The Golden Horde (9 page)

“We did, by sending out scouts towards the river Okya. You merely confirm the first message and what we have already learned.”

“That as we stand exchanging pleasantries the Tatars are on their way?”

“We have warned you already to curb that impudent tongue, Volk Volkovich. You must be aware the office of courier is no refuge from our displeasure.”

As
it
is
in
more
civilized
places
, thought the Grey Wolf.
Unlike
Ryazan
,
concerned
with
its
own
importance
because
there’s
so
very
little
of
it
. He bowed, extending his right hand towards the floor in the proper fashion but a degree lower than was proper so respect became insolence. Roman Ingvarevich didn’t notice, well accustomed to elaborate flattery that puffed his minuscule status as ally and very subordinate landlord of the Great Princes of Vladimir.

“Your pardon, Highness,” said Volk Volkovich. “I spoke from my concern for Tsar Ivan’s wish to offer aid and —”

“There will be no need for the Tsar of Khorlov to trouble himself on our account. The envoys sent to our… to the city of Vladimir will return at the head of an army long before the Tatars are close enough to threaten our walls.”

“Highness, you requested military assistance all the way from Vladimir?” Prince Roman looked evasive, then angry, but said nothing. “But surely saw from Tsar Ivan’s letter that his lady wife can bring aid through a Gate from Khorlov in the minute of your asking for it.”

“We have said already there is no cause for your liege lord to trouble himself,” said Roman Ingvarevich testily. “And we have no desire that such trouble should involve the sorceress he is pleased to call his wife.”

“That was uncalled for, Highness, and I do you the courtesy of forgetting I heard it spoken,” said the Grey Wolf. The faintest trace of a snarl in his voice was enough to warn Roman Ingvarevich against taking offence. Instead he scowled in silence for a few moments, then gestured towards the door of the throne room.

“You may leave the Presence. Now.”

“And when I enter the presence of my lord the Tsar I shall tell him you asked for help from your overlords, as is right and proper for a vassal. Tsar Ivan will understand.”

“
Go
!”

The Grey Wolf bowed again, smiled a fanged smile at his own feet, then straightened up and went.

*

He went not merely from the palace and the kremlin but from the city altogether. For three days Khorlov’s ambassador was nowhere to be found, and during those same three days rumours about an approaching Tatar army were replaced by frightening stories from the steppes. Stories about a gigantic wolf that appeared from nowhere to slaughter sheep and goats and cattle, rending open the pens where they were herded against the start of winter, spreading their gore and entrails far and wide.

On the fourth day Volk Volkovich was back in his lodgings, able to look at the citizens of Ryazan again without that hot green glitter creeping into his eyes as it had done during his walk from the kremlin palace four days past. The tale of his meeting with their Prince had travelled before him and, in the course of that short walk from the kremlin gates to the shabby tavern where he slept, the Grey Wolf had seen the true face of Prince Roman Ingvarevich’s people. He had been sworn at, spat on, and even the children who knew nothing of politics needed no encouragement from their parents – though some got it in plenty – to pelt the tall grey-clad figure with bones and filth.

By the time he closed the tavern door behind him and leaned against it so he could better resist the temptation to change and go back outside, Volk Volkovich wanted, needed,
had
to kill something. Staying in man’s shape among those foul-mouthed, foul-minded people had been one of the hardest things he had ever done. He wanted to howl, to close his fangs in meat, to wash the dirt from his grey furs with the blood of those who had put it there.

Instead he had gone out of the city and up to the snow-clad pastures, where he worked the frenzy of slaughter from his heart and mind until both were cool and calm again. And on the afternoon of the day that he returned, the first Tatars were seen by the Prince and people of Ryazan.

Now the Grey Wolf lolled in the shadows of the gate, watching. No one paid him any heed except to remark on the size of someone’s dog, because the Grey Wolf was back in the shape he preferred best. Interpreting Tsar Ivan’s request about shape-shifting in his own way, he simply made certain that no one actually saw the change take place. After that, with his wolf-shape smaller than usual, it was easy.

Every Rus from the youngest child to the oldest dodderer knew what a wolf looked like. But they also knew that wolves haunted the deep forests or the treeless steppes, like the one who had wreaked such destruction in the past few days. Wolves didn’t, ever, loaf on the shady side of a city square with their tongues hanging out, wagging their tails in a hopeful sort of way at passers-by.

He even barked when the alarm-bell over the gate began a frantic clangour, although anyone watching closely might have seen that this dog was barking with the same awkward care as a man speaking a foreign language. Only a passing child noticed that at least once the barking dog cleared its throat and said, “
woof
!”

Volk Volkovich the Grey Wolf was getting bold.

If the guards on the ramparts had been warned to look out for a horde of warriors darkening the snow from one horizon to the other, they were disappointed. Only three riders came trotting slowly towards Ryazan, black and distinct against the snow, their spears reversed and wrapped from butt to hand-grip with green pine-branches, waving overhead in token of parley. But they were Tatars, not half-glimpsed shapes flitting along the skyline on their little horses but envoys who rode boldly up to the city gates, demanding entrance in the name of the Great Khan. They spoke neither Uighur nor Turku-Mongol, the two languages that might have been expected, nor did they speak in any of the Slavonic Rus dialects. The words were Farsi, the lowest form of trade-talk, and though it ensured their meaning was clear it gave another and insulting meaning to everything they said thereafter.

The envoys were two men and a woman and except for white garments worn by the woman and drooping moustaches worn by the men, there was little to choose between the three. Except for their green-garlanded spears, none were armed. There were no cased, stubby bows of wood and horn and sinew that were as thick through the limb as a child’s arm, no quivers packed with iron-tipped arrows tempered in brine to better toughen them for punching through armour, no swords either straight or curved and above all, no armour. They wore only the conical, wide-brimmed Tatar sheepskin cap and two cross-wrapped coats laid fur-to-fur against the cold.

Volk Volkovich sat more upright and watched as they were invited into the city of Ryazan, his head on one side and his tongue lolling for all the world like any other brainless hunting-dog. The envoys, he noted suspiciously, were all Mongols rather than Tatars, and he wondered if Prince Roman Ingvarevich knew or cared about the difference.

Volk Volkovich knew. Though the Rus used
Tatars
as a convenient label for all nomadic raiders, they were only one tribe of the many absorbed into Chinghis-Khan Temujin’s empire. That these three were of the Khan’s race rather than some subordinate people made the hackles start to rise along his spine. Some cold intelligence beyond the distant hills was playing a game with live pieces. Volk Volkovich the Grey Wolf had never thought, during his dealings with Tsarevich and then Tsar Ivan, that he would find human-kind more savage than wolf-kind. He was learning otherwise.

The envoys looked around at Ryazan and its breathlessly staring people without the interest of potential spies. Stocky, and made broader by those dense-furred coats, they had the flat, wide-cheekboned Mongol features and the slitted eyes that looked so sinister, but which the Grey Wolf knew from personal experience came from squinting into a winter gale on the steppes, where every gust of wind was like a handful of razor-blades in the face.

His sharp ears heard the clatter of boots against the slabs of treetrunk that did duty for pavement on the street leading from the gate to the kremlin palace. Volk Volkovich swung his head around just in time for the wolf’s eyes that were so much keener than a man’s to catch a glimpse of Prince Roman Ingvarevich’s face. When the Prince reached full view of the people by the gate he was all smiles and amiable curiosity; but the set of his features when he was out of their sight had been very, very different. Roman Ingvarevich was flanked by his First Minister and his Captain of Guards, and talking hurriedly to both those worthies as he strode down from the kremlin. There was too much noise for even the Grey Wolf’s ears to sort out what was said, but the grim looks of approval prompted by those words didn’t bode well for the Tatars.

Prince Roman Ingvarevich of Ryazan stopped well away from the three riders and planted hands on hips while his honour-guard took position all around the square and, significantly, across the gateway. The gates creaked then slowly swung shut, bars and bolts slamming into place with a heavy rattle and boom of metal against wood. One of the Tatars turned to watch, unconcerned by what he must have guessed was an ominous precaution. The Grey Wolf watched him in turn, feeling another shiver of apprehension. The man couldn’t be blind to what was happening, yet did nothing. That in turn had to mean he and his companions were expecting something of the sort. However far Roman Ingvarevich might go, they were prepared for it.

“What do you want from us?” snapped the Prince of Ryazan, refusing to use Farsi and speaking instead in Russian. Nor did he trouble with the usual preliminary courtesies employed even to Volk Volkovich, that despised courier from the equally despised Tsardom of Khorlov.

The Tatars gazed impassively at him, then at his Guard-Captain, his Minister, his soldiers and all the other people gathered around. It was the woman who spoke, and that was as much an insult to Roman Ingvarevich as her own failure to use a preamble of flowery compliments – or her continued use of Farsi when the very fact of her reply made it apparent that she understood Russian well enough.

“Submission and tribute,” she said. There was a ripple of disbelief around the square among the people who knew what had been said. Among them was Volk Volkovich, who groaned inwardly and laid his head down on his paws, grateful more than ever that he wasn’t a human and a citizen of Ryazan. He wasn’t surprised; all of this matched what he knew already of Tatar diplomacy, but knowing and actually being there to see were two very different things. Especially when the diplomacy was being exercised on someone like Prince Roman Ingvarevich.

That Prince went white, then red, at being addressed so by a Tatar and a woman, but managed to keep his voice more or less calm. “And who are you to speak to us so boldly?” he said, seeming to bite off each word and spit it out like bad meat.

“I am shaman to clan Korjagun.” There was pride in the Tatar’s voice, whether from being a priest or because her clan had some importance. It mattered little to the Prince since now he had a third reason to be insulted.

“A sorceress!” Roman Ingvarevich stared her up and down, curling his lower lip in a sneer, then turned to his citizens. “They send a sorceress, and a pagan sorceress at that, to treat with Christians!” He laughed derisively, and the guards and people dutifully joined in.

“What I am is nothing,” said the Tatar woman, holding up a small metal plaque that hung on a chain around her neck, a
paiza
tablet of authority incised with the curling Uighur script. Even in the flat winter light its polished surface gleamed dull gold. “But I speak with the voice of the Orlok Subotai, who speaks with the voice of the Ilkhan Batu, who speaks with the voice of the Khakhan Ogotai, Khan of all Khans of the Mongols, who speaks with the voice of Tengri, God of the Eternal Blue Sky. Hear their words.”

Prince Roman Ingvarevich looked like a man who wanted to utter a sarcastic remark, but the sonorous roll of all those names, at least some of which he recognized and feared, was enough to make him control his tongue. “We will hear them,” he said.

“The Rus will make submission, and give tribute to the Khan of all Khans. The tribute shall be the tithe you give willingly to your Church: one-tenth of all things, be they slaves or grain or beasts. Your Church promises Paradise in the next world. The Khan promises life in this one. Choose: bow down, or be destroyed.”

“Those are the terms?” said Roman Ingvarevich, sounding as though he couldn’t believe the evidence of his own ears.

“They are not terms. Terms may be negotiated. These may not.”

“And your Khan sent you to tell us this?”

“Yes.”

“Three of you, alone, into our city, to tell us this?”

“Yes.”

“He must care little for your safety.” There was an unpleasant smile taking shape on the Prince’s full mouth, a smile that Volk Volkovich fancied had been seen before by the unfortunate Kipchaq, but the Tatars seemed indifferent to its menace.

“We are the Khan’s hounds,” said one of the two men, speaking for the first time and using good Russian to do it. “When he tells us
Come
, we come and when he tells us
Go
, we go. And when he tells us to leap into the fire, we do as we are bidden.”