The Golden Horde Read Online Free Page B

Novgorod —”
    “Peace, Vanya. I already told you I know more than I take credit for. Trust me on this. There’s a wariness among the other domains, but not the active dislike directed at me. You stood side by side with Yuriy of Kiev and the Mikhaylovichi of Novgorod in the battle on the ice, you were instrumental in that battle being a notable victory and regardless of how Nevskiy’s tame bookmen slant the history in his favour, they know it. They were there. In the marketplace of alliances, my boy, don’t sell yourself short.”
    The Council Chamber was almost completely silent now, and not because the councillors and the druzhinya retinue were trying to listen in. They knew the murmured exchange between Aleksandr and his son represented a crucial turning-point in this whole affair, and they held still like men awaiting judgment in a court of law. Ivan leaned closer and spoke so quietly that not even Strel’tsin could hear it.
    “One last question. Why now, and not later?”
    It seemed as if Tsar Aleksandr hadn’t heard the question, because he stared not at Ivan but past him for several seconds. Then his eyes focused on those of his son, and to Ivan’s surprise and discomfort, their expression was one of shame. “I’m an old man, Ivan. One more old man among all these others. Khorlov will need a young man soon.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Because you don’t have the Sight.”
    Ivan understood. It was an ability that appeared now and then in the Khorlovskiy male line, just as some families occasionally produced children with red hair. Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin claimed to trace it back to the pagan priests of Uppsala, when all the Rus were just one tribe or clan among the North people, the Vikings.
    Not that the Sight was any great use, to hear the stories. It didn’t help find lost things or see accurate events in the future, but it could cast a brightness or a shadow, an intimation of something good or bad waiting to happen. Even had it been more useful the Sight was no gift to wish on anyone. If one was minded that way it was possible to worry about what the impending light or darkness might mean to the exclusion of all else, including sanity.
    That was the tale, anyway. If Tsar Aleksandr felt that a young Tsar was needed to face whatever might happen tomorrow, next month, next year or whenever, then even if his reasoning was almost impossible to explain, that reasoning would be sound.
    Ivan felt his courage shrivel inside him as it sometimes did when he stood on the open brink of a tall place, but rather than step back he jumped. “I accept the charge,” he said, clearly enough to be heard all the way to the back of the Council Chamber, “and will be such a Tsar as my father would wish.”
    The words were simple; generations of ritual hadn’t yet encrusted them with elaborate phrases of acceptance. But once those words were spoken, whether here and now in front of the Council and the druzhinya or more usually intoned softly beside the bed where the last Tsar lay newly dead, the Prince who uttered them was Prince no longer.
    Ivan was Tsar, by birth, by decree and – after an uncomfortable few seconds of hesitation among the councillors and glances exchanged by the boyaryy and bogatyri of the Tsar’s retinue – by popular acclaim as they stood up and cheered. There was nothing else for them to do except stand up and cheer, except be declared a traitor.
    Despite the warmth in the great wooden hall brought on by braziers and fur-wrapped bodies, the drops of sweat that formed and trickled down the hollow of his back felt cold. It wasn’t entirely the Council’s reluctance to see him as Tsar, though that had a part in it. But Ivan had been watching his father’s face as he took the plunge into the sea of monarchy with all its shallows, rocks and sharks, and the expression he glimpsed had brought the sweat and shivers to his spine.
    Because there was relief on Tsar Aleksandr’s face,