The Golden Horde (6 page)

“This is nothing to do with the Teutons,” said Ivan. He sounded almost sorry to grant the German knights that much back-handed innocence. “It’s the damned Tatars, trying to catch us off guard. I said so when we first heard about the raid.”

“I still wonder how much of what we heard was true, and how much was exaggeration.”

“About the Kipchaqs and the Volga Bulgars?” Ivan snorted. “What I heard sounded like men trying to justify why they ran away.” He turned his head and spat into the snow, more for punctuation than anything else. “They resisted, the resistance didn’t work, so they took to their heels and made up tales of an overwhelming enemy so they wouldn’t look like cowards.”

Mar’ya Morevna looked at him sideways with a crooked smile. “My husband the hero, armed with a hero’s hard words. Tsar for exactly one year and nine months, and already so practiced and cynical. Well, my hero, no matter what happened, here we are, here we stay and as I said before, here we wait. But we might as well be comfortable while we do it.” She muttered under her breath and made an elaborate gesture with her fingers that still managed to be graceful despite the padding of her heavy gauntlets.

Ivan felt a glow of warmth spread through him, as though someone had been warming his blood over a fire before running it back into his veins. It was comfortable indeed, but he still grimaced at the prospect of waiting. No matter what he might say, he hated waiting; here, outside the Council Chamber, inside a barrel floating on the Azov Sea. He had always hated it. There was usually something nasty at the end.

*

They waited, and time passed, and nothing happened. An hour went by, and the army held its formation while the Russian winter gnawed even the Russian soldiers who had grown up enduring it as a dog gnaws a bone, slowly wearing them away. As a second hour crawled to its weary conclusion, Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna could see the formations were beginning to lose their integrity. Even the thickest mantling of furs and a lifetime’s acquaintance with such weather, was no preparation for this. Standing with shield and spear at the ready in the closed ranks of an army expecting imminent attack, even the smallest movement of the air chilled weapons and armour and penetrated fur and leather with blades of ice that bled heat instead of blood.

“What are those damned scouts doing?” snapped Mar’ya Morevna, staring at the empty horizon where white ground met grey sky. More than an hour ago, and then again twenty minutes after that, the silhouettes of first two and then five horsemen had skylined briefly, paused, presumably stared hard, then wheeled and ridden away. The silhouettes, stocky men on stocky ponies, were unmistakeably Tatars, the outriders of the raiding party whose main body was somewhere beyond that misty line where earth and sky came together. She had sent a party of Kipchaq mercenaries out to shadow the outriders, but there had been no further sign of hunters or hunted.

“Our last report said the Tatars were half an hour away and we’ve seen their outriders twice since then. They know we’re here, so why aren’t they advancing? If they’re not, I want to know it. And
why
not, too. The bait’s tempting enough.”

“Maybe they’re waiting for the cold to cut us up before they come in to finish the job,” said Ivan. “It’s already working. Look at that.” He pointed to where yet another soldier had fallen over in the snow and was now being helped from the battle-line back to where braziers of charcoal were set amongst the wagons.

Mar’ya Morevna opened her mouth to say something then shut it again with a snap. She’d fought the Tatars before, it was true, but that had been in summertime where waiting a few hours before the onset made little difference. A raid in winter was different, and different enough that no Rus commander had any experience of Tatar tactics in cold weather.

“You may be right,” she said, unbuckling her helmet and taking refuge instead within the deep hood of her fur robe. Mar’ya Morevna didn’t suffer fools gladly, but she was a good enough general that she would accept advice and even criticism if it was justified. “Boris Petrovich, to me!”

Guard-Captain Fedorov saluted, responding to the summons at a jog-trot and glad to have a reason to move. He and the other captains and commanders were standing a short distance away, with an air of enforced idleness that sat uncomfortably on their mailed shoulders as they eyed the brazier hauled up here for their liege lords. But since those same lords had been ignoring it, none wanted to be the first to weaken and move nearer the heat.

Mar’ya Morevna issued rapid orders, speaking briskly enough that ordering others to action seemed enough to keep her warm. “Detach a troop of light horse. Send them beyond the skirmish-line where we last saw the Tatars – they’ll know to proceed with caution from that point onwards, at least they’d better. When they make any contact at all, they’re to break off and get back here. They’re not to engage, on pain of my extreme displeasure.”

“And on pain of pain,” said Ivan, while the small, hard smile that was only a stretching of his lips leached any humour from the words. “Meanwhile pull every fourth man out of the line and back to the wagons to get enough hot soup, bread and wine for himself and the other three.” He looked at Fedorov and raised his eyebrows a fraction. “All those things are ready, aren’t they?”

“Yes, Majesty,” said Captain Fedorov. “The soup’s in kettles on the braziers, the rest is with the baggage train.”

“Good. Do it. If there’s still no sign of the Tatars after they’ve eaten, bring them back to the braziers by squads, at whatever interval seems good to you and your sergeants. We won’t weaken the formations any more by keeping the men warm than by letting them drop at their posts.”

“By your command. Majesty, Highness.” Fedorov saluted and jogged away again in a rattle of armour and a spatter of snow.

“Smartly done, Vanya,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “You may be only a Tsar, but you’ve got the potential to be a good officer.” She grinned briefly. “I may well make one of you yet. Now, what are
you
going to eat?”

Ivan gave her another of those humourless smiles, but this time it simply made him look wretched. “Not until my insides stop fluttering. This is worse than waiting for the Teutonic Knights.” He unhitched his own helmet and dropped it with a metallic crunch into the snow, then pulled up his hood and stared at Mar’ya Morevna from the refuge of its shadows. “How long did it take before you got used to the waiting? How many battles?”

“Not enough. I’m still not used to it. Just better than you at hiding it.” She peeled off one glove and touched his face, frowned, shivered, and made haste to pull the big fur-lined glove back on again. “The charm is wearing thin. You’re beginning to get cold. Take my advice and have some hot soup at least.”

Ivan’s mouth quirked in distaste. “There’s no guarantee it would stay down,” he said. “I’ll take my own advice and have some hot wine instead.”

“I had a feeling you might say that.” There was disapproval in her voice. “Don’t you think that something other than wine – or ale, or mead, or vodka – might make a pleasant change?”

“Not now.” Whether Ivan was referring to her suggestion or a plea he was hearing more and more frequently, the answer was the same. “After the battle. But not now.”

He watched her sigh and turn away, relieved she hadn’t persisted. What if he drank a little too much, or a little too often? The Great Khan Ogotai was well known for enjoying a cup or three, and Prince Vladimir of Kiev had said it for all Russians three hundred years ago, when rejecting the Moslem religion because of its strictures on wine. ‘
Drinking
,’ he had said, ‘
is
the
joy
of
the
Rus
.’ Joy maybe, and sometimes a necessary buffer against the realities of life, but Ivan knew better than to quote the old Prince’s words to Mar’ya Morevna.

Then all thought of wine or arguments concerning it fled from his mind as a badly-blown trumpet blared from the distant horizon. Ivan swung about and shaded his eyes to see better. The troop of cavalry newly dispatched by Captain Fedorov had barely passed the wooden ramparts of the
gulyagorod
and now they were reining back in confusion, uncertain whether to continue or return.

“One of theirs?” he said, aware Mar’ya Morevna was at his side again.

“One of ours. That’s not a Tatar war-horn. It sounds like our scouts have finally decided to come back and tell us what the Hell is going on.”

She was right. The Kipchaqs and their ponies were just as stocky as any Tatar, so for their own safety’s sake the scouts carried Russian trumpets with a high shrill note unlike the Tatar horns. Ivan felt momentarily foolish – he should have known the difference – then dismissed it. There was more at stake than a tone-deaf nomad mercenary.

“Eight went out,” he said, “and I count eight coming back. So either they missed the Tatars altogether or they’ve led them straight back here.”

“No. They’re alone. I can’t see any movement beyond them, and anyway they aren’t riding anything like fast enough for a hot pursuit.”

“They aren’t exactly cantering either,” Ivan pointed out.

“Maybe they heard about the soup ration,” said Mar’ya Morevna dryly. “Do you want to stand here and guess or go down there and find out?”

“Stand here,” said Ivan. His wife gave him a quizzical glance. “I’m the Tsar of Khorlov and they’re my paid servants, so let them come to me.”

“Now why didn’t
I
think of that?”

“If I said it was because you’re not the Tsar, would you be insulted?”

“I might hit you, if that’s any answer.” Then she grinned and, regardless of the amused and interested captains who now huddled around the brazier close enough that they risked singed furs, put her arms around her husband’s neck and kissed him full on the lips. “That, my loved one, was for having a sense of humour at a time when jokes are few.” She kissed him again. “That was for trying to get used to the waiting.” The third kiss was more leisurely and, though the deep hoods granted them remarkable privacy, it lasted long enough to make the captains politely turn away. “And that,” said Mar’ya Morevna softly in the fur-fringed darkness, “was to keep us warm.”

The chiefmost of the Kipchaq scouts, being a nomad barbarian ignorant of civilized good manners, was astride his shaggy little pony and watching them both when Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna finally emerged blinking from between the hoods. Ivan felt intimately tousled and emphatically aroused, and the scout’s incurious gaze made him blush to the roots of his hair.

“What’s to report, Torghul?” said Mar’ya Morevna. One glance at Ivan’s face told her that he would need a few seconds to get his thoughts back in some sort of order where the battle was concerned. Ivan nodded gratefully. It would be a minute or two before he could talk to the man without wondering what was going through the mind behind that flat-featured, droopy-moustached face and besides, the Kipchaqs had been in her service long before they transferred their allegiance to the twin realms of Khorlov and Koldunov.

“Mongol ride that way, many many,” said the Kipchaq, waving his arm back eastward. It took Ivan only an instant to substitute the unfamiliar name ‘Mongol’ for the familiar ‘Tatar’. “I, Torghul, see Mongol. All Kipchaq see, but I, only I alone am wise to count, ten times I count, count many horse, many camel, many Mongol, a score of scores, ten times. Then Mongol see Kipchaq, chase Kipchaq. All Kipchaq go, swift to come away, but I, Torghul, more brave, less swift, I see no Mongol follow from first chase. So I, Torghul,” – this time he thumped himself on the chest for emphasis – “only I alone go back. And I see Mongol ride again,
that
way as always.” He stood in his stirrups and gestured again, not just towards where the Tatars were, but in a long sweep that encompassed almost half the horizon from east to west by southwest.

“Ryazan,” said Mar’ya Morevna, and thumped her clenched fist against her thigh. “Damn them, they’re heading for Ryazan! They’re trying to sack the city!”

“And this is winter,” Ivan said grimly. “Nobody expects a Tatar raid in winter. The gates will be open, the guards half-asleep… Never mind trying, the bastards might just do it! Unless we take them in flank, now.”

Mar’ya Morevna thanked Torghul, gave him silver – it was her custom to pay the nomad scouts on the spot – and dismissed him, then looked at Ivan sharply. “Vanya, we’re in a prepared position here. The whole purpose was to draw the Tatars into a trap. Now you’re proposing we throw all that aside?”

“You heard the man. A score of scores, counted ten times. They’ve got four thousand men, we’ve almost ten.”

“They have four thousand horse to three hundred, with the rest of our army on foot. That’s why we brought the
gulyagorod
all this way, why we set up this trap in the first place. To negate the advantage of mobility with the advantage of surprise.”

“So they’re ignoring a threat on their flank because they know we won’t come after them? If that’s the case, I say let’s go. The advantage of surprise, remember?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like one of your own
bogatyri
,” said Mar’ya Morevna, and she didn’t mean it as a compliment. “Brave as badgers, every one of them, but solid oak between the ears and no more notion of tactics than a, than a —”

“A bull at a gate?”

“I was going to say, a Frankish knight who thinks his honour’s at stake, but there’s not much difference. Well, maybe there is. The bull knows to stop when it hurts.”