The Exotic Enchanter (4 page)

He got through several encounters with no damage to himself and some to his opponents, although he didn't think he'd actually put anybody down for good except the first man. The saber wasn't the world's best armor-chopper, but it gave him a useful advantage against anyone who didn't think of swords having points.

Working on that
bogatyr
reputation was all very well, but something smelled wrong. Something smelled magical.

Had someone put the see-the-expected spell on the gate and courtyard? And if they had could Shea break it in about two seconds, which was the longest interval he'd had between opponents? Otherwise he'd be the latest sorcerer to be run through for poor spelling.

Here came another man. Shea thought he saw Mikhail Sergeivich under the helm, but he'd already fought a couple of men who had the appearance of ones he'd sparred with in the practice yard.

"Wizard! This is your doing!" Mikhail's voice, too—but the swordcut he launched at Shea wasn't aimed at a friend.

Shea parried, the swords slammed together hilt to hilt, then the psychologist disengaged and opened the distance. He had reach and a point, and a fat lot of good either would do if they killed one of Igor's captains!

Sparks flew twice more, before realization flickered on Mikhail's face. He sprang back; Shea let him go; they both lowered their points and stood, staring and breathing hard.

"What's happening? Who's fighting whom?" Shea panted. He took another step backward and brought his heel up against a fallen body. It wasn't the first one.

"Our men have gone mad! They fight each other!" From the dazed way he spoke, Mikhail Sergeivich hadn't had time to think much.

Suspicion turned to blazing certainty in Shea's gut and burned its way to his brain. "Mount guard," he told the Rus. "I can stop it."

He didn't dare sheathe his sword, but kept his guard down. Gesturing with the sword in his right hand, he recited:

"O would some power the giftie gie us

To see the truth the spell hides frae us!

What friends, what foes do battle wi' us

To us be shown!"

Shea could detect no change in the fading sun or clouds, but everything looked a bit brighter. He could see small differences in the appearance and the armor of the fallen. As he caught his breath and looked around, he saw the living change also. Some still bore Igor's device on their shields, but others had their shields covered.

Mikhail Sergeivich looked a trifle less hostile. Before he could say anything a scuffle on the ramparts made them both look up. Euphrosinia Yaroslavna and a boy of about twelve, daggers in hand, grinned triumphantly at a prisoner between two guards.

Mikhail Sergeivich smiled too, or at least moved his lips. All around them the strange swordsmen were drawing back toward the outer gate.

A door in the wall between the two courtyards burst open. Igor charged through it at the head of bloodstained men moving too fast to be counted. The prince still wore his riding clothes, but carried his sword and wore a helmet at least two sizes too large for him. All were stained with blood.

The attackers recoiled from Igor. That left the prince a clear path to the gate. In a moment the last avenue of retreat was blocked—and a moment after that the strange men were dropping their weapons and lowering their shields.

Igor followed everyone's glance at the ramparts.

"Glory to God!" Igor exclaimed. A smile split his face. Then it vanished as he recognized the prisoner.

"Bring him down."

While the guards did so, the prince looked around the court, apparently counting the dead. His own men cordoned off the prisoners. Shea wiped and sheathed his saber, but Mikhail Sergeivich stayed at his elbow, his longsword still in his hand.

The guards shoved the prisoner, his hands bound behind him, through the archway. The princess and Vladimir Igorovich followed. Igor hugged Euphrosinia tightly, and she didn't seem to mind the blood.

Igor smiled at his son. "Did you capture him?"

"Well, I helped," Vladimir said. "I was in Mother's outer chamber when he broke in. He kept trying to grab Mother, and I kept trying to stab him, and finally the guards came. If I'd had my own sword . . ." His voice trailed off.

"You shall have one, of the finest Frankish steel." The pleasure vanished from Igor's voice as he stared at the prisoner. "Sviatoslav Borisovich! Rebellion? From you, cousin?"

The prisoner stared at his cousin and prince with a corpse's eyes. "I thought to take Seversk by guile." He stopped.

Prince Igor looked at the prisoners, then gestured at one. The guards brought him over. '"What were your orders?" Igor asked.

"To seize the castle, most especially the inner parts and the armory, slay you and Prince Vladimir, and take the Princess Euphrosinia alive," the soldier answered dully.

"You knew that this was treason," the prince stated.

"He was our lord."

Oleg Nikolaivich now entered the court, accompanying a man with a bloody bandage on his arm. "Sergei Ivanovich is one of the scribes assisting—who assisted—your steward, Your Highness. You should hear him." Oleg's voice was soft with tightly leashed anger.

In a low voice that grew stronger as he continued, Sergei Ivanovich told how the wagons supposedly bringing Sviatoslav's taxes contained weapons and armed men. They had slain the steward, seized the storehouses, and opened the gate to the inner
kremlin
.

"I lay as if dead from a wound," the scribe said. "The boyar ordered that word be brought to him when Your Highness, Prince Vladimir, and the princess were taken. But he also said, 'Make sure it's Prince Igor's men you're fighting.' "

Murmurs and gestures of aversion followed this, but Igor paid no heed. "What demon possessed you, cousin? Even if you had succeeded, do you think the boyars of Seversk would have accepted you as prince? Or Vsevolod, or the Prince of Kiev?"

"I was told there was a man of power here, a
bogatyr
, who hated you. He would have given me your semblance until all enemies to my rule were either slain or won over."

A good many stares showing both understanding and hostility turned in Shea's direction.

"Not this man," Mikhail Sergeivich said. "He fought our enemies and broke the spell. I saw him." He looked at Shea. "Where is Rurik Vasilyevich?"

"In our chamber, the last I saw of him."

"Bring him down," Igor ordered.

"May I go up, Your Highness?" Shea spoke low, to keep his voice from shaking with the knowledge of what Chalmers had done. But Harold Shea would not desert him. Neither of them was Igor's man, after all.

Igor considered. "Disarm and bind him," he ordered. "Let neither of them speak or act, and bring them both back."

Mikhail Sergeivich unbuckled Shea's swordbelt and tossed it to a guard. He gestured, and another guard came over, bound Shea's hands with a rawhide thong, and gagged him with another. The two marched him off.

At the door of their chamber Mikhail marched him in, barely two seconds after his, "Open in the prince's name!" Fortunately, the door was not latched.

Chalmers was sitting calmly, but he was obviously shocked at the spectacle of Shea in bonds. "Take them off!" he ordered.

Then he recognized Mikhail Sergeivich, and Prince Igor's device. His shoulders slumped just a trifle.

That was enough to convince Mikhail Sergeivich. He grabbed Chalmers and tied his hands. Being out of rawhide, he took the gag off Shea and used it on Chalmers.

"Just cut that one's throat if he squeaks," Mikhail told the guard.

The augmented party returned to the courtyard, where, in addition to those they'd left, they found the Patriarch and a man who had to be an executioner; he held a huge two-handed sword.

Chalmers and Shea were shoved to the front rank of the prisoners. Mikhail Sergeivich exchanged a few words with Igor.

"Sviatoslav Borisovich," Igor said, "do you know either of these men?"

"No, Your Highness."

"Rurik Vasilyevich, do you know this man?"

The guard removed Chalmers' gag. "No, Your Highness," he practically spat.

"Do you, Egorov Andreivich?"

"No, Your Highness."

"Who told you then, that there was one here who would work with you?"

Sviatoslav was silent.

"Sviatoslav Borisovich, boyar of Seversk," Igor pronounced. "You did not pay the tax due the prince of Seversk. For that, triple taxes will be collected from your estate.

"You caused the death of my steward, and thirteen of my guards. For that you owe a blood price of eighty
grivnas
for the steward, and forty for each guard. You also owe a blood price for every wounded man.

"Finally, you attempted to slay the prince of Seversk and his family. For this, your estates are forfeit, as is your life, if I see fit to take it.

"I shall not take your life, Sviatoslav Borisovich. Instead, you shall be blinded. Before you are blinded, you will see the deaths of the men you led into treason. That is the last thing you will ever see."

The Patriarch said a prayer for those about to be executed, and two guards flung several bales' worth of straw at the executioner's feet. Fifteen times a man was forced to the straw, and fifteen times the executioner struck. He turned his blade and honed the other edge after the eighth man, but never missed his stroke.

Shea did not enjoy his front-row view of this expertise. The only things he could be grateful for were that this brawl had started well before dinnertime, so he had nothing in his stomach to lose, and that Mikhail Sergeivich was holding him upright. He got one look at Chalmers, obliquely away from him, and did not risk what composure he had left by looking again. He found an angle of the rampart he could focus on, and kept his attention there.

The blinding was worse. The bodies were removed, and the straw swept up and fired, along with some wood. Irons were heated, then taken out—

Shea kept his attention firmly on the rampart. He heard a gasp, then a throat-tearing scream that echoed around the courtyard and died away to whimpering. The smell of burned flesh joined the reek of blood. Mikhail Sergeivich's hand trembled on his arm.

Sviatoslav was led out of the yard, still whimpering. Igor turned to Reed Chalmers.

"Fifteen men are dead, and one is blind, for which you bear some blame. Confess your part in this."

Underneath his caution, Chalmers had courage. "A man, none of these, approached me and offered to return the Lady Florimel to me if I helped him. If not, he said she would be sold beyond the Volga and I would never get her back."

Had Reed actually watched the executions?

"How do you know he was none of these?" Igor asked.

"He looked to have Polovets blood, Your Highness."

"And you believed him?"

"I couldn't take the chance that he was lying, Your Highness."

"What did you agree to do?"

"To cast a spell, so that strangers could enter the palace without being questioned. Further orders would have been given me when the palace was taken."

"You knew, then, that you were dealing with my enemies?"

"It was for my wife, Your Highness."

From the look on Igor's face, Shea knew he had better say something before the prince pronounced sentence.

"Your Highness," Shea managed, hoping that Mikhail Sergeivich would keep his dagger sheathed, "I swear to you that Rurik Vasilyevich has done nothing out of malice to you, but only for the sake of his wife. Among us, the marriage bond is strong. A man who will not risk his honor to rescue his wife has no honor at all."

"A man who will take the word of a Polovets also has no sense," Igor said. "And with thirteen dead and more wounded men, it will be harder for me to rescue Yuri Dimitrivich's household."

Shea knelt, awkwardly because of his hands. "I beg you to spare his life, Your Highness. We can't pay your blood price in
grivnas
, only in service. When we work together, we can do much more than either of us can alone. Won't you spare him to recover your losses, if nothing else?"

George Raft could not have improved on the smile Igor's face wore. "He stands condemned, but I will pardon him if you defeat the Polovtsi for me without more loss of men. Or, if men are lost, if you pay their blood price—in
grivnas
.

"I place no punishment on you, Egorov Andreivich. Mikhail Sergeivich bears witness that you fought for me, and you are free to accept or refuse for your comrade's sake. If you succeed, he is free. If you do not succeed, and die in the attempt, his punishment stands but you shall have a warrior's grave. If you do not succeed, and live, I can think of no punishment greater than that you watch your comrade quartered on the execution ground.

"Do you accept?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Free him." Mikhail Sergeivich hauled Shea to his feet, and cut his bonds. "Take Rurik Vasilvevich to the penitents' cells beneath the basilica. Keep him guarded, but I doubt he can work sorcery there. And Egorov Andreivich," Igor concluded, "you will go to the barracks, where you can be watched."

The royal trio swept off, and the rest began to carry out their orders.

IV

Harold Shea swore as his horse shied from yet another balky mule. He had been in the saddle for what seemed like weeks, certainly long enough to learn the difference between riding with a war party stripped for action, and riding herd on a cavalcade of merchants. The dust from a long line of horses, pack and riding mules, carts and wagons, and a fair bit of foot traffic kept his throat constantly dry. He was reaching for his waterskin just as Mikhail Sergeivich rode by.

"Drink up. We'll reach a spring before noon," Mikhail said. Like Shea, the Rus soldier wore the plain armor of mercenaries rather than anything with Prince Igor's device.

"I swear, we seem to add more merchants every day," Shea said.

"That ruse of yours worked a little too well," Mikhail replied. "But I must admit it was clever."

To get Reed Chalmers out from under Prince Igor's death sentence, Shea had improvised a fairly desperate plan: hit the Polovtsi while they're drunk. The prince had laughed aloud when the psychologist explained it, then had come close to him and sniffed.

"No, you are sober," he'd said. "Eh, well, with you in charge it might work. But how will we get them drunk?"

That was the difficult part. They needed thirty or forty wagonloads of wine and mead, more if all they could find was ale and kvass. They also needed an excuse for the Polovtsi to all be drinking at a particular spot. Finally, Shea needed to spare Seversk's treasury, or the plan would never go anywhere.

Remembering tales of moonshiners in both the old and new worlds of his own universe, Shea suggested that a rumor be circulated that the prince was planning to raise the liquor tax in kind, and that his agents would be starting their collections in the west very soon. He hoped that would put liquor merchants on the roads east, trying to dispose of their stocks before the tax collectors caught up with them.

The rumor succeeded far better than Shea, or Igor, could have believed. It was compounded by an even less pleasant one, that Seversk would face more frequent Polovets raids shortly. It was possible that some of the merchants were trying to turn goods into more easily hidden coin. Most of them, though, were probably just trying to evade their taxes.

The vintners and brewers were soon joined by all kinds of other vendors. Not the purveyors of luxury goods: silk, fine glass, gold and silverware, anything whose primary market was in the city itself was not put at risk on the roads. But woodwork, cheap iron and tinware, woolens, rough-cured hides—everything that could be taxed in kind found a market on the roads and added to the sights (and smells) of the cavalcade.

The merchants were being delicately herded to a spot on the border of the principality of Seversk. The area was hardly settled at all, thanks to Polovtsi raids as much as anything, and the actual border was somewhat disputed. Shea's plan required, however, that Igor claim the spot in question.

It was the logistics of getting the merchants there and no further, protecting them from raids along the way, and pretending all the time to have no connection with the prince, that was making Shea and the other men Igor had sent curse, sweat, and ache. The strain of holding back the "in the prince's name" they were accustomed to use soon had the soldiers beginning every sentence with an obscenity.

A few of the merchants, too poor to afford horses or mules, tried to make do with oxen. They held everyone back so much that Mikhail Sergeivich finally ordered them to the rear, to keep up as best they could, for the caravan could not be held to their pace. The merchants howled, they offered bribes, they threatened to protest to the prince.

Mikhail Sergeivich and Shea ignored them.

They couldn't ignore one peddler who'd been too poor even to buy an ox for his cartload of hides. He'd stolen two, and the owner came after them.

The guards couldn't formally arrest him, but Shea gave him a persuasive lecture about mercenaries needing to stay on terms with Igor much more than they did with thieving peddlers. Igor's arm was long and his justice swift and stern. The thief already owed fine of a
grivna
apiece for stealing the oxen. What else was he prepared to risk?

The oxen were returned, leaving the peddler sitting disconsolately on top of his cart in the middle of the steppe.

Then there were the merchants with expensive horses who needed cut fodder and few scruples about where they cut it when their bagged supply ran out. There were the merchants who didn't hobble their ponies and mules properly when they turned them loose to graze, so that Mikhail Sergeivich had to send out search parties for the strays, risking warhorses breaking legs in rabbit holes and lurking bandits picking off the riders. There was the cart that broke down so that it blocked the only strip of dry ground for half the caravan; it eventually ended in the bog.

There was enough trouble so that Shea was actually glad Reed Chalmers was not with him. The older psychologist was not the world's most easygoing traveler, and on a journey such as this they'd have given each other migraines, if not ulcers.

It surprised Shea that men who supposedly traveled for a living would make so many simple mistakes on the march. Shea wondered if most of the merchants were actually accustomed to selling their wares locally. If they were traveling now to avoid paying taxes later, they were certainly paying the penalty.

The biggest problem, of course, was keeping everybody from too much sampling of the main cargo. Shea didn't want to place aversion spells on it, not when his plan depended on free swilling by the right people. He had to fall back on persuasion.

By itself, that would not have been too demanding a job. Mikhail Sergeivich, and Shea as his nominal second-in-command put on a convincing mean captain/nice lieutenant act, which kept the soldiers and most of the merchants in line, most of the time. Once Shea had to draw his sword on a merchant's servant, and a few other times it took Mikhail Sergeivich and his biggest men cracking a few thick heads to quiet things down.

Fortunately that happened after they were far enough out on the steppe that deserting the caravan wasn't a good idea. The owners of the cracked heads stayed in the ranks. But Shea and the soldiers walked with eyes in the backs of their heads and their hands close to their sword hilts for a day or two, and went about in pairs after dark.

And everything from sweet reason to cracking heads had to be done during and after days in the saddle, short of sleep and struggling with thirst. As the days dragged on, Shea began to dream about adventuring in a world based on a work written by some cloistered nun a thousand years and a thousand miles away from the actual events. No long trips, no saddle sores, no reeking horse-barbarian camps, no subtler reek of blood from executed traitors!

"How far have we come today?" Shea asked Mikhail.

"A third less than we should have, so far."

"The devil fly away with this steppe!"

"Speedily a tale is spun, with much less speed a deed is done, eh? Well, by midafternoon tomorrow well have to send out scouts, anyway—and messengers."

The messengers would be riding to Igor's column, well to the rear. Chalmers was traveling with it as a closely watched prisoner, doubtless in no great comfort. But there was nothing Shea could do for his colleague except bring this off.

Over the next few days, Shea found that, this trip anyway, the steppe had no power to hypnotize him. The merchants were settling down for the most part, but the steppe made trouble on its own. A wolfpack stampeded some mules one night, and on another morning, short of water, they reached a spring only to find a dead aurochs in it. That was the longest day of the journey, it seemed, and before they reached the next water source, boredom was the least of Shea's worries.

They saw no Polovtsi, but endured enough else to test everyone's alertness to the limit. Even Shea's dreams of Belphebe grew faint, which he soon realized was just as well. Seeing Belphebe again depended on getting Doc Chalmers out of this jam, and if he'd stopped to think about it, instead of just doing it, he might have convinced himself that it was impossible.

The scouts had gone out as planned, and they brought the good news that the Polovtsi were approximately where they were expected to be, and in about the right numbers—several bands of various sizes. It was another two days before the scouts could, without being detected, pass between the Polovets bands and find the slave caravan.

"Good smiles," Mikhail Sergeivich said on the ninth day, after hearing the latest report. "The slave train's heading for Krasni Podok at about the pace we expected. But the two largest bands are coming our way. We'd best have the trade-truce banner up before dawn tomorrow. Oh, and send word back to our friends—they also have to move the way we planned, or they'll miss the party."

"The party" was crippling the Polovtsi by getting most of them incapably drunk. That was Shea's job, with Mikhail Sergeivich to lead the mopping-up operations. Another column was to drive through to round up the unprotected slave train before it reached neutral territory, and a third was a reserve.

Thanks to their care in not mentioning Igor's name, no one had yet connected them with Seversk's ruler. Some merchants thought the mercenaries might be the last of Sviatoslav Borisovich's household, fleeing an appointment with the headsman.

"Better hope the weather holds," Mikhail concluded. "The autumn rains have been known to come this early."

"I told you, I have no weather magic," Shea said irritably. "We'll just have to hope that the water doesn't come until the wine is gone."

At dawn the next day they raised the trade-truce banner. At noon a party of eighty to a hundred Polovtsi rode in. The smell was as overpowering as ever, even though this time it was only the men, not the campsite as well. Shea briefly imagined conjuring up a gigantic bathhouse, large enough to clean the whole Polovtsi nation—or deal with them permanently, as Olga had done with her husband's murderers.

Mikhail Sergeivich left the negotiations with the Polovtsi to a senior member of the vintners' guild. They came to terms with a minimum of insults, and half the Polovtsi rode away. The merchants started setting up booths and stands, but kept looking nervously over their shoulders at the Polovtsi wandering about.

"These sons-of-bitches," Mikhail told Shea, "are bad enough when sober. How do you plan to control them when they're drunk?"

"That's the point, to get them drunk," Shea replied. "I've been meaning to ask: what does trade law require them to do?"

"To pay for anything they want or break, and to observe the three-day limit. And even then one band once claimed they'd spent a whole day drunk before they looted a border household, so they'd forgotten where they were.

"That only involved maybe fifty Polovtsi. By the time all our friends' friends get wind of the party and come, we'll have half the steppe on our hands!"

"What happens when they have something to sell?" Shea asked.

"They stay sober then, and haggle like everyone else. They generally insist on selling first. Then, as often as not, they've been known to claim that the coin was bad, or the trade-goods worthless, so they can steal instead of buying in turn."

"If this works, they'll actually be falling down. Tell the soldiers to stick to water tomorrow. There's nothing we can do about the merchants."

"True," said Mikhail, and went off to give the orders.

Shea was up before dawn the next morning. Sure enough, one of the Polovtsi had made a nuisance of himself last night, insisting on having his cup filled again and again and never offering to pay. The merchant involved seemed more resigned than angry, and Mikhail told Shea (after saying "I told you so") that the guild would cover his losses out of total profits, if any.

The rider had thrown the cup away after emptying it the seventh time, and Shea had retrieved the leather vessel. The Polovets had been satisfyingly drunk, too, but in this matter of life or death Shea intended to hedge his bets.

Concealed among the wagons, and as close to the sleeping Polovtsi as he could stand, Shea held the cup in one hand and gestured with the other. He didn't quite sing, but a melody lurked under his intonation.

"They're Polovets riders who've lost their way,

Da! Da! Da!

Smelly steppe goats who have gone astray,

Da! Da! Da!

Lousy barbarians out on a spree,

Doomed to get drunk until they can't see,

And the Rus will make prey out of all they see,

Da! Da! Da!"

Then he crept back to the trade area proper, and unstoppered a leather flask. It was filled with a mixture of ale, kvass, mead, and wine, and the thought of drinking the concoction was enough to make Shea turn Prohibitionist. Again holding the flask in one hand, and gesturing with the other, Shea chanted:

"All liquor in the cask and tun

And every barrel on this ground,

You mighty waters old and young

In which our senses oft are drowned;

From strength to strength let every drop

Proceed, nor let that power fail,

Let kvass be strong, the limbs to stop,

Nor be there weak nor watery ale.

Let mead o'ercome the will to move,

And wine be poured that blood not flow,

And every drop a Samson prove

And twenty men or more o'erthrow."

They've been warned
, he thought, as he curled up under the nearest wagon and tried to get a nap in before the action started. He wasn't sure just what the strength—he wouldn't have touched a drop of liquor in the camp.

As dawn lightened the eastern sky, the camp began to stir. The night guards came in, the day guards went out, the merchants lit fires and prepared meals. The wiser ones, Shea noticed, had all the old men and young boys out of sight and were offering food to the soldiers. The soldiers ate, and repeated their warnings about drinking only water today.

Mikhail added, "Put the best drink out first, to put them in a mood to pay."

Shea didn't really care if the Polovtsi were in a mood to pay. All he needed was Polovtsi in a mood to drink.