Prince Ivan (24 page)

He found her in a room of the high tower where any village storyteller knew a Princess would be held captive. She was seated by one of those tall windows like the vacant sockets of a skull, knowing her own beloved husband Ivan might try to rescue her, yet praying he would do nothing so perilous.

Because Koshchey the Undying had made a promise, not just a threat.

That was why Mar’ya Morevna was slow in rising when Ivan stepped through the door, and slower still to put her arms around him, for she had a dreadful fear she was embracing one already dead. And then, though the broadsword had never been drawn and the sabre was sheathed in the instant of finding her, she smelt the distilled, ensorcelled death riding on his swords.

“Ivan, beloved, my own and only love, what madness is this?”

“I bought the charms and brew from a witch, in a village far from here,” he said, reluctant to talk about it. “I asked for… For her most sovereign remedy against life. She gave me what’s here.” He tapped the scabbard of his sabre, seeming to feel death burning cold within its wood and leather. “If it kills him, well and good. If it leaves him stunned until you can reach your books and their spells, it’s still good enough.”

“The instant we leave his kremlin, Koshchey will know.”

“And he’ll come after us, yes. But what
I
know is this: if we wait I’ll have to fight him on his own ground. If we ride away I’ll still have to fight him, but on ground of
my
choosing. And with more than he expects.” Ivan touched the hilts of both swords, moving each one slightly so that the air stank of the venom on their blades, and Mar’ya Morevna flinched.

“You hope,” she said.

“I pray.” Ivan took her by the hand. “I can do little else.”

They hurried down the narrow, winding stairs, walking quietly because even though Koshchey’s kremlin had no living sentries it might have other guardians. They didn’t look closely at the dreadful carvings adorning its walls and wasted no time in reaching the courtyard where Burka awaited their return.

Mar’ya Morevna patted the grey horse on his nose and felt him nuzzle at her hand in return. “Koshchey’s horse was never so friendly,” she said, “for all that it speaks like a man.”

“His horse speaks?” Ivan looked from Burka to Mar’ya Morevna then back again, realizing that though this adventure was both strange and dangerous he had given no thought to how strange it might be.

“It speaks,” she echoed, stroking Burka again while gazing at her husband and daring him to say she spoke less than the truth. “And it can sense when someone does wrong by its master.”

“How so? When I come calling unannounced?”

“No, when you leave it with what Koshchey claims as his.”

“Then let his horse sense this,” said Ivan, helping Mar’ya Morevna into Burka’s saddle and climbing up behind. He shook grey Burka’s reins and they galloped from the dark kremlin…

*

…And Koshchey’s black horse stumbled.

The plaited lash of his riding-whip whined like a mosquito as the necromancer struck the horse across its neck. It screamed and reared, threatening his seat still more, then slammed its forefeet back against the ground and shook its head as though trying to believe the skin-splitting blows of the whip troubled it no more than raindrops, for all that the drops falling from its neck were drops of blood.

“Tell me,” said Koshchey when his arm had grown weary, “if you stumble to warn me, then why, having power of speech, do you not tell me without bringing yourself pain?”

“I stumble,” said the black horse, speaking the words of men in that voice which was not the voice of men, “because it is laid on my kind that they stumble when they scent aught amiss. It is no choice of mine, Koshchey the Unskilled Rider, that each time I stumble, you are like to fall.”

Koshchey considered this and agreed with it, then beat the black horse again for calling him unskilled. He wiped the blood and shreds of skin from his whip before hanging it from his saddle where it could most easily be reached, and said, “Then from your words, Prince Ivan has no more wit than expected.”

“If you mean has he returned, Koshchey the Undying,” said the horse, “then he has indeed. I smell a Russian smell within your kremlin, and again he has taken Mar’ya Morevna from the high tower and stolen her away.”

“And can we catch them?” said Koshchey, letting the promissory wet lash of his whip trail like a snake’s body down across his horse’s neck.

The black horse tossed its head, caring now no more for the whip than for a fly in the hot days of summer. “Of course I can catch them,” it said. “You could grow barley and harvest the grain, you could brew beer and drink it and sleep off the drinking, and even after all that I should surely catch them.” The horse lifted its head and stared at Koshchey out of one blazing red eye. “But you would have to be sure, if still drunk, that you didn’t fall off.”

Koshchey the Undying laughed at that. “Leaving you the power of speech,” he said, “seems sometimes a good idea, and sometimes a mistake.” After that, because no servant should mock its master and go unpunished, he beat the black horse until the red blood ran once more from its shoulders before he put the whip aside.

And then he drew his great sword.

*

Tsarevich Ivan knew what it meant when the shriek of a storm-wind rose out of a clear, quiet sky. He wrenched back on Burka’s reins and, as the grey horse came to a skidding halt, threw one leg over the high-peaked saddle and dropped to the ground. By the time he straightened up again both the straight sword and the curved were drawn and gleaming in his hands. Koshchey the Undying would not take him unawares twice in a row.

For long seconds there was nothing but the wind and swirling shreds of grass. Ivan used that respite to slide his shield onto his arm, and more than once he wished for the mail-shirt his mother Tsaritsa Ludmyla had wanted him to carry on his travels. The chafing iron collar had become a comforting weight about his neck, wide and thick enough to turn the blade of any sword. But the weight of a good mail-shirt would have been more comfortable still.

Then Koshchey the Undying rode out of the evening mist.

The curved sword in his hand was no sabre or Cossack
shashka
but a butcher’s cleaver stretched to monstrous proportions, yet he wielded it as easily as his riding-whip of plaited leather. Ivan met the first stroke with his shield angled to deflect the cut, but its impact still drove him to his knees and left his arm shaking from a blow he had barely turned aside.

Koshchey dragged his black horse to a standstill with the brutal bit, and once it stood quivering and snorting at the end of long tracks torn by its hoofs in the soft earth he stared at his adversary. The stare was not the honourable gaze one opponent gives another; it was no more than a gardener regarding the wasp which has been a persistent nuisance, but whose time has come at last.

“Come down, Koshchey the Undying,” said Ivan. “Come down, come close, and show me how brave you are.”

“Braver than you,” said Koshchey with an unpleasant smile. “At least I do not tremble.” It was an ugly jest, and one uncalled-for, since the light flickering along Ivan’s blades came not from fear but from muscle-tremors born in the shock of the stroke he had warded from his head.

“Dead men don’t tremble,” said Tsarevich Ivan, and levelled both his swords to guard. “Come down and die, Koshchey the Undying.”

“It is true that dead men don’t tremble.” Koshchey swung from his saddle and stamped his boot-soles squarely onto the face of Mother Earth. “But neither do those who have no fear of death. Come here, trembling Prince, and find out what it means to be truly dead.”

“I don’t think you could tell me now.” Ivan poised the broadsword behind his head, the sabre near his hip. “But you can tell me after
this
!”

He sprang like a grey wolf leaping from a thicket, although no grey wolf ever had such fangs.

Thrust and cut came as a single motion, curved blade and straight scissoring together, and Koshchey was in the middle. The shrill ring of poisoned steel was lost in a thick wet sound that might be heard in any butcher’s shop, and Koshchey the Undying toppled backwards to the ground. Both swords were buried in his body, and with them enough envenomed sorcery to slay a Tatar horde ten thousand strong. He kicked and squirmed and clawed at the bright blades…

And then lay still.

“It worked,” said Ivan almost to himself. Whether it was the poison or the spells that had killed Koshchey, he didn’t know or want to know. He looked down at the long, lean body lying still in death at last, and shook his head. He had never killed anyone before and hoped never to do so again, either in combat or by legal process. It was so quick and so easy, but so impossible to reverse. That was why he sank briefly to one knee, signed himself and dead Koshchey with the life-giving cross, then silently commended the necromancer’s wicked soul to God. ‘
Hell
is
there
,
as
we
believe
,
because
God
made
it
,’ Metropolitan Archbishop Levon Popovich had told him once, ‘
but
if
God’s
Mercy
is
,
as
we
believe
,
unlimited
by
height
or
span
or
depth
,
then
surely
Hell
is
empty
.’

Ivan glanced at Mar’ya Morevna, who held his mace in one hand as she stared at a sight she had never dreamt of seeing, then looked at Koshchey’s black horse. The poor beast was in ribbons, torn so grievously by whip and spur that each movement of its great muscles was as plain as an anatomist’s drawing.

“Poor,” he said softly, stroking its nose as it pushed towards his hand. “Poor, poor.” No matter that this horse could supposedly use the speech of men, there were times for only meaningless gentle noises, and it held true as much for men as beasts. He put one hand to the reins, meaning to bring it with him, but the horse wrenched back from his grasp and reared up on its hind legs, cutting the air with fore-hoofs shod like axes.

Ivan flinched back from the hammering strokes, knowing them to be just threats. At least just threats for now. If he gave the black horse any further reason to suspect his motives, he had no doubt it would trample him.

“It wants to stay with its master,” said Mar’ya Morevna, and though her face was pale, her voice was steady. “Leave it to luck, or the wolves.”

Ivan heard yet again the edge of ruthlessness that could dismiss five thousand slain Tatars as the only thing to do. But he understood her now more than then. Every other time she had seen Koshchey’s black horse it had been bearing her away to a captivity longer than mortal lifetimes, so small wonder she had little affection for the beast.

“As you wish.”

“But bring your swords.” Ivan glanced at where the weapons nailed Koshchey’s corpse to the ground and shook his head.

“I like them better where they are, until you do something with your spell-books.”

“Still doubting?”

“Being careful. If what slew him was the spell on the steel, then I’d prefer it stayed in place.”

“I understand.” Mar’ya Morevna leaned the mace back against her shoulder and held out her other hand. “Then mount up. I’ve no wish to linger here.” Faint and far away, the melancholy howl of a wolf hung on the air, and both horses put their ears back. “The dinner-guests are gathering.”

Ivan’s mouth compressed to a tight, bloodless line as he stared at the rolling, terrified eyes of Koshchey’s black horse. “I’d as soon not leave the horse,” he said, an edge of stubbornness creeping into his voice. “Talking beast or dumb, it deserves better.” His hand was already reaching for the reins again, and this time the black horse didn’t back away. “Mar’yushka, beloved, if the sight of this creature offends you I’ll take off its harness and set it free. Just let me bring it clear of wolf country.”

“If you want a horse like that one, get your own,” said a thin, cold voice behind him. “But leave mine alone.”

Prince Ivan froze, unwilling to turn round despite Mar’ya Morevna’s tiny gasp of fear. Or perhaps because of it. The voice was that of someone whose life he had stilled, someone he had struck down and commended to God’s mercy. It wasn’t a voice he had thought to hear again except in his darkest nightmares.

But when he turned, all those nightmares yet undreamed came true at once.

Koshchey the Undying stared at him past the sword-blades criss-crossed in his chest, and hatred would have been easier for Ivan to bear in that icy gaze than the emotionless regard that raked across him like a razor. The necromancer sat upright very slowly, very carefully, made clumsy by the weight and length of steel he carried in his body. A good foot of it pinned him to the earth until he wrenched free of its poisonous embrace, and then Koshchey
Bessmertny
stood upright again.

“These,” he said, wrenching the swords from his cold flesh, “belong to you.” The two blades clashed together as they were flung casually to the ground, bright and clean in the evening light. Clean of blood, and clean of other, less honourable substances. That meant only one thing. The poisons that had coated them had washed from the swords’ edges and were pumping through the necromancer’s body – but apart from the first huge shock which laid him on the ground like something dead, they caused him no distress.