Free The Golden Horde by Peter Morwood

walked about.
    Service and companionship with Ivan Aleksandrovich of Khorlov was entertaining, exciting, and even – had the Grey Wolf been inclined that way – profitable. The young Tsar also managed to tolerate a comrade who wasn’t a man who could take wolf’s shape, but a wolf in the form of a man with all of a wolf’s lack of scruples. Ivan had the good grace to let matters lie, rather than forcing human strictures of conscience or morality onto something very definitely not human.
    Volk Volkovich had been called oborotyen , ‘werewolf’, by people who should have known better. There were few enough of those; Ivan’s father Aleksandr the old Tsar, the High Stewards and Guard-Captains of Khorlov and Koldunov, all knew that regardless of what form he took the Grey Wolf was more than he seemed. No one else had ever seen him in the shape of anything other than an enormous wolf, and Tsar Ivan preferred it to remain that way.
    “Let it be our little secret,” he’d said, “especially when you travel on the Tsardom’s business.” Ivan had smiled thinly in a cool, confidential way that was anything but an indication of amusement and the Grey Wolf had grinned right back at him, because Tsar Ivan had stolen that smile from the Grey Wolf’s own mother.
    Volk Volkovich kept their little secret whenever there were unauthorized eyes about. It was a weapon as useful as a concealed dagger, but much less likely to be discovered and cause suspicion since in his role as courier for the Tsar, the Grey Wolf didn’t carry any weapons at all. There was already little enough trust between Khorlov and the other domains of Russia, and never less than with the Great Princes of Vladimir and their subordinates. Even the lords of Kiev and Novgorod had shown some warmth when Ivan took the crown, but not Yuriy and Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, who shared the throne of Vladimir.
    Those two brothers, and their heir-apparent Aleksandr Yaroslavich Nevskiy, had taken mortal offence at Ivan’s suspicions about their dealing with the Tatars. He had said nothing aloud that could be reported back by the inevitable spies every ruler had in every other ruler’s kremlin, but his attitude had been enough to raise their collective hackles like cats in the presence of a dog. The city and domains of Vladimir claimed to be troubled just as much as everyone else by Tatar incursions, yet it was strange how no real harm ever befell them.
    Fifteen years ago, while Chinghis-Khan’s army was returning from its four-year raid into Afghanistan and Khwarizmid Persia, the Great Khan had granted permission for his generals Jebe and Subotai to make a sweep west and north that took them through the Crimea and the Ukraine. Vladimir, though right in the path of the approaching host, had been undamaged. Since then the city had never been assaulted by raiders, its villages went unscathed when others burned, and its cattle remained in their pastures whilst the herds of other princes were driven into the wilderness of the high steppe.
    But times change, and Khans change, and secret agreements made without witnesses become less convenient than they were. If the present route of the Tatar army was any indication, whatever pact the lords of Vladimir had made with the Great Khan Ogotai was at an end.
    The problem was convincing Roman Ingvarevich to believe it.
    *
    Roman Ingvarevich, Prince of Ryazan, leaned forward to better give the impression of looking down on the tall, tanned man in the grey furs who stood before him. He disliked the man’s eyes being almost level with his own, even though the Prince’s chair was raised on a dais higher than most Rus noblemen required. Or perhaps he disliked the eyes themselves. They were emerald green, brilliant as gemstones or as if illuminated by some source within, and though they were an unnatural colour in a man’s face, the Prince seemed to be trying to remember where he’d seen such eyes before.
    “Your eyes are strange, Volk