“Times change,” said Amragan. “Circumstances differ.” He sat down on the clothes-chest Ivan had so recently been dragging about, his own weight and that of the armour making chest and floorboards creak ominously. Ivan managed to keep any expression off his face. “Finish dressing. You must come with me. At once.”
Ivan reached for his other boot. Whatever was going on had nothing to do with the theft of crowns from the treasure-house, because if anything had been spotted through the spy-holes, Amragan tarkhan wouldn’t have wasted time playing cat and mouse. Most especially he wouldn’t have bothered sitting on the trunk when the thing to do was to fling it aside and have his men tear up the floor.
What made it still more mysterious was that when Ivan hooked the sabre to his belt, Amragan said nothing against it but looked almost approving, as if every sword might help. But help what, and where? There was still no explanation when he and the tarkhan hurried back downstairs, nor was there any comment when Volk Volkovich emerged from the servant’s hall beyond the kitchen and fell into step among Amragan’s ten soldiers at Ivan’s heels. Perhaps it was true that one more servant always went unnoticed, even one so striking as the Grey Wolf, but it seemed more like Amragan tarkhan simply had too much on his mind, and if he wanted silence rather than idle chatter then that was what he would get.
Within a few minutes Ivan realized where they were going, and his uneasiness returned with a rush. The last time he’d walked along this street and turned at this corner, he’d been following a well-dressed servant who had invited him to take wine with three Russian nobles. That afternoon had spiralled downward into unpleasantness and ended with threats, so Ivan was glad his sabre and Volk Volkovich were with him. When he arrived accompanied by a tarkhan and ten Tatar soldiers, the three boyaryy wouldn’t like it at all.
They went into the house at the same raking stride which had taken them through the streets of Sarai, past more Tatars obviously standing guard, and into a low-ceilinged room at the back. Then Amragan tarkhan turned on Ivan, gestured at the room and demanded, “Do you know them?”
Ivan looked at the mess on floor and walls and ceiling that had been Stepan Mikhailovich, Andrey Vladimirovich and Mstislav Vasil’yevich. Even their own mothers couldn’t have answered ‘yes’ immediately. Had he not been introduced to each man and known there were three of them, it would have been hard to say how many corpses were actually in the room. Or even if they’d been human. Usually squeamish in the presence of massacre, Ivan didn’t feel any more nauseated than when passing a butcher’s stall in the market, because whatever had happened had been so thorough that the aftermath was recognizable only as raw meat.
What did make him feel momentarily queasy was the unmistakable sound of Volk Volkovich’s stomach rumbling.
“If it – they – are, or were, who I think …” Ivan cursed briefly and gave up on trying to make sense from case and tense. Whatever he called them wouldn’t matter to the boyaryy now. “We spoke last week. Wine and gossip. They were strangers in Sarai, but they’d heard of me. I hadn’t met them before. Or since.”
“What did you talk about?”
“I told you, just gossip. Why? Do you think I killed them because of something they said?”
Amragan tarkhan smiled thinly and looked him up and down, a slow, contemptuous scrutiny that made Ivan bristle. “You? Do this? Hardly.”
“Then why drag me here? Why get me out of bed at all?”
“It was time you were up and about,” said the Turk coolly. “And this is only a part of what I want you to see. Follow.”
He brushed past and headed upstairs to the room where Ivan and the three dead men had exchanged useless opinions of each other. There was another dead man in the middle of the floor, and this one was all too recognizable. He was a Tatar, spreadeagled on the bare wooden floor and secured there by long iron spikes driven through all his major joints. But that hadn’t killed him. It had been done merely to hold him in place as a cook will with a roast to hold it steady for carving. And then he had been carved, probably slowly, certainly carefully, until shock or loss of blood had done what his torturers had taken such pains not to hasten.
Carved as a dark gift for a dark god.
There were no magic circles on the floor, no cryptic patterns drawn in blood or cunning arrangements of sliced-off meat. There was just a particularly vile murder, and Ivan’s memory of a certain conversation held right here, in which certain Russians who should have known better couldn’t be dissuaded from a certain course of action. The comprehensive carnage in the room downstairs suggested that the sacrifice had been rejected.
Or had it been accepted after all? From the little Ivan knew of Chernobog, gratitude from the Lord of the Dark Places was unlikely to manifest itself in warm light and sweet scent. Mar’ya Morevna had a saying culled from years of studying the grimoires in her father’s library, books that had as much to do with avoiding sorcerous entities as calling them up. ‘Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. And you may not like it, but it may like you. Raw, or cooked.’
He was relieved beyond measure that they’d succeeded last night in making away with the crowns. Probably while this butchery was taking place. And that too might explain why the three downstairs had died. The Dark One had vented his frustration that an unlatched door had been slammed in his face.
Then Ivan swore under his breath. If they hadn’t stolen the crowns, then this killing and the reason behind it would have been a perfect excuse to warn Batu Khan of what was trying to happen, and why each crown should go back where it belonged. But if the crowns had been in place, then the three boyaryy might have succeeded and there would be more to contend with this morning than just murder. There would have been Hell to pay.
Literally.
It was the sort of self-replicating conundrum that delighted Mar’ya Morevna, but it made Ivan’s head ache.
“Well?” From the sound of it Amragan tarkhan’s patience was wearing thin. Ivan tore his horror-fascinated eyes from the corpse on the floor and stared at the Turk.
“Well what? I didn’t do this either. If I kill a man, I do it quickly. Not …” he waved expressively at the floor and turned away.
Amragan followed him downstairs and out into fresher air. “I have seen you kill, so I know what happened is not your way. But you know other things, Ivan Aleksandrovich. Was this just a murder, or was it something more?”
If he already suspects, then this is the perfect time to tell him, except he might go straight to the treasure-house, and then… oh God, what should I do?
“I know a few other things, Amragan tarkhan. But not as many as my wife, whom you in your infinite wisdom sent off to Khorlov to fetch the Great Crown that should have come with us in the first place.”
“What?” The sudden attack took Amragan completely off-guard and off-balance.
“You had shamans with you. I know. I saw them. But what good were they? Not much!” Ivan shrugged flamboyantly. “So I’m here, and she’s somewhere between here and there, and I say this was murder, by men who lost family and friends to Tatar soldiers like the one they killed. If Mar’ya Morevna was here, she might tell you why they killed him that way. But she isn’t, and she can’t, so that leaves you with me or nothing.” He had intended to grin in triumph at the end of his little speech, but a spike of pain ran straight up from the nape of his neck to his temples and twisted the grin to a grimace.
Amragan tarkhan paid his discomfort no heed. “All right, Khorlovskiy. So this was a murder. I can accept that. Just. But what in Tengri’s name happened downstairs?”
“Maybe they were trying to make something like the Chin fire-pots shot from siege engines, and it backfired.”
“No. There was no trace of fire. If you ever saw one of those things in use, you would know what I mean. Once they got the mix right this house would be rubble and cinders, and even if not, the room downstairs would be charred.”
“Amragan tarkhan, I think you want me to say they
were working some spell and I won’t say it, because I don’t know.” That was true enough. If Ivan’s suspicions were accurate, there was no spell involved. “You’ll have to wait for my wife to get back from Khorlov. Ask her.”
The sky flickered, and after several seconds thunder came rumbling in over the city, a long, sullen roll on the Drums of Tengri. As if in sympathy with the distant lightning, another silvery bolt of anguish drilled through Ivan’s head, this time severe enough that his teeth ached and even his hair seemed to hurt.
“Investigate your murder mystery all you like, Amragan,” he said, blinking the spasm away. “I’m going back to my house before the storm breaks. And if my head doesn’t stop pounding, I’m going back to bed as well.”
Once they were out of earshot of Amragan tarkhan, Volk Volkovich spoke for the first time and he sounded worried. “A headache? From when?”
Ivan’s brows drew together in a frown as he tried to remember, then deepened as the lightning flashed far away over the steppes and another jolt stabbed at the backs of his eyes. “I… I think in the house,” he managed eventually. “Upstairs.” He looked at the Grey Wolf through glowing red flecks that swam in his vision. “Where that Tatar was given to Chernobog.”
Volk Volkovich growled something savage low in his chest. “If the Black One’s involved, then the sooner we’re away from this vicinity the better. There’s a foulness lingering here from last night. You can feel it. I can almost taste it.”
Ivan missed what else the Grey Wolf said, because he was learning something he would have preferred not to know. Real, deep pain had a colour and sound all its own, a sickly glowing purple like the afterimage of lightning and a sound like sand poured on parchment. Volk Volkovich took him by the crook of the elbow to hurry him away, but after only a moment Ivan pulled free and stopped walking.
“It’s gone,” he said. and very, very carefully shook his head. “Completely. It didn’t fade away. It just, well, stopped.”
“That house,” said the Grey Wolf, looking back at it, “would be better as rubble and cinders. What happened in there was no way for any creature to die, even a Tatar. And as a sacrifice to Chernobog! Why would they be so foolish?”
Ivan explained the twisted plot as best he could. What with the echoes of that murderous headache and his own lack of any desire to be connected with their crazed scheme, he’d forgotten most of it, but he remembered enough for Volk Volkovich to grin scornfully at the thought of such amateur enchanters.
“A Russian god, to fight on behalf of Russia? It shows how little they really knew. If an entire race can’t lay claim to good or evil, how can that people’s gods claim it either? Chernobog’s no more Russian than sunlight. The Tatars know him too. They call him Erlik Khan, the Dweller in the Dark Gulf under the Earth, the enemy of light, Tengri’s eternal adversary. But a Russian god? Don’t make me —”
The blast from behind smashed both of them flat with a great blunt fist and slapped all the air out of their lungs. For just an instant all their senses were drowned out by a roar of silence and a vast lightless glare. They could smell cold, and taste darkness, and then the torn, tormented world came howling back to haunt them.
Ivan pushed himself up off the muddy street, half-stunned and trembling. “We were too late,” he said, almost to himself. “Too late, too slow, too close. We should have got those damned things out of the city no matter what.” He wiped a smear of dirt from his face, spat more onto the ground, then turned and wished he hadn’t. He had never seen Volk Volkovich afraid in all the years they’d known each other, but now the Grey Wolf was staring back the way they’d come with his face horror-pale under the spatters of mud, and despite his human shape he was cringing like a dog before a beating.
The house was gone, and in its place a great black column towered up into the stormy sky. But it wasn’t smoke. No smoke could just hang there as this was doing, rising so far and no further, spreading so far and no further. It was like a snake made of snakes, coiling sluggishly in and around itself, shadows within shadows. There was no heat, no fire, no rain of wreckage.
Just silence, and cold, and that pillar of darkness like a dagger nailing Sarai and every living creature in it to the dark, cold, silent earth.
The Khanate of the Golden Horde;
September, 1243 A.D.
The ground heaved under Sivka’s hoofs, making Mar’ya Morevna sway in her saddle and clutch the stallion’s mane or pitch headlong. It wasn’t a jolt but a smooth rise and fall like a wave on the open sea. Accustomed to such things as no mortal horse could be, Chyornyy and Sivka whinnied more in surprise than fear, but all the other animals, almost three thousand of them, squealed and reared and fought against things they could no longer trust. Tatar riders who had remained securely on horseback through countless bloody engagements went spilling to the ground, adding yells and curses to the uproar.
Mar’ya Morevna swore as well, and with more reason. She was better placed than anyone else to guess at what had happened, because the crown of Khorlov, wrapped and swaddled though it was, had gone so cold that it almost burned.
Moist Mother Earth rippled again, ponderous and slow, and she felt the fine hairs on her neck and arms stand up as she realized where she’d felt that same leisurely movement before. In bed, with Ivan at her side and no longer quite asleep, she’d felt the unhurried shift of living bone and muscle as he yawned and stretched himself awake. It was as if the earth itself was waking up.
Or something underneath the earth, down in the cold dark. Something that had slept for a long, long time, ignored and forgotten. And when it woke after so long, it would be—
Hungry.
She looked around her at the Tatars, searching for the shrivelled old man with the wise, cruel eyes. Among a thousand men and three thousand horses, all reeling together in confusion, the task should have been impossible. But Beyki the shaman was easily seen, though he was down on his knees with a space around him growing wider by the minute as those nearby heard what he was chanting and fled for their lives and their sanity. One name and nothing else, endlessly repeated as he gashed his scrawny limbs with a knife, or bowed low to beat his forehead against the shivering ground.
“Erlik Khan! Erlik Khan!” Over and over again, but whether to call or to calm made little difference now, because the glitter of wisdom had gone out of his eyes like light from a snuffed candle. Wisdom, and sanity, and anything else that put a soul into meat. There was only the husk of an old man kneeling in the trampled dirt, chanting a name that meant nothing any more.
“So much for advice from you,” said Mar’ya Morevna between her teeth. “Sivka, Chyornyy – to Sarai and Ivan, as quick as you can. I’ve got to… Wait!” She tugged back on the reins, slipped to the ground and picked up a discarded bowcase with a full quiver of arrows hanging from the other side of its belt. She buckled it hastily around her waist and scrambled back into Sivka’s saddle, then pulled the short, heavy bow from its case and nocked an arrow to the string.
“Erlik Khan! Erlik Kha—!” The shaman looked down uncomprehending at the shaft driven to its fletching in his chest, and toppled over sideways.
“Why, little mistress?” asked Sivka.
“Mercy perhaps. Or revenge. I don’t know myself. But I’m sure of one thing. It wasn’t an accident.” She put the bow away. “Now get me to Sarai – and move!”
*
Sarai, capital of the Khanate of the Golden Horde;
September, 1243 A.D.
And the darkness moved upon the face of the earth, and saw that it was good…
That and stranger things went tumbling through Ivan’s head as he and Volk Volkovich scrambled with silent determination through a crowd of shrieking people who had rushed from their homes, and were now rushing even harder to get far away from the thing they had come out to see. Ivan had wanted to hear the Tatars make that sound, the sound of terror they had visited on so many others, but now he heard it he wished it would stop.
As th
e street widened and the trampling confusion eased somewhat, he looked back again – then stopped and stared at the unbelievable. Not the vast darkness that was Chernobog or Erlik Khan, but at Amragan tarkhan, alive and tottering down the street, his clothing and armour in rags where it wasn’t white with a crusting of frost. The man was harder to kill than a cockroach.
There was a slamming explosion at Ivan’s back and a brilliant flare of light threw his shadow down the street, as long and black and sinister as the swirling tower of darkness that was Chernobog. “God damn it, no!” he snarled helplessly. “Not again!”
The screams redoubled their volume as people scattered in all directions, and there was a metallic hammering sound close behind him that he felt sure he knew. The sabre at his belt came from its scabbard with eager ease, and as he turned to face whatever had appeared this time, Ivan was already swinging the wicked blade to cut anything in his path. And then he was wrenching it to a halt less than a shuddering handspan short of Mar’ya Morevna’s leg.
She and the two horses looked down at Ivan, then at the sword, with an expression of such deliberately ordinary disapproval that Ivan could have hugged all of them on the spot. It didn’t bring things back into any sort of perspective, because with the Lord of the Dark Places loose in the world, perspective didn’t matter worth a damn. But there was something comforting about it all the same. Mar’ya Morevna swung down from Sivka’s high saddle and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, all the time staring past him at the writhing column smeared across the sky.
“You’re like the children, Vanya,” she said in his ear. “You can’t be left alone at all.”
“Fewer jokes, noble Lady,” said Volk Volkovich. “The situation here is hardly funny.”
“But then you never understood my sense of humour, did you?” said Mar’ya Morevna.
Ivan looked from his wife to his friend and back again, his lips pulled back in a tight, crooked grin. It sounded like the old sniping, but the ugly edge had gone. If they survived the next few minutes everything was going to be all right, because nothing else would ever seem as bad again. “Later for that,” he said. “We should do something. If we can do something.”
The Golden Horde Page 33
