Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Read online

  “For how long?” he asked. “A year and a day, your mother told us.”

  “I think not so long,” the Grey Wolf replied. “But until this matter of the Firebird and the German knights is settled.”

  “Saint Basil strike me!” Mar’ya Morevna swore, then quickly made the sign of the life-giving cross in case the saint took her at her word. She turned to Ivan with a little gesture of apology. “You were concerned that we knew nothing about the Teutonic Knights, and you were right!”

  That was small comfort to Prince Ivan. Being concerned was all very well, but he hadn’t let it go any further than concern and this was the result: hearing news from a talking wolf, in a land that was part of a folktale…

  “The Firebird I know about already, more or less,” he said. “But what connection does it have to the Teutons?”

  The Grey Wolf’s grin became so long and wide that it ran back beneath his ears, giving Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna a view of more teeth than any three wolves had a right to own. “Of course you wouldn’t know, because it’s supposed to be a secret. I thought my mother would have mentioned something when she met you, but it seems not. How much do you know?”

  “Less than you, apparently,” said Ivan. “Perhaps it was another of those matters we’d find more entertaining to learn about by ourselves. I give you back another question: how is it that you’re so well informed?”

  “I don’t spend all my time in the Summer Country, Prince Ivan. Or in the shape of a wolf. But we wolves have sharp ears, whatever form we take. We hear things. And besides—” the Grey Wolf chuckled softly, a throaty and far from pleasant sound, “—even though it’s been said before and will doubtless be said again, you are what you eat.”

  Ivan flinched slightly and didn’t bother to hide it, but regained his composure after a few seconds and tried to be cool and distant and Princely. “You say ‘what you eat’. Why not ‘who’?”

  “ ‘Who’ is for our own folk,” said the Grey Wolf just as coolly. “Despite my dear mother’s fondness for the shape, we of the wolves were never even slightly human.”

  “I can believe that,” Ivan pushed his shock back into whatever compartment it had sprung from. As well be shocked at a horse for eating hay, though it wasn’t a horse’s nature to gloat over what was in its manger. That raised the question of whether the Grey Wolf was just acting according to his nature, which wasn’t that of a dog by the fire. But he hadn’t forgotten that chuckle, or how little such a sound had to do with the simple needs of finding food. The Grey Wolf might be terrible, but far less so as servant than as master.

  “Though it be for no duration set by word or written contract, Volk Volkovich,” he said, “I accept your service.” The Grey Wolf didn’t change to human shape but, one forepaw extended and his long muzzle almost touching it, his bow was undeniably correct. “Now,” said Prince Ivan, “answer our questions.”

  “How much do you want to be told?

  “I think,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “a great deal more than hints, suggestions and oblique remarks.”

  “Then best we talk as we travel. The right-hand path, was it not? After such an elaborate performance to preserve your—” the wolf paused to grin, “—your wife’s horse, it would be wrong to go by any other route. He’ll find it safe enough, now you’ve met me. And for that same reason, Prince Ivan, you no longer need to walk. Ride on me, the Grey Wolf, as part of my service. I’m strong enough to bear you anywhere in the Summer Country you might need to go.”

  Ivan looked at the shaggy pelt, and at the Grey Wolf’s posture, which even standing still was nothing like that of a horse. He couldn’t begin to imagine what a running gait would feel like, and quite apart from anything else he would be riding bareback. “Never mind how strong you might be,” he said. “I haven’t ridden bareback since—”

  “Since the last time,” said the Grey Wolf. “We don’t have a spare saddle, I wouldn’t wear one even if we had, so bareback it’ll be once again. You can put that whip away too.”

  “I wouldn’t have hit you with it,” said Ivan.

  “This is true,” said Sivka. “He wouldn’t.”

  The Grey Wolf looked from Ivan to the double lash of the Cossack whip, and then scornfully, or so Ivan thought, at the big black horse. “Of course he wouldn’t. Unless he forgot, and did. Just as I wouldn’t tear his hand off. Unless I forgot, and did. Your choice, Prince Ivan.”

  “Well, since you put the matter like that…” Ivan took the whip from where it hung at his wrist, wrapped the lash around the handle, and gave the whole thing to Mar’ya Morevna who tucked it in one boot.

  “Yes indeed,” said the Grey Wolf. “I knew you were clever. Now I see that you’re wise, too. But then most people come around to my way of thinking, sooner or later. Sooner is always best.”

  Lacking a stirrup to lever himself with one foot, or even a saddle’s pommel to drag himself up by, Ivan sank his fingers into the deep fur of the Grey Wolf’s shoulders and vaulted across his broad back. The wolf grunted and looked back at him, making pretence of sagging under his weight. Then he straightened up and shook himself.

  “Hold on with your knees as usual,” he said. “But don’t tweak the ruff of my neck, and keep your heels well clear of my sides. Remember, dear Prince, that I’m not a horse, and have no need to be given instructions.”

  Ivan knew that much already. The Grey Wolf was as big, indeed, but his body was built and muscled differently. The broad, furry shoulders tapered far too suddenly into lean flanks, and the ribcage was far narrower than a horse’s barrel chest, giving Ivan the constant feeling of his knees beingtoo close together. Without reins his hands felt strangely empty, and what with the instability of his seat and one thing and another, his fingers itched to sink into the deep fur and hold on tight. Already missing the familiar pressure of stirrup against boot and cantle against spine, he envied the ease with which Mar’ya Morevna swung herself into Sivka’s saddle.

  “Don’t wriggle and don’t pinch.” said the Grey Wolf. “Unless you deliberately jump from my back, I won’t let you fall.”

  As they moved off through the forest, the Grey Wolf began to explain what he’d learned of the plot to cause war between the Princes and Tsars of the Rus. He told them about the Teutonic Knights, about the Firebird – and about Baba Yaga. That startled Ivan more than all the rest, especially as the details came to light.

  “She may be a witch,” he said at last, “and an evil old hag at that. But surely she’s a Russian witch!”

  “And should have been loyal to the Rus?” said the Grey Wolf, amused at the notion. “Prince Ivan, you’ve survived meeting one Baba Yaga already, the one with the horse-herd, whose house lay beyond the burning river. How many more must you meet before you realize a Baba Yaga’s loyalty is only to herself? This one hasn’t the slightest concern about what the Teutonic Knights intend to do in Russia, or to Russia. What does concern her is much more personal. Revenge. On you. For the death of her daughter.”

  “Her daughter? If the witch who fell into the river of flame was her daughter, then this one must be as old as—”

  “As old as sin,” said Sivka. “And a most appropriate age it is, too.”

  “Mercy of God!” said Ivan. “If this only involved the Princes, it would be easy. But a foreign power, using Russian magic…”

  “Makes matters excessively complicated.” Mar’ya Morevna stared thoughtfully at Sivka’s ears, as though trying to read some sense from the pattern of their twitching.

  “Not a foreign power entirely,” said the Grey Wolf. “A state within a state. The knights owe allegiance to all manner of people: the Roman Pope, lord of their church; the German Emperor, lord of their country; but most of all to their Grand Master. And their numbers are small.”

  “How small?” Mar’ya Morevna spoke now not as a sorcerer nor even a Tsarevna, but a commander of armies.

  “Two thousand, no more than three, in castles between here and the Frank country.”
/>   “They call themselves crusaders,” said Prince Ivan grimly. “I wonder why. That title was appropriate when they fought for the Holy Places and against the heathen tribes of Prussia, but why against us? We’re Christian, just like them.”

  “They say not,” said the Grey Wolf. “Because the Rus adopted Greek teachings not Roman they call you false Christians, worse than pagans whose sole sin is ignorance. If they’re successful they’ll say God gave them victory.”

  “Victory against Himself?” Ivan was bewildered and more than a little angry, the way pointless theology always made him feel. “Will no one think it strange?”

  “Hardly any,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “and least of all those who stand to gain from it. There are men like that among the Rus. Men who want only fighting, plunder and glory, and who care nothing for the cause. Besides, Prussia was a trackless waste of swamp and scrub—”

  “And forest far thicker even than this,” said the Grey Wolf helpfully. “No cities, no merchants, no one to plunder, and only each other to witness the glory. I’ve never understood the glory of drowning in mud. It makes the meat harder to get at than their iron suits do, and those just make it taste of rust.”

  Mar’ya Morevna gave the Grey Wolf a look that showed she was still capable of shock at his casual ruthlessness, but then she nodded. “Quite… No wonder they’re casting their eyes towards us. After Prussia, we must look a treasure trove indeed. Even after the looting’s finished, and if they haven’t burnt too much, there’ll be plenty of land for their own vassals. They have to be stopped.”

  “And so must the Princes,” said Ivan, “before they do just what the German warlord wants, this voevoda or Grand Master or whatever he calls himself. They’ll tear each other apart so all his knights need do is mop up what remains.”

  “The best way,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “is to find a Firebird with one tail-feather missing, and persuade it to tell them that all the thefts and other acts of hostility weren’t the act of their malicious neighbours.”

  “But I have—” Ivan twisted around on the Grey Wolf’s back, lost and regained his balance, and tried to speak, all at the same time.

  “—A feather. Which proves nothing. They’d call it a conjuring trick, something I did to deceive them. We need the Firebird and, more, we need its goodwill to speak on our behalf. Yuriy of Kiev and the rest have no love for either of us, and they won’t take our unsupported word for any of it.”

  “In that case, O-Prince-who-was-my-master-and-who-will-be-soon-again,” said Sivka, running all the words together into a single honorific title, “despite the strange way time runs in the Summer Country, we should make haste to find the Firebird with the missing feather.”

  Ivan looked up at the trees, and at the birds which flitted among them. Small, ordinary birds with all their feathers but not a trace of flame. “Of course we should,” he said. “But where do we start…?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Great Princely State of Kiev;

  1234 A.D.

  Dieter Balke grunted with effort as he raised the slab of ice. It had begun to freeze in place again, despite all his work to keep it easy to open, but as it swung back like a trapdoor the waters of the River Dnepr gleamed up at him, black and cold and endlessly hungry for whatever morsels he might feed it. He shivered, because though he was sheltered from the view of casual passers-by on the bridge overhead, he was by no means sheltered from the wind that swirled around its arches.

  Once the ice had been braced with a length of timber it was only a few messy minutes’ work before he was ready to remove the prop and let the slab drop back into place. Balke shoved with both hands and heard a splash in the dark water, looked in, and swore. After a hurried Ave in penance for the oath, he leaned in to poke with the end of his trusty beef-rib at where one wayward foot had caught on the lower edge of the hole, resisting all the efforts of the current to tug it out of sight beneath the ice.

  Once the foot came free and its late owner drifted away to join the others somewhere downstream, Balke sent all he could scrape up of the stained snow after them and, regretfully, the useful beef-bone too. When the lid of ice dropped back into place he let it slap hard against the surface of the river. Water jetted up between the cracks, smoothing them and sealing them tight. He wouldn’t need this means of disposal again, for his departure from Kiev was a matter of some urgency.

  Balke made the sign of the cross towards the river, then again over his own chest, and spoke the words of the shortened Funeral Mass he employed on such occasions. It wasn’t hypocrisy but concern for the souls of his victims. Dieter Balke had no hesitation in killing if it was necessary, however light the pretext, but as a warrior-monk he made sure to exercise both sides of his role.

  That beef-bone had served him well, not least as an excellent and tasty meal by courtesy of Great Prince Yuriy’s name-day, even though that celebration had already come to a jarring and premature end within the kremlin palace. It still continued merrily enough outside, among the common people. Yuriy’s subjects hadn’t let the unexpected delivery of a stranger’s severed head interfere with the one day in the year when free food and drink let them recoup a little of what they paid in taxes.

  Balke had guessed rightly about the suspicions of spies from Novgorod and Vladimir. When he met them both had requested, in the polite, well-armed way which accepts no refusal, that he set aside his knife and whatever other weapons he was carrying before they came too close. Neither had said anything about the beef-bone – though one of them had grunted quite loudly when Balke hit him with it underneath the ear.

  Afterwards, the still-rowdy celebration justified his stagger down towards the river, each time supporting his limp victim as if the man was no more than dead drunk. Revellers were heading that way all over Kiev, so a pair of drunks helping each other wasn’t something to cause comment.

  What would certainly have caused comment was what happened to each spy under the bridge, for the sight of Dieter Balke removing a head with his knife would have sobered Silenus. That was why, despite personal discomfort, he took such care to remain beneath those wind-scoured arches. Some innocent real drunk might have leaned over the bridge to throw up, and seen something even a brain marinated in cheap wine couldn’t forget without plenty of cold, deep river water.

  Then there were the heads themselves. For his stratagem of provocation to be effective they had to be recognisable. That meant waiting until they had drained somewhat, suffering from the cold that no longer troubled them, then gathering enough clean snow to pack around them before taking both back to his lodgings in a merchant’s-quarter tavern.

  The Gate hidden under a cheap sheepskin rug was already aligned to outlets in the appropriate cities, and Balke hurriedly dispatched his icy packages to the brethren who awaited them. There hadn’t been time to set up as many links as he wanted, but Balke decided not to push his luck. Provoking wars between half a dozen Rus principalities would be more than enough.

  He was certain Hermann von Salza knew what was going on, although typically nothing had been said about it. Not yet. The way his Constable could travel swiftly between certain places, yet had the usual difficulties between others, wasn’t likely to have gone unnoticed. Congratulations or condemnations were being held in abeyance, depending on success or failure. Whichever happened, Dieter Balke had decided it would be better to make formal confession. That way whatever the Grand Master thought of his new skill would be protected by the Seal of the Confessional.

  It had taken him a lengthy, sweaty afternoon to extract enough information from an old Prusiskai shaman, including the interesting detail that a visiting Rus sorcerer had also learned Gate-magic but had never dared to use it. So the shaman said, though when Balke pressed him more rigorously the feeble old fool had expired without another coherent word. Certainly there had been no sign of Gates in Russia except for those prepared by himself, but one could never be too careful.

  Balke checked the first head’s wrappi
ngs then set it down in the centre of the Gating circle and primed the spell with two quick strokes of a brush, altering a character on the circle’s perimeter. That simple action opened a prepared Gate in the Novgorod lodgings of a spice-merchant who was more than he seemed. The package faded, going from solidity to transparency while a man might draw three breaths, and for an instant the sockets of a crystalline skull looked at its slayer with dead eyes like teardrops. Then eyes and skull and snow and leather wrappings all winked out of existence and the circle was empty again.

  Balke reached for the second head, then hesitated with his arm outstretched, frowning at his own fingers. They were trembling. He grunted in disgust and clenched a fist once or twice to drive the tremors away; but when he put this next head into the Gate, he made sure its face was turned away before he primed the spell.

  And that was when the letter arrived, literally out of thin air three feet above the Gate. The Landmeister started at the small pop of displaced air it made, but still reacted fast enough to catch the sealed and folded parchment before it dropped to the floor. Balke tore it open and scanned the few scrawled lines it contained, then swore viciously to relieve his feelings. The Gate had provided something more disturbing than just a dead man’s stare.

  After making the proper penitential prayers for the swearing, Balke read the letter again. It came from Gottfried Kuchmann, the knight sent to keep an eye on the only Rus prince Baba Yaga had named, and the one for whom she reserved her most vitriolic hatred. Kuchmann’s letter dutifully reported everything seen and overheard: how Prince Ivan and his wife had left their kremlin in great haste, looking for some creature called a Firebird; how it had been done; and where they had gone.