consideration.
About thirty miles, Hero calculated. ‘So it shouldn’t take more than a day or two to get clear of them.’
The pilots stared at him. Kolzak laughed. ‘The convoys take a week.’
‘A week!’
‘Sometimes longer. There are nine rapids and we have to carry the ships over six of them. In some places we have to drag the ships along the bank. In others the men must get into the water and lift the ships over the rocks with ropes and poles. At the worst rapid — the Insatiable — the slaves have to make their way on foot for ten versts along the top of the gorge. That alone takes a whole day.’
Hero didn’t have to confer with Vallon to know what his reaction would be. He addressed Fyodor. ‘That’s unacceptable.’
Fyodor laughed madly. ‘The pilots are talking about the big ships of the summer convoy. With small boats, there’s no need for all this lifting and carrying. Kolzak and Igor will run the rapids without you having to set foot on land once.’ Another laugh. ‘They know the river so well that they can run them in their sleep.’ He thumped the pilots’ backs. ‘Isn’t that true, men?’
They looked at their feet. ‘Yes, master.’
Hero knew that they wouldn’t tell him the truth while Fyodor was present. ‘What about the nomads?’
‘I told you. The Cumans have gone. They’re like swallows that are seen only in summer.’
‘Let the pilots answer.’
Kolzak shifted. ‘It’s true that the Cumans wander away from the river in winter. That doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat. They can turn up anywhere, at any time.’
‘Are they as dangerous as people say?’
Igor answered with surprising eloquence. ‘They devour the land as if it were food laid out for wolves. They sow our soil with arrows. They harvest our youth with their swords, winnow our fighting men with flails of iron and build haystacks with their skulls. They harry us like flies that can be beaten off but not destroyed.’
Fyodor laughed and gave Igor’s arm a twist. ‘Come, come. They’re men not devils.’
‘How soon can we leave?’
‘As soon as you wish. My ships are waiting at Vitichev, a day downriver, where the summer convoy assembles.’
Hero turned to Vallon. ‘He says we can go whenever you’re ready.’
‘I’m ready now.’
XLI
It was twilight when they reached the rendezvous at Vitichev. Vallon studied the place from mid-channel. Under the lacklustre sky the stockaded settlement presented a glum and shuttered air. Scores of ships crammed a dock, some of them half-submerged and others in the process of being cannibalised. A pair of small galleys that had seen better days lay moored along the quayside, each carrying three horses. Fyodor’s slaves and soldiers were waiting on shore. In the dusk the slaves’ faces looked as pale as winding sheets. Fyodor waved. The only other people in sight were four dim figures surrounding a horseman at the far end of the quay.
‘Hero and I will go,’ Vallon said.
They climbed a ladder to the quay. The slaves were of an uncannily pale race, with blanched complexions and hair as white as swans. All of them were children, the oldest barely pubescent and some as young as four or five. They squatted in huddles, hugging their shoulders, racked by croupy coughs, staring at the strangers with eyes that held neither curiosity nor hope. The soldiers were scarcely less apathetic. They gave the impression of slovenly and unwilling conscripts, their clothes shabby, their weapons second rate.
‘Call those soldiers?’ Vallon said in disgust. ‘I thought it was supposed to be a valuable cargo.’
‘Welcome, welcome,’ Fyodor called. ‘Welcome.’
‘How did you come by the children?’ Hero asked him.
‘My agents purchased them from their parents.’
‘Their parents sold them?’
Fyodor’s mouth turned down. ‘Last year’s harvest was a poor one. They would have starved if I hadn’t rescued them.’
‘They look half-starved now.’
Fyodor flapped a hand. ‘If I fed them any more, my expenditure wouldn’t be commensurate with income.’
Hero lips curled in detestation. ‘What will they be used for?’
‘Angels.’
‘Angels?’
‘Isn’t that what they look like? Most of the boys will serve as eunuchs in the imperial court. The girls … ’ Fyodor widened his eyes and hunched his shoulders.
Vallon had been watching the figures in the gloom at the end of the quay. ‘Who’s the horseman?’
Fyodor pretended he hadn’t been aware of the rider and his entourage. ‘Ah, yes. That is a very important man in Kiev.’
‘What’s he doing here?’
Fyodor considered his response. ‘He owns the ships.’
‘The slaves too,’ Vallon told Hero. ‘We’ve been taken for a ride. Tell the fat fraud to start loading.’
Fyodor kicked one of the soldiers and they set about herding the slaves into the galleys. The merchant took Hero’s hands and gazed at him with moist sympathy. ‘I feel for you, dear brother. That captain of yours is a cruel man.’
They put the town behind them, navigating by the lines of tarnished silver that marked the shores. They slept in the boats and woke exhausted. Three days’ rest wasn’t enough to restore reserves of energy run down by three months’ travelling. Three weeks wouldn’t have been too much.
Before noon they passed the tributary leading east to Pereiaslav, the last city in Kievan Rus. Below the confluence there were no more towns, only isolated farms scratched out of the sandy soil and scattered pines. Then even these petered out and night after night passed when there was no sound to be heard anywhere along the river and their fires were the only pricks of light in the darkness.
The dingy yellow current carried them through the steppe. Weird rock formations where hermits had lodged flanked the west bank. On the flat eastern shore a wilderness of reeds fringed empty grassland and sand dunes. Rus didn’t have a clearly defined southern frontier, the pilots said. It shifted according to the movements of the horse nomads.
Wayland had purchased a score of pigeons and chickens as a food reserve for the falcons. He had to start using it sooner than he’d expected because most of the wildfowl had gone, flown to the south. Now he counted himself lucky if he killed a brace of game a day.
Returning one morning empty-handed, he made his way over to the falcons’ cages on the riverbank and stopped short, staring dumbfounded.
Vallon noticed. ‘What’s wrong?’
Wayland ran towards the cages. Two of them stood with doors ajar. He flung one open. Empty. He checked the other one. Empty. He knelt in stunned disbelief. ‘They’ve gone.’ He turned. ‘Two of the falcons have gone.’
The other travellers hurried up. ‘Are you sure you shut them securely?’ Vallon said.
Wayland stared at him and it was Syth who answered. ‘Of course we did. We always check each night.’
‘And this morning? Did you check then?’
‘It was still dark when we left to go hunting.’
Wayland rose. ‘Someone released them during the night.’ His gaze settled on Drogo and Fulk and his features contorted. ‘It was you!’ He ran at them. ‘
Drogo drew his sword. ‘Don’t blame me for your sloppy husbandry.’
Sword or no sword, Wayland would have hurled himself against Drogo if Vallon hadn’t pulled him away. ‘We’ll
