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  She looked at Kiy’s round cheeks, not at his eyes. She looked at his small, plump hands that held on to the black mane of the powerful horse. But still she said nothing.

  For silence is more powerful than words.

  The Alan watched her. What could she know, he thought, of the destiny that awaited the boy, over the horizon? What could she know of the busy Greek and Roman Black Sea ports; of the tall grey cliffs that shone like molten ash upon that southern sea; of the smooth, humpbacked promontories that looked like great bears come to drink the waters? What could she know, this poor Slav woman from the forest’s edge, of the rich grain trade by the Crimea, of the caravans that travelled to the east, of the snow-topped Caucasus Mountains, the forges where men tempered iron in the passes or of the green vineyards on the lower slopes? She had never seen the great herds of magnificent horses, like gods, that dwelt by the mountains, or the proud stone towers of his people.

  Soon, in a few years, this boy would be a warrior – ride a horse like Trajan, perhaps. He would be one of them, the radiant Alans, whose charges and feigned retreats the Romans themselves had copied. Had not the emperor Marcus Aurelius himself recently given up his attempts to conquer them? Had not the Romans seemed glad of their help against the fiery Parthians?

  There was so much to see and know: he might visit the kingdoms of the Cimmerians, or the Scythians in the Crimea; he could converse with Greeks, Romans, Persians, Jewish settlers in the ports; meet Iranian and Asiatic people from who knew what distant eastern lands. He might win glory fighting the Persians in the east or the troublesome Goths from the north. Above all, he would experience the huge freedom of the mighty steppe – the thrill of the gallop, the comradeship of their brotherhood.

  As a Slav, what could he do – live in the forest and pay tribute, or move south and till the land for the masters of the steppe? But as a member of their clan, he would be a lord of men.

  With these thoughts he stared down at the woman who wanted her child.

  ‘The boy is ours.’ Little Kiy heard the words and looked first at the Alan, then at his mother. He tried to see if the Alan meant to kill him. Surely if they meant to, they would have done so by now. Yet what was to become of him? Was he never to see her again? The sharp smell of the big horse and the hot tears that welled up in his eyes seemed to fill the whole afternoon.

  The men by the wagons were stirring, harnessing up. The Alan allowed his gaze to wander over the steppe. Lebed stood where she was.

  The dark Scythian watched her as impassively as a snake. His horse shook its head. The village must be close indeed, he thought. How he longed to raid it. But he had twice suggested it and his blood brother had been unwilling. His arm flexed round the boy. ‘Let us go, my brother,’ he said quietly.

  The Alan paused. Why should he pause? There was no reason to do so. But since it would be a long journey, and since the boy his blood brother had captured was about to begin a new life, and since he wished to show some small act of kindness towards the little boy to reassure his watching mother, he moved close and drawing it out from his chest, hung a small amulet around the boy’s neck. It was a talisman of the magical bird Simrug, whose eyes point in different directions – one to the present, one to the future. Pleased with this gift, he nodded to the Scythian, and the two men wheeled their horses.

  As they did so, Kiy’s face began to pucker up. He wrenched himself round, stared back round the Scythian’s unyielding arm.

  ‘Mama!’

  Her body quivered. Every muscle she possessed wanted to move, to rush at the horseman. But she knew that if she did, he would strike her down. For some reason she herself did not understand, she knew that stillness and silence were her only hope.

  ‘Mama!’ A second time. They were thirty paces away now.

  She did not move. Slowly the two men walked their horses into the long grasses, towards the east. Seventy paces. A hundred. She watched the small round face, its eyes very large, looking strangely pale above the dark horse that carried it away.

  ‘Mama!’

  Still she gazed at the face intently. The tall feather grass was starting to obscure him.

  The carts were moving now, lumbering after them, accompanied by the other horsemen. They did not even bother to glance at her, as she stood, watching them go.

  She had been praying in her mind since the moment she had first seen them; and although her prayers had been to no avail, she continued to pray, nonetheless. She prayed to the god of the wind, whom she felt against her face. She prayed to the god of thunder and lightning, and to the sun god who even now beat down upon them both. She prayed to the god of cattle. She prayed to Moist Mother Earth, who lay everywhere, under their feet. She prayed to all the gods she knew. But the empty blue sky looked down upon her – and gave her nothing. It seemed metallic, hard as the horsemen’s eyes.

  The wagons receded through the swaying grasses. After a time she could no longer see even a faint cloud of dust. And now it seemed to her that the blue sky itself was slowly receding from her. And though she continued to pray, after the manner of her people, she bowed her head in tacit acknowledgement – it was fate.

  It was mounting a small hillock and looking back that the Alan saw her: a tiny figure in the distance, still standing there, watching after them.

  And then he took pity on her. For by chance, that year, he too had lost his only son.

  When the Scythian heard what his blood brother asked of him, his eyes shone.

  ‘Twice today, my brother,’ he replied, ‘you have said to me do not ask – when I desired to raid the village. But that you may know my love for you, ask anything of me and it shall be yours. For did we not put our sword points in the cup of blood together? Did I not swear by wind and scimitar to be yours in life and death?’ With an easy movement, he passed the little boy across to the Alan. ‘He is yours.’

  Then he waited.

  Had it not been against his honour, the Alan would have sighed. Instead, with a light smile, he answered: ‘My faithful brother, you have journeyed far with me to honour my grandfather, and you have done all that I have asked, not only today but many times. Nor have you ever asked anything in return. Now, therefore, I beg you, ask a gift of me that I may show my love for you.’

  He knew a gift was due; and he knew what it would be.

  ‘Brother of mine,’ replied the Scythian gravely, ‘I ask for Trajan.’

  ‘Then he is yours.’

  It hurt, physically, when he said it. Yet even in his pain he felt a surge of pride: to give such a horse away – this, truly, was the mark of a noble man.

  ‘One last ride on him,’ the Alan said gaily. And without waiting, he wheeled Trajan about and with no more than a touch, and holding the little boy easily in his arms, put the horse at a gallop across the steppe.

  And as Little Kiy looked about him in bewilderment, clinging instinctively to the splendid beast’s mane, the Alan said to him in the Slavic tongue: ‘See, little boy, you are returning to your village: but all your life you will be able to say – “I rode on Trajan, the noblest of all the horses of the radiant Alans”.’

  The little boy had no idea that there were tears in the Alan’s eyes. All he knew was a thrill of joy, and of excitement greater than he had ever known before.

  So it was that Lebed, staring hopelessly at the empty steppe, suddenly saw, as though it were the wind god himself, the flying form of Trajan racing over the ground towards her. Almost carelessly, and without a word, the Alan dropped the child at her feet, then turned and rode away into the shimmering steppe.

  She hugged the child to her, in disbelief, while he clung to her.

  And she scarcely took in the fact that, after a moment, he abruptly turned round in her arms, pointed to the disappearing figure on the pulsating steppe and cried out: ‘Let me go with them!’

  Carrying the child in her arms, lest he be taken from her again, she hurried back to the woods.

  Lebed did not return to the village at on
ce. Instead, she went to a quiet place beside the river. Close by there was a sacred oak tree to which she gave thanks, and then, wishing only to be alone with her child, she sat in the shade and watched the little boy while he played by the water and then slept a while.

  It was evening when they emerged together from the wood’s edge. The big field had been cleared, and was empty. Like two little clouds, they drifted slowly across the big open space.

  The harvest was done. In one corner of the field, as was the custom, a sheaf of barley had been left standing – a gift to Volos the god of wealth. At the top of the field, a group of little girls were standing in a circle, playing a clapping game and laughing; and as they entered the village, the geese by the huts greeted them with their usual din.

  The first person Lebed saw was her husband. His face lit up with joy as he lifted the little boy high into the air above his head, while her mother-in-law came out of the hut and gave her a curt nod.

  ‘I looked for you,’ he said. No doubt he had. Indeed, she knew, his warm heart might have driven him to search for them for days – except that there were so many other things he had to do.

  ‘I found him,’ she said simply. Then she told them about the horsemen, and they went to the village elder and made her tell it all again.

  ‘If they come another time,’ the elder said slowly, ‘we shall move north again.’ For the little community had come north to that place only five years before to avoid paying tribute to the horsemen of the steppe.

  But that day there was nothing to be done except celebrate the ending of the harvest.

  Already the young men and girls had gone out beside the field and were rolling and turning somersaults on the grass. In front of the elder’s hut, the women were putting the finishing touches to a small figure in the shape of an old man, made of barley. It had a long, curling beard which, just then, they were anointing with honey. This was the god of the field, whom they were about to take to the boundary where the field met the edge of the woods.

  And it was only now, as the villagers were gathering, that Mal emerged from the doorway of his hut. He hesitated when he saw Lebed and the child, but the little boy ran up to him. ‘I saw the bear,’ he cried. ‘I saw him.’

  And Mal blushed deep red, as Lebed pulled Kiy away.

  As the villagers started to move out into the field, Lebed felt her husband at her side. She did not glance up into his face, as she knew he hoped she would, but she already knew the soft expression it wore. His eyes were glowing with eagerness like a boy’s – she knew this, too, without looking. His long arms hung beside her and now one of them moved as his hand took her by the arm and gently squeezed. That was the signal – she knew it was coming.

  She kept walking. Other women, she guessed, had noticed the little signal too. It was a strong arm, she thought, though rather bony, and by walking on, by not looking up, she could best conceal her lack of enthusiasm. He would come to her that night: that was all. She pushed the little boy in front of them so that their eyes could rest upon him, and this, as they entered the field, was their communion.

  While the sun began its slow descent on to the trees, and the long shadows streamed across the cut field, the villagers began the songs and dances. In a circle now, led by her mother-in-law, the women who had been reaping sang:

  ‘Stubble of the summer grain

  Give me back my strength again.

  I reaped you and now I am weak,

  But winter is long, winter is bleak:

  Harvest field and summer grain

  Give me back my strength again.’

  The warm rays of the sinking sun caught the soft honey that trickled off the beard of the barley man, so that it shone.

  By the side of the field, three old women, each a babushka too old now to dance or sing, watched them placidly. As she glanced at them, Lebed smiled to herself. She knew that she too would pass that way. They say that the god of the field shrinks to a tiny old man when the field is cut, she thought. Humans, too, shrink into the earth, dwelling underground like the ancestral domovoi. That was fate. Nature could not be mastered; man or woman could only accept seed time and harvest. And her individual destiny – this too, she knew, was not important. No, not even the loss of her child would be greatly noticed, whatever her pain. So many children were lost. Nobody counted them. But some survived; and the life of the village, of the rod, only this would continue, always, through the harsh, remorseless cycle of the seasons in the endless land.

  When the song was done, she went over to Little Kiy. He was sitting on the ground, fingering the talisman the horseman had given him; his mind was not on her, but moving upon the open steppe. He scarcely looked up at her.

  And now her husband was in front of her, hovering over the child, his face smiling, eager.

  He too was necessary: at certain times, at certain seasons, she had need of him. Yet although she was his to command, although it was the men who ruled in the village, it was the women, she knew, who were strong and who endured. It was the women, like Moist Mother Earth herself, who protected the seed in the ground and who brought forth the harvest for the sun god and for a man with his plough.

  He smiled.

  ‘Tonight.’

  It was after dusk, when the splinters of resin wood that served as candles were lit, that the feasting began in the elder’s hut. The loving cup and its ladle, brimming with sparkling mead, was passed from hand to hand. And with each course of fish, millet bread, and meat, a dish was offered to the domovoi who it was assumed had emerged from his lair under the barn to join them.

  When the food was eaten, the whole village continued to drink, and to dance. Kiy saw his mother take her red tambourine and dance before his father; and watched, fascinated, until in the heat his head finally fell forward on his chest and he slept.

  Twice her husband touched her and murmured: ‘Come.’ Twice she shook her head and continued to dance. She too had drunk, though less heavily than the others, and now her body was suffused with warmth. Excited by her own dancing, she began to crave him; but still she danced and drank, to bring herself to the moment when she would truly want him.

  Gradually, as men and women alike reeled drunkenly out into the night, Lebed too allowed her husband to put his arm round her waist and lead her out. All around, by the huts, towards the field, indiscriminate couplings were taking place: who knew, who would remember, who had lain with whom? Who would know whose child was whose, in any results of that general sexual encounter? It did not matter. By such careless means the life of the rod would go on.

  They went down to the river, past long grasses where the fireflies were shining in the darkness. Together they gazed at the river, that gleamed in the moonlight. To this little river, the villagers had given a name, taken from the horsemen of the steppe they feared. For as the Slavs knew well, some of the greatest of the Alans had described themselves, in their Iranian tongue, as Rus – meaning ‘light’, or ‘shining’. And so, since to a Slav ear this word had a pleasing feminine sound, well suited to a river, the villagers had called the little gleaming waterway Rus – the shining one.

  It was a good name. And no doubt it would have pleased them still more had they known that this same Iranian name – Rus or Rhos – was also to be applied in these early ages to that mighty river far to the east that later times would call the Volga.

  Rus they called the river; and the hamlet beside it they called, similarly, Russka.

  The night was quiet. The stream shone, moved, yet did not move. They lay down on the grass. High above in the starlit summer sky, pale clouds came from time to time, like horsemen in an unhurried procession, glowing softly in the reflection of a crescent moon that rode to the south – and who knew, out in the forest, what bear or fox, wolf or firebird might be moving through the shadows, or what horsemen camped by their fires upon the endless steppe?

  But the only sound that Lebed heard was a whisper in the leaves, as the wind moved softly over the land.

&n
bsp; The River

  In the year of Our Lord 1066, in the month of January, a terrible sign appeared in the heavens. It was seen all over Europe.

  In the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England, threatened with William of Normandy’s invasion, it was recorded in the chronicles with gloomy expectation. In France, Germany and all round the shores of the Mediterranean it was seen. In eastern Europe, in the newly formed states of Poland and Hungary, the dreadful object dominated the nights. And beyond them, on the eastern borderland where forest meets steppe and the broad River Dniepr runs down to the temperate Black Sea, the great red comet hung, night after night, over the white and silent landscape; and men wondered what new evil was to befall the world.

  And how that world had changed. In the nine turbulent centuries since the days of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, western civilization had passed from classical to medieval times in a series of huge events. Rome had become Christian; but soon after, its sprawling empire, now divided between its western and eastern capitals of Rome and Constantinople, had collapsed under the weight of huge barbarian invasions.

  From the Mongolian lands above the Great Wall of China they had come, wave after wave from the east, crossing the great southern crescent of mountain ranges and sweeping down on to the desert and steppe of the vast Eurasian plain. Some white, some Mongoloid, mostly speaking forms of Turkish, these terrible invaders swept all before them. Thus came Attila and his Huns; after them the Avars; then the Turks. But it was not their sudden invasions, nor their huge, short-lived empires in the steppe that broke the Roman Empire: it was the enormous chain reaction of migrations that they set off as they crashed into the tribes of eastern Europe. These were the migrations that brought the Franks to France, the Bulgars, descendants of the Huns, to Bulgaria, the Saxons and Angles to Britain, and gave the names of tribes to regions like Burgundy and Lombardy.

  By the end of this process, the old world had been shattered. Rome had fallen. Western Europe, though the barbarians were slowly converted to Christianity, remained a disorderly patchwork of tribal and dynastic regions. Only in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea did a semblance of the old order remain. For here, just above Greece and beside the narrow channel that links the Black Sea to the waters of the Mediterranean, stood the stately city of Constantinople, also known as Byzantium. Unconquered, guardian of classical culture and of eastern Christianity, its character Greek rather than Latin, Constantinople remained inviolate: the city where, right through the Middle Ages, there would still preside – even if only in name – a Christian Roman Emperor.