Katabasis (The Mongoliad Cycle, Book 4) Page 13

  He knew what had to be done, and as soon as the messengers from the northern ports returned with a response from the letter he had sent, he gave the order. The city is yours, he told the men. Take what you will, and take it with force. If a man raises his hand against you, cut it off. If a woman dares to resist you, take her children from her. And from each house, regardless of what you take, bring something of value to the main square where we will burn it. The fire we will set in Pskov will be seen in Novgorod.

  His men had embraced these orders, as he had known they would. They were here to conquer these northern pagans, after all. Hermann’s approach had lacked the necessary ruthlessness. If they were going to lure Alexander back to Pskov, the threat had to be real.

  His predecessors—Volquin and, to a lesser extent, Dietrich von Grüningen—had failed to create the proper environment of fear. Volquin had been obsessed with claiming territory in the name of the order, and he hadn’t subjugated the pagan tribes. He had left enough of them alive that they had banded together—setting aside their old enmities to face a common enemy—and they had fought back. They had ambushed the Livonian Order at the river crossing at Schaulen, and the battle had been a disaster—the order had been broken and Volquin had been slain unceremoniously while struggling in the mud. The next Heermeister—Dietrich—had been so ineffective at Hünern that none of his men had bothered to wonder what had happened to the Heermeister when Onghwe Khan’s Circus was scattered.

  The Mongols, on the other hand, were perfectly ruthless. Kristaps had seen firsthand how they dealt with those they conquered, and he had found much in Batu Khan’s approach to his liking.

  The first bonfire was lit, and it smoldered at first, the flames struggling to find purchase in the damp wood. A thick plume of white smoke rose into the night sky as the second and third fires were lit. The night was clear and there was no moon in the sky. From a distance, the smoke would look like nothing more than a spreading fog.

  Kristaps waited, warm in his heavy cloak and beaverskin gloves.

  The scouts had also brought word that the Veche—the ruling council of Novgorod—had sent for Nevsky; the boyars had called their exiled prince home. Kristaps knew Nevsky would go to Novgorod—the prince needed the militia and any funds he could pry loose from the Veche—and while the prince was dallying in the city, the Teutonic army would move north.

  A fierce grin spread across Kristaps’s face. I’m doing you a favor, he thought. As soon as word reaches Novgorod of what I have done here, you will have your excuse to leave all the petulant whining and in-fighting among the Veche behind.

  The first fire was a roaring pillar of flame now, tongues of red and orange licking the sky.

  In the square, the white shapes of his knights were moving more erratically. Shouts and screams intermingled with the crackling roar of the fire, and as Kristaps watched, a trio of knights hurled a squirming shape into one of the fires. After that, movement became much more chaotic.

  The people of Pskov need you, Kristaps thought, looking away from the panic in the square. He turned his gaze to the east, toward Novgorod. Save them, Nevsky. Come to their rescue.

  Hermann of Dorpat was waiting for him in Trinity Cathedral, drinking from a bottle of mead. Kristaps waved off the offer when Hermann tipped the mouth of the bottle at him. Wine was rare in the northern lands as grapes did not fare well in the hard ground and with the short summers, and the locals made do with a too-sweet concoction made from honey and dried berries. Judging by the tilt of the bottle when he raised it to his lips, Hermann had drunk most of the bottle already.

  “Are they here?” Kristaps asked.

  “Aye,” Hermann said, lowering the bottle and wiping his lips. Light from the bonfires leaked in through the narrow windows of the church, elongating the shadows. Hermann’s eyes kept twitching in his head as if he were seeing movement among the twisted effigies of the strange pagan saints.

  “A fitting place to meet,” Kristaps said as he looked about at the abandoned place of worship with its dust-covered floor and intermittent and strange shadows. Early on, people had taken refuge here, but after Hermann had put the priests and acolytes to the sword—one of the few acts he had done after taking Pskov that Kristaps approved of—few dared to openly worship. Only the truly wretched among the wretched sheltered here, though none were present on this evening.

  “They’re heretics,” Hermann said. “This was the only place they would all gather.” He drank from the bottle again. “There’s no shame in being here, in accommodating the desires of men you want to make use of.”

  The Prince-Bishop wouldn’t meet his gaze, and Kristaps wondered if the drunkenness was a sham. Hermann’s face, while affable, was a mask, and had been since the Prince-Bishop had agreed to Kristaps’s plan. It was possible that treason lurked behind those eyes, but it was not likely in the short term. Hermann was a man of station and duty. He would not risk everything on a game of pride, especially not when Kristaps still possessed the backing of powerful friends in Rome.

  “There is no shame in doing what must be done to win the war,” Kristaps said. “Show them to me. I would see faces and hear names.”

  Hermann indicated that Kristaps should step into the deeper shadows of the church, and as Kristaps strode down the empty nave, the Prince-Bishop whistled lightly. Hearing the Prince-Bishop’s signal, several lanterns were uncovered and the altar of the church was bathed in light. A half-dozen of Hermann’s personal guards stood near the front of the altar, and beyond them were a handful of mismatched men.

  They were a mixture of sizes and shapes, a motley group that stood off from one another, as if each man were trying to keep all of Hermann’s guards and the others in view. One had a large broken nose and numerous scars across his forehead; on his hip, he wore a curved sword similar to the ones that Kristaps had seen the Mongols carry, though this one had no noticeable guard. “That is Gorya,” Hermann said. “He has served princes and warlords, but serves first those who have the most gold.”

  The second man had shaved his head, making it difficult to discern his true age. Living in the harsh wilderness aged a man quicker than a life within the walls of the cities, and Kristaps put him at somewhere between thirty and fifty—old by any martial standards. He had a pair of hatchets shoved through his belt, and his eyes were frosty and gray, like the ice on the river. “Onikii,” Hermann said.

  There were three more: Taras, who had a long mustache and carried a heavy axe; Vasya, a narrow-faced man cloaked in furs that Kristaps suspected he had caught, skinned, and sewn himself; and Makar, a slightly rotund man who appeared to carry no weapons unless they were well hidden beneath his plain robe.

  “A priest?” Kristaps asked, nodding at the last. “Does he mean to convert the prince to Christianity?”

  “He uses more subtle methods,” Hermann said, and Makar inclined his head at the Prince-Bishop’s words.

  Poison, Kristaps realized. A coward’s weapon, but what did he care how the prince was slain?

  Men of Rus willing to fight their own kindred for coin. Men who know that who rules may change, and wisest is he who follows when the true masters appear. Volquin would not have failed if he had had men like this.

  “Subtlety?” a voice rose from the niche beyond the altar. “I thought you wanted a man killed. Not an accident.” The speaker wandered into the circle of lantern light, and Kristaps noted how the others shifted nervously at the sudden appearance of the newcomer.

  “I am Iakov,” the sixth man said, offering Kristaps a slight bow. Whereas the other men were weathered and battered, their faces marred by scars and age, Iakov looked like a young lad, not more than a year or two past his first beard. His face, finely featured as that of a woman of court, was framed by long brown hair that was carefully tended to, and his hands, likewise as delicate as a highborn maiden’s, were small. His mouth was drawn into a perpetual smirk across his face, and he regarded each of the others as if he were examining hogs at a market. For
all his apparent innocence, the lad’s eyes betrayed him. They moved like a predator’s, watching and waiting for the right moment to pounce.

  “My sincere apologies for not being immediately present at this…” Iakov waved his hand dismissively at the others. “I was at prayer.”

  “You’re too young,” Kristaps said dismissively.

  “For what?” the youth replied. “Too young to die? To kill?” He glanced at the one named Onikii and batted his eyelashes. “To love?”

  In spite of himself, Kristaps was intrigued by the way the boy openly antagonized the other men, who were clearly accomplished killers.

  “Where is this dandy from?” he asked Hermann, switching to German.

  “Does it matter?” Iakov replied before the Prince-Bishop did. The lad spoke German easily with a noticeable accent. Well traveled, then, or well educated, Kristaps thought.

  “You’re not like the rest,” he said to Iakov, still speaking in German. Iakov bowed at the compliment, and Kristaps noted that the lad kept his head up, his eye on the others.

  “Have you killed anyone other than a rich relative or a drunk merchant?” Kristaps asked.

  Iakov laughed. “Which was your first?” he asked in return. “The uncle or the merchant? I’ve done both.”

  “Skilled fighters,” Kristaps snapped, ignoring Iakov’s question. “Not pompous fools and leather-skinned old men. If those are all you have to your name, I am not impressed.”

  “Knights,” Iakov replied. “Christians, Jews, Muslims. I have killed warriors in their prime, children at their mother’s breasts, and shy young maidens. I have killed boyars on their horses and witches in their hovels. All before I was sixteen.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Kristaps answered.

  “Because,” Iakov answered, “you are afraid of me.”

  Beside him, Hermann of Dorpat emitted a small, quiet laugh.

  “Don’t mistake wariness for fear,” Kristaps said.

  “I never do.”

  Kristaps eyed the boy, considering just how much of what Iakov had said could be true and how much of it was pure bravado. He had said similar things in his youth—the brash braying of an untested warrior—though he had since learned that the measure of a man was his actions and not his words. While such bluster was not to his liking, that didn’t mean such talk was empty posturing. If half of what he says is true, he may be more than enough for what I need, he thought.

  “You men know each other,” he said, switching back to the tongue they all knew. “Have you fought together before?”

  They looked at one another with some muttering and nodding of heads. Only Makar abstained from admitting to knowing the others.

  “And would you look to one of you as leader?” Kristaps asked, mainly to see their reaction. They shuffled about, trying not to draw attention to the boy, but Iakov stood still and all the posturing of the others accomplished was to clear a space around the boy—making it all too clear what they wouldn’t say. So be it, Kristaps thought. That cocksure arrogance is not without a basis, then.

  “They follow who is best at what they all do,” Iakov sighed, lifting his shoulders in a girlish shrug.

  “Did the Prince-Bishop tell you what it is that I require you to do?”

  “He said that you wanted an important man killed.” It was Onikii who spoke, his brutish, scarred face watching Kristaps in the same way a hungry dog watches a bigger beast it hasn’t yet sized up. “There aren’t many such men in this land.”

  But you don’t know for certain, Kristaps thought, and you want to hear me say it.

  “We will leave this city soon,” Kristaps replied. “When we do, a savior will come. Someone whom these people will gladly welcome. That is the man I want slain.”

  He could have given Onikii and the others the satisfaction of naming their target, but he wanted to see their reaction. He wanted to know if they could muster the nerve to name the target themselves. If they could speak out against the man whom their fellow Ruthenians called a hero. It was one thing to ask a man to commit treason, even if you offered to pay him; but if he volunteered to do it, then the odds that he actually would were much better.

  “Nevsky goes nowhere without five hundred retainers,” Gorya said finally. “All of them are skilled. None of them will be weak.”

  “You will not lack for pay,” Kristaps said, tacitly acknowledging the target. “The wealth of Pskov can be redistributed at my discretion.”

  “He who kills Nevsky will be hated in this land,” Onikii said.

  “All the more reason to use the money to go somewhere else.” Kristaps nodded at Iakov. “The boy may have some suggestions.”

  There were other questions, though most of them were empty hypotheses or baseless objections. Kristaps had anticipated a certain amount of this pointless speculation. Hired knives lived by discretion; rarely were they known for being bold or being hungry for glory. But the fact that they asked all of these questions meant they were already thinking about and planning how to accomplish the task.

  “Enough of this prattle,” Iakov said at last, silencing the others. “I have never killed a prince, much less a son of Iaroslav, and for that reason alone, I will do this.” He smiled at Kristaps, an eager glint in his eye. “They will help me, of course,” he added, nodding toward the other killers.

  “The people of Pskov will not let us escape to collect our pay if we do this,” Onikii said. “These men want us to rid them of an enemy whom they are afraid of, and for what? None of us can do this thing and live.”

  The young man looked past Onikii’s head to the shadowed effigies of the cathedral. “They say that he is wise and that he is brave,” Iakov said, seeming to ignore Onikii’s concerns. “They say that he has a ghost for an advisor and that Valkyries ride in his vanguard. He defeated Birger Jarl and ingratiated himself to a great Mongol Khan. I hear he is very beautiful.” Iakov sighed longingly, and his gaze came back to Onikii. “I never took you for a complete coward,” Iakov said mildly.

  Hermann’s guards stirred, sensing the sudden tension in the men standing on the altar. Hermann made as if to speak, but Kristaps laid a hand on his arm. “No,” he said quietly. I want to see what comes next.

  “You are a fool, Iakov,” Onikii retorted. “Killing for coin is one thing, but throwing your life away for a foreign master who will abandon you is suicide.”

  “How can killing a prince and stamping our names on history forever be suicide?” Iakov asked.

  Onikii was shifting his weight from foot to foot, his hands twitching toward the hatchets in his belt. Iakov, on the other hand, appeared utterly unaware of the bigger man’s tension. The boyish young man with his effeminate carriage might as well have been standing in the back of the halls in some boyar’s court, absently cleaning his nails, for all he seemed unnerved by the larger man before him.

  “It can’t be done,” Onikii snarled. “You might as well charge the prince’s host with your weapons drawn.”

  “You could,” Iakov replied, “and that would be suicide.”

  Gorya laughed, and the sound was a signal for Onikii. He moved quickly, snatching one of his hatchets from his belt and lunging at the boy in a fluid motion that impressed Kristaps. Iakov hardly seemed to move: a pivot of his body was all that was needed to throw the measure of his opponent off enough so that Onikii’s hatchet missed his nose by less than an inch.

  “Slow,” Iakov said, stepping to the side. A long knife flashed in his hand, drawn from some hidden sheath that Kristaps had not noticed. Onikii’s left hand darted out to grasp Iakov’s outstretched knife hand, but the boy’s slender arm darted back as quickly as it had come. Onikii slashed upward with his hatchet, trying to catch Iakov, who only laughed as the blade missed again. The knife blade flickered in the lantern light, and Onikii’s blood splashed across the floor.

  Onikii staggered back with a grunt of pain, and Kristaps watched as Iakov held back from pursuing the wounded man. The others may do this for
coin, Kristaps thought, but not Iakov. There was a perverse light in the boy’s eyes, an eager delight at what was going to happen next.

  Onikii drew his other hatchet and came at Iakov again, his weapons a blur of motion. Iakov nimbly evaded the charge, spinning around Onikii like he was dancing at a royal wedding, and Onikii coughed and stumbled. His hatchets slowed and when he turned, his legs moving slowly, Kristaps saw a flood of blood running down the side of his neck.

  Iakov waved at Onikii, encouraging him to attack again. Onikii raised his hatchets, though the motion seemed to be very difficult, as if the weapons were made of stone instead of steel and wood. He took a step, and noticed the blood coursing down the front of his tunic. He stared at it, confusion written across his face, and when he raised his head again, Iakov darted forward, the long knife driving straight into his right eye socket.

  “There will be no more discussion,” the young Ruthenian said as he jerked his blade free and Onikii collapsed, quivering like a maimed dog. Iakov looked as though he’d just carved up an apple for breakfast. “You will have your dead prince.”

  He might actually do it, Kristaps thought, realizing he knew what Iakov wanted more than anything in the world.

  “Onikii’s argument is one not so readily dismissed,” the Prince-Bishop said as he steadied himself against the frame of the church’s threshold. “Even if the man himself is…”