‘That’s what I mean. You’d have to join me in the fiery pit.’
‘Don’t talk like that. You’re scaring me.’ She moved closer. ‘One of the priests is staring at us.’
He was a youngish man with a benign expression. When Wayland made eye contact, his smile widened and he moved towards them. Wayland took Syth’s arm and began walking her towards the door. The priest called out and lengthened his stride. Wayland increased his own pace, saw the priest do likewise, and broke into a run. Feet flapping on the marbled floor, he and Syth raced towards one of the great arched doors and burst into the open, vanishing among the crowd while Syth’s laughter was still echoing around the cathedral.
The pilots were brothers, sinewy men with faces as wrinkled as dried figs. One was called Igor, the other Kolzak. Igor had suffered some trauma that made his face when relaxed sag in chaotic folds, as if the strings holding it together had been cut. They stood before Vallon and Hero, their eyes straying towards Fyodor.
‘How well do you know the river?’ Hero asked.
‘We’ve been navigating it every year since we were boys,’ said Kolzak. ‘Our father was a pilot before us, and his father before that. We know every rock and whirlpool, every ledge and chute.’
‘How far do the rapids stretch?’
‘Fifty, sixty versts,’ said Kolzak, shrugging to indicate that distance wasn’t the most important consideration.
About thirty miles, Hero calculated. ‘So it shouldn’t take more than a day or two to get clear of them.’
The pilots stared at him. Kolzak laughed. ‘The convoys take a week.’
‘A week!’
‘Sometimes longer. There are nine rapids and we have to carry the ships over six of them. In some places we have to drag the ships along the bank. In others the men must get into the water and lift the ships over the rocks with ropes and poles. At the worst rapid – the Insatiable – the slaves have to make their way on foot for ten versts along the top of the gorge. That alone takes a whole day.’
Hero didn’t have to confer with Vallon to know what his reaction would be. He addressed Fyodor. ‘That’s unacceptable.’
Fyodor laughed madly. ‘The pilots are talking about the big ships of the summer convoy. With small boats, there’s no need for all this lifting and carrying. Kolzak and Igor will run the rapids without you having to set foot on land once.’ Another laugh. ‘They know the river so well that they can run them in their sleep.’ He thumped the pilots’ backs. ‘Isn’t that true, men?’
They looked at their feet. ‘Yes, master.’
Hero knew that they wouldn’t tell him the truth while Fyodor was present. ‘What about the nomads?’
‘I told you. The Cumans have gone. They’re like swallows that are seen only in summer.’
‘Let the pilots answer.’
Kolzak shifted. ‘It’s true that the Cumans wander away from the river in winter. That doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat. They can turn up anywhere, at any time.’
‘Are they as dangerous as people say?’
Igor answered with surprising eloquence. ‘They devour the land as if it were food laid out for wolves. They sow our soil with arrows. They harvest our youth with their swords, winnow our fighting men with flails of iron and build haystacks with their skulls. They harry us like flies that can be beaten off but not destroyed.’
Fyodor laughed and gave Igor’s arm a twist. ‘Come, come. They’re men not devils.’
‘How soon can we leave?’
‘As soon as you wish. My ships are waiting at Vitichev, a day downriver, where the summer convoy assembles.’
Hero turned to Vallon. ‘He says we can go whenever you’re ready.’
‘I’m ready now.’
It was twilight when they reached the rendezvous at Vitichev. Vallon studied the place from mid-channel. Under the lacklustre sky the stockaded settlement presented a glum and shuttered air. Scores of ships crammed a dock, some of them half-submerged and others in the process of being cannibalised. A pair of small galleys that had seen better days lay moored along the quayside, each carrying three horses. Fyodor’s slaves and soldiers were waiting on shore. In the dusk the slaves’ faces looked as pale as winding sheets. Fyodor waved. The only other people in sight were four dim figures surrounding a horseman at the far end of the quay.
‘Hero and I will go,’ Vallon said.
They climbed a ladder to the quay. The slaves were of an uncannily pale race, with blanched complexions and hair as white as swans. All of them were children, the oldest barely pubescent and some as young as four or five. They squatted in huddles, hugging their shoulders, racked by croupy coughs, staring at the strangers with eyes that held neither curiosity nor hope. The soldiers were scarcely less apathetic. They gave the impression of slovenly and unwilling conscripts, their clothes shabby, their weapons second rate.
‘Call those soldiers?’ Vallon said in disgust. ‘I thought it was supposed to be a valuable cargo.’
‘Welcome, welcome,’ Fyodor called. ‘Welcome.’
‘How did you come by the children?’ Hero asked him.
‘My agents purchased them from their parents.’
‘Their parents sold them?’
Fyodor’s mouth turned down. ‘Last year’s harvest was a poor one. They would have starved if I hadn’t rescued them.’
‘They look half-starved now.’
Fyodor flapped a hand. ‘If I fed them any more, my expenditure wouldn’t be commensurate with income.’
Hero lips curled in detestation. ‘What will they be used for?’
‘Angels.’
‘Angels?’
‘Isn’t that what they look like? Most of the boys will serve as
eunuchs in the imperial court. The girls … ’ Fyodor widened his eyes and hunched his shoulders.
Vallon had been watching the figures in the gloom at the end of the quay. ‘Who’s the horseman?’
Fyodor pretended he hadn’t been aware of the rider and his entourage. ‘Ah, yes. That is a very important man in Kiev.’
‘What’s he doing here?’
Fyodor considered his response. ‘He owns the ships.’
‘The slaves too,’ Vallon told Hero. ‘We’ve been taken for a ride. Tell the fat fraud to start loading.’
Fyodor kicked one of the soldiers and they set about herding the slaves into the galleys. The merchant took Hero’s hands and gazed at him with moist sympathy. ‘I feel for you, dear brother. That captain of yours is a cruel man.’
They put the town behind them, navigating by the lines of tarnished silver that marked the shores. They slept in the boats and woke exhausted. Three days’ rest wasn’t enough to restore reserves of energy run down by three months’ travelling. Three weeks wouldn’t have been too much.
Before noon they passed the tributary leading east to Pereiaslav, the last city in Kievan Rus. Below the confluence there were no more towns, only isolated farms scratched out of the sandy soil and scattered pines. Then even these petered out and night after night passed when there was no sound to be heard anywhere along the river and their fires were the only pricks of light in the darkness.
The dingy yellow current carried them through the steppe. Weird rock formations where hermits had lodged flanked the west bank. On the flat eastern shore a wilderness of reeds fringed empty grassland and sand dunes. Rus didn’t have a clearly defined southern frontier, the pilots said. It shifted according to the movements of the horse nomads.
Wayland had purchased a score of pigeons and chickens as a food reserve for the falcons. He had to start using it sooner than he’d expected because most of the wildfowl had gone, flown to the south. Now he counted himself lucky if he killed a brace of game a day.
Returning one morning empty-handed, he made his way over to the falcons’ cages on the riverbank and stopped short, staring dumbfounded.
Vallon noticed. ‘What’s wrong?’
Wayland ran towards the cages. Two of them stood with doors ajar. He flung one open. Empty. He checked the other one. Empty. He knelt in stunned disbelief. ‘They’ve gone.’ He turned. ‘Two of the falcons have gone.’
The other travellers hurried up. ‘Are you sure you shut them securely?’ Vallon said.
Wayland stared at him and it was Syth who answered. ‘Of course we did. We always check each night.’
‘And this morning? Did you check then?’
‘It was still dark when we left to go hunting.’
Wayland rose. ‘Someone released them during the night.’ His gaze settled on Drogo and Fulk and his features contorted. ‘It was you!’ He ran at them. ‘
You
released them!’
Drogo drew his sword. ‘Don’t blame me for your sloppy husbandry.’
Sword or no sword, Wayland would have hurled himself against Drogo if Vallon hadn’t pulled him away. ‘We’ll establish where the blame lies later. Which falcons have we lost?’
Wayland stood panting, casting desperate looks around. ‘The white haggard and one of the eyases – the screamer.’ He gave a despairing laugh. ‘Drogo knew how much the haggard meant to me, and he was always complaining about the eyas’s racket.’
‘Is there anything to be done?’
Wayland stared across the river, trying to think straight. The reed beds on the other side harboured wildfowl. If the falcons were hungry, that would be the logical place for them to go hunting. But the chances of finding them in that maze of marsh and inlets were next to none. He turned to face the empty steppe. A dirty wind blew from the south-west, hazing the boundary of earth and sky. He fought for calm.
‘Trained falcons often return to the spot where they were released. I’ll wait close by with live lures. Send everybody you can spare into the steppe. If they spot a falcon, they must ride back as fast as they can.’
‘We’ll use all the horses and send parties on foot to search up and down the river.’
‘If we haven’t found her by midday, it means she’s left the area.’ By ‘her’ Wayland meant the haggard. The eyas had never known liberty
and was too weak to cope in the wild. She’d either been blown miles downwind or had pitched into the grass somewhere, an easy meal for wolf or jackal.
Wayland and Syth rode out into the steppe carrying a basket holding two live pigeons. They stopped about a mile from the river and watched the seven horsemen fanning into the distance. Soon they were alone, the riders gone into the immense sea of grass. Every time Wayland thought of the haggard, he felt her loss like a punch in the gut.
It was a long and miserable wait before the first of the Vikings returned. ‘Didn’t see a living thing,’ he said.
The other riders rode back with equally dismal news.
Vallon cantered in last. ‘I had one moment of hope when a large bird flew overhead. It was too dark to be one of your falcons. I think it was an eagle.’
Wayland gathered his reins. ‘I’ll search for her.’
‘By now she could be a hundred miles away. You don’t even know which side of the river she’s on. If by some miracle you caught up with her, you won’t be able to call her down. She hasn’t been made to the lure.’
‘I trapped her wild, didn’t I? If I find her, I’ll bring her to hand.’
Vallon looked back into the distance. ‘The steppe goes on for ever, the horizon always retreating before you. Don’t let it take you too far from the river. Nomads rode this way not long ago. I saw the trails left by their sheep and passed one of their campsites. Make sure you return by evening. We still have enough falcons to meet the Emir’s demands.’
‘This wouldn’t have happened if you’d left Drogo in Novgorod.’
‘Save the recriminations until you get back.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Syth.
He almost rejected her company. Searching for a lost hawk could be a long, tedious and soul-destroying undertaking.
‘Take her,’ Vallon said. ‘Take a sword, too. It’s a lonely world out there.’
They rode off, Wayland heading across the wind.
Syth galloped alongside. ‘How will you know where to look?’
Wayland had only one tenuous hope. In England he’d searched for
lost hawks many times and discovered something that flew in the face of the lore peddled by Olbec’s keeper of falcons. This man, ageing and unimaginative, insisted that lost hawks always made their way downwind. That might be true of unfit birds, but Wayland had flown only confident and well-muscled hawks, and when he’d lost them, he’d usually found them upwind of the place where they’d disappeared. It was only logical. A fit falcon in hunting mode flies into the wind to gain height. Once she’s reached a high pitch, she tends to circle across the wind, covering the sky with minimum effort.
As Wayland rode, he looked for the telltale signs that a falcon was in the vicinity. Back home rooks towering into the sky often betrayed a hawk’s presence. Crows or magpies protesting in a tree sometimes marked where a hawk fed on a kill. Here on the steppe there were no signs to be seen, nothing but endless vistas of wind-bent grass, the occasional bush or stunted tree. Occasionally he put up a hare, and once they surprised a herd of gazelle that fled like a cloud shadow. Of birds he saw only a few and they had no tale to tell. A flock of cranes making a late passage south. A harrier quartering the grass. A raven that mocked them with its croaks.
His eyes processed hundreds of square miles of sky. The wind played tricks on his mind, drawing him on after the imagined sound of the falcon’s bells. He rode an eccentric course, diverting to every rise where he stopped and swung a lure, shouting until his voice grew husky. The light began to go and the faint hope of finding the haggard sank into the sickening certainty that he would never see her again.
Syth rode up, pale with fatigue. ‘It’s growing dark. We’d better return.’
Wayland looked back and realised that he was lost. ‘We won’t reach the river before dark. We’ll keep searching as long as there’s light to see.’
The ground beneath their feet was almost invisible when he called a halt in a hollow that offered some shelter from the wind. He left Syth to scavenge brush for a fire, working his way up a ridge. He reached the crest. Far away but not far enough another wilderness traveller had lit a fire, its flames the only light in the universe. He put down his load of fuel and felt his way back to Syth.
‘I couldn’t find any wood.’