Hawk Quest (69 page)
Ivanko invited them into his house. A stove filled the interior with smoke. Hero coughed and rubbed his eyes. ‘They’ve got it the wrong way round. The cold comes in through the chimney and the warmth goes out of the door.’
After a meal of porridge and kvas, Ivanko and his sons loaded equipment into a sturdy dugout canoe that they could convert into a sledge or cart by adding runners or wheels. They harnessed two horses and then, after a brief prayer, set off. They picked up more porters from farms along the way, and by the time they called a halt that evening there were twelve in their company, plus four more horses and two canoes. All the porters seemed delighted to be laying aside their everyday labours for the privilege of hauling three heavily laden boats through ninety miles of forest.
Next day they left the Lovat and began the portage. It wasn’t as arduous as Vallon had feared. Oleg took advantage of every little stream and lake, and there was no shortage of either. Between watercourses, Ivanko’s team fitted the boats’ hulls with runners and dragged them with the horses, the men lending their weight and singing work songs. The route was well trodden, with timber causeways laid across some of the bogs. At night the caravan camped beside stone rings blackened by the fires of previous travellers. Twice on the portage they
came across weathered wooden idols, the phallic pillars bearing a moustached face looking out to each quarter. When pressed, Oleg said that this was Perun, the thunder god. He affected not to notice the idols and seemed embarrassed when the porters bowed to them before crossing themselves. Vallon couldn’t have cared less about their idolatry. They were cheerful and willing workers, adept at everything they turned their hands to, using their axes as knife, plane, saw or hammer as the task demanded.
Ever upwards they climbed, the slope never steeper than a gentle incline, until at last they emerged from the forest into a tract of turf swamps. Vallon had the sense of standing at the centre of the world. Whichever way he looked, he was surrounded by a gently rumpled continent of golden-brown forest that faded ridge by ridge until the last ridge was indistinguishable from the sky. Oleg pointed south. ‘Dnieper,’ he said. He swung his hand towards the north-east. ‘Volga.’ Then he nodded very seriously as if confirming a truth. That the arteries of Rus issued from this heartland.
‘Hear that?’ Vallon called. ‘We’ve reached the watershed.’
‘What a relief to be on the right side of gravity,’ Richard said.
Hero laughed at Vallon’s puzzlement. ‘He means that from now on our journey leads downhill. All the way to the Black Sea.’
Around noon next day they floated off downstream into a forest untouched by man since the day of creation. Wayland lay back with Syth’s head on his arm, watching the trees sliding across the sky. They were the old familiar trees of the wildwood grown to fantastic proportions. Many of the oaks and pines steepled up for eighty feet before branching, and some of the spruces must have stood a hundred and fifty feet tall. It was a place of rot and renewal, with live trees sprouting out of dead ones, trees of two different kinds fused in spiral clinches, mouldering giants melting back into the soil. This far south the leaves were still turning and the travellers drifted under a steady pattering of yellow, red and brown that covered the stream in mosaics.
A couple of short portages brought them to a broad, slow-moving river. ‘Dvina,’ said Oleg. ‘Three days and we’ll be at the Dnieper.’
Vallon had a quiet word with Wayland while the porters readied the boats. ‘You’re wrong about Vasili. I’ve been watching Oleg like a hawk and he’s as honest as they come.’
‘Too honest. Most guides leading travellers through foreign parts would take them for every penny.’
Vallon shook his head in exasperation. ‘What was that phrase Raul used to use? “Your mind’s as twisted as a pig’s guts.” You don’t believe that the porters are part of Vasili’s plot.’
‘No. Which is why I think he’ll strike after we’ve paid them off at the Dnieper. Sir, we have to reach the river at a different spot from the one Oleg chooses.’
‘It’s not my place to tell our guide which route to take.’
At that moment Oleg turned to say it was time to board.
Most of the company dozed at their oars as they floated down through the forest. Their rest was brief. Only a few miles downstream, Oleg ordered them to row towards a tributary emerging from the left shore.
‘Where does that take us?’ Vallon asked.
‘Smolensk,’ said Oleg. ‘Two days.’
‘Lord Vasili advised us to avoid Smolensk.’
‘Yes, yes. We will reach the Dnieper below Smolensk. Tomorrow I will go ahead to hire more porters.’
That was the first fishy thing Oleg had said. Vallon kept his tone relaxed. ‘I’d rather you stayed with us.’
‘Ivanko knows the way as well as I do. Don’t worry. Tomorrow, we’ll eat supper together as usual.’
‘It seems a pity to leave this fine river so soon.’
When Oleg smiled, his eyes almost disappeared above his cheekbones. ‘Honoured sir, you can go down the Dvina all the way to the Baltic, but this is as close as it comes to the Dnieper.’
His manner was guileless. His behaviour had been exemplary. Wayland’s instinct wasn’t infallible. Two days and they would be at the Dnieper.
Oleg had turned away to oversee a rearrangement of the cargo. The porters were sharing a good-natured joke. Vallon could sense Wayland looking at him.
‘Leave the goods where they are.’
Oleg looked up. ‘Excuse me?’
‘We’re taking a different route.’
Oleg’s face wrinkled in bafflement. ‘But this is the route.’
‘I don’t like the look of it.’
Oleg assumed the manner of a man used to dealing with difficult clients. ‘I know all the portages and this is the easiest, I promise.’
‘It might be the easiest, but it isn’t the one I want to take.’
Oleg hid his annoyance. ‘There is another way, but it means rowing upriver and brings you out above Smolensk. You said you didn’t want to travel through Smolensk.’
‘I don’t. I want you to reach the Dnieper from somewhere downriver.’
Oleg stepped from foot to foot and pointed at the tributary. ‘But this is the path. There is no other.’
‘Find one.’
Oleg tugged off his cap and wrung it in his hands. ‘I don’t understand why you’re making this trouble.’
The porters and the rest of the voyagers looked on with incomprehension. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ Drogo demanded.
‘Stay out of it,’ Vallon said. He’d acted like a boor in the hope of dislodging Oleg’s mask. He hadn’t succeeded. The guide had behaved as any decent man would when confronted by a fool and an oaf. Well, it was too late to change direction.
‘If you won’t take us by another route, we’ll find our own.’
Oleg shut his eyes. He muttered to himself and then he threw up his hands. ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘Find your own way!’ He called out in Russian and stormed over to the porters, cuffing them across their backs. Clueless as to what had provoked the turnaround, they began packing up their things.
‘Leave the men,’ Vallon ordered.
Oleg turned on him. ‘They no longer work for you. There’s no point in them dragging your boats on a path that doesn’t exist.’
‘I’m the one who’s paying their wages.’
Oleg spat. ‘Keep your silver. Vasili will pay them from his own purse.’
‘Double wages for every man who stays,’ Vallon called.
Only Ivanko met his eye, shaking his shaggy head at how badly things had turned out. His team couldn’t get away fast enough. They paddled away upriver, Oleg punching the side of the canoe.
‘What in hell was that about?’ Drogo demanded.
‘Wayland thinks that Oleg was planning to lead us into an ambush.’
‘Oleg?’
‘Acting on Lord Vasili’s orders. He wants the falcons.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Vasili doesn’t have to rob us to obtain falcons.’
‘Yes, he does. We refused to sell them.’
‘They’re coming back,’ Wayland said.
Vallon watched the canoes return. Oleg stepped ashore, his face crumpled. ‘I can’t leave you lost in the forest. Lord Vasili will hold me responsible if you come to harm.’ He choked back a sob. ‘Keep the porters and pay them for the unnecessary toil.’ He thumped his chest. ‘But I will not be coming with you. What use is a guide if his clients won’t be guided?’ Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘Thank you very much. Lord Vasili entertains you like princes and you spit in his face. Thank you very much.’
He lurched away with Ivanko trying to soothe him. His anguish was so genuine that Vallon came close to running after him and begging his forgiveness.
‘Marvellous,’ Drogo snorted. ‘Now we have the worst of all worlds. If Oleg did plan to betray us, he’ll get to Smolensk long before we reach the Dnieper.’
Drogo was right. The only way to make sure was to murder the guide. The idea was so repugnant that Vallon put it out of mind immediately. The falconer had got it wrong, and that was that.
Not a word passed the porters’ lips as they travelled down the Dvina. After about ten miles they rowed into another tributary. Vallon looked at the stream winding out of the forest. For all he knew, it would bring them to the same place Oleg had been making for. Well, the choice was made. He nodded at Ivanko. Mute as beasts, the porters led the passage through the forest.
It was a hellish struggle. Every few yards they found the stream blocked by beaver dams and fallen trees, forcing them to haul the boats onto the banks and manhandle them around the obstacles. The problem was that the banks themselves were choked with dead trees. In some spots, a tree in falling had dragged others down with it, four or five at a time, sometimes flattening them, in places leaving them suspended in a drunken huddle. At each hurdle, they had to unhitch the horses, empty the boats and then lift and slide them across the tree trunk. Only to repeat the process a few yards further on.
They were at this toil until darkness and Vallon guessed that they hadn’t covered more than two miles. That night the porters ate around their own fire and refused the mead that Vallon sent them.
In the cold light of dawn they doddered to their feet and stood wincing and rolling the stiffness out of their joints. They plugged on. Unhitch, lift, push. Hitch, drag, unhitch, lift … At this rate, Vallon calculated, it would take them a fortnight to reach the Dnieper.
Around noon the light turned ashen and the air grew frowzy. The whole forest seemed to take an enormous sighing breath and billows of leaves streamed from the trees. The porters were terrified of the oncoming storm and dragged their canoes onto land, entreating God’s mercy and Perun’s protection. Darkness veiled the sky. The storm when it broke burst overhead with a long sizzle of lightning that seemed to light up the inside of Vallon’s skull. Thunder boomed and a mighty wind tore through the forest. Trees a hundred feet tall writhed as if they were saplings. From all around came the tearing groans of falling timber. A lightning bolt blasted a nearby pine, splitting it from crown to roots, hurling ten-foot splinters more than a hundred feet. Rain slashed down. Pagans and Christians alike crouched with their hands over their heads. Like apes.
The storm passed. The sun broke through. The voyagers took their hands off their heads and grinned weakly at each other. Every tree had been stripped of its leaves, each twig tipped with liquid crystal. Nobody had been injured. In fact the storm cleared the festering atmosphere and that night travellers and porters again ate around a communal fire. Vallon questioned Ivanko about the route and persuaded him to deviate from it so that they would strike the Dnieper at a spot never used on a regular portage. They clinched the arrangement with a handshake, silver transferring from palm to palm.
At sunrise the company found their way decked with cobwebs slung like silken canopies between the trees. The porters left their canoes behind and struck out overland, carrying the upturned boats on their shoulders. Their legs were caving in beneath them when they straggled at last out of the forest. Below them a wild meadow slanted down to a wide river curving away in a shining semi-circle. On the opposite shore unbroken forest sloped up from limestone bluffs.
Ivanko pointed like a prophet. ‘Dnieper!’
Hero and Richard capered and even Vallon grinned and back-slapped his companions. But it was too soon to be certain that they were in the clear. Bends upriver and down restricted his view to no more than a couple of miles.
He pointed upstream. ‘How far is Smolensk? How long would it take a boat to reach us?’
Ivanko pondered. ‘One long day, maybe two.’
‘And from the spot where Oleg wanted you to take us?’
‘Half a day.’
Uncomfortably close. Vallon studied the terrain. A warm breeze blowing from the river tousled the grass. A brown bear and her two cubs browsed near the river. When Wayland clapped, she rose on her hind legs, peering myopically in their direction, then dropped to all fours and lumbered away like a giant furry inchworm with the cubs gambolling in her wake. On the other side of the river, a herd of deer popped into focus. They watched the intruders as though paralysed, then melted away into the trees.
‘Nobody’s been near this place in days,’ Wayland said.
Vallon glanced behind him. ‘It will take time to prepare the boats. Stay here and watch our backs until you hear the signal.’
‘No one’s following us.’
‘And no one’s waiting for us. You’re the one who started this, so let’s not relax our guard. You know the signals. One long blast of the horn means we’re leaving. Three short blasts and we’ve run into trouble.’
A more tranquil spot would have been hard to imagine. Here in its upper reaches the Dnieper was less than two hundred yards wide, sliding down a long pool before spilling away in a series of sweet-sounding rills. Shoals of minnows darted in the shallows. Blue and yellow dragonflies hawked over the surface. At the tail of the pool was a ford, its banks churned up by cattle of extraordinary size. They’d
crossed recently and if their spoor could be used as a yardstick, their herdsmen must have stood ten feet tall. Vallon could place his entire foot in one half of the cloven prints.