Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [74]
‘Perhaps,’ Ivanushka said drily. He turned. ‘They’ve killed my poor Shchek though,’ he added mournfully.
It was true. The boy looked at the sturdy old peasant who now lay still, his blood making a black patch on the moonlit grass.
But neither then, nor later, could he understand why Ivan had let the last Cuman go. Nor did Ivan ever tell him who his attacker was.
They found the main Cuman force a few days later, drawn up beside a river. Ivanushka and Vladimir ran their eyes along the huge, dark, menacing line. They had drawn themselves up well, on a slight slope that favoured them. To the right, their carts and light chariots were set in two enormous circles into which they could, if necessary, retreat.
It was the biggest force that Ivanushka had ever seen – line after line of mounted men in leather or light armour with lances and bows, who could charge, wheel, or fly across the steppe like so many falcons.
‘I can count more than twenty princes there,’ Vladimir remarked. He knew the Cumans well.
‘And Boniak?’ Boniak the Mangy, the most terrible, the most ruthless of them all.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Monomakh cheerfully, ‘he’s there.’
The two armies faced each other in silence.
It was then that Ivanushka noticed something. It happened gradually, softly, so that even the sharp-eyed Monomakh had not at first perceived it.
The wind was changing direction.
He reached out, touched the great prince on the arm, and nodded at the swaying grasses.
‘Look.’
Monomakh looked.
‘Praise God.’
The wind would carry their arrows towards the enemy. God meant them to punish the pagans.
The battle that took place that day lived long in the memories of the men of Rus.
‘Our arrows floated on the wind,’ Ivanushka told Emma afterwards. ‘They sailed like swallows.’ The slaughter was terrible, for Monomakh, though generous in peace, was terrible in war. His contempt for Cumans, whom he often accused of breaking their oaths, was complete. No Cuman who came within his reach could hope for the slightest mercy. ‘They tried all their tricks,’ Ivanushka said of that day. ‘They even pretended to run away. But we stayed put until we could trap them against the river.’ The victory was total.
But there was one event of which Ivanushka never spoke. It took place a little before the end of the battle and was seen by nobody else.
He had scarcely thought of his brother during the battle; there was no time. But suddenly, glancing to his left, he saw a single Russian boyar surrounded by three Cumans, who were hacking at him with their curved swords, and instantly knew it was Sviatopolk.
He did not trouble to think, but spurred away from his sons towards him. They had backed him against the river so that his horse’s hind legs were already digging feverishly in the crumbling earth of the bank. As they closed, he valiantly lunged forward, knocking one of the Cumans from his horse. Then, as one of the attackers slashed at its nose, Sviatopolk’s horse reared and he fell, over the steep bank into the swirling river some ten feet below.
Ivanushka caught one of the Cumans from behind, killing him with a single blow; the other fled. But by the time he looked down into the river, Sviatopolk was already several yards out into the stream. The water was moving fast. Half stunned for a moment, Sviatopolk was struggling now to reach the bank, but his chain mail was dragging him down. He looked up hopelessly at the bank above, then seeing his brother, turned away his head. Then he sank.
For a moment, Ivanushka hesitated. The water was deep. Sviatopolk had vanished. If he went in, his chain mail would probably drag him under too. The words of the Old Testament story suddenly flashed through his mind. ‘Am I,’ he murmured, ‘my brother’s keeper?’ And for the first time in many years, as he gazed at the water, he knew fear.
‘Am I to give up my life for the brother who tried to kill me?’ he asked himself. He looked around. The battle had moved away towards