Vallon eyed the icon. ‘In your opinion, Hero, would you say that Caitlin’s mad?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir. Even though I have five sisters, I’ve never been able to fathom a woman’s mind.’
‘I want you to arrange a meeting between us. Nobody but we three must know about it. Understand?’
Hero hesitated. ‘Not really, sir.’
They reached the riverside to find Andrei waiting with the guide. Oleg Ievlevich was a small, serious-looking man with slanting hazel eyes above high cheekbones. Nothing in his demeanour lent weight to Wayland’s suspicions. With Andrei acting as middleman, they purchased three riverboats and a skiff. Each boat twenty-four feet long, clinker-built of larch strakes little more than half an inch thick. Although light enough to be towed or dragged, it took six men to lift them and a dozen would have been needed to carry them any distance. Each boat was fitted with eight oarlocks and was masted for a small sail. Behind the mast was a simple stall consisting of two posts and a sling to hold a horse. The skiff was for Wayland to go hunting in.
All the equipping and provisioning, plus the personal disbursements and other expenses, lightened their exchequer considerably. Selling the two ships’ boats and some of their trade goods offset part of the cost, but by the time the expedition was ready, only thirty pounds of silver remained.
On the morning of their departure, Vallon and company left their lodgings before first light. It had rained heavily the day before and then frozen overnight. Vallon’s face tingled in the cold and his feet made stars on the icy puddles as he walked to the riverbank. Caitlin’s party and the Vikings had already gathered, their breath clouding in the still air. As they were loading, Garrick and Arne came down to see them off. A curtain of lilac-coloured sky was rising above the city walls when Andrei arrived with Oleg.
Fifteen men and three women would be making the voyage, travelling six to a boat. Oleg joined Vallon’s company. The six Vikings took the second boat, while the third carried Drogo and Fulk, Caitlin and her maid Asa, and Tostig and Olaf. Vallon’s boat would tow the skiff. Into it Wayland put the caged falcons, plus twenty live pigeons from Vasili’s own dovecotes.
The sun was lifting clear of the city when the voyagers clasped their well-wishers and pushed off. Looking back from the first bend, they saw Garrick and Arne still standing on the jetty with their arms raised.
Hero pulled on his oar. ‘I bet they wish they were going with us.’
Vallon’s smile was noncommittal. Winter coming and more than a thousand miles of river and portage ahead of them before they reached the Black Sea.
Three or four miles upriver they rowed into Lake Ilmen and made twenty easy miles before entering the Lovat, the river flowing south from the great portage. As Vasili had warned them, it ran shallow with many hurrying shoals that forced them to disembark and tow the boats.
The weather was sublime. Nights of acrid frost that left the water margins skimmed with ice gave way to days of brilliant sunshine. Two days upriver Oleg halted the convoy at a farmstead in a forest of birch and pine. They’d passed many similar steadings. A log hut wreathed in blue smoke. A boat drawn up on the grassy shore, beside it a rack for drying fish. Two small haystacks raised on poles. A cow eating from a crib.
Oleg jumped to the bank and gave a loud hail. ‘
Out of the cabin stepped a man with rufous hair and beard. He flung up a hand in greeting. ‘
Ivanko clumped down to the bank, his trousers flapping around his legs. An oddly proportioned fellow. Above the waist he was a big man, below it a small one, with stunted bandy legs shod in leather boots so large that it seemed that if he turned round, the boots would stay fixed to the spot. Behind him strode two hearty sons with the same peculiar physique. It was as if their waists had slipped to where their knees should have been.
‘
Vallon watched the guide and porters bantering together. There was nothing veiled in their manner. He glanced at Wayland and gave a little shrug.
Ivanko invited them into his house. A stove filled the interior with smoke. Hero coughed and rubbed his eyes. ‘They’ve got it the wrong way round. The cold comes in through the chimney and the warmth goes out of the door.’
After a meal of porridge and kvas, Ivanko and his sons loaded equipment into a sturdy dugout canoe that they could convert into a sledge or cart by adding runners or wheels. They harnessed two horses and then, after a brief prayer, set off. They picked up more porters from farms along the way, and by the time they called a halt that evening there were twelve in their company, plus four more horses and two canoes. All the porters seemed delighted to be laying aside their everyday labours for the privilege of hauling three heavily laden boats through ninety miles of forest.
Next day they left the Lovat and began the portage. It wasn’t as arduous as Vallon had feared. Oleg took advantage of every little stream and lake, and there was no shortage of either. Between watercourses, Ivanko’s team fitted the boats’ hulls with runners and dragged them with the horses, the men lending their weight and singing work songs. The route was well trodden, with timber causeways laid across some of the bogs. At night the caravan camped beside stone rings blackened by the fires of previous travellers. Twice on the portage they came across weathered wooden idols, the phallic pillars bearing a moustached face looking out to each quarter. When pressed, Oleg said that this was Perun, the thunder god. He affected not to notice the idols and seemed embarrassed when the porters bowed to them before crossing themselves. Vallon couldn’t have cared less about their idolatry. They were cheerful and willing workers, adept at everything they turned their hands to, using their axes as knife, plane, saw or hammer as the task demanded.
Ever upwards they climbed, the slope never steeper than a gentle incline, until at last they emerged from the forest into a tract of turf swamps. Vallon had the sense of standing at the centre of the world. Whichever way he looked, he was surrounded by a gently rumpled continent of golden-brown forest that faded ridge by ridge until the last ridge was indistinguishable from the sky. Oleg pointed south. ‘Dnieper,’ he said. He swung his hand towards the north-east. ‘Volga.’ Then he nodded very seriously as if confirming a truth. That the arteries of Rus issued from this heartland.
‘Hear that?’ Vallon called. ‘We’ve reached the watershed.’
‘What a relief to be on the right side of gravity,’ Richard said.
Hero laughed at Vallon’s puzzlement. ‘He means that from now on our journey leads downhill. All the way to the Black Sea.’
Around noon next day they floated off downstream into a forest untouched by man since the day of creation. Wayland lay back with Syth’s head on his arm, watching the trees sliding across the sky. They were the old familiar trees of the wildwood grown to fantastic proportions. Many of the oaks and pines steepled up for eighty feet before branching, and some of the spruces must have stood a hundred and fifty feet tall. It was a place of rot and renewal, with live trees sprouting out of dead ones, trees of two different kinds fused in spiral clinches, mouldering giants melting back into the soil. This far south the leaves were still turning and the travellers drifted under a steady pattering of yellow, red and brown that covered the stream in mosaics.
A couple of short portages brought them to a broad, slow-moving river. ‘Dvina,’ said Oleg. ‘Three days and we’ll be at the Dnieper.’
Vallon had a quiet word with Wayland while the porters readied the boats. ‘You’re wrong about Vasili. I’ve been watching Oleg like a hawk and he’s as honest as they come.’
‘Too honest. Most guides leading travellers through foreign parts would take them for every penny.’
Vallon shook his head in exasperation. ‘What was that phrase Raul used to use? “Your mind’s as twisted as a pig’s guts.” You don’t believe that the porters are part of Vasili’s plot.’
‘No. Which is why I think he’ll strike after we’ve paid them off at the Dnieper. Sir, we have to reach the river at a different spot from the one Oleg chooses.’
‘It’s not my place to tell our guide which route to take.’
At that moment Oleg turned to say it was time to board.
Most of the company dozed at their oars as they floated down through the forest. Their rest was brief. Only a
