The Ocean of Time

by David Wingrove

  ‘True,’ another counters, ‘but Kiev is far to the south and much closer to the steppes. They would not dare bring their army this far north. Not with winter coming. Besides, without our tribute, how do they clothe and feed their men?’

  It’s not true. The Mongols would dare. In fact, they do most of their fighting in the winter months when frozen rivers make it easy for their horses to cross the terrain.

  But there’s a lot of sympathy for that view. Heads nod and beards wag. I have only now to push it one stage further. Yet even as I make to speak again – just as Sergei said he would – Belikof’s chief rival in the veche, Alexander Yakovlev, makes a great show of getting to his feet.

  The whole room falls silent.

  I nod to him, giving way before him.

  ‘Meister Behr,’ he begins, smiling at me, his voice heavy with a fake reasonableness, ‘is it true that you killed two men in Rzhev?’

  I stare at him, astonished. This isn’t in the script. This isn’t what Sergei said would happen. I think on my feet and answer with a confidence I don’t feel.

  ‘Killed? What nonsense is this? You think I would dare show my face in Tver’ if it were so?’

  Yakovlev stares at me coldly. ‘A certain kind of man would.’

  The words are a challenge. They impugn me. Now I must fight him or admit to being a criminal.

  Sergei has let me down badly. What’s more, I’m totally unarmed. If they wanted, they could seize me and chain me and there would be little I could do about it, not against this number of them.

  Only Belikof isn’t having any of it. He stands, glaring across at Yakovlev. ‘Have you any evidence to support your accusation?’

  Yakovlev nods. ‘Word came from Rzhev four days back. Of this Nemets and his woman. It seems, between them, they killed two of Rzhev’s leading citizens – Ilyushkin and Podnayin. What’s more, they committed violence against the person of the posadnik himself, Talyzin.’

  Belikof slumps down in his chair, the wind taken from his sails. He looks to me. ‘Meister Behr, what have you to say?’

  I decide that honesty would serve me best.

  ‘Okay. I killed them. But there was good reason. They invited me to Podnayin’s house, along with my wife, Katerina, and there they drugged me and tried to rape her – the daughter of a senior boyar in Novgorod. Talyzin had Katerina arrested and refused to hear my side of things. He sentenced my wife in my absence.’

  ‘So you claim that your actions were rightful vengeance.’

  ‘I do. And if there is a fine to be paid, I’ll gladly pay it. Only Rzhev is a corrupt place and the prince’s justice did not prevail. I denied the charge because I did not want us to fall into their hands again. Why, they even charged me for a new pass, even though I held the tysiatskii’s visa, paid for in good silver.’

  There’s a long pause while a murmur of discussion passes back and forth about the table. Then Belikof stands.

  ‘Forgive me, Meister Behr, but I am left with no option. You must submit yourself to trial. You and your wife. But be assured. You will be heard. And here, not in Rzhev, if that allays your fears. But we must send to Rzhev for witnesses, and that might take some time.’

  I bow my head submissively. ‘I understand, and thank the veche for the chance to clear my name.’

  But when I look up again I see how Yakovlev is glaring at me, furious, and know it is far from over.

  We are escorted back to our inn and a guard is posted. And there we wait, until gone dark. It’s only then that Sergei appears, looking a little sheepish.

  I stand, confronting him. ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘Things are different,’ he says. ‘That business with Yakovlev and the news from Rzhev. That didn’t happen last time.’

  ‘It’s the Russians,’ I say. ‘The Russians have changed it.’

  But Sergei laughs at that. ‘The Russians? We are the Russians.’

  201

  I sit there for a long time after he’s gone, shocked, not understanding. Is Sergei a member of a rebel faction, split off from Yastryeb? Or …?

  Or what? Because I can’t explain it. Can’t understand why a bunch of Russians are helping me, unless they’re renegades.

  All I know for sure is that something’s happened up the line. Some twist that has thrown itself back in time. As it must, eventually, because here in this strange dimension nothing ever stays the same for long.

  I tell Katerina, but she’s as much at a loss as me.

  ‘What will happen?’ she asks.

  ‘They’ll keep us here,’ I say, ‘under guard until they can bring witnesses from Rzhev. Then we’ll appear before them and state our case.’

  ‘And then?’

  I look away. I don’t know, and I hate not knowing. I hate not being in control, especially when it places Katerina’s life at risk.

  As this does. For short of jumping out of here, there’s really fuck all I can do about the situation. My guns are in the cart, which is in their compound. To get to it I would have to fight my way halfway across town.

  Which might even work, only more than likely it wouldn’t.

  I slump down, placing my head in my hands, trying to think, to come up with an answer.

  ‘I think you should see Hecht.’

  Katerina’s words echo in my head. It’s crazy, sure, but so is this whole situation, and it’s getting worse by the day.

  Only … before I can do anything, I hear, distant yet unmistakable, shouts and cries, and then the screams. Awful screams. And then, equally distinctive, the strong, pungent scent of woodsmoke.

  Going to the window, I see, at the top of the town, a flickering glow in the sky, growing brighter by the moment. Great clouds of smoke are billowing up into the moonlit sky, and I know, without being told, what it is.

  So Sergei was right.

  News comes an hour later. Belikof is dead, and all his sons and their wives and children. The whole clan gone. We overhear the guards talking and learn that many of them were cut down in the streets, naked, running from the flames, by Yakovlev’s men, and I wonder if they’ll come for us next. It seems the logical thing to do. Only no one comes, and soon the town falls quiet again, with only the awful burning smell in the air to remind us of what’s happened.

  It puzzles me why they didn’t come and finish the job, but it’s not until the morning that we find out why. Yakovlev was drunk, celebrating his success. And we were overlooked. But now, as dawn breaks, he sends for us, and Katerina, Lishka and I are taken to him, hands bound behind our backs, up the hill and into the hall where, only yesterday, we were honoured guests.

  Yakovlev, seated in Belikof’s chair, looks to have the mother of all hangovers. Even so, he’s in control, and makes us stand there waiting, while he gives orders to this minion and that. Finally he looks up at me and, coldly, his eyes like ice, asks me what I think he ought to do with me.

  ‘Try me,’ I answer. ‘Just as Belikof was going to. Let the veche decide.’

  For a moment I think he’s going to say no. But then he gives the smallest nod, and I note, as he stands and walks away, that he’s smiling.

  And why not? For he thinks he controls the veche now. And why take the further risk of being blamed for our deaths when the veche could legitimise them?

  We are taken back, the guard doubled. No doubt they’ve heard what we did at Rzhev, so no chances are being taken. Only Sergei is allowed to visit us, and I wonder at that, at why Yakovlev would allow it.

  Sergei has news. The witnesses from Rzhev are already here. They arrived last night, even as Belikof’s house was going up in flames.

  ‘And what of that?’ I ask. ‘Are the other boyars just going to let him get away with it?’

  Sergei laughs. ‘They’ve been expecting it. Ever since Belikof insulted Yakovlev openly in council. It seems he called Yakovlev “the Great Khan’s dog … nestling at his feet.”’

  ‘Even so …’

  ‘They are proud men.’

 
‘And violent, too.’

  ‘Of course.’ Sergei grins, but then the grin fades and he lowers his voice. ‘But listen. I have a plan …’

  202

  Plans. What are plans except vague hopes? Walls of sand built against the incoming tide of chance?

  Even so, Sergei’s is a beauty, even if he is a Russian.

  I ask him about that, but he evades my questions, telling me that there will be time to explain everything once we are safe.

  When Sergei’s gone, I discuss the matter with Katerina, and we decide to trust Sergei, only I’m not as sure as she is. I have begun to wonder if this isn’t an elaborate trap, a ploy to get me cornered in a cul-de-sac of time, and then snip me off – time-dead – and no way back.

  So, when we are brought before the veche once again, I am not surprised to find Sergei among a small group of men I’ve not seen until that moment. Russians, by their beards and manner. But are they agents, too?

  It turns out that they aren’t. In fact, they’re citizens of Rzhev, brought here by Sergei in anticipation of such a trial as this. Men who will speak up for us.

  Which means he’s gone back in time and made an alteration. There’s no other explanation, because two days ago he didn’t know that Yakovlev would bring his witnesses.

  The trial begins with Yakovlev making an empty speech about justice. He invokes the Russkaia Pravda – ‘Iaroslav’s code’, the written law of the land – and calls upon the veche to administer it ‘without prejudice or fear’. But everyone knows what a lie that is, and that certain members of the veche will not oppose him if he finds us guilty. That doesn’t mean that we’ve lost before we’ve begun, nor – even if we lose – that our lives will be forfeit. Article one of the code stipulates the financial penalties for homicide, and Yakovlev has little option but to abide by those. Only I have a feeling that Yakovlev doesn’t plan to keep us alive that long. He’s hoping we’ll try and make our escape, as we did from Rzhev, and then …

  Well, you see it, as clearly as I. As long as we behave ourselves and go along with the mockery of this trial, we’ll survive. There’s only one difficulty: Katerina.

  Katerina wants to fight their accusations. She wants no blemish against our names, which, of course, there will be if we let this go. She claims – and rightly – that those men deserved to die for their villainy and for their attempt to dishonour her. Such men, she says, deserve nothing better than a knife in the heart, and the world’s a cleaner place without them. And I don’t disagree. Only there’s no possibility – not with Belikof dead – of us getting such a decision.

  So my problem is keeping her quiet. Stopping her from venting her anger against the veche.

  Lishka has been silent these past few days, like he’s afraid to say what’s clearly bottled up inside him. But I’m not fooled by his silence. Like Katerina, he is furious that we are standing trial, while the real villains are sitting there, waiting to pass judgement.

  But there’s still Sergei’s plan, and if it works …

  We stand before them for the best part of three hours, listening to our accusers speak. And Katerina – pregnant and weary from it – bears it all without a murmur. But when it’s over her pallor makes me ask the captain of the guards whether she might not be seated for the afternoon session. He goes away and returns to say that Yakovlev has refused our request.

  That infuriates me so much that before the ‘great man’ can open the second session of the hearing, I interrupt him and angrily ask for his explanation.

  ‘My explanation?’

  ‘For making the daughter of a boyar stand. Would you dishonour your own daughters so? Any of you?’

  And I turn in a half circle, making my appeal to them all, hoping that they’ll be shamed into overruling Yakovlev. Some look down, some look to Yakovlev, but I have misjudged the mood of the assembly. After Yakovlev’s strike on Belikof it appears that none of them wish to take him on. He’s master here now. I look back at him and see how much colder he’s become. He wants to crush me. To humiliate and destroy me. But we’ll see about that.

  I stare him out. ‘The prince will hear of this. Make no mistake.’

  Yakovlev laughs at that. ‘You think Prince Alexander has time to speak to mere traders?’

  But I’m not to be belittled that easily. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot, Master Yakovlev. You have a money tree, rooted in the shit of your midden. You have no need to be besmirched by mere trade.’

  At another time I think that might have brought a laugh. Looking about me, I see how several of the veche have their heads down, so as not to reveal their smiles. But Yakovlev is almost apoplectic. Spittle sprays from his lips as he stands and yells back at me. ‘You will not show me such contempt! It is you who are on trial, not me!’

  ‘No? You think yourself above Iaroslav’s code?’

  It’s not a wise thing to say with your hands bound behind your back, but I can’t help myself.

  He comes round the table and, standing before me, makes to slap my face, only Lishka intercedes, ducking in and head-butting the man full in the face, the crack of Yakovlev’s nose audible in the sudden silence.

  And then there’s uproar.

  203

  I come to, my vision blurred, such a pain in my head that I wonder if my skull is still in one piece. It’s dark but for a thin sliver of moonlight that slips in through the narrow crack between the door and the frame.

  I sit up slowly, groaning, the blood pounding in my head, the pain almost blacking me out again. For a moment I just sit there, my hands tenderly exploring my skull, feeling the bumps, the clotted blood. Someone gave me a good beating, it seems, but I’m still alive, and I find that fact amazing after what Lishka did.

  ‘Lishka?’

  My voice is cracked and frail in that dark silence.

  ‘Katerina?’

  But there’s no answer. It seems I am alone.

  I rest for a time, then, moving warily, begin to explore that tiny space.

  Nothing. No sign of either of them.

  I move back, a few inches at a time, until I’m propped up against the log wall of the hut.

  And go very still, listening.

  The river. I can hear the river flowing past outside. Only somehow it’s different.

  For a while I sleep. When I come to again the door is open, the cool night air flooding into the room. For a moment I see only the pale night sky, but then a figure steps into the doorway.

  ‘Otto? Are you okay?’

  It’s Sergei, and for the briefest moment I feel like crying with relief, only where is Katerina? And, for that matter, where is Lishka? But I can’t speak. I can only sit there, staring back at him.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says, crouching before me, his eyes taking in the injuries to my head. ‘You’re safe now.’ Gingerly he touches my scalp. I flinch and he takes his hand away. ‘You’ll be okay. We’ll patch you up. Make you good as new.’

  ‘Katerina?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Yaklovlev took her. But where she is …’

  I close my eyes briefly, a separate, different pain flooding through me.

  ‘And Lishka?’

  ‘Lishka’s dead.’

  The news shocks me. I know it shouldn’t, but it does. Somehow I’d begun to think of Lishka as immortal, but he head-butted the wrong man in Yakovlev. Some men, it seems, are unforgiving.

  I put my left hand to my face to wipe away the tears, then look back at Sergei.

  ‘I’ve a medpac,’ he says quietly. ‘You’re not allergic to any of the standard drugs, are you?’

  I shake my head. What they use we use, and vice versa. It’s one of those things that happens when you fight someone for any length of time. Your technologies converge. You learn from each other and adapt. Enhanced evolution, Hecht calls it.

  Sergei goes outside and comes back moments later with a box not so different from my own. He takes several vials from it and fits them into an injector, then, tearing my shirt fr
om my arm, injects me with a couple of standard cure-fast mixtures, as well as an anti-shock booster.

  It’s only minutes before I feel the pain begin to subside and a kind of woozy pleasant feeling take its place. Pleasant, I say, only it’s hardly nice to feel my anxiety for Katerina dissolve along with the chemicals in my blood. She deserves better than that.

  I find words. ‘Was she … unharmed?’

  ‘Katerina?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think so. It all got rather manic. Getting you out was my priority. Yakovlev would have killed you.’

  I should have jumped. I should have got out of here the first moment I could.

  And then what?

  ‘We have to find her.’ But the drugs rob the words of the urgency they ought to have. I feel warm and drowsy. And safe …

  I sleep. Sergei shakes me awake some hours later. It’s light, the call of birds, the nearby rush of the water downriver filling the silence.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asks, smiling at me.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, sitting up, feeling renewed, the pain gone from my head, the drowsiness washed out of me. And then I remember.

  ‘Where would he have taken her?’

  ‘Dolrugy, maybe.’

  ‘Dolrugy?’

  ‘It’s a village, north-west of Tver’. It’s Yakovlev’s estate.’

  ‘Ah … so she’ll be there?’

  Sergei shrugs. He doesn’t know. Which means all of this is new. A departure from what happened before.

  ‘What happened to your plan?’ I ask.

  ‘We can still use it, if needs be.’

  Only the whole situation has changed. Lishka is dead and Katerina taken. And I don’t know what I’ll do if Yakovlev has harmed her.

  No … I daren’t even think of it. Of what he might have done in the night. To gain vengeance. To humiliate me.

  Only I know now – without a doubt – that I will kill him. He’s had his chance and failed. Now it’s my turn.

  I get to my feet. My head’s fine, my legs sound. If anything, I feel energised. Only I know that that’s only the drugs, and that, in reality, I’m still weak and overdoing it could prove harmful.