The Golden Horde (14 page)

“Spies and other trusted agents have kept a close watch on their progress across Moist-Mother-Earth. I can tell you now that with the exception of a few garrisons, the bulk of their host has passed beyond the borders of Russia, heading westward towards the lands of Hungary, Wallachia, Poland and the Holy Roman Empire. The cities of Buda-Pest, Krakov, Vienna and many others lie before them.”

Ivan paused, listening to the undercurrent of murmuring, and heard what he’d expected. Not one man in the Council Chamber cared a whit about what was happening or might happen further west. The foremost hope voiced was that the Tatars would find the lands of Europe enough to their taste that they would settle there for good. The Tsar of Khorlov closed his eyes briefly to shut in a spasm of disgust with his own people.

“Councillors, I believe they’ll find these western countries a far harder nut to crack than they found us.” There was a small hum of denial, but Ivan shook his head. “The Princes of the Rus have become so used to feud and private war, or at the very least so used to distrusting one another in anticipation of such wars, I doubt we could act together even in the face of Armageddon and the Judgment Day itself. The Kings and Dukes of Europe may have squabbled with each other just as much, but unlike us, they banded together in the common cause of their Crusades. What they did once, they may do again – though whether it will serve against the Tatars, I can’t say. But their cities and kremlins are walled with stone, not wood, and their lands are mountainous and thick with forests, a terrain less suited to the Tatar way of making war than our wide steppes.”

He paused again, and looked at his hands. Now he was coming to the crunch, they’d stopped shaking and were as steady as those of any man with a clear conscience. The councillors were aware he’d called them here for more than a summary of what he hoped they all knew already; but Ivan knew the High Council of Khorlov well enough not to trust such optimistic assumptions. They all held their positions more by rank and inheritance than by ability, and though Ivan intended to change that situation, now wasn’t the time. Thus for the most part the older
boyaryy
were comfortable, indolent and disinclined to change, while the younger
bogatyri
were warriors who viewed war with the starry eyes of ignorance. Too few of them had been with Ivan in the Battle on the Ice, and despite the fondness of Rus Princes for making private war on one another, Khorlov’s Tsars had avoided such pointless and unprofitable activity for long enough that most of these blindly courageous blockheads had never drawn their swords in action.

“The Tatars are gone, and we in Khorlov haven’t seen them pass us by. Be grateful for that respite, my lords and gentlemen, because they’ll be back. If they’re defeated in the west, they’ll fall back to regroup as they’ve done for the past three years. Even if their downfall is so complete that they return to the high steppes of Asia, they’ll pass through Russia on the way. But if they conquer in the west they’ll
still
need the steppes to raise their horses, and they’ve conquered all the lands of Rus already.”

As Ivan expected, there was a rumbling of disapproval at that. He had guessed right: the High Council of Khorlov, advisors to the Tsar on affairs of government and policy, either didn’t know or didn’t care to know what had been happening to other cities and domains. It hadn’t happened to them, therefore it didn’t matter.

It hadn’t happened
yet
.

“Last month they laid siege to Kiev,” he said. “The siege lasted five days, before the city fell on the feast of St. Nikolai. Now do you begin to understand me?” Ivan watched the effect of such blunt words with a detached, cool interest. For a few minutes it was like watching a fox in a hen-house, and then one of the gabbling poultry thought to ask a sensible question at long last.

“Majesty, if the Tatars come to Khorlov, what can we do?”

In
what
sense
do
you
mean
‘
we’
? Ivan didn’t voice the doubt aloud. He’d prepared his speech for this moment with an actor’s care, but now the moment had arrived, like many actors he found the lines had fled from memory. “If by that you mean resist, then we – the Tsar and the Council and the people of Khorlov – can do nothing. Kiev tried to resist. Ryazan, Vladimir – all the others, and what are they now but names? Those cities are gone. Destroyed. Wiped from the face of the earth. I won’t see that happen to Khorlov. So there’s something I can do. When the Tatar envoys come to the gates with their demand to bow down and submit or be destroyed, I—”

His hands were shaking again, and he clenched them so tightly that his fingernails cut crescent welts into the palms, pressing them so hard against the arms of the chair that they might have been tied in place.

“I will put my pride in the dust, and I will bow down to the Khan, and I will submit.”

During that long walk from the kremlin to the Council Chamber, Ivan had tried to imagine what the uproar would sound like when it came. None of those imagined noises were adequate to describe the pandemonium that greeted his announcement, a cacophony of denials, refusals, jeering and formless howls of outrage beyond even Captain Akimov’s ability to shout down. There were few words clear enough to distinguish from the general clamour, but Ivan heard some of them; words no ruler wants to hear from his loyal supporters.

“Renegade..! Coward..! Traitor..!
Abdicate
..!”

Warned in advance that there might be trouble at this Council meeting, Akimov had quadrupled the usual guard of honour and on his own authority had made sure that they were equipped not for parade, but for battle. It meant that by the time the shouting had begun to die down, the Tsar of Khorlov was flanked by two troops of armoured men, with a third ranged across the doors of the Council Chamber. The place became relatively quiet after that.

Ivan studied the rows of choleric faces, glistening with the sweat of righteous wrath, and despaired of seeing even one that might understand his appeal to reason. There was such a thing as being a High Councillor for too long. It was becoming all too obvious why some Princes flew into notable passions and had all their advisors slaughtered, then appointed completely new ones. Such behaviour wasn’t far removed from the Tatar approach to conquest: the fate of their predecessors would keep the next lot in order for fear of the same treatment. As long as they didn’t make a habit of it, those Princes were the ones with relatively stable reigns. It was the soft-hearted rulers who usually had trouble, because their nobility knew that taking liberties would never be punished as it deserved. Ivan could see that all the doors had been secured; every single councillor was here, and Guard-Captain Akimov’s men carried the only weapons.

Then he stamped such thoughts into the back of his mind before they could become a command that from the look of him Akimov would obey without hesitation. If he was going to act like a Tatar, he might as well join forces with them rather than merely capitulate, something to justify the cries of ‘Traitor’ more than anything else could do. It would have to be reason after all, though talking sense into heads that had no room for it wasn’t a task he relished.

*

The High Councillors of Khorlov conceded his point at last, though Ivan’s throat was dry and hoarse by the time he was done. They’d finally agreed that resistance wasn’t just futile but suicidal, as witnessed by the ruins of so many cities. Those same ruins, and the death or flight of the Princes who had once ruled them, prevented any scornful fingers being pointed at Khorlov in later times. And men in chains could plan to get rid of their fetters, but dead men could never climb out of their graves.

It had taken almost five hours, and in all that time – he was proud of it – he hadn’t once resorted to the simple declaration of his rank and title as a reason for obedience. Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin had been equally proud, though Ivan was sure success here had condemned Tsarevich Nikolai to the same wearisome tuition in rhetoric and oratory he’d suffered as a boy. If it worked then it worked and the Prince would probably thank him for it later, though Ivan was honest enough to concede that thanking his own father was the last thing in his mind when the lessons began.

What had made Ivan’s task more delicate than almost anything else was the realization that any consent had to be unanimous, otherwise there would always be at least one loudly righteous council member who could make the others question their decision whenever he chose. But there had been no protests, no objections, and if the final murmur of compliance had been less than enthusiastic, at least it had been consistent.

Mar’ya Morevna had come into the chamber at some time during that five hours of debate, slipping quietly into an unoccupied chair near the door, and had brought the children with her. They had slept for most of the time, but Ivan had been grateful for her presence both then and now everything was settled, because as the day dragged on an expression of friendly support had come to count for more than those of stern or scholarly approval worn by Akimov and Strel’tsin. But it was done at last, and hopefully Khorlov was safe. If the Tatars didn’t offer their usual terms he would be the first to make them pay in blood for every span of ground they gained; but if that ground could be bought more cheaply then he wouldn’t examine the bill too much. That had provoked a weak laugh, but at least it could be recognized as such.

Unlike the young
bogatyr
who got to his feet near the back of the chamber. Ivan didn’t know him by sight, except that he wasn’t one of the warrior-heroes who had fought the Teutonic Knights and now made up the core of the new Tsar’s
druzhinya
retinue. With the discussion over and everyone shifting about to relieve cramped arms and legs and especially backsides kept immobile for too long, someone standing wasn’t be out of the ordinary. But this young man was moving too deliberately to be merely stretching his limbs, and those sitting near him were visibly attempting to pull him back. He wasn’t heading for the privy, then; anyway, he was going in the wrong direction. And if he was leaving the Council Chamber for any other reason, then he was gravely out of order to the point of open discourtesy. The Tsar left such meetings first, and only after they had been formally concluded.

“You, sir! Where are you going?” First Minister Strel’tsin was also on his feet and pointing with one finger so there could be no mistake about the subject of his question. Even so the
bogatyr
, already halfway to the door, turned around and gestured to himself as though he wasn’t alone. There was something insulting about it, and Strel’tsin seethed with all the affronted dignity of his rank. “Yes, noble sir, I mean you. This meeting isn’t over yet.”

“It is,” said the warrior. “For me at least.”

Ivan stood up with a single smooth movement that betrayed nothing of his own stiff joints and stared at the
bogatyr
through narrowed eyes. The man was no older than himself, and that meant he was a deal too young for such dramatic posturing, and quite possibly too young to have a place on the Council at all, unless…

“Your name, sir,” he said.

The young man looked at him with unconcealed contempt. “Aleksey Mikhailovich Romanov,” he replied and then, a deliberate afterthought, “Majesty.”

Under Ivan’s beard a muscle twitched in his cheek. He hadn’t heard such derision in a human voice since Hermann von Salza and Koshchey the Undying – even though Old Rattlebones scarcely counted as human. He could identify the young man now; the son of a
boyar
whose absence from the meeting on an excuse of some unspecified indisposition had been heartily welcomed, since Mikhail Petrovich Romanov was if anything more stiff-necked and honour-besotted than the rest put together. If he’d been here, Ivan would still have been trying to insinuate something remotely approaching common sense into the chunk of oak that did duty for his brain.

The son had agreed where his father would never have done, and now he knew the family Ivan was surprised. Yet there was something not quite right about all this; first, the unexpected acceptance of something that must stick in Aleksey Mikhailovich’s throat as much as it would with his father; second, his blatant attempt to leave the meeting; and third, the insults directed at the Tsar’s person. That third case in particular could be dealt with easily enough, by any one of several penalties ranging from a fine to loss of privileges to an actual stripping of property and titles.

Then it hit Ivan like a fist in the face. That was what he was supposed to do and by so doing, forfeit the hard-won sympathies of the other council members for their young Tsar. Right now he was a reasonable man wise beyond his years, forced by circumstances into an unpleasant decision. But that would change if he was a Tsar whose response to this mild criticism was unleashing the full weight of the law.

It wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t done so faced with their own provocations. It wouldn’t matter that Aleksey Mikhailovich was following the instructions of some elaborate plan created by his own father. Nothing would matter, because those five hours had told him more about his own councillors than he wanted to find out, and very little of it was to their credit.

And where was Aleksey going, anyway?

“I am going to do what any
bogatyr
of honour would,” he said in a prim and self-important voice that sounded properly heroic but still managed to set Ivan’s teeth on edge. “I intend to find a Tatar and kill him, in vengeance for the dead of Mother Russia.” He stared defiantly at the Tsar for several seconds, then conceded the last word as though reluctantly parting with a high and thoroughly undeserved tribute. “Majesty.”