The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [178]
The noise drew them, like an inhalement of steam, to the cockpit.
It was no more than the bare mound of a hillock, not far from the camp and beyond Baida’s tent. Round it were gathered the Cossacks, their torches bright in a circle of fire, their shadows jerking and running before them, A little in front of them stood Dmitri Vishnevetsky, very drunk, with the golden eagle, hooded, weighing down his powerful arm. And thrusting past him, as he stood there, helplessly laughing, were two of his henchmen, not so drunk, and carrying something weakly moving between them, which they threw on the crown of the hill and cuffed into silence and then left, retreating a little, standing hands on their hips, waiting for their great leader Baida.
A Tartar captive. A Tartar child, perhaps eighteen months old, with a piece of raw meat tied to its sunken, bruised belly.
Baida pulled the tassel of Slata Baba’s elegant hood, and flung her high, flags beating, into the air.
Lymond shot his eagle as she swept down: a high, perfect shot with the little birch bow and the short, Turkish fork-headed arrow. He nocked again as she fell. Before she lodged on the ground he killed Baida’s first henchman; he aimed and released the third arrow in the same sequence of deliberate movements, and the other henchman dropped, also shot through the heart. Then, as, screaming, the Cossacks surged up the hill, Lymond turned the fourth, cold shining arrow on Baida.
Everything stopped. Watching, his heart shaking his rib-cage, Best heard the shouting diminish; saw the rush falter, watched Vishnevetsky, frowning, gather his resources and attempt, belatedly, to command himself, and the sudden, uncharitable turn of events. Through his nose, to Lymond, he said, ‘Damn you!’
To Adam Blacklock, Lymond said, ‘If the child is alive, save it. If the eagle is alive, kill it.’ He had lowered the bow. But Baida he had never stopped watching.
Already kneeling at the top of the mound: ‘She is dead,’ said Adam Blacklock, with the Tartar child on his arm.
‘How dare you?’ said Lymond softly to Prince Vishnevetsky. ‘How dare you teach my hunting fowl to turn rogue? Do I feed human flesh to your horse? Do I train your dog to pull the shaft from your leg as you stroke him at table? What do you offer me, to replace Slata Baba?’
There was a growl. Vishnevetsky shouted, ‘You have killed my two men!’
‘Forgive me. I thought they were your servants,’ Lymond said. ‘You have slaughtered, without leave and without courtesy, six months of my time. I am waiting to hear what amends you will make.’
Clear and savage and cold, the voice cut through all the confusion; the shouting dropped to a rumble and already there was a move backwards from the low hill, leaving Vishnevetsky isolated with the Voevoda near the top. Best thought, He has only to pitch his voice so, and they believe it. They believe the lives of two half-trained moujiks are nothing compared to the life of this bird.
‘If the fowl was your lapdog,’ said Dmitri Vishnevetsky at last, ‘I will get you another. Or this …?’ And, sobered now, he took the whip from his belt and, stretching it, hooked from the hands of an onlooker a cage, in which a terrified linnet chirped and fluttered and hopped. ‘This might please your child, who does not go to war, rather better.’
Lymond said, ‘I want payment in full.’
For a moment they stood face to face in the torchlight: the tall tousled man with the wide-striding boots and high colour, and the repressed and motionless foreigner, skin, clothes and hair bright and groomed and deadly as sharplings. The prince, staring at him, suddenly shrugged. ‘I cannot manufacture an eagle.’
Lymond said, ‘Take your bow.’
The other man had none with him. Before he could open his mouth, Alec Guthrie had leaned over, bow and quiver in hand, and was offering his. Frowning, Prince Vishnevetsky grasped it, while Guthrie took and held the small cage in its place.
‘You have booty,’ Lymond said.