The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [172]
Lymond’s method, Best afterwards learned, was simpler by far. A squadron of fast horse, in the tall hats and long dress of merchants showed themselves, briefly to the enemy’s outposts, and then apparently taking fright, fled to the north, leaving their laden carts stranded behind them. In the carts, packed still in half-melted ice, was a sacrificial offering of part of the army’s provisions: mutton, poultry; carcasses of stiff, watery beef. That night, deployed with muffled harness on either side of the Tartar encampment, the Voevoda’s army swept in on the gorged and slumbering men and overran them with the loss of scarcely a man. No prisoners were taken.
Best saw the booty come back: the fence coats and hooked Persian swords; the cloaks of white felt which was so different from English cloth; which could keep armour from rusting and lock, piece and match dry in the Russian climate. And the droves of tough, short-necked horses which could live on roots and birch-bark and branches, with their wooden stirrups and saddles, and leaves for a horsecloth.
It has been thought of, Danny Hislop had said, when he had questioned the wisdom of lavishing food on this army. And Best realized that this had been thought of as well. That, at the turn of the season, the Tartar who quenched his thirst with fermented mares’ milk and the blood cut warm from the veins of his horses; who thought horse-head as great a delicacy, they said, as boar’s head in England, would be hungry from a long winter’s deprivation, during which a man might travel four days and nights without food, and think it nothing out of the way. And that, given food, he would eat his fill and the worth of four days, as an insurance.
That night the fires burned brightly and food was plentiful and hot. And next day they crossed the steppes, riders and sumpter horses, like dancers, to the sound of trumpet and schawm and the thud of the little brass saddle drums until, mysteriously to Rob Best, the order came to draw up and stand, and they did so, under a clear, warming sky with the flag of St George reeling and clapping lazily over them, while another flag appeared far on the horizon, and another company of men, smaller it seemed than their own, came advancing over the melting snow of the grasslands towards them.
Best glanced at Daniel Hislop, mounted beside him. ‘Baida. Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Vishnevetsky,’ Hislop said. ‘Starosta of Kanev and Cherkassy, with five thousand Cossacks. Our scouts encountered his yesterday evening.’
‘I thought,’ said Robert Best, ‘that the Grand Duke of Lithuania was very far from a friend of the Tsar’s?’
Danny Hislop glanced airily round him. Of them all, perhaps, he looked least like a hardened campaigner, although he wore, like his fellows, the furlined coat and chain mail over his padded silk tunic, and the shining spired helmet with its neck-curtain of rings. He said, ‘On the other hand, news takes rather a long time to travel from Cherkassy to Vilna. I rather fancy that by the time the Grand Duke hears that his Starosta has been in action, it will be too late to do much about it. Or Prince Dmitri may simply mention a productive joint action with the Putivl Cossacks. I hope you note,’ Hislop said, ‘that we are going to endless discomfort in order to mortify the allies of Turkey. The Queen, poor thing, should be pleased.’
‘The Queen?’ said Robert Best, with fairly artistic confusion.
Danny Hislop surveyed him. ‘Well, my God, that’s why you are here; why else did you imagine? To keep our dear Voevoda company?’
‘Well, he’s got company now,’ said Robert Best. Waves of song, half drowned by whooping and shouting, the banging of drums and the rumbling of thousands of soft, unshod hooves reached them from the streaming mass now advancing towards them. They heard a shouted command, and a single horse moved from the line as the rest slowed and stopped; a horse whose trappings were gilded leather glinting with jewellery, and whose high saddle was plated with deep beaten silver and dressed with a horse cloth, somewhat splashed, of silken fringed