The Ice Queen (24 page)

Some hours later, after I'd slept a little and Kuchug had gently washed my wounds and doctored them with some concoction of his, Yaroslav convened his war council. We met in the church, where Eustaxi lay, and Kuchug and I reported to the assembly all that we had seen. I couldn't avoid mention of the sad state of the prisoners and the great number of dead.

“And my son?” the prince asked, tight-throated with dread.

“We saw nothing of him. I'm sorry. But many may have gotten to safety inside the citadel.”

“Yes, yes, of course, of course they may.” How desperately he wanted to believe it.

“The main thing,” I said, “is that the Pechenegs are eating through the countryside like a plague of locusts, and what they don't eat they burn. Unless we drive them off soon, Kiev will be a city of corpses.”

“Then there's nothing more to say,” said Harald, “we attack at once.”

“As Mstislav did?” Eilif laughed harshly. “We all see what that came to. Yaroslav Vladimirovich, don't listen to these two crack-brained children. Take the advice of seasoned men. It's plain that we can do nothing until Sudislav and the other princes arrive.”

Harald turned on them hotly, “Prince, give no ear to cowards! Sudislav might be as much as ten days behind us. As for the other two, we don't know if the couriers we sent even got through. Meanwhile our rations are nearly gone. In another day we'll all be starving. No. We must raise the siege now, and do it in a way that will put the fear of God into these savages for years to come.”

“Of course,” sneered Eilif, “you'll tell us how you plan to do that.”

“With pleasure, Eilif. With the help of certain allies of ours, seven hundred brave druzhiniks will be as good as seven thousand. Now, attend all of you to my plan—” (Not for the last time did Harald lay claim to a stratagem of mine.) When he was done, and his words had been translated for those Rus and Slavs who spoke no Norse, there were grunts of satisfaction around the room. The idea pleased them.

Eilif, shamed and desperate, swore, by Christ, that neither he nor a single one of his Swedes would waste their lives in this folly!

“In that case Eilif Ragnvaldsson,” cried Yaroslav in a fury, “I strip you of your rank, in God's name I do, and—and I order you from my sight!”

Shocked silence.

What an effect this bracing military air was having on our prince. At home, under his wife's withering glance, he would never have dared.

Eilif knew that too. “You what? Strip me of my rank? Why you pathetic, weak-minded, old cripple, the princess will have the balls off you for this—I mean if you've got any …”

Harald sent him staggering across the aisle with a single blow to the jaw. As he rose on wobbly legs and drew his sword, two of his own men pinioned his arms and dragged him, choking with rage, from the church.

Of course, it was easy to say later that we should have killed him then, when we had the chance. The next morning he was nowhere to be found within the walls of Vyshgorod.

Now there followed an anxious time of waiting.

Regularly each morning a band of Pechenegs came screaming over the plain, to ride round and round our walls until they tired of launching arrows and insults. During these assaults only Eustaxi's men were allowed to show themselves on the ramparts, while the rest of us, by Harald's order, crouched out of sight.

We were hungry all the time now. Water from a well within the fort was the only thing we had in abundance. We were reduced to eating the last of the cats and dogs and all but two of the remaining horses. Inside Kiev, I kept reminding myself, it must be even worse.

A day, a night, another day crept by, while we stewed and fretted. Harald and Yaroslav began to give me searching looks. Had I led them into making fools of themselves? I put on a bold face, but doubt gnawed at me. Had Feodosy and his crew of lunatics sunk back into their pious torpor as soon as I departed?

But the next night—our fifth in Vyshgorod—brought a messenger to say that all was in readiness. Yaroslav ordered us all on our knees while he thanked Christ and a host of saints for near an hour. Kuchug and I slipped away unnoticed and spent the time more profitably readying our gear.

Finally, our little army, with a surge of battle joy that made us forget our empty bellies, moved to attack.

Harald and Yaroslav set out together at the head of the Norwegians and the bravest of the Rus warriors. They would be the spearhead, aimed straight at Tyrakh Khan's silken tent.

The Swedes, Eilif's former men, were now commanded by a certain Helgi Whale-Belly, a druzhinik they'd elected from among themselves. He was ordered to lead his men around to the west of the city and, as soon as he heard the sound of battle on his left, to attack the camp at its farther end, free the prisoners who were penned up there, scatter the horses, and fight his way to us. The Swedes received these orders in silence.

Harald had pleaded with Yaroslav to stay back, but the prince would not be dissuaded from leading the main thrust. He would leave to no other's hands, he swore, the sacred duty of cutting his poor brother's bonds. Among his motives was no doubt an element of sweet revenge—that brawny, boastful Mstislav, who had bullied him since childhood, should have to owe his life to his despised and crippled brother.

Wrapping our weapons in our cloaks for silence, we advanced along the river bank and through the ruins of the podol to that point where the ground begins to rise. We saw no Pecheneg pickets anywhere; weeks of drinking and gorging had taken its toll of discipline.

The prince, in spite of his age and his club foot, drove himself to keep pace with Harald's long strides. But what Yaroslav could do, Einar Tree-Foot could not. The hardships of the past few days had been too great for his already failing strength; it was impossible that he could hobble on his crutch from Vyshgorod to Kiev.

“We leave this place in the hands of a true and tested warrior, Tree-Foot,” I had told him, trying not to let pity show in my voice. “If we fail, you'll organize the defense of Vyshgorod.”

“Aye,” he answered. There was so much desolation in that single word.

It was near dawn by the time we were in position—time for me, Kuchug, and the monk who had brought us Feodosy's message to slip into the river. Wading armpit deep through the icy water, we watched for the glimmer of a candle flame on the shadowy face of the bluff. Feodosy had said there was a cave mouth there, about half the way up, from which the monks were accustomed to lower a bucket to haul up their drinking water.

The signal light winked on and off. We reached the spot and found a knotted rope waiting for us. Hand over hand, with all our paraphernalia tied to our backs, we climbed the bluff.

Feodosy, who met us at the top, betrayed momentary alarm at the sight of Kuchug in his barbarous costume. Then, with unmistakable pride, the abbot showed us what his people had accomplished in this short time—a prodigy of digging—incredible, considering the frailty of their undernourished bodies, and the fact that they only dared work during the daytime when sounds underfoot would go unnoticed amid the bustle of the camp. These monks had the instincts of moles. Apart from psalm-singing, excavation was their chief joy. Now they had pushed their tunnels still farther and in dozens of places dug narrow shafts upwards to within a foot of the surface.

Undoing our packs, we distributed amongst them the pots and pans that we'd collected from all the kitchens of Vyshgorod, the hunting horns, the tubes of birch bark, and lastly Yaroslav's own brazen war trumpet, freshly blessed and sprinkled with holy water. With just such an instrument (I now knew from inquiring of the prince) had that Hebrew
viking Joshua brought down the walls of Jericho. The camp of Tyrakh Khan had no stone walls to fall, yet we hoped to rival his feat nonetheless.

“By the way, Feodosy,” I asked, “has a man been to visit you anytime in the past three days—a Swede, about thirty, thick featured, with his hair in his eyes?”

“We have seen no such person.”

Where in Hel's Hall could he be? My greatest fear was that, knowing our plan, Eilif would find some way to make it fail.

The monks, with all their noise-making gear, went to their stations. Kuchug crept out of the cave at the bottom of the little ravine, scrambled noiselessly up the side, and strolled as slow and easy as you please toward the khan's tent. I climbed up behind him just far enough to see him go. This was his own idea—to stand beside his master from the first moment of the attack and defend him with his life until we reached them.

The starry sky was fading into grey. Somewhere a horse snorted and shook its head. Here and there a sleeping body stirred. Drawing my head down, I waited the few moments it would take Kuchug to reach his destination; then I put Yaroslav's trumpet to my lips.

Picture a field of slumbering men flying straight into the air—for that is what happened when the trumpet's bray shattered the silence and was followed next moment by the clashing of pots, the squeal of hunting horns, and the most frightful hooing and wooing beneath their feet. Ghosts, trolls—whatever it is that a Pecheneg fears—by this they thought themselves assailed. There was instantaneous panic.

“God and Saint George!” rang Yaroslav's voice in the distance. The sun, just rising, picked out his trident and Harald's raven as they gained the high ground and soared above the heads of the terrified Pechenegs. On the heels of their standard-bearers came the two leaders themselves and all their Rus and Norwegian fighters deployed in the ‘swine array'—the wedge-shaped semblance of a pig, with overlapping shields for the hide and spears for the bristles.

Slinging the trumpet over my back, I boosted myself out of the ravine and dashed after Kuchug. All around me was indescribable confusion. Men ran and stumbled this way and that, not knowing where to turn, while their frightened animals reared and plunged.

I found Kuchug, true to his word, standing guard over his master—all alone, for the khan's guards had fled. A moment later Harald and Yaroslav
came pounding up. While the druzhiniks formed a wall of spears around the tent, Harald and I slashed through the white silk and stepped inside.

We found the great khan, abandoned even by his women, crouching naked on the floor and moaning with terror. By pure good luck one of the underground shafts from which the ghostly sounds issued was exactly beneath his feet.

Now, part of my plan was to take Tyrakh prisoner, if we were lucky enough to catch him, for he would be more useful to us alive than dead. I imagined it would be a simple matter to truss up a ninety year old scarecrow and throw him over my shoulder. No one had bothered to tell me that Tyrakh Khan weighed close to three hundred pounds. His belly was huge, his breasts pendulous like a woman's, his hairless chins quivered.

As soon as he saw us, I think he realized that he was the victim of some kind of trick and that it was only the Rus, after all, that he had to deal with. For he lumbered to his feet and, unarmed as he was, flung himself at us.

Ramming his bald head into the pit of Harald's stomach, he tossed him as a bull tosses a terrier. This to Harald the giant! As he charged through the tent flap I leapt on his back, locked my arms around his fat neck and held on for dear life. It took five of us, finally, to bring him down. Meanwhile some of our men caught two loose ponies by their bridles, threw saddles on them, and, with lassos tied the Khan's bulbous ankles to the two inside stirrups; thus he lay on his back with his legs in the air between the horses.

By now, Mstislav was on his feet, supported by Kuchug and Yaroslav, each under one of his stiffened arms. The Wild Bison of Chernigov gazed dumbly at his brother as though at an angel just flown down from the sky. All along the parapet of Kiev's citadel figures appeared, pointing to us and cheering.

But our victory was still far from sure. We had gotten in—now we must get out. The ghostly noises were growing fainter as the monks, for whom trumpeting and screaming were not regular pastimes, began to tire. At the same time, the Pechenegs were already somewhat recovered from the first shock. Even worse, those at the western end of camp, who, being beyond reach of the monks' tunnels, had heard no ghostly sounds at all, were streaming in our direction to see what all the commotion was about.

And the Swedes who should have taken them in the flank and scattered them? We listened in vain for their war-cries.

“Close ranks around the prince!” shouted Harald. “Fall back to the podol.”

But it was a steep drop down to the level of the riverside and the enemy was pressing us hard. By this time, some of them had gotten mounted and were putting their bows to use. Their volleys rained down on us, splintering our shields and rattling on our helmets. It was only because I'd had the foresight to put on three mail shirts that I was not killed half a dozen times.

Brave Kuchug was not so lucky. An arrow drove through his teeth and came out at the base of his skull with a gush of blood. As he fell, Mstislav sagged and Yaroslav had to support his brother's whole weight alone. With one arm around his thick waist he struggled to keep him on his feet while he held his shield over both their heads. Doggedly he went on, asking no help of anyone, until a Rus druzhinik, seeing him stumble, ran to help him.

By now, we had jumped, slid, and tumbled down to the riverbank, but in the process our solid shield-wall was broken up, leaving gaps where the enemy could rush in. Where I was, a band of them, desperate to rescue their khan, charged into us swinging sabers and maces. At the cost of many brave men's lives we beat them back. But another band, mounted on their sure-footed ponies, had taken a different way down, slipped around our right flank, and now barred our way to the citadel. We were hemmed in right, left, and front, with our backs to the river. Where were the shit-eating Swedes!

Then, hearing a rasping cry behind me, I looked around to see Einar Tree-Foot galloping towards us along the river's edge on a nag that was as thin and mangy as himself. His sword was in his hand, the reins were in his mouth, on his legless side the empty stirrup danced on the end of its leather.