Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [20]
Kiy stared at the horseman. He had never seen such men before, but he had heard of them. The man on the black horse, he guessed, was a Scythian.
‘If a Scythian catches you,’ his father had once told him, ‘he’ll skin you alive and use your skin for horse-trappings.’ Kiy looked at the reins anxiously. His first sight of the dark warrior’s cold eyes had made him expect the worst and now he supposed they were discussing how to cut him up. He was trembling. And yet, as he stared up at the fair-haired horseman, he wondered if there might be hope. For, despite his terror, he was also thinking that this was the most splendid figure he had ever encountered in his life.
Unlike his Scythian blood brother, the tall fair horseman had his hair cut short. The features of his handsome, oval face were regular, refined, almost delicate; his expression was open and pleasant. But when his pale blue eyes flashed in anger, he was truly terrible – more frightening even than the dark Scythian in front of him. So fearsome was the gaze of the men of his tribe that it was remarked upon by several authors in antiquity.
For he was an Alan – the greatest of all the Sarmatian tribes – and the mighty clan to which he belonged one of the proudest of all, who called themselves the ‘pale’ or ‘radiant’ ones.
Since time out of mind, horsemen had come from the east, from Asian lands that lay beyond that huge crescent of mountain chains that bordered the mighty Eurasian plain to the south. Through the passes above India and Persia they had ridden, through the shimmering haze of the foothills, streaming down on to the vast plain. From the desert they had come, round the Caspian Sea, over the River Volga, and thence to the rich steppe north of the Black Sea, to the lands of the Dniepr River and the Don. They had even penetrated to the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkan Mountains above Greece.
First, in distant antiquity, came the Cimmerians, iron-age horsemen. Next, about 600 BC, the Scythians – an Indo-European people with a mixture of Mongol race, who spoke an Iranian tongue. Then, around 200 BC, and mightier yet, another Iranian-speaking people – the Sarmatians – had swept over the land, reducing the Scythians to a small area and dominating them.
They came from the east, these warrior clans with their noble princes. They gave an Iranian name – Don, meaning water – to the Rivers Don, Dniepr, and even the more westerly Danube. They were nomadic warrior lords of all the steppe.
From the Black Sea to the forest’s edge, the Slavs feared and admired the radiant Alans. Some Slav tribes worked for them; others paid tribute. Widely indeed did they roam: as they proclaimed in their heroic folk tales, they rode the wide prairies from the land of the warm sun to the land of the sunset.
The Alan glanced up at the sky. The afternoon was still hot, but in a little while the men under the wagons would finish their sleep and it would be time to move.
‘We return today,’ he said quietly. ‘You have the boy.’
Kiy could not take his eyes off the tall warrior. Unlike his Scythian blood brother, the Alan used stirrups. He wore soft leather shoes and billowing silk trousers. By his side hung a long sword and a lasso – a favourite weapon of his people – and a dagger with a ring on top was fastened to his leg. His coat of mail and pointed helmet were strapped to a pack on the ground near the wagons, together with two of the long spears which the Alans used to mount their devastating charges. The cloth doublet he wore was sewn with little open triangles of gold; around his neck was a golden torc of golden wires with ends fashioned as golden dragons. Over his shoulders was a long cloak made of wool and held with a huge pin richly studded with oriental gems. And that was all his personal ornament.
The Scythian was differently dressed. Kiy felt his back scratched by the gold and silver ornaments sewn on to the Scythian’s leather jerkin. On the dark arm that held him was a bracelet carved with fantastic gods and animals. Kiy did