The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [176]
‘Mr Hislop?’ said d’Harcourt woodenly.
The uncomfortable blue eyes opened fully on his. ‘The sparrows know it, so why should it be hidden from me that Hislop has a Tartar wench at Kitaigorod? So you will roll her in the rug she is blemishing, and dispose of her how you will, provided that it is secretly, and sufficiently far from this tent. She is a murderess, and a heretic, an upholder of the faith you took vows to destroy. It appears therefore to be a task which befits you better than any other. Don’t you agree?’
Ludovic d’Harcourt did not answer. But he did as he was told, and most efficiently, so that soon the Voevoda’s tent was vacant and ordered once more, and the Voevoda was able to retire, as he preferred, without company; but with the final verse of the Song of Baida remaining, freakishly repeating itself in his mind.
You should have known
How to punish him.
You should have cut off his head,
And buried his body,
Taken and ridden his jet-black horse
And given your affection to the boy.
But of that, naturally, he said nothing at all to his underlings.
Chapter 13
The combined armies of the Voevoda Bolshoia and Prince Dmitri Vishnevetsky sailed down the Dnieper, causing damage to every major settlement on the way, and finally raided the Tartar stronghold of Ochakov, lying in the spring sunshine on the Euxinian Sea to the west of the Crimean Peninsula. Using fire, using decoys, employing the cannon concealed in their carts, they felled ramparts and broke wooden walls, killed and looted, freed prisoners and took them and confounded the violent defence of the enemy with all these and one measure more—the touch of flamboyant genius, the unexpected exploitation of the obvious which was the mark of St Mary’s. Into the streets of Ochakov, where the children screamed and the scimitars flashed through the swaying strings of dried fish, all furred and buzzing with flies, Lymond released a double cartload of swine, the abomination of the Musselman, and set the Streltsi firing their hackbuts over their heads.
The Khan of the Krim Tartars was not taken, and not a tenth of his horde was lost in the raid: the numbers to achieve that needed a different season and a different campaign. But that night, in his round reeded house on the steppes, Devlet Girey prostrated himself on his carpet, and tears from his hollow eyes sank into his beard as he mourned his dead, and promised vengeance, and considered, gnawing his lips, the new offence and the new menace offered by Moscow.
Far to the north, on their way home, the combined armies of Russian and Cossack raced across the fresh grass of the steppes, hunting, singing and shouting in a clamour of wind-pipe, drum and brass while their banners flew reeling across the endless blue skies of the Chernoziom.
They were on the verge of the riches of spring, when deer and antelope would run to the bow, and wild boars frequent the thicket, and foxes and beavers. When the stork would come back and geese and heron, swan and pheasant and partridge would stand in the brush, when honey would spill through the trees and there would be pike and perch, tench, roach and carp free to take in the unfrozen rivers, and the birchwoods would smell fresh and sweet under the melting spring sun, and the nightingale sing.
Riding north, through the sharp wind and the light warming sun, the conquering armies felt the quivering change of the season. They rode bare-headed, thrusting off helmet and shuba, so that their mail tunics sparkled like river water and the ikons gave off great flashes, as if angel were speaking to angel, under the striding sword of St George.
The leaders hunted, Lymond with Slata Baba behind him, murmuring to her as he unstruck and drew off her hood, praising her with his voice as he fed her her bloody reward, watching her, head thrown back, as she stooped and struck and returned, perfectly manned, to stand behind him again with her half-mantled wings. ‘For the first reason,’ Lymond said to nobody in particular, ‘is that hunting causeth a man to