“You have found a cure?” Ögedei’s voice cracked, breaking into a dry cough that made his chest ache.
“I have spoken to some of the shamans, and they fear there is no hope. But an old man of the Eagle Hills has told me there is a way…” Tolui’s voice fell away, becoming lost in the rhythmic drone of the shamans who still watched over him, chanting and tapping their drums.
“No,” Ögedei managed. “I can’t allow—”
Tolui shook his head. “Father told me to watch over you, Ögedei. Is that not what I have done? When you forgot your lessons, where was I? When you dozed off, who prodded you awake? Who took care of Father’s empire while the tribes squabbled and whined about declaring you Khagan? I gave it to you gladly when it was time because I knew you, of all our brothers, to be the wisest and most capable. You were Father’s choice, and it has always been—and will always be—my greatest duty and honor to stand by you.” His eyes were bright and wet. “If you die, we will be lost. We will be weak and helpless while the tribes gather for the kuraltai and pick a successor, like an orphaned child who crawls from its ger to find its family devoured by predators.”
“It should be you, Tolui. You would make a fine Khagan.”
“Compared to you?” Tolui shook his head. “The gods fear you, my brother. Look how desperate they are to destroy Father’s dream—your dream.” He squeezed Ögedei’s hand, forestalling any argument. “I have already decided. The shamans will perform the ritual. Let me do this for you. Let me serve my Khan in the best way that I can.”
Silence had fallen in the tent, and Ögedei struggled to look around. There were more shamans than he thought the ger could hold. They all wore blue robes, and they had traded their drums and divining bones for cups and deer horns and carved wooden rods. He tried to extricate his hand from Tolui’s grip, but his younger brother held him fast. He could not sit up; he could not speak. His strength was gone, and he fell back against the sweat-stained furs. They wrapped around him like wet snow, and dark demon patterns danced at the edge of his vision…
The shamans were chanting, and the tent was illuminated by the light from four braziers burning fragrant pinewood. Had time passed? Tolui was no longer at the side of his bed, and his hand—the one so recently held by his brother—was cold and cramped. When Ögedei blinked, one of the braziers went out; in quick succession they were extinguished, and great billowing clouds of smoke began to obscure the chanting shamans.
A greasy tendril of smoke passed over his face. He reached out to touch it, but there was nothing there, nothing but a vast emptiness, as if he lay naked on the steppes and the stars had all winked out.
He could smell blood, like a fresh kill, and thought of the deer by the river—the one he had killed with his father so many years ago.
The chanting stopped, and then shamans whooped and yipped, a wolf pack cacophony.
Ögedei could not remember closing his eyes, and opening them was like lifting an iron gate. Little by little, he managed to raise his eyelids, squinting and blinking even though there was little light in the tent.
The shamans were chanting again, muttering and humming under their breath—whispers on the wind. Tolui had returned and he stood at the foot of the bed. His head was lowered, and the sound coming from his throat sounded like the noise of ten men, droning and crying. A wooden cup was passed from shaman to shaman, until it reached his brother, who accepted it, squatted next to Ögedei’s feet, and raised it to his lips.
He drank and drank and drank. It seemed as if he would never stop drinking, and Ögedei was about to cry out for him to stop, when he dropped the bowl and fell heavily against the bed. He raised his head, his bright eyes piercing Ögedei. His mouth worked for some time before words came out, and when they did, Ögedei wanted to cry out, to drive them back into his brother’s throat as if that would undo what had been done. “Bring greatness to our empire, brother,” he whispered.
Ögedei sat up. His spirit was returning in prickly waves running through his limbs. “Tolui,” he cried, his voice a hoarse gasp.
Tolui groaned, then doubled over, his hands clutching at nothing. When he looked again at Ögedei, the veins of his brow swelled purple and tight under the sweat-slicked skin. “Brother,” he whispered, his voice a ragged hiss, “they drink me.” All the skin of his face now stretched tight, like the head of a drum, and Ögedei could see things moving beneath—like worms burrowing.
“I am drunk,” Tolui sighed. He tried to shape one last smile for his older brother, but his muscles failed him and he collapsed in a heap.
Ögedei threw off the furs. Finding he could stand, he rushed to his brother’s side.
A shaman stood to one side, half in shadow. “It is done,” he pronounced in a hollow, distant voice.
Tolui’s eyes were closed, as if he had fallen into a deep sleep. Ögedei hugged him tightly, but there was no life left in his brother’s body.
“On this day nine years ago, my noble brother sacrificed himself so that I might live. But his sacrifice was not just for me! Tolui…Tolui Khan sacrificed himself so the Mongol Empire would not be denied its leader—or its destiny.”
Surrounded by more than a minghan of ecstatic and effusive warriors, it was easy to be infected by their enthusiasm, and when the crowd roared in approval following the Khagan’s words, Gansukh found himself halfheartedly cheering along.
The courtyard was removed enough from Ögedei’s balcony that it was not easy to tell if the Khagan had been drinking. Certainly, at this distance, one could not make out any of the telltale details in a man’s face that betrayed intoxication, but based on the Khagan’s cadence and the way he leaned heavily on the balcony railing while the crowd cheered, Gansukh suspected the Khagan was, indeed, besotted.
“We must never forget my dear brother’s spirit,” Ögedei continued, pulling himself upright again. “His strength is our strength; his spirit is with us still. His name, and the names of all our fallen brothers, are what make us who we are. Those who stand against the empire—those who defy me—defile the memory of our dead brothers.”
Ögedei paused dramatically, and as the noise of the crowd filled the courtyard, he raised his arms, urging them to even greater volume. The ground rumbled as men began to stomp rhythmically. This time, when the Khagan dropped his hands, silence came slowly.
“It is due to my brother,” Ögedei shouted in a ringing voice, “and to your brothers, and all the fallen Mongol brothers, that our empire endures. My father brought the tribes together and set us upon a course that will forever carve a furrow in history. It is our duty—our sacred duty for our brothers who will follow after us—to continue that course.”
The crowd’s cheers grew louder, more guttural, becoming a war chant. The noise flowed back and forth, beating against the walls of the palace, and above the seething tide of shouting warriors, Ögedei faltered. Gansukh’s heart faltered with him. But the crowd did not notice as Ögedei steadied himself, and Gansukh saw someone move behind Ögedei and the sharp shooing motion of his hand as the Khagan brushed off any assistance.
The crowd continued its exultation, but Gansukh had seen enough. As Ögedei began to quiet the shouting warriors for one final declamatory exclamation, Gansukh shoved his way through the crowd.
The Khagan’s greatness had not departed. The wine addled him, but it had not entirely doused Ögedei’s fierce spirit. The Khagan could still be saved, but it would require someone like Gansukh—an outsider, a warrior for whom the old ways were still fresh and vital—to show him the path.
Learning the ways of court were a means to an end, much like learning how to read tracks and spoor in order to hunt. A hunter had to know his prey well before he could stalk it, before he could get close enough.
CHAPTER 30:
PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS
No place could be less like Jerusalem than the one they were riding into now. Yet as they entered the gates of the priory on the top of the hill in Kiev, Raphael could not help thinkin
g of the day a dozen years earlier when he had ridden into Jerusalem a few lengths behind Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor and author of the Sixth Crusade. For Jerusalem too had thrown open her gates without a fight. The martial orders of Christendom—the Teutonic Knights, the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae—had all sent contingents. Buffing their armor, grooming their horses, and unfurling their most glorious banners, they strove to outshine one another in the eyes of the locals—Muslims, Jews, and Christians—who had lined Frederick’s route from St. Stephen’s Gate to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Shield-Brethren, who styled themselves after the Spartans, tended to come off quite poorly in such displays, and so had probably made little impression upon the crowd. Which was acceptable—preferable, even—to Raphael and the dozen brothers who had ridden alongside him under the Order’s red rose banner. Less attention from the common folk of Zion gave them more leisure to observe the city and the rival orders of Christian knights who were now reoccupying the place after four decades’ absence.
The Knights Hospitallers, for one, who had ridden into Jerusalem at the right hand of Frederick II in their black surcoats adorned with silver crosses. After paying their respects at the Holy Sepulchre, they reoccupied the Hospital of St. John, which, in its original conception, had been a hostel for pilgrims who had traveled from the West to visit the tomb of Our Lord. Its martial proprietors had since learned that succoring pilgrims was a complicated business that extended beyond merely giving them food and shelter. For what good were those amenities if they could not travel safely on the roads?
It was impossible for Raphael not to think of that day as he entered the Shield-Maidens’ nunnery-cum-fortress and saw the sick and the lame distributed about its courtyard on straw pallets. They were being tended to by the good sisters in their white wimples. These nuns had learned the same lesson as the Crusaders at the Hospital of St. John: protecting the meek required a judicious combination of bandages, simples, and sympathy on the one hand, and brute armed force on the other.
The Shield-Maidens were amply qualified to supply the latter. These were the descendants of Norsewomen who had drawn inspiration from tales of Valkyries and the skjalddis. Like all the other Varangians who had migrated down the great rivers of Rus, they had gradually become one with the local population, adopting their Slavic language and their Greek alphabet. But Raphael could plainly see ancient links to his Order in many details of their arms and armor, their movements, and their discipline.
Since they had so much in common, and since Vera and Illarion could both translate freely between Latin and Ruthenian, conversation flowed easily once they had been formally welcomed, introductions had been made, and they’d been given a tour of the little fortress. Eventually they found themselves seated around a great old table in the keep, quaffing mead and eating coarse black bread dipped in honey.
“This country has fallen under a great mortality, as you have seen plainly enough,” Vera explained, reading the astonishment in their faces when the food was brought out. “But bees live, flowers grow, and farmers till their fields, and we are able to sustain ourselves on what they bring us. In exchange, we tend to their sick and offer them some meager protection.”
“By what miracle,” Illarion asked, “did you escape destruction at the hands of the Mongols?”
“You are almost too shrewd in the way you phrase your question,” Vera retorted, giving him a sharp look that made Raphael glad he’d not been on its receiving end.
She was a big-boned woman who in some more fortunate country might have ended up as a strapping, plump milkmaid, blundering about a dairy with heavy buckets yoked to her broad shoulders. Austerity had made her lean and revealed cheekbones that owed more to the steppes than the fjords. A similar tale was told by the color of her eyes and of her hair, which hung just above her shoulders when she swept it back from her head—just the right length to fit under an arming cap but not get tangled between the steel links of an aventail.
“I am not trying to be shrewd,” Illarion said, “only to—”
“The wretched people of Kiev, living below in the ruins, are inclined to view it as a miracle, and we see no advantage in telling them otherwise,” Vera said, cutting him off. “As you rightly ken, we could not have withstood the Mongols, even had we all fought to the death. Instead we fought them enough to slow their advance and to become an irritant. They had already taken Kiev, and when their strategy is calling them on at a gallop over the sea of grass, it is not their practice to spend months staying in one place to root out every last pocket of resistance. This place looks like a church; they don’t like to destroy churches. It is defended by women; in maintaining a long siege, they saw little honor and less glory—as well as danger that they might suffer mockery and humiliation if they were unable to defeat us quickly.”
“And so they passed you by,” Illarion said, nodding.
Strength was returning to Raphael’s body as he ate the bread and honey, and close on its heels came the sorts of feelings that had long been suppressed by cold, dirt, hardship, and the company of men. He began to look at Vera in the timeless manner of men looking at women and saw that smallpox had left a trail of shallow craters in the hollows of her cheeks and extending down the sides of her neck, without really disfiguring her. And it had spared the eyes. Seeming to feel his gaze on her, she turned her head quite deliberately and looked him straight in the eye. It was not a demure look, of course. He’d not have expected any such thing from a Shield-Maiden. Neither was she telling him to drop dead. She was just letting him know that if he looked at her, she would look back. He did the only polite thing, which was to avert his gaze and concede the point with a smile.
“So we were not extirpated,” Vera concluded, gesturing at the bread and honey, “and so we have continued to survive. But of communication with the rest of Christendom there has been almost none. Rumors only of great battles, won by the Mongols. What news from your Order? Does Petraathen still stand? Or are you wandering strays, like these others?”
These others. She was talking about the Livonian Knights.
Raphael’s mind went back again to Jerusalem. A formation of Teutonic Knights had entered the city just behind the much smaller Shield-Brethren contingent. They were a younger order, but they had fared better in recent decades, being based out of Acre—a city still under Christian dominance—rather than Jerusalem, which had fallen to Saladin forty-two years earlier. They had put on a better show in the parade, making a much stronger impression on the locals than the Shield-Brethren. Their presence in the Holy Land had dwindled soon thereafter as they had moved north to pursue crusades along the eastern border of Europe, where Christianized kingdoms abutted pagan-held lands.
A few years ago, the Teutonic Knights had assimilated the remnants of another crusading order—the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. The Livonians had been scattered by a pagan army, their grandmaster and most of their knights slain. The surviving Livonians had accepted the authority of the Teutonic Knights’ grandmaster and discarded their traditional heraldry—a red cross and sword—for the black cross of the Teutonics.
“These strays…” Percival said, leaning forward to grab another slice of the thick bread. “It was our understanding that the Livonian Order was no more. Had we known…”
“You would have ridden to rescue us?”
“Of course not.” Percival shook his head, deftly avoiding the trap that lay before him. “We would have sent word.”
“If they had been more adroit, we might have let them in the gates and ended up wishing that such a warning had reached us,” Vera countered. “As it was, word of their arrogance and vainglory preceded them by several days, and so we knew what to expect. When Kristaps, their leader, presented himself at our doorstep, he spoke true to form. He offered to relieve us of the burden of defending this place and proposed to supply us with duties more befitting the weaker sex.”
“I’m sure that went
over well,” Raphael snorted. Illarion, Roger, and even Percival were barely hiding their amusement.
“From the tone in which he tendered the offer,” Vera said, and here she was unable to prevent the corners of her mouth from twitching back, “it was clear he considered the terms to be astoundingly generous. He stood there awaiting our thanks and our admiration. He received neither. When he returned, he spoke less politely, enabling us to see his true nature, as if this were not already obvious.”
“Would he be the fellow with the arrow in his eye socket?” Raphael asked hopefully.
Vera shook her head. “That would be pleasing,” she said. “That fellow was a knight of lesser rank who made a nuisance of himself.” She took a bite of bread and chewed it as the statement sunk in.
She shifted in her chair, facing toward Percival, whom she had identified as the group’s leader. “You have shown courtesy,” she said, “in expressing brotherly curiosity about our situation. I have not returned it in kind. What brings you all here, and in such a condition? Pardon my frankness, but it’s obvious that you have traveled hard for a long time.”
Any of them might have answered. Raphael bated because he did not wish to blurt out the truth. Feronantus might later take the Shield-Maidens into his confidence, but it was not for any lesser member of their company to do so. Raphael had seen enough of Vera by now to feel quite certain that, if they simply told her that their errand was none of her business, she would accept it with no pouting or ill feelings.
He was searching for a polite way to say just that when Percival spoke: “It is a quest.”
Around the table, Percival’s companions were dumb-struck, wondering whether he had spoken sincerely or was making up a lie on the spur of the moment. But supposing that Percival were even capable of telling a lie, he would probably do a miserable job of it. Nothing but sincerity was visible in his face. Vera spent several moments gazing into that face. Raphael, watching her, thought he saw a slight softening, a lowering of the defenses, in her eyes.