The Mongoliad: Book Three

  Where is she? He felt fairly certain that Munokhoi would come after him first, a certainty that had only increased in the days since the Chinese attack. The ex–Torguud captain liked to cause others pain, especially those who could not fight back as effectively, and so he knew Munokhoi would wait to deal with Lian. But now, scanning the crowd, he wasn’t so sure. And he was leaving the camp for at least a day. What would Munokhoi do while he was gone?

  The Khagan swung himself up in his saddle, finally satisfied that the straps of his reins were not frayed or twisted. Ögedei adjusted his position in his saddle, and raising one arm over his head, he tried to stir the audience’s fervor again. But a little too much time had passed and some of the initial excitement of the Khagan’s hunt had waned; now the crowd’s enthusiasm felt a little forced.

  Ögedei brought his hand down sharply and snapped his reins. His white stallion leaped forward with a snort, scattering courtiers who hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Namkhai gave a shout to his Torguud, and the honor guard followed the Khagan in a thunder of hooves. Master Chucai and the trackers followed, the shaman on his tiny pony bringing up the rear.

  “Hai!” Alchiq shouted, slapping his reins against his horse’s neck. The gray-haired hunter galloped after the hunting party, leaving Gansukh as the last.

  His horse snorted, eager to join the rest, and Gansukh searched for sight of Lian one last time.

  Ögedei had given him the sprig to keep safe, and the decision to leave it with Lian had been a sudden one. He had sensed she was worried that he wasn’t coming back, and on one hand, he wasn’t terribly worried about the Khagan’s hunt. The escort would more than protect the Khagan from a rampant bear should things go awry. On the other, there was Munokhoi.

  Munokhoi will come after me first. He tried to believe it, but his heart quailed. What if he was wrong? Not only was he was leaving her to die, he had entrusted her with the sprig. Had he just given it to his enemy?

  Someone whistled shrilly, and Gansukh caught sight of Lian finally. Her face was drawn—frightened, concerned, steadfast—and her left hand was clenched tightly around the lacquer box that held the sprig. She pointed in the direction of the galloping horses. The fear vanished from her face as she slowly traced her thumb across her throat.

  Gansukh was suddenly cold in the warm late-morning sun. He locked eyes with Lian and nodded, understanding what she was telling him. He slapped his reins, encouraging his horse to join the others.

  The hunt had begun. It would be finished out there, in the woods.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Uncaged

  Hans crouched behind the Black Wall, sheltered by the straining afternoon shadows. He could clearly hear every detail of the battle at the gate; in the chaos of battle, Hans knew, it was all a whirling wind—a thick cloud of noise and violence that deadened the senses and mind with its intensity. It was bad enough hearing it; he didn’t need to see it too. He had had enough of watching men kill one another during the siege of Legnica.

  Maks, on the other hand, could not tear his gaze away. He stood, shifting nervously from foot to foot, at the edge of the wall, peering down the alley at the gate of the Mongol compound. His hand kept tensing on the grip of his sword, a nervous reaction each time a new scream echoed on the air, as if he might tell from whose throat it sprang.

  “They’ll win,” Hans said, and immediately felt foolish for speaking the words. It didn’t matter if the Shield-Brethren won or lost; he knew what Maks wanted was to be part of the battle. It was the same feeling he’d felt every time that he’d sent one of the other boys to carry a message in his stead.

  Abruptly Maks looked back at him, and by the sudden calmness in his stance, Hans realized the young man was weighing a decision. “They need me,” Maks said. “And you should not be here in any case. Go back to your uncle, boy. I must fight with my brothers.” He pushed away from the wall, turning toward the alley, and then paused. He reached behind him, slid his dagger out of its sheath, and offered it to Hans. “In case you run into any trouble on the way back,” he said, and then he left, sprinting down the alley to join his companions.

  Hans stared at the dagger in his hand. Long and narrow, it possessed a triangular cross section and a single edge tapering to a deadly point. More screams ripped through the air, accompanied by a renewed frenzy of metal clashing on metal, and Hans shivered, immobilized by the deadly weapon in his grip.

  He should listen to Maks’s command. He should go back to his uncle and flee Hünern. But that would mean going with Ernust to Löwenberg. They promised to take me with them, he thought, his hand tightening on the handle of the dagger. If he went to Löwenberg, would the Shield-Brethren come and find him? Would they send someone for him? He shook his head. If he left with his uncle, he would never know who won. He would never know if he had been helpful. He stood paralyzed, the sounds of the combat echoing in his ears; the dagger was a heavy weight in his hands.

  I will never know...

  His mouth tightened into a hard line, and he turned away from the alley, heading back along the wall in the direction he had gone several hours earlier with Styg, Eilif, and Maks.

  Styg had pounded stakes into the wall of the Mongol compound. Hans had no illusion that he was going to fight the Mongols, but he knew the layout of the compound better than anyone else. Could he trust Styg to remember all of the details of the map he had sketched in the dirt?

  Once he was out of sight of the gate, he broke into a run. He could still be useful.

  The Shield-Brethren needed him more than his uncle did.

  Styg and the scarred man found Eilif inside the large tent, crouched next to the first of two large iron cages. The Shield-Brethren scout was wrestling with an iron lock, cursing the mechanism’s failure to yield to his efforts. He glanced up as the pair approached, and Styg was taken aback by his brother’s frantic expression.

  They could hear the sounds of the pitched battle at the gate—the mingled cries of the victorious and the shrieks of the dying. How many of those wailing voices were the cries of their friends dying? Styg understood Eilif’s consternation; he had been struggling for some time with the lock, growing more and more frustrated with his continued failure.

  “There must be a key,” he said, trying to calm Eilif. “We will find it.” As he came closer to the cages, Styg recognized the one Haakon had faced in the arena—Zugaikotsu No Yama. The other one had to be Kim, the Flower Knight, the man Andreas had faced at First Field. Both had been brutally beaten, their faces swollen and their bodies crisscrossed with ugly scars and welts. Styg smelled sweat, piss, and blood, and knew these men had been in these cages since Andreas had died.

  Kim started talking to the scarred fighter, his words slurred and thick. The scarred fighter responded, pointing to the two Shield-Brethren. Kim nodded, and pointed at the heavy locks on both cages, as if none of them had noticed them yet.

  “Everything else about this place is made from sticks and bones,” Eilif groused, “but not these damn locks. They’re solid, and I can’t figure out how to jam them open.” He ran his hand through his hair, a helpless expression painted on his face. “We need a key, but I have no idea which one of the Mongol guards—”

  The scarred warrior put his hands on Eilif’s shoulders and carefully pushed him aside. He stood before the lock on Zug’s cage, staring contemptuously at it as though there was nothing more loathsome in the entire world, and Styg could almost feel him feeding all of his hate, all of his rage, into this lump of rain-rusted iron. Zug had been talking to the warrior, but he broke off suddenly as the fighter raised his stolen Mongol sword and brought it down with all of his might on the loop of metal at the top of the lock.

  Styg could see no change in the metal as the fighter smashed his sword down on the lock a second time. Within the cages, Zug and Kim were now considerably more animated than they had been, as if freedom were only one mighty stroke away. Styg caught sight of the fiery delight in their eyes, and he sh
ivered. Yes, he thought, I want you to be unleashed too.

  “Lakshaman,” Eilif said quietly, nodding at the scarred man. “He fought the Livonian. Do you remember?” Styg, eyeing the furious intent in the scarred man’s face, remembered. Lakshaman had fought against a better-armed and better-armored opponent and won. This man, with his scars and his knives, had taken that warrior with every advantage, and fed him his own preordained victory on the tip of his own rondel.

  Suddenly Styg had little doubt the lock would yield.

  There was a deafening clang and sparks flew, dancing across the dirt floor. Zug’s cage trembled. Lakshaman raised his weapon, and Styg noted how pitted and scarred the edge of the blade was, jagged like broken teeth. Styg was arrested, rooted to the spot as the whole world seemed to fade into the nothing but for Lakshaman and his jagged blade. Styg’s heart pounded in his chest as Lakshaman brought the sword down one more time, screaming in inchoate fury. Everything rested on the strength and fury of one man, battered and scarred by brutal masters, against a simple iron lock.

  Lakshaman’s sword snapped, and Styg and Eilif ducked as a large piece of the blade bounced off the iron bars of Zug’s cage with a resounding clang.

  The sword was not the only thing that had broken. The lock lay on the ground, snapped in half.

  Lakshaman, breathing heavily, tossed aside the useless hilt of the Mongol sword. Zug tentatively touched the bars of his cage and slowly pushed the door open, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. The door moved, and a ferocious grin spread across his face. He was free.

  Kim cleared his throat, and when he had their attention, he pointed at the lock on his cage. The look on his face was easy to interpret.

  One more.

  When Lakshaman raised his sweat-slicked face and looked at Styg, he shrugged and went to get another Mongol sword. He knew where a few were lying, no longer needed by their owners.

  There was someone climbing the spikes Styg had driven into the wall.

  Hans had found his way back to the spot where the Shield-Brethren had entered the Mongol compound readily enough—he knew every route through the broken alleys of Hünern, but instead of darting to the wall and scaling the spike ladder, he had ducked behind the same broken wall he and Maks had hidden behind previously. He had seen no one during his dash—not surprising, given the mood in the city—and so the sight of another person was startling.

  More so that it was a Mongol warrior.

  In fact, it was none other than Tegusgal, the captain of the Khan’s guard.

  The Mongol’s armor was battered and stained—both with soot and blood—and his helmet was missing. From what Rutger had said when they were all gathered behind the Black Wall, Tegusgal and his Mongols should have been caught in an ambush on the other side of the river. The Templars and Hospitallers had been in charge of making sure none of the Mongolian cavalry made it back to the compound. Hans felt his stomach tighten at the thought that the other knights had failed.

  But Tegusgal was alone, sneaking into his own camp—which suggested that the ambush had been successful. Tegusgal was returning to his master like a whipped dog.

  Hans gripped Maks’s dagger. His heart was beating fast. And before he talked himself out of the idea, he darted from his hiding place.

  Tegusgal was climbing slowly. He had been wounded in the left arm, and the injury was making the ascent difficult. Hans knew he could climb faster. Even while holding Maks’s dagger in one hand.

  He ran to the wall and scrambled up the ladder of spikes.

  Tegusgal, having reached the top, braced himself on the wall. He looked down, hearing Hans on the spikes below him, and he stared, incredulous at the sight of the boy coming after him.

  Hans didn’t slow down. As soon as he got close enough, he launched himself off the spikes, Maks’s dagger in his hand. The tip pierced the back of Tegusgal’s calf, the force of Hans’s blow driving the metal point in far enough that the tip grated on the bone in Tegusgal’s leg.

  Tegusgal howled, his foot slipping off the stake. Hans hung in the air, both hands around the hilt of the dagger. Blood ran down the back of Tegusgal’s leg as the Mongol tried to shake him off.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  A Change of Plans

  Skjaldbræður.

  The word burned in Haakon’s head for the rest of the day after the gray-haired one had caught him off guard. He hadn’t imagined that a Mongol would know of the Shield-Brethren, much less of his affiliation with the order. Had the gray-haired warrior been at Onghwe’s arena? He couldn’t recall. The first weeks were a dull blur in his head. Other than his chance encounter with the Great General, Subutai, he could not remember the faces of any of the Mongols.

  Where had he learned about the Shield-Brethren?

  After awhile an answer came to him, and it made his blood run cold. The gray-haired one had laughed when he had spoken the word, the savage glee of a man who thought he was stronger. A man who had survived battle and who was now fearless.

  They’re dead, Haakon realized. Feronantus and his band. The Mongols found them. They’re all dead.

  This news distressed him, and for several hours he struggled to understand why. As he lay in his cage, his head resting against the bars so he could see the sky, he gradually laid to rest a vain hope he had nursed ever since he had woken up in the cage. The Shield-Brethren were dead. No one was going to rescue him.

  He was going to die in this foreign land. No one would sing of his deeds after he was gone. He was a nameless gladiator, and he lived at the pleasure of the Khagan, who was little more than a petulant child, constantly drunk on power and wine.

  “Hssssst!”

  Haakon shook off his maudlin fear and rolled onto his side. He peered out of his cage, looking for the whisperer.

  Krasniy, in the next cage, waggled his fingers to get Haakon’s attention. Haakon nodded, indicating that he had seen the red-haired giant’s gesture. Krasniy held up a small object, nearly invisible in the dark, and Haakon nodded again. Krasniy pointed at the sky and then drew an arc with his finger, from east to west—sunrise to sunset. Haakon understood.

  Tomorrow night, Krasniy was going to use the arrowhead he had been hiding since the Chinese raid. The Khagan was leaving on his hunt in the morning; by nightfall, no one in the camp would be paying much attention to the prisoners in their cages. It would be the best chance they had to escape.

  Haakon lay back down on the floor of his cage, and after a few moments of trying to find a comfortable position on the unyielding floor, he fell asleep.

  A plan always quieted the mind.

  After the Khagan’s hunting party had left, Lian had gone to Gansukh’s ger, even though he had warned her to avoid it. She only had to unlace the flaps partway to understand Gansukh’s command. The destruction and the smell within mortified her, more so because even though it was Gansukh’s ger, it was the only place within the caravan—with the entirety of the Khagan’s empire—that she might have been able to feel a feeble sense of security and freedom.

  Munokhoi had taken that from her.

  Lian had stumbled through the camp—her heart numb, her mind a confused cascade of thoughts. Munokhoi said he was going to kill her when he returned from killing Gansukh. If the ex–Torguud captain did return, that would mean Gansukh was dead. Would Master Chucai protect her? That was unlikely. She was a pawn in his endless court games—a piece whose use was, unfortunately, coming to an end.

  Even if she found someone else to protect her, wouldn’t she still be nothing more than a slave? Her life would never be her own.

  Lian paused between two ger and fumbled in the pocket of her jacket, where she had slipped the tiny box that Gansukh had given her. It was an unadorned lacquer box, the sort that appeared seamless. She had had one like it when she was a child, and she knew the trick to getting them open. The lid was stiff and moved slowly, but she managed to open the tiny container.

  Inside was a small twig crowned by three
green leaves. It looked healthy and vibrant and not at all like a dried sprig cut from a tree. She touched the leaves gently, and found them soft and pliant. She raised the box to her face and sniffed. The scent was crisp and fresh, not quite mint and not quite lavender. Looking at the twig lessened her panic and confusion, and easing the lid back onto the box was more difficult than she expected.

  This is what Chucai wanted, she thought. This is what the Chinese came for.

  “Lian!”

  Her hand closed reflexively around the box, and as she turned, she tucked it away in her jacket again. “Jachin,” Lian said as she spotted the approaching woman, trailed by a trio of her handmaidens.

  “We have nothing to do until the Khagan returns,” Jachin said as she swept up to Lian. “I, for one, am going to take a bath.” She rolled her eyes at her handmaidens. “If these simpletons can ever manage to shore up my ger well enough that the water doesn’t keep running out of the tub.”

  “Perhaps it might be best to not fill the bath completely,” Lian suggested, attempting to quickly fix Second Wife’s problem.

  “I might as well not even bother in that case.” Jachin shook her head. “Next you’ll be suggesting that I have the servants rub my skin with wet clothes in lieu of actually submerging my body.”

  “Oh, my Lady, no.” Lian moved her hand—the one that had just shoved the box and sprig into her coat—up to her mouth as if horrified by the idea. “That would be akin to suggesting that you strip naked and jump in the river.”

  Jachin snorted. “Just like the men?”

  “Well, not just like them.”

  One of the handmaidens giggled and Jachin laughed outright before frowning playfully at Lian. “I do not think the Khagan would approve,” she said. “No, I want to please him when he returns from his hunt. Even though he will be elated, he will be tired from the long day of riding. I want to be ready for him. I want him to take me to his bed on the night of his victory. I want to be—” She broke off, and surprisingly, blushed. She toyed with her hair, staring off over Lian’s shoulder.