Prince Ivan (17 page)

It seemed as though Moist-Mother-Earth was holding her breath. Without the constant breeze that had sighed on every other day across the steppe, the beating of Ivan’s heart and the hoofbeats of his horse were an intrusion on the silence of the world. The mace hung heavy from its strap around his wrist, a constant reminder that he might have to raise that weight and bring it down on another living being. He sighed; in the old tales no
bogatyr
was ever so reluctant to fight his enemies, even though they were meant to behave with forbearance to all the world. Ivan hadn’t realized it could be so hard to play the hero of his childhood dreams.

Then all the dreams were shattered by the hammer of approaching hoofs. Ivan ducked behind his shield, and without thought the mace was already poised to strike. He looked just once at the wicked flanges of its striking surfaces, shivered deep within himself—

But when five wild-eyed Tatars galloped frenziedly towards him, he exchanged no more than two clanging strokes before they were past and gone.

Burka reared and danced, squealing, pawing the air, as eager for combat as his master was reluctant. Ivan fought his mount back down and stared in utter confusion at the five distant riders. He had never heard of such a thing, that five Tatars should meet a single Rus and not attempt to capture or to kill him. There was more: in the brief glimpse as they thundered by he had seen blind terror on each face. Prince Ivan was not at all sure he wanted to meet anything that could put such fear into a Tatar; they were wary of their Khan, and frightened of thunder, but of nothing else in the wide white world.

Ivan’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a grin without humour. He had already faced that question and made his own choice to ride on, to meet the adventure and be as brave as the Tatars. He could see what they had seen – and if necessary he could also run away.

The land beneath the towering columns of dark smoke was less flat and featureless than other places. It was dotted everywhere with lumps and bumps and tussocks, as if low bushes had been seeded broadcast all across it, and it had a fuzzed look as if barley had grown between the bushes. Between the stark emptiness and this low vegetation, it was the perfect place for an ambush, and Ivan felt the old familiar tension gathering in his stomach, fluttering like the wings of trapped sparrows. There was no sign of any other Tatars and though he had slowed Burka to a walk, he knew he might be moving deeper into someone’s trap. Then the horse jolted to a stop, snorting, and refused to take another step.

Tsarevich Ivan couldn’t blame his noble steed for that, because he was looking at the Manguyu Temir’s horde, three thousand Tatar horsemen less five, and every one of them was dead.

There were no tussocks or bushes, and never had been. Only corpses. They lay where they had fallen like peasants taking their ease in a field of barley. Ivan turned his head from side to side, struck shock-still astride his stock-still horse. Those barley-stalks were the shafts of innumerable arrows, and the barley-heads their fletchings, standing tall across a field well ploughed by the scrabbling fingers of dying men and richly watered with their blood. The smoke that billowed upward from the blackened skeletons of burning cart-
yurtuy
was freighted with the heavy smell of scorching horsehair felt, a fitting monument for many, many murdered towns.

Ivan looked at the devastation, and he felt…

Nothing.

Ivan had never seen death close to, either in family or friends, and even the judicial executions that happened so rarely in his father’s Tsardom took place far off in the square. These Tatars were the ancestral enemies of the Rus, but even so he might have regretted Manguyu Temir killed in falling from a horse: the khan had been kind to him when there was no reason to act so. Doctor Juchi dead of the extreme age he wore like a badge of office would have made him sad. But this – this could not be grasped, either by the mind or the imagination. It was too vast.

If
you
must
do
murder
, he thought,
do
it
on
a
scale
like
this
.
Or
even
bigger
.
Then
no one
will
believe
it
really
happened
.

Yet this wasn’t murder but the aftermath of battle. It was described in
byliniy
, epics made in the courts of lords and noblemen whose warriors had seen the reality of war, and smelt it, and wiped it from their swords and armour. Peasant
skazki
tales ignored it, pretending that such things never happened, that all battles were a glitter of steel and a sheen of gold. As he closed his eyes and muffled his nose in his kerchief, Ivan wondered why.

Everyone bled when they were cut, peasants and lords alike, even though the great princes chose not to accept that view any more. Not since they had begun to use their peasants as foot-soldiers. He swallowed, and was grateful to whichever god, old or new, who had made him follow the Tatar horde so soon. Ivan had heard what battlefields could be like in summer when the freshness was gone from them, and the crows and wolves and blowflies had become intimate with the unburied dead.

Who
did
this
? The unvoiced thought rattled through his head like dice in a cup. The general who had bested such a foe in open battle was someone to befriend or someone to avoid, and until he knew which action was appropriate, Ivan was at a loss.

“Who did this?” he repeated aloud. Burka flicked his ears, but didn’t venture any further information. At last Tsarevich Ivan stood up in his stirrups and shouted the question at the top of his lungs, the only sound to be heard all across that desolate field. “If anyone still lives, tell me: who defeated Manguyu Temir, and vanquished this Tatar horde?”

No one spoke that he could hear, and nothing moved that he could see, until a spearhead tapped him on the shoulder. For an instant the blood froze in his veins. Ivan held out his hands, open and empty, then turned about to look at the ten warriors behind him with swords drawn, or spears poised, or arrows on the string.

Their captain saluted with the spear that had touched Ivan’s shoulder, then looked from side to side across the field and stared at Ivan long and hard. “Your question has a simple answer,” he said. “These Tatars were vanquished by our liege lady Mar’ya Morevna.” The captain paused, and his spear dropped from the salute. It didn’t point at Ivan, nor did it point away. “And you will come with us to meet her.”

“Then bring me to her presence.” Ivan looked at the other weapons, then at the spear, and brushed it aside as coolly as a Tsar’s son should.
Falcon
,
Eagle
,
Raven
,
oh
my
brothers
, he said inwardly to men who weren’t there,
you
told
me
I
would
meet
this
lady
!
But
I
wish
you’d
told
me
when
and
where
and
how
!

CHAPTER SIX

How
Prince
Ivan
met
Mar’ya
Morevna
,
and
what
he
later
learned
concerning
ears
and
mirrors

Leading his horse by the bridle, they escorted Ivan around the edges of the battlefield instead of straight across. Soldiers were working their way through the bodies, recovering spent arrows, discarded swords, and all the other things for which the Tatars had no further use. Ivan shuddered, thinking that they were also killing the wounded: but when he summoned enough nerve to look more closely, he realized there were no wounded left to kill. Under such a hail of arrows as had fallen here, there could only be the dead.

“Your liege lady fights fierce battles,” he said to the leader of the escort.

The captain, a grizzled man with a beard as silver-grey as a badger’s pelt, glanced at him and smiled slightly. It was the weary expression of someone who had also fought fiercely, but with the tolerant amusement of a soldier who had heard inconsequential nervous chatter many times. “These were fierce enemies,” he replied, “and their intentions for her people and her land weren’t something any ruler would permit.”

“But they were Tatars!” said Ivan. “Three thousand of them!”

“That they were.” He seemed surprised that anyone could think it made a difference to Mar’ya Morevna. “And now they’re dead Tatars. Best kind.”

Ivan fell silent, feeling that if he was the only person still impressed by the Tatars’ reputation, he was heavily outnumbered and should give up. Certainly he felt much more at ease with this escort than the last one; at least they had the courtesy to keep intrusive spearpoints from his person. He looked around some more and ignored the corpse-strewn battlefield as best he could, although it took effort not to stare in horror at what some archers did to get their arrows back.

Far more pleasant was the war-camp of white tents towards which he was being guided, though its location was rather a surprise. After much perseverance, Guard-Captain Akimov had taught him something of the other side of war, about forage rations, and the disposition of an army and its baggage train on the march and in battle. It was the boring part, with no place in descriptions of the
boyaryy
in their shining armour astride noble steeds that neighed and pranced and shook their manes, but never kicked or bit anyone except their master’s enemies – and never needed fed or groomed or shod or mucked out, either.

Very little of that teaching had stuck in Ivan’s head; he had always preferred the sparkle in the story to the elbow-grease from which the sparkle came. But one thing he did remember was that camp and battlefield were kept well apart, in case an enemy raiding party might leave their opponents without food, fresh horses or a place to sleep.

These white tents with their gold tassels and banners set up along the far edge of the field showed either ignorance of war, which was nonsense given what had happened to the Tatars, or arrogance in the face of superior odds, which was unlikely since the camp was twice the size the Tatar
bok
had been…

Or a demonstration that Mar’ya Morevna planned her battles so completely that the risk of raiding enemies didn’t arise. The proof of that was scattered all around.

The escort stopped in front of a pavilion finer than the rest and the captain went inside while Ivan sat quietly in Burka’s saddle and admired the pavilion’s richness. Its tasselling and fringes had the deep lustre of things spun from solid gold and, though there was only the barest movement of air, the banners overhead were of silks so delicate that they rippled with slow waves like the deep Ocean-sea.

A servant came out with a golden cup that held not
kvas
or
kumys
or even wine, but the sort of good brown ale to slake thirst and ease weariness that might have been drunk by the old North people, his ancestors. Ivan took the cup and turned to face the unseen eyes he suspected were watching him from within the shadows of the pavilion.

“Mar’ya Morevna, fairest Princess in all the Russias,” he said, “I pledge you health and wealth and long life!” Then he drank with such a will that when he gave the cup back to the servant it was empty. He heard laughter, and hands clapping in approval of his feat, and Mar’ya Morevna came out of her tent to greet him face to face.

That was when a fist of icy fire clenched around Prince Ivan’s chest. It squeezed the air out of his lungs so that he couldn’t breathe, and it squeezed the blood out of his heart so that it surged up to his brain, drowning the buzzing of the ale with a thunder like the beating of a demon drummer. It felt as if he was enchanted and, if so, Ivan had no wish to resist. He could see Mar’ya Morevna smiling at him, and the looks her guards exchanged with one another, but Ivan could really, truly see only one thing that mattered.

All that had been said concerning Mar’ya Morevna fell far short of the truth.

Though a small, cool part of Ivan’s mind knew he hadn’t met enough others to be so certain, the heated remainder had no doubts. She was indeed the fairest Princess in all the Russias, but the words of her title described no more than that and did her appearance no justice. The beautiful Tsarevna was like a precious ikon made all of burnished gold and silver, jewelled with sapphires and steel so that she was like the sky and snow of Mother Russia.

Her hair had been braided and caught up beneath her helm, but now it hung free across her armoured shoulders, pale against the silvery polished iron like the noon sun on snow. All her wars and her campaigning had left no mark on her more than golden skin blushed like a setting sun on snow. Her eyes had the bright blue of sapphire gems and the dark blue of the Ocean-sea, and though she was as stately as any queen, and as forbidding in her armour as any warlord, she smiled as sweetly as any woman that a man could love.