“For the sake of the food they leave behind?” the Grey Wolf finished for him. “Of course we do. But we don’t enjoy them when we’re far too close. If I wasn’t in your service, Prince Ivan, I’d—”
“Bite me?”
“Not straight away,” said the Grey Wolf. “I would have enough manners to wait.” So that was what unfeeling sounded like when it was sincerely meant, thought Ivan. “I was going to say, I’d be over the hills and far away until things were more quiet. Like the Firebird.”
“The Firebird hasn’t gone,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “It’s waiting, just as I am.”
“Again?” said Ivan.
“Again. Battles are mostly about waiting, Vanya. Before they start; after you give an order but before you’ve seen if it’s been heard or carried out correctly; before you’ve seen if it’s worked. And waiting for the noises to stop afterwards. That’s the hardest waiting of all.”
*
“They’re being butchered!” shrilled Albrecht von Düsberg for the third time, bouncing in his saddle in a mingled ecstasy of horror and excitement.
“Albrecht,” said Hauskomtur von Buxhövden, “Shut up.”
The Grand Master glanced at them both, watched von Düsberg glare and ride off in fury to join the knights, then nodded silent approval to von Buxhövden. This was the waiting time: an unseen, unheard duel of wills between the two commanders. The winner would be the one who could longest bear the sight of his own troops being slaughtered, who could watch what his opponent was doing and counter that move with devastating force. The Treasurer had never commanded more than a small company of knights in all his time with the Order. He had never faced a situation where lives had to be thrown away so others could be saved, but such situations occurred in every battle, whether they had been planned or happened by some grim mischance.
Behind him, further up and further in among the shadows of the trees where they could neither see nor be seen, his cavalry were dismounted and standing by their horses. There had been protests from the knights, but von Salza knew from having watched it go wrong more than once in Outremer, that the only knight who couldn’t go barging off when the excitement became too much for his precious pride was a knight out of his charger’s saddle.
Forty knights and fifty sergeants weren’t much of a reserve to win a battle, unless that reserve was committed at the proper time. Von Salza watched coldly as Rus spearmen advanced to relieve the beleaguered Wagenburg, and responded by releasing his own remaining men-at-arms. There were more protests from his knights when the order went back that the sergeants, and only the sergeants, were to mount and hold themselves in readiness.
The Grand Master waited while the infantry battle seethed like a pot stirred by the circling Rus horsemen, and he waited while his mounted sergeants plunged down the snow-covered slope into the flanks of the enemy, and he waited as every last man the Rus had sent to his side of the river began falling back. They were retiring in good order and close formation, just the way he wanted. It made them a more compact target.
“I win,” said Hermann von Salza, and released his knights at last.
*
Prince Ivan saw the line of horsemen emerge from the forest and pause, dressing their ranks and drawing closer together. Though the Rus made little use of fully armoured knights, he knew what they were doing. A charge needed cohesion above all else: it was the difference between throwing a handful of iron links into someone’s face and striking them with the entire chain. These distant, unreal figures, white-robed knights astride white-trappered horses manoeuvring on white snow, were forging that chain even as he watched. There was a flicker of black against all that white as the big shields were fronted and the hammer-headed crosses came on view.
The line began to move, passing from a walk to a run – destriers didn’t trot, a man in armour was unable to rise with the gait – to a canter. By the time they levelled out onto the flat river-plain, they were galloping. There was another flicker, hazy and hard to see, as the long lances dropped into rest, and the drumming rumble of the charge began to reverberate between the hills.
There was still a small force of cavalry behind the Princes’ tents, druzhinya retinue and bodyguards more than a military reserve, but it would do. Unable to bear what he was watching any longer, Ivan raised his right arm and saw their captain signal his response. Without waiting for orders from Mar’ya Morevna or Prince Yuriy or anyone else, he slashed his arm down and charged out of the defile with the reserve behind him.
Ivan heard Mar’ya Morevna’s voice behind him. At first it was the expected cry to stop but immediately afterwards, in an exasperated tone he knew all too well, it issued orders to someone for his protection. Who, he didn’t know. He felt terrified and knew that what he was doing was stupid in the extreme, but at the same time it was swallowed up in the exhilaration of the headlong gallop and the knowledge he was doing something. Light horse in fewer numbers had broken a charge before, when the charge was committed to its target and the light horse were unexpected. It could happen again.
Except that to break a charge, they had to be there. Ivan lowered his head and clamped his knees and began to pull away from the horsemen at his heels until they closed the distance. The ring of wagons went past – flick – still boiling with men striving to kill each other. Fleeing Rus spearmen went past him – flick-flick-flick – as he and his little company sped down the slope and onto the river ice, hoofs hammering, heart hammering, breath hammering.
Now he could actually hear the oncoming knights even over the beat of Sivka’s hoofs, a thunderous sound that rolled in the air and shuddered in the ice beneath him. They came across his front with a roar like the ending of the world; he loosed the single arrow he already had on string and saw it fly with those of his companions into the flanks of knightly horses, and then they went crashing into the flank of the knightly line.
It broke the charge.
The long file of mailed riders, crouched over their lances, concentrating on whatever target filled the eyeslits of their helmets, collapsed sideways and folded up like a reed pushed firmly against a wall. Their own speed and weight did most of the damage, one man spilling two and even three of his neighbours, man and horse together. Those not thrown from their saddles were thrown from the line of their charge, becoming individuals once more and not the awesome, unstoppable force of less than a minute before. Out of that confusion of bloody snow and kicking horses, maybe twenty knights remained. And they went hunting their tormentors.
Ivan reined Sivka in so hard and fast that the big black horse reared back almost to his haunches, and he suspected it was just as well his noble steed needed every breath for galloping or such clumsy horsemanship would get a severe piece of his mind.
The nearest Teutonic Knight was even less sympathetic. His mount had skidded on the ice and almost fallen like so many others, but whether by luck or good horsemanship he was still upright. There was already blood on the black-crossed white trapper over the animal’s flanks, and it was freshened as the portly knight rammed home his spurs and wrenched his sword from its scabbard.
Prince Ivan grabbed for the mace hanging from his saddle and pulled it free, not taking time to get his wrist through its loop. If the weapon fell, it fell, but if it wasn’t ready to be used, he might fall instead. He knew which he preferred.
The knight surged forward at him, all white robes and black crosses and blank iron face beneath that black transverse crest, and Ivan put his shield high to take the sword, swinging his mace into the space beneath. The shield boomed and twisted on his arm; the mace-haft stung his fingers as its head slammed against the hardness of mail and the fat yielding flesh beneath. There was a confusion of limbs as the knight’s head and arms went back and his legs came up, and then he was out of the saddle and rolling on the ground.
Ivan bore left and kept going. To slacken his pace so near the enemy foot-soldiers was to invite a crossbow bolt, and another squad of knights was already bearing do
wn on him. The long lances dipped and steadied, and he could hear the rumble of the hoofs increase its pace as spurs went home.
“Back!” cried Sivka, turning on the spot in a way that would have required a complicated use of knee and rein had Ivan tried to make any other animal perform the same gyration. The horse was no battle tactician, but he knew when flight made the best sense.
Ivan chanced a look behind as Sivka accelerated again. The seven knights were still hot in pursuit, leaning forward down the shafts of their lances as if competing to be first to skewer him. He jammed the mace through his belt, slung his shield behind his shoulder where it bounced wildly but stayed out of his way, and pulled bow from case and arrow from quiver. The bow thumped, and one knight left a long gouge in the snowy ground when his horse went from under him with that arrow in its chest.
Ivan almost hit the ground as well when Sivka flinched, leapt, squirmed, all at once and mostly in mid-air. He saw why an instant later as he passed the fat knight he had unhorsed with his mace. The man was back on his feet, but staggering with the momentum of the sword-swing that had just missed Sivka’s front legs.
And then he went down again, this time to stay. Three of the knights still chasing Ivan went down with him in a tangle of yelling men and squealing horses, and a fourth, clearing the crash with a great bound as if over a fence, came down with both fore-hoofs close together on the black-crested helm.
It went almost completely flat, and the eye-slits vented a gush that stained the snow for yards around.
Ivan’s mouth twisted in disgust, tempered with unashamed relief that it hadn’t been him. So much for all the stories that horses wouldn’t trample people on the ground. If they had to put their feet down and you were underneath that was just too bad, and right of weight would triumph over right of way. He wondered what the black crosswise crest had signified, then dismissed the idle question in favour of Sivka’s raking hand-gallop towards the gulyagorod, and wondering what the Hell would happen next.
It happened all too soon, in the shape of a single Teutonic Knight who still had his long lance. The knight came at Ivan no faster than a canter at first, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do. Ivan reached down for another arrow to encourage him to go away, and encountered empty space. The quiver was gone, and a look back told him where. It had come adrift back where Sivka had evaded the dead knight’s sword, and Ivan had been so busy trying not to come adrift himself that he had never felt it go.
No one else was nearby with a timely arrow out of the blue, and as Ivan frantically dragged his shield into place, this new knight lowered his lance and touched spurs to his horse. Instantly responsive, the destrier’s haunches convulsed under the long black-crossed trapper, and it went from that leisurely closing canter to a full charge within three strides. The knight gathered his mount between rein and spur and lunged behind the thrusting lance. There was no chance to dodge.
The point took Ivan’s shield full in the centre, so hard that it felt like the shield rather than the spear punched him backwards over Sivka’s withers. The Teutonic Knight thundered past in a spatter of churned snow, far too close, trying to trample as he went by. Ivan rolled over, scrambled onto knees and fists, then sagged helplessly. The swirling, star-filled world inside his head let him rise no further. Beyond the dancing specks of fire that filled his eyes, he could see a blurred knight on a blurred horse come around in a long half-circle, and a blurred bright lance-point lowered to aim straight at his face.
Then something large and loud happened in the world of blurs; a howl and a scream, the sound of breaking wood, receding hoofbeats and a metallic rending noise. After that the blurred world went away for a few seconds, and Ivan opened his eyes to find that he was face-down in wonderful, cold, immobile snow and everything had steadied again.
“So that was jousting...” he mumbled in disbelief. “And they do it for fun.” Shaking his head, he scrambled clumsily up again.
The knight lay on his back some thirty feet away, with the broken stump of his lance driven into the ground a little further off. Of his destrier there was no sign, though Sivka was coming closer now that Ivan was back on his feet. The Grey Wolf was crouched over the knight’s body, which explained the black stallion’s reluctance to come any nearer without his little master awake to protect him, and from what Ivan could see, the horse was right.
Certainly he wasn’t going any closer than this.
The Grey Wolf ambled up, licking blood off his muzzle. Then he hacked a cough, a sound such as any dog might make with something in its throat, but what the Grey Wolf spat onto the trampled snow were five small rings of mail. Ivan looked at them. Still linked, still shiny, but by the way their edges gleamed, pulled by main force from the dead knight’s hauberk.
“Mar’ya Morevna sent me to keep you safe,” said the Grey Wolf, speaking as if his teeth were sore. “She didn’t say I had to keep up with you first. Come on, mount up!” Ivan could see why the Grey Wolf was in a hurry. The Teutonic Knights and sergeants were re-forming their ranks with a practised ease that sent shivers running down his spine. Except for the corpses strewn across the river and on either side of the plain, it was as if nothing had happened to disturb their dreadful composure.
The Grey Wolf loped off towards the Russian side of the River Nemen, then turned and looked back at Ivan. “She wants everybody off the ice,” he said, “and if you want my opinion—”
“—I wouldn’t stay here to see why,” Ivan finished, swinging into Sivka’s saddle. “I don’t need your opinion this time, Volk Volkovich. I share it!”
It was as if Mar’ya Morevna had been watching them. Ivan, Sivka and the Grey Wolf weren’t quite the last off the river, they shared that honour with a half-dozen of Prince Yaroslav’s men, but they were still on the bank and nothing like far enough away when all Hell broke loose.
Or all Heaven, because it was as if the sun had come adrift and fallen onto the river.
Ivan’s shadow crossed the bank and up the ridge and into the woods beyond, and it was sharp-edged black the whole way. He turned, shielding his eyes against the intolerable glare, and watched steam going up from the Nemen with a whistling roar that shocked the ears. The ice on the river didn’t melt; it exploded into huge chunks that reared like a giant’s building-blocks and then came crashing back to break off others like them.
Every man and beast still on the river went into it instead, their tiny cries lost in the bellow of steam and the creaking, screeching sound as the slabs of ice grated together. Then the river’s current, freed from the iron grasp of winter for a while, tumbled them away downstream in a ponderous whirling dance that led towards the Baltic.
The Firebird rose like a phoenix from the ruins, curving on wide wings high into the fog-shrouded air, while the heat that washed off it brought a brief false spring to the valley of the Nemen. Its light grew brighter and then brighter still until there was nothing in the world but flare and shadow.
And then it was gone.
*
Some knights and sergeants remained, the few who hadn’t been on the river. They were surrounded by a dozen riders from someone’s druzhinya retinue, and their commander sat off to one side, too shocked and sickened by what he had seen to think of escape. Though Hermann von Salza’s sickness and shock wore off at last, it didn’t bring back the men who had marched to war and would never come back. Men he had known – von Düsberg, von Buxhövden, even young von Jülich – and others who were just nameless sergeants, familiar and strangers, all fallen in battle or gone under the ice.
Prince Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna looked down at the Grand Master for several minutes, studying the pale, handsome, ascetic face above armour and clothing tricked out with such blatant signs of wealth, and wondering how the cross on his surcoat justified the cruelty of his plans. In the end they could think of nothing to say, but when Ivan turned his horse to go it was von Salza who broke the silence.
“You have not killed me,” he said, his Russian clumsy b
ut clear enough, “and that is a good and Christian act.”
“So despite singing psalms at us, and using crossbows prohibited by your Pope, and all the trappings of a Crusade, we’re Christian after all.” Ivan was too tired to be properly angry. “Just because we haven’t killed you out of hand as you deserve. Would French or German lords be so lenient? Perhaps we should take your head off to prove how like them we can be.”
Von Salza’s face went almost as white as his clothing. “Neither you nor your witch-wife dare to kill me!” he snarled. “Know this, both of you: I still command a thousand knights and sergeants. We took Livonia with less.”
“The soft words, then the threat. Nothing changes.” Mar’ya Morevna tapped her nagayka riding-whip gently against her leg and looked von Salza up and down. “What we dare and what we do are no concern of yours. If we’d decided you were better dead, you wouldn’t be drawing breath to defy us.”
“This isn’t Livonia,” said Prince Ivan, “and we aren’t Prusiskai barbarians. Your thousand knights and sergeants couldn’t be assembled from the other castles of your Order before spring, and by then we could meet them with ten thousand.”
He shifted in his saddle, leaning forward in the same gesture of scrutiny that his father had employed so often, and from the cool eyes shadowed by the iron rim of his helmet to the cool steel of the mace he carried crosswise like a sceptre, he looked the Prince that birth and rank – and duty, honour, obligation and marriage – had made him.
“Best you remember what I say, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order,” said Tsarevich Ivan Aleksandrovich Khorlovskiy. “If you come back, we’ll be waiting. We’ll always be waiting. And next time you may die a worse death than the knight you sent to kill us.”
Von Salza glared at Ivan, fighting down black fury. In another place and time, he would have released Dieter Balke to take revenge in whatever way that strange and terrible man deemed proper. Except that Balke was dead, and now he knew who had killed him. There was a new, hate-filled respect in the way he eyed the Rus prince.
Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 33
