The Ice Queen (22 page)

Turning back to Eustaxi, Yaroslav said gravely, “Your father's treachery has cost him dear and, if you should die, dearer still. I only pray it does not cost my son's life as well. Now, nephew, as soon as it's dark you will send gallopers to the princes of Izyaslavl and Volhynsk with orders from me to come at once with all their mounted men and as much food as they can carry. And you may as well know that Prince Sudislav of Pskov is on his way here too. From being your father's private adventure this will become such a gathering of brothers as hasn't been seen since our sainted father was alive. That's where all your guile has gotten you.”

Eustaxi turned his face away in shame.

For the rest of the day we applied ourselves to the business of scuttling the ships. There was plenty of grumbling from the men—almost amounting to mutiny—but Yaroslav, backed up by Harald, made himself obeyed.

By sundown we carried up to the fort our last remaining sacks of oatmeal, rye, and beans, which Yaroslav insisted on sharing with the local folk and Eustaxi's men, although that left us with only two days' supply at quarter-rations for ourselves. Finally, we had to squeeze our seven hundred men into this tiny place that was already near bursting. Men who were there will tell you that we slept standing up; they hardly exaggerate. Life within these walls would, in a very few days, sink from bad to unbearable; we knew we had no time to waste.

At dusk, the prince, with Harald and some others of us, stood on the parapet looking south toward the beleaguered citadel of Kiev, which we could just make out perched on its three hills, a smudge on the horizon. Harald asked Yaroslav how close one might creep to the enemy's camp without danger of being seen. “For I aim to scout them myself tonight,” he said.

“But they have the eyes of lynxes,” Yaroslav turned an anxious face toward him. “They can spot a man creeping through the grass two versts away. What chance has a giant like you to elude them? I beg you not to risk it. We need you—I need you—too badly.”

Harald started to protest when an unfamiliar voice spoke behind us. “There might be a way for a brave man.”

We spun around to discover that a Pecheneg warrior had crept up behind us, close enough to touch us, without making the slightest sound. Like all that race, he was short in the legs, his drooping moustache and long hair were glossy black, and his brown high-cheekboned face was scarred with frostbite.

“You remember Kuchug?” He doffed his hat and made a slight bow toward Yaroslav.

“Mstislav's bodyguard, of course!” said the prince. “You remember him, don't you, Harald?”

Harald remembered him all right, and did not look particularly pleased to see him. Kuchug, you recall, had come close to slicing off his head that night when he lost the wrestling match with Mstislav and attacked him with a knife.

“What way, man?” asked Yaroslav, speaking Slavonic, the language which Kuchug had used.

“As my prisoner, prince. Pechenegs often catch Rus hiding in the woods. If they're worth ransoming, they take them back to camp. You, gospodin,”—he spoke to Harald while Yaroslav translated into Norse—“Tear your clothes, rub dirt on your face, I'll cut you a little bit, tie you to my horse's tail, drag you through camp. With God's help we may find Prince Mstislav and make a plan to rescue him. Kuchug is ashamed—he got separated from his master in the rout. Now Kuchug swears by the Blessed Virgin Mary to save him or die.”

All this was said without a flicker of emotion in those piercing black eyes of his.

(Kuchug was a Christman. His father, as he later told me, had been one of a handful of Pechenegs who were converted to Christianity by one Bruno von Querfurt, a missionary monk. Bruno had proselytized among the savages twenty years before, until he provoked the khan's anger and was lucky to get away with his life. After this, most of his converts slid back. Those few who didn't were driven out by their fellow-tribesmen.
Kuchug, then a boy of fifteen or so, went with his parents to the court of Vladimir, where he grew up a Christman. After the Grand Prince's death he joined Mstislav's druzhina.)

We adopted Kuchug's plan with one difference. It was perfectly obvious that Harald couldn't go. His outlandish size, for one thing, would have drawn attention. For another, as Yaroslav kept insisting, we needed Harald alive—and the likelihood of anyone returning alive from this escapade was not something you would bet your last grivna on.

So they picked me.

Next morning's dawn found me stumbling behind Kuchug's horse, my clothes in shreds, my arms and chest bleeding from several carefully administered gashes, and my hands tied together with a bowstring.

Though he had lived among the Kievan Rus for more than half his life, Kuchug was proud of his Pecheneg blood and always dressed in the style of his people. He wore a tall fur cap, a caftan of green wool that reached nearly to the ankles, and a pair of thick-soled felt boots. Hanging from his belt on the right side was a quiver; on the left, his saber and his bow, in a case of tooled leather.

Leaving Vyshgorod, we struck south-west for about five versts, then turned eastward so as to meet the river again just north of the city. Along the way, we passed fields of rye, millet, and hay, in which peasants reaped while mounted Pechenegs trotted up and down, striking out with their riding quirts at any who were not brisk enough. In other fields, however, they had simply turned their horses loose to graze and trample the grain. We saw orchards too, that had once borne apples, pears, and cherries—all of them burnt black, like the ones we had passed up-river. Despite this, it was obvious that there was enough grain and pasturage here to feed the eight hordes for weeks while they starved the city into submission. The nomads had no notion of catapults, battering rams, or scaling ladders. If they could not burn the place down with fire arrows, then they were content to wait and let hunger do the job.

Squadrons of Pecheneg cavalry, always on the move, kept the whole citadel under observation, so that escape was impossible, while the defenders had to rush continually from place to place to guard against sudden attack. As we came within view of the city, a war party was assaulting a stretch of wooden wall, trying to set it afire by dragging bundles of burning faggots up to the foot of it, while the defenders
fought back with arrows, stones, pots of boiling water, and quicklime.

Our way took us through the ruins of what had been the podol, or merchants' quarter, of the town. Like the Market Side at Novgorod, it had no wall, and its inhabitants in time of danger were expected to take shelter within the citadel. But this time the attack had been too sudden. Every shop-house was razed to the ground and the wreckage of their contents lay everywhere. Amidst the debris were many bodies—some mere skeletons, others with tatters of flesh still clinging to the bone. Perhaps these had been tortured longer before being allowed to die—tortured in full view of the citadel, of course, where their comrades could see them and hear their screams. Was one of those mutilated remnants young Volodya?

Beyond the podol, the ground rose steeply to a flat wooded hill-top south of the citadel, where the Pechenegs had their encampment. Kuchug had already made several nighttime sorties to steal a little food or an unguarded horse, but he hadn't dared penetrate to the center of the camp as we now proposed to do.

As we approached, he turned in his saddle, screamed something at me in his native gibberish, and, touching his riding quirt to his horse's flank, jerked me off my feet and dragged me up the slope over sharp stones and brambles.

Just when I'd eaten as much dust as I could stomach, he reined up and dismounted, and, cutting me loose, slashed me across the back with his quirt and kicked me for good measure.

“Dammit not so hard!” I burst out in Slavonic.

Ignoring my cry (for a true steppe-dweller would not have known a word of that language), he pointed to a scrawny poplar tree nearby and, handing me a hatchet that hung from his saddle-bow, indicated that I should cut it down for firewood.

While I chopped, he hobbled and unsaddled his mare and sat down on the sheepskin-covered saddle to watch me. Everywhere around us Pechenegs swarmed. They had made a great haul of loot from the captured merchant boats; they swaggered about with flagons of Greek wine to their lips and bolts of silk wrapped around them and trailing in the dirt. By every campfire, too, were heaps of other loot and weeping women, bruised and disheveled.

Being a fast riding war band, these Pechenegs had left their lumbering ox-drawn tents far behind them on the steppe. There were, however, several
luxurious tents of silk which must house the lesser khans and their master, Tyrakh. His was plainly the large white one, visible from where we were, beside whose entrance his horse-tail standard was fixed in the ground.

And tethered by a lasso to that standard-pole crouched the unmistakable figure of Mstislav: bloody, filthy, naked, and still supporting the galling yoke on his neck. Every Pecheneg who passed by either kicked him, struck him in the face with his quirt, or spat on him. To these injuries he made so little answer that I feared he must be near death. Kuchug walked past him, hoping to catch his eye and whisper a word of courage, but though the eyes were partly open, they gave no sign of awareness. So as not to betray himself, the faithful druzhinik was forced to spit upon his master as the others did.

Only once during the hours that I watched him did someone come and push a bowl of something in his face—just enough nourishment, I guessed, to keep him alive for more days of fun.

As for the other captives, they were imprisoned in a large pen—hundreds of naked bodies heaped one atop the other, the ones on the bottom surely dead already, and the others not far from it.

I was just trimming the limbs from the poplar tree when a young Pecheneg in a make-shift coat of yellow silk, clutching a flagon of wine in one hand and his quirt in the other, sauntered up to Kuchug and, pointing the quirt at me, screamed something at him. Instantly a circle of bystanders formed around the two men, all shouting at once and gesticulating, with many curious stares directed at me.

Presently, over comes Yellow Coat to me, cuts me across the knuckles with his quirt, making me drop the hatchet, and almost in the same motion gives me a blow across the face. Then here comes Kuchug, with a look of fury, right behind him, with his own quirt upraised. If I expected him to apply it to my attacker, I was disappointed. He struck me himself, every bit as hard as Yellow Coat. After that they took turns aiming insults at each other and blows at me, encouraged by the shouts of the bystanders. If only, I lamented, Harald had gone on this mission as originally intended; the thought of him being horse-whipped was so very appealing.

Just as I was thinking that I'd had enough of this and was wondering whether to grab for the hatchet or make a dash for the river, Yellow Coat throws down his quirt and draws his saber. I gave myself up for dead then, but I'd forgotten Kuchug's swift hand. In less time than it takes to
tell it, Yellow Coat was flopping like a fish on the ground, his right arm at some distance from the rest of him. The bystanders slapped their thighs, stamped on their hats, and roared with laughter. Kuchug put an end to their fun with a thrust through the fellow's heart.

As the laughter subsided, there arrived on the scene an important personage—a khan perhaps, to judge from his fine coat of scale armor, jeweled sword belt, and spiked helmet. He sent the onlookers scurrying with a wave of the arm and turned on Kuchug.

Black Odin, thought I, here's an end to both of us! He's bound to discover that Kuchug has no friends nor kinsmen here and belongs to no horde.

But that wasn't what happened at all. After a few words between them, Spiked Helmet comes over to have a look at me, prods Yellow Coat with the toe of his boot, yawns and strolls off.

Afterward, when we were safely away, I learned from Kuchug what it had all been about. Yellow Coat, he explained, had tried to claim me as one of his own slaves and demanded that Kuchug give him up.

“Nobody minded your killing him?”

“Oh, I think nobody liked that fellow anyway, always picking fights.”

“And the khan, or whatever he was, didn't ask who you were?”

“I told him a story,” he shrugged. “A lot of these Pecheneg are not so very smart; it comes of drinking too much horse's blood.”

But that was later.

As Spiked Helmet departed, Kuchug screamed and gestured to me that I was to drag the body of Yellow Coat by its heels to the bluff that overlooked the river and fling it down. He himself marched along beside me, swinging his arms and strutting like a bantam rooster—and not omitting to flick me with his quirt every few steps.

“Enjoying yourself, aren't you, you bastard,” I swore at him under my breath.

Pechenegs we passed grinned and saluted him, but he, with his chin tilted to the sky, paid them no attention. I, however, with my eyes on the ground, noticed something along the way that intrigued me very much and occupied my thoughts for the rest of the day.