Our trade in Kiev was all we had hoped for. Woolen cloaks from Flanders commanded prices many times greater than we paid, and within two weeks our merchandise was gone, and our carts and packhorses were heaped high with furs, ermine, marten, fox and wolf skins, elk hides, and much else.
In the ninth century a few bands of Norsemen had swept over this land, defeating the Slavs and establishing themselves in a series of fortified enclosures called gorods for protection against the people they ruled. Novgorod was one such, Kiev another. Kiev was the largest trade center, and its prince was superior to all others.
To the east lay the Moslem world of Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, and Samarkand. To the south lay Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, formerly the Eastern Roman Empire, called so but rarely now.
Arab, Jew, and Byzantine traders filtered into Kiev and were quick to establish a working relationship with the rulers from the north. The slave trade, providing slaves for the harems, shops, and large homes of Byzantium, was remunerative. The Hansgraf disapproved of serfdom (he was, I believe, born a serf) and would have none of it. He was on good terms with the Scandinavian traders who had settled among the Slavs and were called Russians by the native peoples.
In Córdoba I had read the writings of Constantine Porphyrogenetus who traveled here in the ninth century, and his works were the source of much of the information I had given the Hansgraf.
Each year there gathered at Kiev a great fleet of boats, and after the melting of the ice, this flotilla descended the Dnieper to the Black Sea, sailing to Constantinople with slaves, furs, and products of the northern lands. Boats also went upriver, and from there the caravans traveled across country to the Baltic, following a part of the Amber Road.
By the time we arrived in Kiev much of this trade had ceased to exist. Far to the east there was restlessness among the wild tribes of the steppes. The Petchenegs, sometimes called Cumans, had swept across the trade route to Baghdad, and they had almost cut Kiev off from Constantinople by driving their hordes into the lands north of the Black Sea.
Kiev was, in many ways, a more enlightened city than Paris, for Paris lay under the domination of an autocratic Church that was only beginning to broaden its intellectual base, and Kiev, utterly pagan, but drawing upon both Christian and Moslem cultures, was a town where all ideas were of interest.
There was little agriculture about the city. Nomadic herdsmen, dark-eyed and savage fellows with Mongolian features, stalked the streets in tight, well-armed groups, talking to no one. There were tall, blond Vikings from the north, a fierce, piratical people, many of whom had become excellent traders.
“Sometime,” I told Suzanne, “I shall write about the relationship between piracy and trade. The one always seems to precede the other, and the most successful pirates have become traders, perhaps on the idea that it is easier to defraud a man than kill him.
“Trade is much superior to piracy. You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again.”
“You are cynical,” Suzanne said. “They only sell them what they want.”
“If people were sold only what they wanted, there would be little trade, my lady. The soul of business is to inspire people to buy that which they neither want nor need.
“Take our Lucca, for example. Fur makes his neck break out in a rash; yet at each fair in Flanders he wore fur-trimmed robes with such style, such elegance, that many were prevailed upon by their wives to buy cloaks in which they looked neither stylish nor elegant, and which their own woolens far outclassed in many respects.”
“Mathurin, has the Hansgraf said when we would go south?”
“Soon. He is negotiating with the boatmen to travel with them, but I fear it will come to nothing. They have their own cargo to carry, and we have too many people.”
“But if we go overland we must pass through the country of the Petchenegs!”
“The boatmen probably hope we will be attacked. Our goods will be in competition to theirs, for they will be carrying furs also, and gold.”
Rising, I belted on my sword and donned a cloak, one of our woolens, purchased in Flanders. “The decision will be made today.”
Trade was no longer of interest to me. What I wished for now was Constantinople, a meeting with Safia’s friend, and then to do what could be done to free my father—if he still lived.
We had met many travelers, and each I prodded with questions about Alamut and the Old Man of the Mountains as well as his Valley of the Assassins. Little it was they could tell beyond what I already knew. They all agreed that escape from the Valley was impossible, to enter it equally impossible.
We gathered about our fire in the woods outside Kiev, an oddly assorted group. Sarzeau was there, his wounds mended now, but oddly surly. The Hansgraf was flanked by Lucca and Johannes, the latter pale and thin after his long illness. Flandrin, Grossefeldt, and the others, all were present. The Hansgraf had failed to negotiate a ride downstream, and the disappointment was great. Following the long trek across Europe with its fighting and hardship, they longed for the lazy drift down the river and the sail across the Black Sea.
Sarzeau was grumbling. A good man and a fighter, since his wound he had changed. Lucca, commenting on it, said, “He thinks his luck has run out.”
It was obvious he intended to bicker with the Hansgraf. Grossefeldt, a stubborn, hard-headed man but a good leader, was seated beside him.
Yury Olgevichi was present. He was a leader of a new faction in Kiev, and I suspected him of some association with the tribes to the south. There was little on which to base my suspicion, but I believed he had done much to see we were denied passage on the boats. Khatib spied upon the meetings and assured me this was true. One of his wives was a Magyar woman.
What the Hansgraf had in mind, I did not know, but as we entered the meeting, I whispered to him the news Khatib brought. Yury I had seen before and did not like, nor did I like the way he looked upon Suzanne. It was not only her beauty that interested him but the importance of Saone. To possess such a castle would give him immeasurable prestige, and I suspected Yury of ambitions toward Constantinople itself. Not many years past a prince of Kiev had led an attack on the Byzantine Empire, driving deep into their territory.
With a strong castle to the south, a fleet on the Black Sea, and a strong land force made up in part of the tribesmen who had moved in south of Kiev, Yury might pose a serious threat to Constantinople.
He was a tall, powerful man with a reputation as a fighter and a statesman as well. If he possessed the Castle Saone, he could prevent supplies or men reaching Constantinople by that route as well as draw upon the manpower available there. He was a somewhat larger man than I, extremely strong, a dangerous antagonist.
The Hansgraf opened with a statement. “We have been refused transportation down the river to the sea. I propose we travel overland, following the Dnieper for easier travel.”
My head came up, and I stared at him, but he ignored me. Follow the Dnieper? It was insane. The river flowed far to the east before taking a great bend to flow back toward the Black Sea. If he went overland, marching south, it was somewhat less than half the distance. To be sure, there was some protection along the river, but not much. To strike due south was the thing, but I did not interrupt. Maps were almost nonexistent, and the few who knew the country chose to remain silent and await the Hansgraf’s plan.
“We could buy boats,” Sarzeau argued. “It is foolish to go overland. We have looked forward to the river and a rest.”
“We attempted to buy boats”—Lucca wished to avoid discussion if possible—”and none could be found. They can make more by carrying goods than men.”
“We could build our own boats.”
“We might build enough by spring,” Johannes said, “or we can wait a month until the river freezes and use sleds.”
Sarzeau started an angry reply, but Lucca spoke first.
“Whatever we do, the decision must be made here, now. The season is already late.”
“What is the distance?” Grossefeldt asked.
“Perhaps six hundred miles. It is safer following the river.”
Sarzeau was determined to object. “We can find boats. We have not looked up the river.”
“You are free to look,” the Hansgraf said, “but the rest of us should leave tomorrow.”