The assassin had been riding too fast, and the horse had stepped in a divot, breaking its leg. The assassin had killed it quickly to prevent its screams from giving away his position, but Gansukh had been tracking him closely enough that the smell of blood had been enough to betray him.
Wolves howled in the distance as Gansukh pulled his horse’s head around. There hadn’t been any clear indication on the ground of which direction the assassin had gone, and so Gansukh continued north. Behind him, he could make out the distant glow of Karakorum. The Seven Gods, the dead horse, and the city—that was a line easily followed, and there was no reason to think the assassin had changed his course.
He leaned forward as he rode, listening intently to the world around him. Overhead, thousands of stars stared down at him, a multitude of silent observers watching tiny shapes crawl across a wide plain. The hairs on his neck bristled as he was momentarily filled with an awareness of the immensity of the world and the heavens. No matter how big the empire, he thought, there is always a greater world beyond. Ordinarily such a thought comforted him. He loved to be alone on the plains, loved to surround himself in the vast majesty of nature. Tonight, though, that vastness unsettled him. There were things out there in the darkness, things he couldn’t see or hear or feel, and they were ghosts of a world he could never completely understand. Ögedei Khan—and the Khans after him—would spread throughout the world, but the world would spread through them too, and it would change them.
He looked back over his shoulder at the faint bubble of light that was Karakorum—a tiny flicker of fire in a vast emptiness. Gansukh had heard stories of other empires riding out from the steppes, riding out to conquer the world, and he couldn’t help but wonder what happened to them. What happened when their light went out and the darkness rushed in again? He had seen the weathered foundations of their ruined forts. Would Karakorum share the same fate in a thousand years’ time? If the Khagan is dead, Gansukh thought, what will happen to that light? Was the plain already starting to nibble away at Karakorum while he rode through the night? Were the wolves already calling to one another? Fresh meat, brothers. Fresh meat for all of us.
Gansukh shivered slightly, trying to drive away the darkness that had invaded his brain. Which is better? his brain asked, undeterred in its course. To be the bright fire that tried to dispel the darkness, thereby attracting all manner of scavenger and hunter, or to die like that horse back there, lost and forgotten, picked clean by the weather until the very ground itself grew over his bones…
On his right, something bolted, a sudden explosion of pounding feet. Two legs, Gansukh realized in a flash, and he jerked his horse toward the sound, kicking it into a gallop. He leaned low, his head nearly level with the horse’s, straining with all of his senses to pinpoint the runner.
He had found the assassin.
Out in the gloom, he spotted a running figure. The assassin was both larger and smaller than he had expected: bigger because he was now so close to the man, who was smaller than Gansukh had expected him to be. He kicked his horse in the ribs, and the animal lunged forward. The assassin, still dressed in black, twisted like a shadow slipping away from an approaching torch, and Gansukh’s horse bumped him heavily as it passed, sending him sprawling.
Gansukh tried to jerk his horse to a stop, and when it started to buck against his pressure, he threw his leg over its back and jumped off, landing lightly on the hard ground. The assassin was getting up and tried to draw his sword, but Gansukh slammed into him. He got his hand over the assassin’s, and they wrestled for control of the half-drawn sword as they went down on the ground. A knee glanced off Gansukh’s thigh, and as his left arm was pinned beneath the squirming figure, he slammed his head forward and bashed the assassin with the peak of his forehead.
The assassin went limp, and Gansukh extricated his arm as he disentangled himself from the other man. Something sharp slit his right thumb, and he jerked his hand up and back, his fingers finding the hilt of the assassin’s weapon. He scuttled backward on his ass, pulling the sword with him, and the blade rasped noisily against the metal rim of the scabbard. But it came free, and he had control of it.
When the assassin lowered his hands from his bloody face, he found himself staring at the tip of his own sword.
“Don’t move.” Gansukh tried to hide his ragged breathing. The blade trembled in his tight grasp.
The assassin froze, his hands held out in a supplicating position. His chest was moving as rapidly as Gansukh’s, big heavy breaths, and with a sudden shock, Gansukh realized why the assassin was smaller than he had expected, why he had been able to physically dominate the other person. He flicked the tip of the sword toward the wrapped scarf that obscured most of the assassin’s face. “Take it off,” he growled.
Moving very slowly, the assassin complied, and her long hair spilled out of the tight embrace of the scarf.
She reminded him of Lian, and not just because they shared the same elongated face and long black hair. There was a spark in her eyes, a fiery refusal to be tamed, and Gansukh felt both his stomach and groin tighten—a momentary flash of panic and elation—even though he knew that the similarities between Lian and the assassin were merely racial and not familial.
“Who sent you?” Gansukh demanded.
The woman grinned, a mouth full of white, bloodstained teeth. She said something in a dialect he didn’t know, and when he didn’t react, she spat at him.
He flicked the blade, slapping her on the cheek, reminding her of her situation. “Do you speak Mongolian?” he snarled. “If you don’t, then you are no use to me. I’ll just kill you like you did your horse. Let the wolves have you.” He put the tip of the blade against her throat. “Who sent you to kill the Khagan?”
She stared at him for a long moment, daring him to follow through with his threat, and when he didn’t flinch or look away, she swallowed heavily and spoke. Her grasp of the language was rough, her accent clipped, and her words enunciated too clearly as if she had never spoken any of these words more than once or twice before. “You make mistakes. I am not a killer. Your Khagan is alive.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She pursed her lips, defiant, but she didn’t try to convince him. As if it didn’t matter what he thought. The truth would be the same either way.
Gansukh shifted his weight, lowering the tip of the sword so that it rested against her breastbone. Just enough that she didn’t think he was a fool. He didn’t believe her—not entirely—but there were a number of details that were starting to clamor for his attention. If she was an assassin, what had been her tool of choice? Not this sword. It was plain and functional—a horse rider’s sword—and to be used effectively, one had to be bigger and stronger than she appeared to be. Poison? If so, had she discarded the poisoned weapon? There were no visible pockets or pouches on her plain black garments.
“Roll over,” Gansukh said. When she didn’t move, he elaborated. “I want to search you. There must be a knife…”
She shook her head, but complied when that refusal made no impression on Gansukh. Keeping her hands raised, she shifted onto her hips and rolled toward Gansukh, forcing him to pull the blade back or cut her. Silently cursing at himself for not being more explicit, he shuffled a half step in reverse to keep his measure the same. As he moved, he rocked back onto his toes so that he was no longer on his knees. Anticipating her.
She tried to bolt when she got her hands on the ground. Half running/half crawling, she scuttled away from him and nearly got upright before he body-slammed her again and took her to the ground. She gasped as she felt his full weight, and she squirmed until he punched her twice in the lower back with the hilt of the sword. She lay still after that, head turned, cheek pressed against the dirt, glaring at him.
He ran his hands roughly over her body, feeling through the fabric of her clothes. She was thin and angular, more like a bird than a woman, but he felt nothing hard enough to be a knife. And nothing soft enough to be a p
ouch. He grabbed at her jacket, meaning to pull her over and search her front, but he stopped as his hand encountered something hard. He tried to tug her jacket around without having to roll her over, and she reacted, violently bucking under him. He slammed his elbow against her spine and put the sword blade against the side of her head.
“Lie still,” he hissed when she quieted down.
He continued to yank at her jacket so that he could get his hand inside it, but the angle was all wrong. As he struggled to get the jacket open, he heard the rumbling sound of hooves.
Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted a quartet of lights bouncing across the plain. Torches, held by a search party. His prisoner started to squirm again and he leaned against her body, hissing at her again. Gansukh felt her relax, and together they lay as flat as possible on the open ground, hoping the riders wouldn’t notice them—he, because he wasn’t ready to give up his prize; she, because while she might still escape one captor, more only reduced her chance of success.
There were five of them, riding fast with torches, and they passed on their right, seemingly intent only on what lay directly in their path. Gansukh was about to congratulate himself on remaining undiscovered when one of them suddenly reined in his horse and shouted at the others. Gansukh’s heart sank when he heard the rider’s voice.
Munokhoi.
CHAPTER 16:
THE MAN FROM ROME
Dietrich von Grüningen had officiated at a number of tournaments since becoming Heermeister—the military master of the Fratres Militiae Christi Livoniae, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. He was no stranger to the tedium that surrounded such proceedings. But this gladiatorial spectacle, sponsored by one of the Khans of the invading Mongolian army, was not like the others. It was similar in the sense that crowds did gather to witness feats of arms between single combatants, but unlike other tournaments, which were typically over in one or two days, the duration of this one depended on its host’s willingness to continue watching.
The invitation, which he and the masters of other martial orders had responded to, spoke of a tournament to decide the fate of Europe. Representatives would meet in single combat, but it hadn’t been clear what would be the spoils of victory. The Khan—Onghwe, a son of the Khan of Khans, Ögedei—had suggested he would spare Europe if he lost. But he was only one of several generals—and not even the most powerful—who was threatening the West. What was the real purpose of these games?
Sport, His Most Holy Father had said when Dietrich had asked that question two months earlier, during his audience with the Pope in Rome. It is a distraction they can afford to entertain themselves with. It speaks of how little regard they have for us. After the devastation they visited upon good Christian soldiers at Legnica and Mohi, they do not fear our martial strength.
What is the purpose, then, of participating in this mockery at all? Dietrich had asked.
The Great Khan wishes to extend his dominion, Pope Gregory IX had finally replied. Like all conquerors before him—men of small vision who thought land and tribute were what defined an empire. These are matters that do not concern us.
What does? he had asked.
His answer was not to come from the pontiff himself, who had fallen senseless. His eyes remained open, and his chest still rose and fell, though the motion was difficult to discern beneath the voluminous robes and blankets that covered him. The room faced west, and the windows were wide and tall enough that the sun looked in on the room for most of the day. He had been standing there for but a few minutes, and his back was already warm. The Pope had been there much longer, and still his body shivered slightly.
Dietrich had not been able to shake a sense of foreboding at how frail the Bishop of Rome had become. The weight of the Church was immense, and it slowly crushed every man who took the office, but in the year since his last audience, Gregory IX looked as if the life were being wrung out of him like juice from a grape.
The persistence of the Church, Cardinal Fieschi had said as he led Dietrich back to the main hall of the Lateran Palace. To answer your question, we are concerned with the persistence of the Church, for it is the soul of the people. We are the rock to which they cling when everything around them is swept away.
What am I to do? Dietrich had asked, seeking the answer to why he had been summoned to Rome, an answer the frail Pope had failed to offer during the brief audience.
Make certain of our survival. It would be best if the Mongolian rabble does not encroach any farther into Christendom. Should that be impossible to avoid—and we realize such indolence on the part of this horde is, indeed, most unlikely—how do you reduce an army’s strength before it arrives at your gates?
By making the journey costly, Dietrich had replied. Every league they march is a league farther from their homes, a league farther into territory that they do not control. Ground they must earn.
Redirecting an unstoppable army and whittling away at its host of fighting men until the cost of conquest was too high was a seemingly impossible puzzle, one he pondered daily—nay, hourly—until his arrival at Legnica. The circus itself seemed like nothing more than a passing fancy, an idler’s summertime indolence. In the fall, the Mongol hosts would have finished resupplying and would be looking south for warmer climates to conquer. How was he to turn their attention away from Rome?
And then a solution presented itself. North of the killing fields and the recently erected arena—as well as the ram-shackle sprawl of the new city growing around it—was an old monastery. Abandoned by its previous residents, it housed new penitents now, more martial than spiritual in their inclinations. Their standard, raised above the old hall, was a red rose laid over a yellow thirteen-pointed star.
The Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae.
Gladiatorial fights were the sort of peasant entertainment that used to be the mainstay of the Colosseum in Rome; clearly the Mongolian Khan knew the best way to keep his troops from becoming disenchanted with the lack of opportunities for rapine and pillage. Mortal combat was held once a week. The other days were filled with nonlethal bouts, a slip-shod tourney through which combatants earned the right to fight before the dissolute Khan. As long as the venerable Shield-Brethren could provide ready fodder for the arena, Dietrich suspected that this circus could last a very long time.
Long enough that the impetus to march before winter might be lost.
It wasn’t much of a respite, but it was a start. Every season that passed without the Mongols encroaching any farther into Christendom was time his masters in Rome could use to negotiate a peace treaty. It wouldn’t last. The Mongols, much like the Arabs in the Levant, were heathens, and Rome knew they couldn’t be trusted. But a peace treaty might be enough to make them turn their attention elsewhere…
The crowd was on its feet, shrieking and howling at the spectacle in the arena. The Mongolian fighter, a man dressed in a garish costume, complete with a lurid mask with white whiskers, had lost his weapon; the Shield-Brethren knight had managed to take it, but clearly had no idea how to use it properly. The Mongolian fighter—someone named Zug, if he understood the audience’s chant correctly—had at least traded his pig sticker for something longer. Throwing his short sword at the knight was an ineffectual move at best—a blade like that had no chance of penetrating the knight’s armor—but it gave him the opportunity to seize the knight’s sword. Whether he knew how to wield it effectively was another question; Dietrich doubted the man had any experience with the Great Sword of War.
Some of his knights used such a weapon, but it was much too big and clumsy for his liking. It was a weapon for a man who liked to wear armor, who preferred to be in the thick of battle. In Dietrich’s experience, being that close to one’s enemies meant a mistake in tactics had been made, and such mistakes were invariably costly.
He had heard reports about the Mongolian general, Subutai, from the survivors of the battle at the Sajó River. He used horse archers, incredibly fast and mobile fighters who remained out of reach
of the sword and spear. By the time you could get close to them, they could empty an entire quiver of arrows into your ranks.
Costly mistakes.
Burchard, one of his two bodyguards, nudged Dietrich, drawing his attention toward a rippling movement in the crowd. Dietrich came away from his reverie and looked for what had caught his fellow Livonian’s eye.
“A heckler,” Burchard pointed. “He threw something.” The tall German had been a scout for years before he became one of Dietrich’s bodyguards, and his eyesight was well known among the Livonian Sword Brothers.
Dietrich squinted at the tiny object rolling around on the sand and then gave up trying to ascertain what it was. The reaction in the stands was much more interesting anyway.
Some sort of thrill was running through the crowd like a gust of wind across a field of rye, a rippling of bodies as heads were turned toward the enormous pavilion that housed the Khan and his retinue. Some signal passed from within the shade of the tent, and the motion through the throng reversed itself, splitting the audience apart. The crowd drew away from a single man as if he had burst into flames. A Saracen, judging from his clothes. His terror was abject, and he scuttled toward the rim of the growing circle as if to escape notice, but half a dozen hands lashed out and shoved him back. He slid across the floor, and as he passed through the center of the open space, he jerked to a stop, suddenly transfixed by three arrows that sprouted from his body.
Dietrich noticed the fletchings pointed outward in very different directions. Reflexively he glanced around the arena in an effort to note the locations of the snipers. He spotted two readily enough—positioned on fixed platforms around the periphery of the arena. Burchard indicated the third, a Mongol standing just under the edge of the Khan’s pavilion. A fourth stood on the opposite side, though he had not shot his bow.