Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 13

  The Grand Master strode towards her, flanked by the two mailed sergeants who had accompanied him since the witch and the inquisitors made their separate ways to Castle Thorn. Both soldiers laid hands to their sword-hilts, and von Salza needed only to say the word.

  Baba Yaga watched them approach without concern, smiling an unpleasant smile, plainly confident either in her own powers or in her importance to his plan for Russia. One at least was correct. Hermann von Salza stopped in his tracks and waved the sergeants back as a huntsman might leash in his dogs.

  “You task me, witch-woman,” he said. “You test my limits of endurance.” One finger jabbed at her as though it was a spear-blade. “Believe me, if you push me too far you won’t live to benefit from the knowledge!”

  “Threatening a defenceless grandmother with armed guards, Master von Salza? So this is how the Knights of the Teutonic Order prove their courage. I’d often wondered.”

  Von Salza dismissed his guards back to the doorway with a curt gesture, out of earshot – and out of reach of the temptation to let them wipe that sneer from Baba Yaga’s face with a hard-swung blade of God’s good steel. The witch-hag watched them go, then stared coolly at von Salza.

  “No need for those two apes anyway. I see you carry a blade yourself, and wear armour under your fine robes. You never did that before. Do I frighten you so much?”

  “I’m a knight and a Grand Master of knights. Wearing mail should come as no surprise.” Von Salza knew the excuse was a feeble one, but he would lose all hope of Heaven and be damned to Hell before he would admit to this wrinkled, unwashed and louse-ridden hag that yes indeed, she frightened him, as Salah eh-Din Yusuf and all the hosts of Islam ranked in battle array had never done. He looked more carefully at the book in Baba Yaga’s lap and frowned.

  “What’s that?” The tooled-leather binding had been gouged in many places, and scorched along the gouges as though the entire book had been raked with spikes of red-hot metal. “It didn’t come from any shelf in this library.” Von Salza was certain of that. It wasn’t a book he would forget.

  “No indeed.” Baba Yaga cuddled the heavy volume to her shrivelled breasts as if it was a child. “It’s mine. Liber Tenebrae. I found it. One of the other things I gain from this enterprise besides my revenge on the Khorlovtsy.”

  “The Book of Shadows. A book of sorcery, then. I should have realized. Stolen, no doubt, and kept from me. That was no part of the bargain you made.”

  “Not made with you at least, Grand Master Hermann von Salza. With a man more flexible and practical about getting what he wants. Have your Constable of Livonia tell you all about the rest of it.”

  “Dieter Balke has gone back to Russia, as you well know. And he told me nothing before he left.” Balke had indeed said nothing, which was entirely in keeping with his habit of obsessive secrecy. He was one of the few knights of the Order who had mastered the language enough to pass himself off as Russian, always claiming to be from a different city where they spoke with a different accent.

  “As I well know,” echoed Baba Yaga smugly. “You should have asked him. Some of the arrangements made on your behalf, dear von Salza, aren’t confessed as freely as you might think. Because what you don’t know you can deny knowing. All the sins your loyal friends commit for you so you can keep your innocence, what there is of it.” She opened the book again and began to leaf through its pages, then paused to glance up at von Salza with an arch, sly lifting of her straggly white eyebrows. “Although to an untutored and ignorant old peasant woman—”

  “Who can speak perfect German!”

  “Who can do a great deal more than you can imagine, Hermann von Salza. That includes seeing with these weak and ancient eyes. And what they see, Holy Grand Master of the Holy Teutonic Order, is a man who might well want this little sweetmeat for himself.” She patted the book, then picked a bit of charred leather from its cover with a crooked, dirty fingernail.

  Von Salza stared at her, his own eyes narrowing. He walked to the window to look out at the winter landscape where snow fell from a dead grey sky. He walked to the charcoal brazier that kept chill from the room and pulled off his white leather gloves to warm his hands. Then he dismissed the two sergeants of his guard beyond the library door – dismissed them twice, when they hesitated the first time and gazed uneasily at Baba Yaga – and waited until it had closed behind them before sauntering back to where the ancient hag was watching him, with an expression of amusement on her face among the warts and the dirt and the wrinkles.

  “I might consider it, witch-woman,” he said slowly. “What sort of price had you in mine? Gold? Power?”

  “I have small need of gold, von Salza, and as for power, I already have that in plenty. What else can you offer?” Baba Yaga shifted her scrawny legs under her dirty peasant skirt and apron in so blatant an attempt to seem seductive that Hermann von Salza would have laughed in her face, had he not found both the proposal and the prospect totally revolting.

  “There are some things with prices higher than a self-respecting person would even consider.” He managed to keep the twist of revulsion from his mouth and voice, though his fingers tightened on the hilt of his long dagger against the chance that Baba Yaga would take offence. Instead she cackled at him.

  “But you’d order Dieter Balke to pay that price in your stead if you weren’t so wary of how he would react, eh?” She cracked two errant lice with her thumbnail, then tugged her skirt back down over the expanse of bony, flea-pocked skin that passed for her shins, straightening its dingy fabric with as much care as if it had been the finest Moorish satin. “Evidently you Germans have never heard of the stories where if a brave man dares to sleep with an ugly hag, he awakes beside the beautiful maiden who was under an enchantment to cheat her of high rank and a rich inheritance.”

  “That must be a strong enchantment indeed,” von Salza said, eyes and nose assailed by the signs of slovenly poverty. Even the Lazar Knights of Jerusalem, afflicted by God with the grim disease of leprosy, didn’t look and smell so vile. He put his head on one side and eyed Baba Yaga in much the same way as he might have studied a loathsome insect from underneath a stone, and then, scarcely believing the possibility in one so hideous: “Not you, surely?”

  “Of course not.” Baba Yaga fluttered her gummy eyelids at the Grand Master and cackled, and in that grating laughter von Salza heard for the first time what real wickedness could sound like. “But you were beginning to wonder. And there have always been the greedy or the goatish ones who did more than wonder… They were disappointed, poor boys.” She grinned at him and ran the tip of her tongue in a mock-erotic lick across the ragged spikes of iron that did duty as her teeth. “But not disappointing. Very toothsome lads they were, one and all.”

  Von Salza clutched with both hands at the collar of the hauberk he wore beneath his gardcorps mantle as though it was suddenly too tight and throttling him. It was the best way to keep those same hands from reaching out to throttle her instead. His fingers flexed against the leather jerkin that made a soft lining for the shirt of hard iron rings, squeezing until the bones of his knuckles showed white through the tightly drawn tanned skin, and his breathing was shallow and rapid by the time he trusted himself to speak.

  “You’re defying me. And trying to defile me!” Baba Yaga looked him up and down, and all of the evil amusement went from her face, leaving it as emotionlessly ugly as a stone gargoyle.

  “Oh no, von Salza,” she said. There was no smugness in her voice now, no satisfaction, just the flat statement of fact. “Not trying. No need to do again what’s been done already. You call me evil and yourself good, but you use me to gain your ends just as I use you. Where does the difference lie, Grand Master? Perhaps you might tell me, from the store of your great wisdom, because this poor stupid old peasant woman can’t see it for herself…”

  Hermann von Salza was a just and fair-minded man, though justice could be ignored when it had to be. The old witch spoke truth, and if it was sp
oken in coarse terms, what else could a knight and nobleman expect from a dirty foreign vassal who probably couldn’t even spell ‘manners’, never mind know what they were? That reasoning kept his hands and his dagger from Baba Yaga’s throat until he had fought himself calm again, and that fight was one of the hardest things he had done all day.

  “Guards, to me!” the Grand Master said sharply, not a shout but loud enough. The sergeants in the corridor outside had been waiting for just such a command. They flung both doors wide open and came through at a dead run with their swords drawn for immediate use. In the instant before he brought them to a skidding halt with one upraised hand, von Salza was rewarded by a gratifying expression of stark fear on Baba Yaga’s face. It suggested that for all her bravado and all her vaunted skill at sorcery, if she was taken unawares she might be as vulnerable to a blade as anyone else.

  “Don’t be frightened.” He leaned as close into her stench as his fastidious nostrils would allow, his voice deceptively gentle. “They’re here to protect you, not me. Otherwise if you try my patience again, I might kill you with my own hands. And all my plans would be wasted.” Von Salza straightened up, walked a little distance away from Baba Yaga and breathed deeply of the clean air again. With his composure restored, he glanced at her over his shoulder. The witch seemed appropriately chastened; at least there were no more word-games or misplaced coquettish looks.

  “Good. It seems I’ve made myself clear. Now, what about the other details of the bargain? The attention of your sending was concentrated solely on Khorlov. It’s high time you turned attention to Novgorod, Kiev and the rest.”

  “Why?” Her question sounded more surprised than insolent.

  “Because I command it. That should be enough.”

  “More than enough; far too much.” Baba Yaga uncurled herself from the seat and waved one dismissive hand at the very idea. “No Prince of the Rus has much love for any other, von Salza, but they do occasionally talk to one another, even if only through ambassadors sent between the cities to avoid unnecessary wars. A better arrangement than your military Orders of chivalry, I know enough about the Templars and the Hospitallers for that.”

  “And so…?”

  “So if all the Princes can complain of trouble from the same sorcerous occurrence, who can they blame? But if only one has suffered, who will he not blame? Those accused will deny all knowledge, but denials are expected from the guilty. So the Tsar of Khorlov will lash out blindly and be punished by the conquest of his lands and the extirpation of his line. The other Princes will squabble over that conquest and make war on each other, so they’ll be weakened before you send your knights across the border. And I will have had my revenge.”

  “Very satisfying, no doubt,” said von Salza, clapping his hands in sardonic applause. “And what happens if something goes wrong?”

  “Ask Dieter Balke. He’s already taking steps to prevent it. The Constable and I understand one another in a way that you do not, Grand Master. He told me where he was going, and what he intends to do when he gets there. Aleksandr Khorlovskiy and Yuriy of Kiev have never been friendly. They’ll soon become something much worse.” The witch sat down again and tucked her legs beneath her, then pointedly opened her book and began to study it. “Now go away. I want to read in peace.”

  “Are you giving me an order, hag?” Hermann von Salza was almost amused by her impudence. “I warned you not to do that.”

  Baba Yaga looked at the book again, her lips moving silently. Then she made a quick grasping movement with each hand, fingers spread wide so that the untrimmed nails extended like claws, and the sergeants to either side of von Salza made startled little grunts. Then their armoured chests exploded in a spray of blood and ribs and burst mail-rings. Baba Yaga watched complacently as both ruined bodies slumped to the floor, and grinned raggedly at their Grand Master when he stared at her in horror.

  “Yes, Hermann von Salza,” she said, “I was giving you an order indeed. And a warning. Don’t let your sergeants threaten me with swords unless you no longer need them.” Baba Yaga looked at the still-throbbing lumps of meat that filled her open hands, and licked her lips. “Not that such heartless brutes are much of a loss…”

  *

  The Independent Tsardom of Khorlov;

  “He was burnt, that much is clear. But before or after he died?”

  Whether it was the fierce vodka Mar’ya Morevna had given him, or just being away from the blackened horror that had so turned his stomach, Prince Ivan was all cold business in a way that would have gratified his wife’s High Steward. He glanced at her, then at his father the Tsar, seated in state at the head of the table and flanked by First Minister Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin and Petr Mikhailovich Akimov, the Captain of Guards. Ivan was standing, as was the custom for one making a first statement in any court business, and was the focus of attention. Indeed, the faces of all four were attentive enough to make him regret his bluntness, but it seemed better to reach the point of discussion than to merely circle it.

  “We should also try to learn why,” he finished, feeling rather awkward, and gratefully resumed his seat. “And by what.”

  Mar’ya Morevna stood up, then remembered that she wasn’t the lord of this kremlin and looked to the Tsar for the right to speak out of turn. Aleksandr Andreyevich nodded once, granting permission and approval of the courtesy with a single inclination of his silver-maned head.

  “Murder has been done,” she said, “but the manner of it is such that we can’t hand this crime to the constables of the City Watch. Instead we—”

  “This is the only murder, Mar’ya Tsarevna,” interrupted Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, “but it isn’t the only crime. Someone has dared to steal from the Tsar’s own kremlin palace.”

  “A thief, here?” Mar’ya Morevna’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. She turned her head to stare at Prince Ivan in silent astonishment that any criminal should be so bold. The rewards of robbing from any lord’s palace were matched only by the savagery of the punishments when the thief was inevitably caught. It was one thing to make away with coins and common goods from a merchant’s house, where one could be spent and the other sold unnoticed at any market stall. It was another thing entirely to dispose of the jewelled, precious-metal trinkets that would tempt light fingers in a palace. A thief with sense would never dare make away with such things, but then why enter the kremlin in the first place? The very fact that he or she or they had done so argued against them having any sense at all.

  The stupidity of it was almost funny, at least until Ivan thought to ask what had gone missing. Then it didn’t seem so stupid or so funny after all.

  “Magical things, Highness,” said Strel’tsin. The words came from him slowly, reluctantly, like an embarrassing confession drawn out by a persistent priest. “At first they were only the small things anyone might misplace, or set down and forget.”

  “Such as?” There had been enough times in Ivan’s youth when Strel’tsin had extracted a lesson from him just like this, or worse, an admission that it hadn’t been learned. It was only the circumstances that prevented him from getting what little enjoyment he could from their reversal of roles.

  “A spelling wand, five charm-stones in a box, and some candles of Arabian gums mingled with rare wax.” Mar’ya Morevna, listening to the recital with arms folded and head lowered, looked up sharply as that reminded her of something else. “As I say, Highness,” the First Minister continued, “they were little items, the sort only missed when looked for and not found. Until the night when the guard was killed. That was when the book was taken.”

  “Book?” echoed Mar’ya Morevna. “You mean a book of spells, a grimoire? Is there no safe place in the library for such things?” Dmitriy Vasil’yevich looked truly miserable, for though she hadn’t said so aloud, her tone implied that toys put away after playing didn’t go missing. At least, not as easily as when they were left lying around for anyone to find.

  “Yes, noble Lady,” he said,
“there’s an iron book-chest with an iron lock. But I’d been reading it only that evening, late into the night, and…”

  “And the library’s a long way for an elderly gentleman who would rather go to bed,” said Ivan kindly. “Especially when the book’s large and heavy, and he hasn’t finished with it yet. Do I guess right?”

  First Minister Strel’tsin gave Ivan a swift glance of gratitude. The softer emotions weren’t strangers to the old man, but in his long life he had buried two wives and seven children, and gentleness had rusted after that for lack of use.

  Mar’ya Morevna took that cue from her husband, and the edge of irritation left her voice. “Never mind the book for now. We can come back to it later, when other things begin to make more sense. But tell me this, Dmitriy Vasil’yevich; how long have these thefts been going on?”

  “Perhaps a week, Lady; ten days at the most. That was when I first noticed things gone from where I’d left them, and not just because I was looking in the wrong place.”

  “Highness, Lady, the guards were reinforced five days ago,” said Captain Akimov. “I hoped they might see something, or even catch the thief red-handed; at least they should have deterred whoever it was from coming back.”

  “Or whatever it was,” said Ivan. “The dead man must have seen it.”

  “And it must have seen him, Highness. He was armed and armoured, but he died without a sound. Whatever he saw made sure he would say no more.”

  “The murderer was mistaken about that.” Mar’ya Morevna steepled her fingers and tapped their tips against her chin. “As murderers so often are. But my concerns are deeper than mere murder. Yours too?” She looked from Strel’tsin to the Tsar and back again. Faces sombre, they both nodded.

  Ivan looked at them, not understanding. “Worse than murder?” he said at last. “Worse than that murder? What are you talking about?”