by George R. R.
“I don’t drink water. It’s all right for baths, of course,” Sergey said; unlike some, he washed every couple of weeks whether he needed it or not, and took sweat-baths even in winter.
He forced himself not to gape like a moujik as they passed a building that must have been fourteen stories high, a survival from before the Change not yet torn down for its metal. Most of the city was post-Change two or three stories and built of brick often covered with colorful plaster; on a rise to the north were the walls of the city’s Kremlin, and behind it, the gilded onion-domes of cathedral and palace. Shopkeepers and artisans called out the wares that spilled into the street, windmilling their arms and screaming of their low prices in a dozen languages, selling everything from Chinese silk to blocks of tea carried here from Georgia to piles of Azeri oranges from the southern shore to a tempting display of swords laid out on dark cloths.
Sergey would have turned aside to look at the fascinating glitter of honed metal if Dorzha hadn’t scowled and jerked his head. The caravanserai he chose was the usual type, a square of cubicles within a high rammed-earth wall with a section fenced off as a corral for livestock, and a warehouse where goods could be left under guard for an additional fee. Sergey’s nose twitched at the smell of cooking food; it had been a long day.
A sullen-looking man in ragged clothes and an iron collar came to take their animals.
“Here, rab,” the Cossack said, and tossed him a silver coin. “See that our horses are well-watered and fed—alfalfa and cracked barley, not just hay.”
That brightened the slave’s face; it also made him more likely to do his job properly...and anyway, a Cossack brother was supposed to be open-handed, especially with found money and booty. Sergey didn’t like trusting his horse to a rab, but slaves were common in places like this.
Many of the residents were squatting at the entrances to their little mud-brick rooms, cooking their evening meals on little braziers. Those not concerned about religious pollution sat at long trestle tables around a firepit, where the serai-keeper and his helpers carved meat from a whole sheep and a couple of yearling pigs that turned on a spit, and handed out rounds of bread and raw onions and melons.
“Room for us, if you please, brothers,” Sergey said.
One of those customers looked over his shoulder at Sergey, grunted, and returned to his meal.
“Hey, dog-face, thanks for the seat,” Sergey said.
Then he grabbed him by the back of his coat, heaved him aside to thump squawking on the ground, and tossed the man’s plate and loaf after him.
“Here’s your dinner, and fuck your mother, pal.”
Yob tvoyu mat’ wasn’t necessarily a deadly insult in Russki—between friends it could be just a way of saying “take this seriously”—but Sergey hadn’t used the friendly intonation. The ex-diner was burly, and he had a long knife through his sash. Sergey stood and grinned at him with his thumbs in his belt. The man put a hand to his knife for a moment before thinking better of it and slinking away; the two who’d been on either side of him crowded aside to make room for the newcomers.
“He can’t complain if I serve him some of his own manners,” the Cossack said as he sat down on the bench and slapped the rough, stained poplar planks. “Food and wine! Christ’s blood, does a Sir Brother, a knight of the Don Host, have to go hungry and thirsty here with gold and silver at his belt?”
A serving wench bustled over with wooden platters and clay mugs; she gave Sergey a long considering look. He preened and smoothed down his mustaches with a thumb before she turned back to her work, but he caught the glance she gave his companion, too.
“Nice round arse,” he said to Dorzha as the youth sat beside him. “And haunches like a plow-horse. Hey, dog-brother, I think she fancies you, though. Or your fine boots and coat. Give it a try!”
The Kalmyk flushed under his dark olive skin and tore off a lump from the loaf of bread. Sergey laughed. The youth was as fastidious and dainty as a young priest fresh from a monastery school, even waiting until a rock or a bush came up to drop his trousers. He’d noticed that on the trip here, though they’d had little time for anything but riding and sleeping and chewing jerky in the saddle. With ten horses each, you could push hard, two hundred kilometers a day or better.
And we needed to, after we spent hours fishing that dead Tartar out of the well....
“It gets moldy if you don’t use it, youngster,” he said. “Anyway, it’s the little skinny ones like you who can fuck like rabbits.”
Dorzha flushed still more, then scowled as Sergey guffawed and took a long gulp of the rough red wine.
I blushed like that the first time Uncle Igor said that to me,he thought. Of course, I was thirteen, and the Kalmyk has to be older than that.
“Best not get drunk,” Dorzha said coldly. “We may have work to do this tonight, if lucky.”
“To drink is the joy of the Russ,” Sergey said reasonably. Then he shrugged: “Besides, this is just wine. No Cossack can get drunk on wine. We are born with a grape in our mouths.”
He didn’t take more than one mug, though; the boy had a point. When he’d gnawed the last gristly meat off the rack of pork ribs and picked his teeth with his dagger-point, he tossed the bones to a dog that looked even hungrier than the rab, and walked to their cubicle with an exaggerated care; if anyone was watching, they might be encouraged to think he was drunk and would sleep soundly.
* * * *
You can’t keep a dog from rolling in shit or a Tartar from seeking revenge, he thought later that night.They’re not peaceable and forgiving and full of loving-kindness to all, like us Christian men.
They’d left the door open—many of the residents of the caravanserai did, to get what little breeze they could in the sultry summer heat of the delta. Sergey opened one eye a slit; he was lying in his drawers, sprawled back with his head on his saddlebags. Long curved knives glinted a little in the moonlight, as three dark-clad figures slipped in, with the tails of their turbans drawn across their faces to leave only the eyes exposed. A man stooped, knife poised to thrust into Sergey’s belly.
Thump.
His foot lashed up into the man’s crotch, toes rolled up to present the callused ball of the foot as the striking surface. That slammed his victim’s testicles up against the pubic bone as if they were iron on an anvil. A thin squeal like a dying rabbit sounded, and then a maul-on-oak sound as the Cossack’s knee punched into the descending face. The Tartar pitched to the side, unconscious or dead; Sergey used the motion to raise both feet in the air and then flip himself up into a standing crouch.
Dorzha had moved in the same instant. He had his belt in his hand, with a brick snugged into a loop at the end by the buckle. It arched out and smacked into the side of the second knifeman’s head; the long dagger fell from nerveless fingers, and the man reeled back and collapsed against the wall.
The third Tartar acted with commendable prudence and great speed; he threw his knife at Dorzha and fled. The Kalmyk boy gave a startled yelp of pain. Sergey ignored him—time enough to bind wounds later—and threw himself forward in a tackle that caught the man around the knees and brought him crashing down. The air went out of him in awhuff! as he flopped on belly and face; most of the Cossack’s went out, too, but he scrabbled forward over the heaving body and hammered a knobby fist into the small of his enemy’s back—much better than breaking your knuckles on a skull, grandfather had always said. And again and again, until the enemy went limp.
“Shut up, you fornicating buffoons! We’re trying to sleep like Christians!” someone called from the cubicle next door.
“Sorry, brother,” Sergey said contritely. “The saints guard your dreams.”
Then he dragged the man back into the cubicle by his ankle and turned to look at Dorzha. The Kalmyk was in his drawers and shirt, with a long red stain spreading on the linen beneath his left arm. He clamped that to his side and shook his head.
“Just a scratch,” he said, with a tight brace in hi
s voice that gave him the lie. “Let’s get what know we must—what we must know, I mean.”
Sergey grunted thoughtfully and looked through the dimness at their three assailants. The man he’d kicked and knee-butted was breathing in swift shallow jerks, his eyes wide and fixed; no use there. The one he’d punched was unconscious—and probably bleeding out internally from his ruptured kidneys. If he woke, it would only be to scream.
“Well, Christ be witness, you hit this one just right!” he said, as the one stunned by the Kalmyk started to stir. “That was good work—it shows a delicate hand. I finished my two off or nearly, and they’re useless.”
“Delicate is not Cossack way, eh?” Dorzha said with a painful smile.
Sergey laughed as he grabbed the man, pulled his belt loose, trussed his arms behind his back with it, and stuffed a gag into his mouth.
“So, dog-face,” he said, tipping water from his skin over the man, who glared defiance as he came fully aware. “You nod when you feel like a good chat, eh? No noise and fuss, now; people are trying to sleep.”
“Let me this do,” Dorzha said.
Sergey looked around; the Kalmyk had bound a spare shirt around his ribs beneath his garment, and was moving with careful precision. Sergey shrugged and stepped aside. Dorzha picked up one of the Tartar daggers, held it up until the captive’s eyes followed the flicker of moonlight on the honed edge, and then struck like a cat. The Tartar’s eyes bulged as his hide trousers fell away. It was only a few seconds later that he began to nod frantically, trying to bellow at the same time and choking as the wet cloth slipped farther into his wide-stretched mouth.
Dorzha flicked the gag free with the point of the knife, and held it so that blood dripped on the man’s face. Sergey winced slightly and suppressed an impulse to cup his hands protectively over his crotch. Instead, he pulled on his clothes as the Kalmyk asked questions in quick, confident Tartar—he spoke the turka dialect better than he did Russian, though with an unfamiliar accent and choice of words that showed he’d learned it somewhere else besides the middle Volga. The interrogation was thorough and expert; where, when, how many guards, what the passwords were, a staccato sequence timed to leave no time for the captive’s pain-fuddled mind to invent lies.
“Kill me,” the Tartar rasped at last, face gray and sweating.
Dorzha nodded and thrust; the dagger’s watered steel slid home with only a slight crunching sound, and he left it with the hilt jutting out of the man’s chest to keep the first spurt of blood corked. Then he rose...and staggered, his eyes turning up until only the whites showed, and collapsed backwards himself with limp finality.
“Bozehmoi! I didn’t think he was that badly hurt!” Sergey said, and sprang to drag the Kalmyk into the scanty clear space.
He pulled up the shirt to get at the wound; it was leaking red through the loose, hasty bandage. Then he stared for a long moment, blinking and shaking his head.
“Bozehmoi!” he said, then thumped the heel of his hand against his forehead as bits and pieces of the past week went click within. “Aaaaaah! I am a stupid Cossack ox!”
* * * *
Dorzha opened her eyes and raised a hand to feel at her ribs, now expertly and tightly bandaged. Then her hand flashed toward the hilt of her yataghan where it lay next to her.
Sergey laughed. Her eyes flashed toward him, and the blade glowed blue-white in the darkness, catching a stray gleam of moonlight from outside.
“Hey, sister, how many men have I watched you kill?” Her blue eyes narrowed, and he went on: “Four. And I’ve only known you eight days! So if I had designs on your skinny arse, I wouldn’t have left that sword within your reach, would I?”
“I listen,” Dorzha said, sitting up against the mud-brick wall of the cubicle and propping the blade across her knees.
“Also, as a boy you were more girlish than was good to see, and as a girl, you’re too much like a boy for my taste. And we’ve shared bread and salt, and fought for each other. Now, let’s get on with rescuing this ‘princess’...a friend of yours, or your sister?”
Dorzha smiled unwillingly. “Half sister. My mother was a concubine, and half-Russki. I was raised with Bortë...the Princess...and it amused the Khan to let me train as a warrior to protect her.”
The smile flashed wider: “How she me envied! We are friends, too...more or less. She is...wise. A scholar.”
Sergey grunted and tossed over the leather water-bottle. Dorzha drank deep and then stood, moving experimentally.
“How is it?” Sergey asked.
“Not too bad,” Dorzha said. “I wouldn’t want to use my bow, but I can fight; you strapped it up well. Where are the bodies?”
“Over the wall,” Sergey said. “The street-pigs will eat well tonight; or maybe the beggars.”
He rose himself, swinging his long arms and grinning. “Let’s go!”
* * * *
Now, how to kill this one?
The Tartars were holding the Princess—Sergey thought of her as looking like an icon, with stiff gold-embroidered robes—in the house of a rich Kurdish merchant who traded in silk, cotton, and slaves; from here you could look down a long narrow roadway at its side, but it was black-dark, too far from the main streets to rate gas-lamps. The building presented a thick blank wall to this street and it had a tower at the back, four stories high with narrow slit windows; one of them showed lantern-light, but everything else was dark.
“Let me have the lantern,” Dorzha whispered.
Sergey handed it over. It was hers, and a good one, made of metal and running on distilled rock-oil. What he hadn’t realized until now was that the cover would flip up and back if you squeezed the handle. That the Kalmyk woman proceeded to do; long-short-short-long-long-long. It was no code he knew, but. . .
The second time through, the window darkened...then went light again, in the same pattern, as if someone were waving a cloth in front of the light. Dorzha seemed to slump slightly, and gave a soundless sigh of relief.
“She is there,” the Kalmyk said. “And well, and says come to me. We used that signal when we wanted to steal out of the Khan’s house in Elst.”
“You two must have done wonders for your father’s peace of mind,” Sergey said, grinning in the dark.
“Tcha!” Dorzha replied. “Now, how best to go in?”
“They have patrols along the walls,” Sergey said. “Best through the entrance—if we can do it quietly.”
“I think I can. Come.”
They circled, meeting nothing more alarming than a pi-dog that growled and slunk away from sniffing at a motionless drunk, or corpse, lying in the gutter. This was a respectable neighborhood, and that meant few went out late at night. At last, they ghosted down the avenue that approached the Kurd’s mansion from the front, keeping to the deep shadows the moon cast on the right side of the street. The same moon shone full on the sentry leaning on his spear before the entrance—it glinted on the whetted metal, and on the rippling black-laquered scales of his sleeveless hauberk.
“How do we get past him?” Sergey whispered.
“Leave this to me,” Dorzha said.
“I’ll be noisy, if you’re going to cut off his—”
The Kalmyk woman gave him a scowl. Then she leaned shield and sword, bow and quiver against the wall and walked quietly toward the sentry. The man was dozing standing up, but he straightened and leveled his spear as she approached,
“Who comes to the house of Ibrahim al-Vani by night?” he growled in Tartar.
Dorzha spoke. Sergey blinked in astonishment. Apart from her accent, the Kalmyk had always spoken to him in a light pure tone much like a lad’s—it had been close enough to fool him, after all. Now . . .
“One seeking a valiant warrior,” Dorzha said, in voice that nobody would have mistaken for a male’s of any age, full of honey and musk and promise. “But I see I’ve found one.”
Sergey blinked again as the Tartar leaned his spear against the wall and the two figures merged.
An instant later, the Tartar slumped down, with only a thin brief whining sound. When he came up, Dorzha was scrubbing the back of her left hand across her lips.
“That’s a trick I don’t think I can copy,” he said, handing her the weapons she’d shed.
“Ptha!” she said—either something in Kalmyk or simple disgust. Then she put an arrow to the string. “Take his keys. I cover you.”
“Bad security,” Sergey noted, as he did, and propped the corpse artistically against the wall in the sort of slump a sleeping man would use. “They should have locked him out and kept a relief inside.”
Though the merchant probably guarded merely against theft; against stealth, not an assault—it was hard to change your habits quickly. The doors were thick oak, strapped with a web of salvaged steel fastened with thick bolts at each crosspiece, and the lock was well-oiled.
