The short servant adeptly kept the tray in motion, dancing about and rotating it effortlessly with the Khagan’s every move, to keep a steady supply of full cups near his reach. ?gedei downed each in one motion, slamming the empty cup upside down on the tray. The servant flinched with each one but kept the tray upright and moving. Gansukh wondered what happened when all the cups were overturned. Would the Khagan stop drinking? Judging by his unconscious swaying motion and the strident volume of his humor, that probably wasn’t the case. In fact, this was probably not the first tray of cups.
As the Khagan snapped his head back again, Gansukh scanned the crowd to see if anyone else was paying attention to the Khagan’s drinking, and he was relieved to see everyone’s attention was on the wrestling match.
Everyone except Namkhai.
The wrestling champion felt Gansukh’s gaze and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes met Gansukh’s for a second, and then he turned and rudely shoved his way through the crowd. But it was too late. Gansukh had seen his expression.
The big man had lost his grin, and his face was a mask of disgust and dismay.
The Khagan did not seek, or even need, permission from his subjects, but he did need something—respect. Hard earned and easily lost.
A yell rose from the crowd as one of the wrestlers bested the other, sending him sprawling to the ground on his hands and knees. His opponent helped him to his feet as the Khagan roared his approval.
“Let us eat and drink tonight!” he shouted. “A feast for our fighters.” He staggered as he glanced around the sea of faces, and Gansukh ducked behind a cluster of off-duty guards. His face burned with shame for hiding, but even more for not wanting to be seen beside the Khagan.
He was beginning to understand Master Chucai’s riddle. It wasn’t enough to stop ?gedei’s drinking. The whole empire was in danger of being poisoned with loss of respect.
The Khagan slammed another tiny cup down on the tray. How many of those would he consume in one day? Gansukh wondered, and then an idea struck him.
One cup, he thought. One instead of dozens.
It was a preposterous idea, but it could work.
CHAPTER 26:
OVER THE WRECKAGE AND THROUGH THE RUINS
The walls that encircled Kiev were a wrecked shell, though the Golden Gate retained much of its majesty through sheer bulk, if nothing else. As Raphael rode through it with Percival, Roger, and Illarion, he sensed, if only for a few moments, what the city had been before the coming of the Mongols. Then the gate was behind him and he could see nothing but ruins.
To the east, the Dnieper, winding from north to south, flanked the city. Above it stood a pair of hills, and on the taller of two stood a white-walled structure, obviously religious in purpose, with high arched windows that shone even beneath the gray, overcast skies. To Raphael’s eye, it was much in the style of the Byzantine Church, with certain Ruthenian peculiarities.
A street—now just a chute winding among the avalanched rubble of collapsed buildings—stretched before them. Houses had once clustered tightly in the shadow of the old wall, but now only a few rose from the scavenged ruins. The remains of once-proud works of white and gold-tinted stone stood side by side with buildings somehow untouched, as if protected by divine intercession. The building on top of the hill—Raphael suspected that it was the priory of some religious order—was not the only house of God left in Kiev. It was rumored that the Mongols, equally superstitious about all supernatural beings, did not destroy churches if they could avoid it.
The people who remained in this place—he was no longer inclined to call it a city—were likewise a curious mixture of the lost and the enterprising, the shattered and the oblivious. Even after the passage of the Mongolian Horde, Raphael mused, life must go on as best it can. The scent of boiled cabbage reached his nose, along with the sweet, earthy fragrance of beets. A mouthwatering vapor of onion bread wafted from a stone oven squatting incongruously on a rubble-strewn corner, tended by a burly, sweating baker. The stench of garbage and sewage was also prevalent, but that was familiar to any city dweller and even a sign of revival. Dead cities smelled only of ancient decay and dust. Here, life was evident, even to a blind man, in the odor of unwashed, laboring flesh—mingled with fish that he assumed must have been dragged fairly recently from the Dnieper.
Following Illarion’s lead, Raphael guided his horse out of the main path to evade a cadaverous merchant’s thudding, grumbling wagon. It says much, Raphael reflected, about the tenacious nature of men that one with wares to sell would be willing to brave such a place. The profit, it seemed, was small indeed. No doubt much of the money changing hands was ultimately swept into Mongol coffers.
Between the ruins on another street, he caught sight of Feronantus and the rest of their company entering via another gate—no, on second thought, this was a breach in the wall—and heading away in the direction of the riverfront.