot on the west bank of the Don, where the Polovtsi occasionally did some legitimate trading.

They stayed in the shadow of the trees as long as they could, and Igor deployed scouts a couple of hours' ride ahead. He feared treachery, it seemed.

"Some of the boyars and even the princes have fought with the Polovtsi," he explained. "You seldom know who's turned his coat until they attack."

Shea wished he knew more of this continuum. He vaguely recalled that in the opera, Prince Igor had been a Polovets captive.

"What is worse," Igor continued, "is the way the Rus fight each other. If we put our joint strength against the Polovtsi we could crush them. By Saint Vladimir! My grandfather Oleg Sviatoslavich, curse his name, fought against the last Great Prince of Kiev. Now I must negotiate new alliances each time I face peril, instead of being sure of support from all the princes of the Rus."

"If the Polovtsi are such bad neighbors," Shea asked, "why will any of the Rus deal with them?"

"They want Polovtsi slaves," Igor said shortly.

Shea and Chalmers discussed this later in the day.

"It sounds as if the Rus never learned about hanging together or hanging separately," Shea said.

"They didn't," Chalmers replied. "Russia was never united until the Grand Dukes of Moscow took a hand. That's why they styled themselves the 'Czar of all the Russias.' Plural."

"But no one's mentioned Moscow, Doc. Does it even exist here?"

"I don't know. But I'm pretty sure about the slaves.

"Russia's always been huge, Harold. Until the railroad and telegraph were invented, its eastern frontier was just like our west—dangerous, but a place to run away and not be found if you didn't want to be.

"To prevent the farmers, the peasants, from doing just that, Russia stuck with serfdom a lot longer than most countries. It wasn't officially ended until the reign of Czar Alexander II, well into the nineteenth century."

"Yeah, but what does that have to do with Polovtsi slaves?"

"It sounds as if these boyars and princes are trying to ensure a labor supply, and are not too scrupulous about its source."

There was silence, as both men remembered that the supply included Florimel.

They journeyed for nearly ten days, sleeping in their cloaks and existing for the most part on smoked meat and journeybread. They made fires and did some hunting while in the shelter of the forest, but once on the steppe, the dry grass and the chance of being seen made for cold meats and nights.

Shea occasionally visited his family in St. Louis by way of Chicago, and he was all too familiar with the hypnotizing sameness of Route 66. Mile after interchangeable mile of field and sky made the trip seem like three thousand miles, not three hundred. He was truly grateful for the succession of towns and country crossroads, which proved he was not just sitting in the same spot, and could even muster up some gratitude for the farm machinery ambling along. Having to watch for tractors did focus his attention.

I hope no one ever builds one of those German autobahns down here
, he remembered thinking.
No one could stay awake long enough to reach St. Louis.

Once out of the forest, the journey to the Don was Route 66 cubed and squared. The grass was turning pale as autumn came on, but was dotted with wildflowers. Sky and grass, grass and sky—the occasional rustle of rabbit in the grass or outline of bird against the sky did nothing to disturb their eternal immensity.

"I'm glad I'm not scouting," Shea told Chalmers as they made camp one night. "I'd have to spend so much time on antihypnotic techniques that I'd never spot anything."

As the sun rose on the tenth day, they saw the glint of the Don in the distance. The wind blew from the east, and the Ohioans discovered that Igor had been right about one thing. You could smell a Polovtsi camp a
long
way downwind.

The prince raised the trade-truce banner, a yellow trumpet on a field that must have been intended to be white, then slowed the pace of the advance to an amble, Easing into the smell made it no easier to get used to.

"Anything in your repertoire for this, Doc?" Shea asked.

"Unfortunately, this stink interferes with one's logical faculties. Moreover, I suspect that since the odor has entirely natural causes, the only way to overcome it would be to plant a posthypnotic love of cleanliness in every Polovets."

About three hours after sunrise Shea sensed that his mount was walking on softer ground, and he began to hear the cry of marshbirds. By the time they stopped for noon rations, they could all see where stands of brush and tall grass broke the steppe and marked the banks of the Don. The air had grown more humid as they made their way east, but the increased moisture did nothing to blunt the smell.

That afternoon, Shea got his first look at the river. The Don was broad and placid, seemingly untouched by humans. It was totally unlike the Mississippi at St. Louis, fringed with piers, spanned by bridges loaded with trains, carrying squadrons of barges and towboats.
But this river can still flood
, Shea reminded himself,
though it looks to be at low water now.
The psychologist had done his share of sandbagging before leaving St. Louis.

They finally ambled into the Polovets camp about two hours before sunset. At that particular spot the Don curved into a miniature bay, which made it easier to water horses. There were no permanent structures, but the grass was crushed, and the ground dimpled here and there with firepits.

Some thirty Polovtsi were waiting, mostly mounted. They looked remarkably similar, all with dark shaggy hair and moustaches. Their riding coats and breeches were similar to those of the Rus, and those who didn't wear the caps Igor had described wore long pointed hoods that tied under the chin.

Polovets saddles, when they were used, were leather pads dangling ragged stirrups of the same material. Few of the riders wore mail, and all they carried besides bows and quivers was either long knives or short swords.

Looking at the Polovtsi, Shea realized the variety of physical appearance among the Rus. There was a bushy though well-groomed beard on every chin, but their hair ranged from dark to blond and they showed a wide range of heights and builds. This might look normal to an American, but not to a tribal people.

Multiply this lot
, the psychologist thought,
and you understand what starts the legends about enemies where two spring up for every one slain.

The Polovets leader, who wore a riding coat stiff with enough dirt to be half-decent armor, and lots of tarnished gold and silver jewelry, rode out on a shaggy steppe pony. Beside him on another pony rode a figure, recognizable in spite of his dirty robe, that the Ohioans hoped they'd seen the last of a dimension or two ago.

Recognizing Malambroso was all they had time for, because the Polovets chieftain hailed them.

"What brings the noble prince of Seversk to my tents?" he said.

To Shea's surprise, Igor kept his temper. "It seems, chieftain, that some of my goods found their way to your tents."

Suavity was not the chiefs strong point. "Dare you claim anything of mine, you self-gelded eunuch of a Rus? Your tongue will be next!"

Igor ignored this. "Those who steal rather than fighting for their booty are bandits, not warriors. Those who lead bandits are not chiefs. Can one be sure they are even warriors?"

"Ask the spirits of your dead about the Polovtsi, oh prince of windy words! Warriors and free men are we all, and we stand by each other against all enemies."

"So? Well, if one snake can speak for all, then I need not look for a particular thief. I may demand the return of my goods from any."

"The goods of our foes are ours to plunder at will. But as you have come under the truce banner, I will not refuse outright. You ask me to put myself to some trouble, and for that trouble I want twice eighty
grivnas
.

"That's twice the blood price of my bailiff! Twenty
grivnas
for the return, alive and uninjured, of all the captives taken at Nizhni Cherinsk."

"You ask for the ones from a particular raid? We are warriors, not scribes who sit about scribbling lists! Only a fool would expect us to tell one lot from another! You ask of me a long journey, many slaves come in each day, and the day we meet the traders approaches.

"A Greek trader would pay one hundred, for what you ask. You say the Rus are better than the Greeks. So pay me twice sixty."

"Forty, you son of a she-ass."

From Igor's slightly relaxed seat and wandering attention among men on both sides, Shea gathered that the two leaders expected to be at it for a while. The figure at the chieftains side backed his horse and dismounted, as if to relieve himself. The psychologists drew off a little, for privacy.

"At least we know where he is, Doc," Shea said. Chalmers' thoughts appeared to be inexpressible, but deadly.

Florimel's abductor, the wizard Malambroso, disappeared into a clump of brush. When he had not come out after the next three exchanges between the prince and the chieftain, Shea decided to follow.

"What if he's setting a trap?" Chalmers asked.

"He can't trap us without trapping all the Rus. If that costs the chieftain a profitable deal, the chieftain will be angry. He doesn't look like somebody I would want mad at me, and Malambroso's not an idiot."

Chalmers looked mollified. Shea turned his horse and urged it to a walk, toward the clump. "One for all and all for one, Doc!" he called back over his shoulder.

Maneuvering the horse between tangles of tall grass, Shea felt a sensation, as if he were entering an invisible tent. Everything seemed quiet. He grasped the hilt of his sword and looked around.

Malambroso was twenty feet away, pacing restlessly. Shea saw that some of the dirt on the wizard's skin was mobile, and hastily backed his horse.

"I knew you'd be coming, so I put up a see-the-expected spell," Malambroso said. "All anyone on either side will see is this clump." He shook his head vigorously. "That iron bathrobe you're wearing does not become you."

"That cootie sark doesn't do much for you," Shea replied, releasing his grip on the hilt. "What are you doing in such company? Come to think of it, how did you get here in the first place?"

Malambroso gave the grandfather of all sighs, but continued pacing. "You remember Freston's, ah, unfortunate demise?"

"I do," Shea said.

Freston was a demon who, tricked by Reed Chalmers into committing good, suffered the ultimate penalty. The demon wasn't the only one who suffered; Chalmers and Shea, Florimel, and Malambroso were flung separately from a world in which Don Quixote was its greatest knight and not a madman's delusion, to that of the
Aeneid
.

"Well, I wound up in Troy also, and shipped out with a chief named Agamemnon. I jumped ship in Egypt with a bunch of the loot; I figured it was a good place to hole up."

Shea regretted that Malambroso had not continued to Mycenae with Agamemnon. If he had, Clytemnestra might have disposed of him permanently. According to the Greek legends, she'd made a pretty thorough sweep of her late husband's cronies.

Malambroso smirked. "Then I bargained with Hermes the Lightfingered. Ten percent of everything I took in exchange for news of visitors from other continua. I bargained him down to five when I hinted that they might be the advance party for new gods.

"But you can't depend on those Olympians. By the time I found out what you'd been up to you'd already left, although Hermes did drop me off in the same universe.

"I wound up on the edge of the steppe, and started looking for Florimel. I found her at Yuri Dimitrivich's estate, but I couldn't afford to have her recognize me. She was established enough to have me imprisoned. And I didn't, ah, want to try amnesia spells before practicing with the magic of this world."

"You don't seem to have learned much," Shea said, increasing his distance as the wizard took a step forward.

"Magic among the Rus is complicated," Malambroso replied. "Many of them are strongly pious, which can cause spells to have, um, unintended results. Things are easier among these Polovtsi. Their old customs and taboos are breaking down, thanks to the wealth gained from raiding settled areas and providing slaves for the trade. They want spells for spying and battle-luck, things like that."