The Winds of Khalakovo (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

Peasants were a hard people, and they weren’t accustomed to asking for handouts, but eventually the strain had become too great, and once it had, they became insistent. They had asked, then begged, then
demanded
that the city’s Posadnik provide them relief.

With the farmers’ fields stricken as they were, and the fishing so poor, the obvious choice was to buy food from the Empire, but the grain and rice from Yrstanla was by common agreement spread among
all
the Duchies. Little enough was rationed to each of the nine Duchies; it was cut again for each of Khalakovo’s seven islands, and then again for each of the cities on those islands. Volgorod was Khalakovo’s largest city by far, and so it got the lion’s share, but still, the sacks went quickly as more and more families came for their dole.

The incoming aid—however inadequate it might be—stemmed the tide of discontent, but everyone knew that it would build again, however slowly. And now, here, as the peasants bore witness to the palotza’s hording, Nikandr could feel their anger bubble up and boil over. They stared wide-eyed at the strelet who had fired his musket into the chest of one of their own. They shouted, demanding he set his weapon down and give himself over. Those further back joined in, then further still, the sound of it deafening as the entire crowd began pumping their fists at the sky, screaming for justice.

The meager perimeter the streltsi had managed to maintain collapsed. The desyatnik ordered his men to hold fire, but as the shouting intensified and the man wailed over his dying son, two more shots rang out. One of the streltsi tried to stab with his berdische, but it was grabbed by a pair of men and he was pulled viciously into the crowd.

“Halt!” Nikandr shouted. “By order of your Prince!” But no one heard him. He nearly drew his pistol, but rejected the idea when he realized that firing it would only serve to heighten the chaos.

“Nikandr, come!” Gravlos waited at the doors, motioning for Nikandr to get inside. “There’s nothing we can do here!”

Behind Gravlos stood Borund, pistol in hand, eyeing the crowd warily.

Nikandr stood impotently as another strelet struggled to break away from two men who had grabbed his musket.

And then he turned to the weathered old tun.

“Help me!” he said to Borund and Gravlos as he pushed the left door open. He pulled at the edge of the tun, using all his weight, but it wouldn’t budge. Even with Borund and Gravlos helping, it was clear it wouldn’t tip over.

He ran into the workshop as another shot was fired and the excited commands of the desyatnik were cut short. He scanned the workbenches and the tools hanging on the walls behind them, knowing Gravlos had an axe but not sure where—

He spotted it on the far end of a long workbench. He grabbed it and sprinted back. The crowd was feeding on its own blood frenzy as he cocked the axe and swung with a heavy grunt. It cut deep, and a thin stream of water began leaking from the cut. He swung again and again, more water sluicing between the staves with each strike. On the sixth, three of the staves gave way, and water gushed out.

Along with the tarpfish.

The deluge splashed into the crowd, surprising many. A moment later, the fish was carried down the ramp, flipping and flapping as it swung its great bat-like wings about. The talons at the end of its wings sunk deeply into an old woman’s leg. She shouted in pain and fright as she staggered into two younger women. The fish hooked someone else with its other wing, and as the two separated from one another, the thing flipped, squirting brown ink. A moment later it was lost among a sea of legs.

“Back!” Nikandr shouted as he drew his flintlock pistol and fired it into the air. “Back, by order of the Duke!”

Borund followed suit. Finally some in the crowd recognized them while many more retreated from the putrid, writhing mass of skin and bone and teeth.

“Back!”

The crowd eyed him and the streltsi warily as the tarpfish flipped closer to the edge of the quay. Finally it fell into the water with a hollow splash.

It was with that one simple sound, from an animal few had ever seen, that the winds were released from the sail. Those at the edges of the crowd—the realization of what they’d done clear on their faces—retreated, and then ran. Soon the area was clear save for the wounded and the soldiers.

After reaching the Boyar’s mansion in the center of Volgorod, they spoke briefly with Ranos, but he soon put them off to deal with the wounded streltsi as well as two women who claimed their husbands had been shot “without provocation.”

“Wait here,” Ranos said as he grabbed his coat of office and opened the door of the drawing room. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m able, and then we’ll go to the eyrie together.”

Without waiting for a response he closed the door, leaving Nikandr and Borund in a room that held little to occupy their time. Ranos’s wife—cold in her choice of decor—had left it without so much as a deck of cards. By the time they had finished their second mazer of vodka, it was clear Ranos had been delayed.

Nikandr set his ivory mazer down with a clack and stood. He could feel his nose and cheeks and ears flush from the alcohol. “Come, good Vostroma, and we shall see what the eyrie holds for us.”

Borund, his rounded cheeks still red—more from the vodka than the cold—surveyed the room as if it were his last hope at warmth, but then he raised his lips in a wry smile and downed the last of his drink. “
Da
. Fuck Ranos.”

Nikandr smiled. “Fuck Ranos.”

Soon they were back on their ponies and headed uphill from the city along Eyrie Road, the wide, gravel trail that climbed up to the highlands and then west to the eyrie. After they passed the first rise, the wind picked up, and both of them buttoned their long cherkesskas up to their neck. As the trail led them above the expanse of Volgorod, they spotted the tall white cliffs of the eyrie and the great pillared rocks that withstood the churning green seas to the south of them.

Traffic along the road was high. Laden carts and wagons clattered toward Volgorod, while empty ones returned. Far ahead, a wagon had pulled onto the grass. Two men were changing the rear wagon wheel.

“Don’t you think it’s time we discussed my sister?” Borund asked as he pulled the collar of his coat up.

Nikandr stared at the men repairing the wagon as their ponies trotted onward. “I’m sorry the ship was damaged, Borund. I know it has caused difficulties with your father—”

“That’s not what I mean, Nischka.”

Nikandr didn’t know what to say, not without causing insult.

Borund’s thick eyebrows bunched together. “My sister is not so terrible.”

“She was always the worst of them, Borund.”

Borund laughed. “That may be true, but she’s grown into a fine woman.”

Perhaps, Nikandr thought, but the churning in his gut he got every time he thought about being married to her was still as strong as ever. Yet despite that, despite all his fears—founded or not—he would have buried his discontent and prepared for the wedding with diligence—if not passion—had it not been for the Aramahn woman he had seen near the gallows. Rehada. Had they come from slightly different places, he would have already asked for her hand in marriage. As it stood, however, such a thing was out of the question. Impossible. But it didn’t stop his heart from yearning for such a thing, even more so with the knowledge that he had little time left.

“You’re right,” he told Borund. “She is a fine woman, and I’ll love her as she deserves.”

Borund laughed, though there was little humor in it. “That’s small consolation coming from you, Nischka. You’d do well to love her better than that.”

Nikandr bit off his reply, unsure what to say without lying outright or causing insult. He was saved by the approach of a galloping pony. It turned out to be Ranos. He looked cross, even from a distance.

“You were to wait,” Ranos said as he pulled his roan pony to a stop. His cheeks were flush. He wore a belted woolen coat, similar to Nikandr’s fitted cherkesska, but it didn’t have the same ornamented cartridge pouches on the chest, and the cuffs, embroidered with golden thread, ran halfway up his forearm.

“You were busy,” Nikandr said. “I thought we’d go ahead.”

Ranos glanced at Borund, who was keeping his round face as straight as he could manage. “I was
busy
, as you say, dealing with your mess.”

“
My
mess?”

“You could have done better than throwing a fish at them, Nischka, and I daresay you could have done it sooner.”

Nikandr urged his pony forward, forcing Borund and Ranos to keep up. “Well, next time I’ll just turn a blind eye, shall I?”

“Come, come,” Borund said, reining his black pony between them. “Nikandr did well enough.”

Nikandr frowned.
Well enough?

“We’re finally together,” Borund continued, “and we’re off to see the ships,
da
?”

Ranos looked between them, clearly displeased, but then he smoothed his wide moustache and visibly unwound. “I suppose you’re right.”

Ranos led the way down several switchbacks to the eyrie’s third quay. The eyrie was alive around them: the clatter of carts, the bark of the clerks, the ever-present cry of the gulls both high among the ships and far below where they built their nests. The quays were just as busy as they had been the day of the
Gorovna’s
launching, the only difference being that there were four times the number of streltsi standing guard among the warehouses and the quays. All five cannon emplacements were manned as well. Father was not willing to take any chances after what had happened to the
Gorovna
. The Maharraht would be foolish to attempt anything now, but in reality this show of force was as much for the landing dukes as it was for the protection of Khalakovo. With politics in play, they could ill afford to look weak.

They stopped at the first perch. The ship moored there was an ancient and wounded carrack. Ranos made a grand gesture of stopping and turning to Borund. “This,” he said while giving Borund a short, polite bow, “is the first.”

The ship’s hull had dozens of battle scars from her decades of service. Nearly every mast had been repaired instead of replaced. Even the figurehead, a charging ram, was marred by several pockmarks from some ancient battle. Nikandr knew it wasn’t a sign of neglect but a remembrance of the ship’s first kapitan, who had died at that very spot on its maiden voyage. Borund, however, who had up until this point held an eager expression on his face, didn’t know this, and so as he examined the carrack, his face became more and more splotchy. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it and swallowed heavily.

Nikandr clamped his jaw to keep himself from smiling.

“Old she may be,” Ranos continued, “but she’s stout, and once the new mainsail’s complete, she’ll be tip-top.”

For years Nikandr and Borund had played jokes on one another. He would normally have played the role of instigator himself, but Borund had become too wary, so he’d enlisted Ranos, and from what he could tell it had been a wonderful choice. He was barely able to contain his amusement over his brother’s straight face. He feared Borund would notice and sense the nature of this exchange, but Borund wasn’t paying the least bit of attention. His eyes were locked on the ship, jaw clamped shut, a look of deep indignation on his face.

“Your father promised us stout ships....”

So grave was Borund’s voice that Nikandr nearly confessed, but their time together had so far been very stiff, and he hoped that by breaking the ice, the old camaraderie between them would return. And so he strode to the edge of the perch and slapped the ship’s hull. “Believe me, I served on her for six months. She’s as stout as they come.”

Borund peered up at the rigging. “She needs a season’s worth of repairs before she’ll cross the neck.”

“A season’s worth...” Nikandr shook his head. “A week at most. I tell you—”

“Ranos,” Borund said, ignoring Nikandr. “My father made our position clear. We will not accept ships that are ready for pasture. Bad enough your brother allowed our prized ship to be damaged beyond repair, but now you try to pawn off the debris of your fleet as if we’re Motherless beggars who’ll take anything we’re given.”

Ranos’s face hardened. “My brother saved your life, Bora.”

Borund scoffed. “
Nyet
, Ranos. You had the right of it when you said Nikandr should have done something sooner. So it was on the quay, so it was on the
Gorovna
.”

“Bora,” Nikandr said, raising his hands. “This was in jest. Only in jest. This isn’t one of the ships you’ll be given.”

Borund’s face was pinched. He was tight in the shoulders and in his stance. Nikandr thought he would come down from the heights of anger, but if anything he grew angrier as he stabbed his finger at Nikandr’s chest. “This is no time to joke. We are no longer children, you and I. We are men. I am a Prince of Vostroma, in line for my father’s scepter, and you play a prank on me as if I’m your servant boy?”

Nikandr shook his head, confused. “We used to do this all the time.”

“There are many things we used to do, Nikandr, none of which make the least bit of sense to continue, including your insulting refusal to accept the hand of my blood and bone as you should—with grace and humility.”

Nikandr realized with those words how much Borund must have been holding back on their ride together from Volgorod. He had seemed, if not cheerful, at least jovial, something akin to what they had once shared together, but Nikandr realized now it had all been an act. Borund had become much more like his father than he ever would have guessed.

A piercing whistle tore through the cold morning wind, burning away the tension that hung between the three of them. There was a moment of silence as the entire eyrie turned its attention seaward.

An incoming ship—a twelve-masted barque—was listing to one side as it drifted toward the eyrie. Nikandr recognized it immediately as the
Kroya
, Father’s missing ship that had weeks ago been presumed destroyed or taken by raiders. There was a momentary sense of relief, but that emotion was soon tempered by the signs of battle that became more apparent the closer it came.