The Ocean of Time by David Wingrove Read Free Book Online Page B

Mesyats, seeing the funny side of it, laughs too, and so we arrive in Velizh in the best of moods, even as the sun finally breaches the cloud cover and lights up the afternoon, blazing on the river’s surface.
    Russia … how beautiful it sometimes is
.

167
    Krylenko, when he finally arrives, proves as dour and unhelpful as he could possibly be. He refuses to take me upriver, and will only take me to Surazh, to the south-west, which is in completely the wrong direction. I object strongly, and remind him of the advance Ernst paid him, and of his handshake on the deal, but Krylenko is unmoved. He looks at me from under his heavily hooded eyes and shrugs.
    ‘My wife is with child,’ he says. ‘If I leave her for so long …’ And he shrugs again, as if I’m to take it or leave it.
    I begin to wonder if this is yet another attempt to squeeze more money from me, the foreigner, the
Nemets
. Nor, I know, is it any good me flashing the
tysiatskii
’s pass at him. We are two full weeks from Novgorod and these people are not afraid to snub their noses at the good commander, no, nor kill his tax collectors if they become too persistent. In the end, I bite the bullet and offer to pay the man an extra six dirhams, but even this seems to have no effect.
    ‘I’ll take you to Surazh,’ he says. ‘You’ll get another boat from there. Someone mad enough to go into the marshes.’
    I fall quiet, understanding. Krylenko is afraid. Where the River Mezha turns south towards Zarkovsji, it runs through extensive marshlands, home to river pirates and bandits.
    I say nothing more. Surazh it is, then, and a week lost at the very least.
    His sons, when they arrive, are carbon copies of their father and every bit as surly, and in transporting the cart and its load across the water, I have to tell them more than once to stop poking at the parcels stacked on-board the sled. For the first time on this journey I feel I am among dishonest men, and come to a decision.
    At Surazh I shall have them. All five of them, if needs be. But I don’t tell Katerina what I’m thinking. I tell her calmly that there’s been a change of plan and when she queries it, I tell her it’s for the best. And maybe it is, for to travel into bandit territory with such men might prove disastrous.
    Even so, I am angry at the delay. Surazh is a good day and a half’s journey downstream, and Krylenko will not leave until tomorrow. And if I cannot find a boat to hire at Surazh …
    I feel like forcing him to stick to his agreement – to
make
him take me – only the practicalities of that are insurmountable; at best it’s an eight-day journey to Belyj on the River Obsca, our final destination, and I can’t imagine how I’d make him take me, short of holding a gun to his head and then keeping awake for eight whole nights.
    No. It has to be Surazh. But he’ll not get away with this.
    That night I sleep on the cart, Katerina on a pallet underneath. And it’s a good job I do, for in the early hours someone sneaks up and, not noticing me there, tries to take something from the sled. I am awake and on them in an instant, beating them off with my stave. They run away, whimpering, into the trees. In the dark I’m not sure who it was, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll have the bruises to show.
    Krylenko is twice as surly when he finally arrives, an hour after noon, and I note that only three of his sons are with him. The fourth is conspicuously absent.
    They lift the cart on to their boat – a flat-bottomed
strug
– then, letting us settle in the stern, push off into the current.
    There’s little talk. Krylenko is content to mutter instructions now and then to one or another of his sons. Taking his lead, they try their best to pretend we’re not there, and even when Katerina needs to stop to answer nature’s call, Krylenko makes as if he hasn’t heard my request to pull the boat over to the bank. It’s only when I make my way forward and, grabbing his arm, turn