“Stop staring at me like that,” she said gently. “We knew this day was coming. We take death into our hearts when we take our oaths.”
“Yes,” he argued, “but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.”
She cupped Raphael’s face with her hand. “I have liked very little in this world, Raphael of Acre, and you have shown me more affection than I deserve. I am sorry—”
He placed his hand over her mouth and shook his head. “I have said good-bye to too many friends today. I am done. No more.” She relented, and tightly pressing her hand to his, she kissed his fingers. He pulled her close, and dropping their hands, their lips met.
She broke contact first, as he knew she would, but she didn’t let go of him. Her teeth worrying her lower lip, she rested her head against his shoulder. “By the time the Mongol horde reached Kiev, we knew they were going to besiege the city for as long as it took to break our spirits, and we swore—my sisters and I—that we would never submit. We would never, willingly, open our gates to the Mongols, and the Virgin heard our prayer. They breached Kiev’s gates and ravaged the city completely, but the walls of our citadel held. We took in too many refugees, and if the Mongols had been patient, we would have starved to death. But Batu Khan was too eager to press farther west. He thought the destruction of the city would be enough to break our spirit. But we didn’t falter. We were skjalddis. We would never surrender.
“And then I took my sisters out of the city. I took them away from the Virgin’s protection, and the Mongols found us.” Her hand closed to a fist on his chest. “I killed my sisters as readily as if I cut their throats myself.”
Raphael shook his head. “You can’t blame yourself. Every commander feels responsible for his troops. They would not be a good commander otherwise. But you can’t carry that burden. It will crush you.”
“It won’t crush me, Raphael.” She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “My sisters guide my arm. They give me strength. They will be with me when I kill the Khagan.”
“Vera...” He faltered. Her gaze was too guarded, too hard. His words would not be strong enough to penetrate her armor.
She kissed him lightly. “I’m sorry, Raphael,” she whispered, her breath light on his cheek. “I wish there was more room in my heart.” Her lips brushed his cheek as she squeezed his arm, and then she was gone.
He would have preferred an opportunity to play with the ratios of the various powders that he had found in the satchel, but Feronantus had been disinclined to let him go off and conduct explosive experiments on innocent trees. Time was limited; the resolution of their quest was upon them. He had one chance to get the mixture right.
He would have thrown his hands up at such an impossible challenge six months ago, but as a companion to the Shield-Brethren who looked upon the impossible as a noble challenge, he had become inured to the insurmountable. Creating an explosive reagent from an untested oddment of powders, tinctures, and salts was exactly the sort of conundrum God would put before him.
Especially after he had complained—somewhat incessantly, he was now willing to admit—about that damned Livonian stealing his horse back in Kiev. He had stumbled upon a veritable treasure hoard of alchemical ingredients in the ruined city. He had collected an entire bag of smooth stones that were nearly all the same shape and size, not too small and not too large—nearly perfect, in fact, for a balneum cineritium. The large grains of sand would have retained their heat so evenly. The idea of a portable balneum had been so tempting.
The jugs of aqua ardens had been an unexpected blessing. The two bottles weren’t as volatile as a recipe he had made several years ago, but, as evidenced in the tunnels, the fiery water burned readily enough. The other jug could have been distilled further—he was certain he could have done it—and having several vials of purified aqua ardens would alleviate his current dilemma.
“Attend to your mind,” he whispered to himself. The aqua ardens was gone; the treasure trove he had collected during the early days of their journey was gone. Dwelling on the materials he had lost was to engage in wistful daydreaming like an ale-addled simpleton. He had to keep his mind focused. The company was depending on him.
They had stumbled upon the location of the bear’s cave late in the day after they had said good-bye to Cnán, and Feronantus had kept them busy, exploring the two-pronged valley, until well after moonrise. They had argued for several hours around a meager fire about the best way to entrap the Khagan. In the end, the simplest stratagem won out: let the Khagan’s party enter the valley, but don’t let it leave.
The last part fell squarely upon Yasper’s shoulders, and shortly after sunrise, he had surveyed the rocky terrain on either side of the western entrance of the valley. An avalanche was clearly the best solution, but how to move all those rocks? After an hour of clambering about less sure-footedly than a mountain goat, he thought it was possible to bring down a number of rocks.
However, he would need a few supplies.
Feronantus had been loath to let him go wandering off into the forest, especially when they expected the Khagan’s hunting party late in the day. All the more reason Yasper had to find his alchemical ingredients sooner than later. Without these ingredients, he had argued, I can’t bring the hillside down. You’ll have to come up with a different plan.
Early the following morning, Yasper, Istvan, and Raphael went scouting again with two goals in mind: finding Yasper’s alchemical ingredients and discerning the location of the Khagan’s hunting party. Consensus among the companions was that the Khagan had simply waited a day before leaving, but they needed to be sure.
Shortly after midday they found the hunting party and Yasper found his alchemical supplies, albeit in an unexpected fashion.
They heard a booming noise, and Yasper thought it was too singular and too close to be thunder, especially given the lack of cloud cover in the sky. Keenly aware that they were not alone in the woods, they dismounted and carefully led their horses through the trees. After the second rumbling echo, Yasper was sure the source of the sound was an alchemical explosion.
They nearly interrupted the duel between the two Mongol hunters, and had the pair not been so intent on killing one another they would have surely spotted the trio of Westerners. Istvan had wanted to kill them both, but Raphael had held him back, and after one had dashed off and the other followed, Yasper had been able to creep into the clearing and retrieve the dropped satchel.
He had nearly wept with joy when he opened it and examined its contents.
By nightfall, his joy had withered to consternation. Some of the powders were foreign to him, and he had no time for practical research. He woke often during the night, shivering with a sensation nearing panic, and in the morning when the rest of the company departed for their hidden positions within the valley, he was left alone. Just Yasper and the mystery of the powders and God, who wasn’t offering any insight.
The white crystals, sweet to the taste, were a salt of some kind. The metal shards had no function as part of the alchemical explosive. It was only after catching his finger on a rough burr and drawing blood that he had realized their purpose. They were tiny projectiles, meant to be packed in with the powders. When the incendiary device ignited, the alchemical energies released would hurl the shards in every direction.
He shuddered, imagining the effect they would have on unarmored flesh, and then shuddered even more as he divined how the Chinese used these powders. Feeling befouled, like he had just accepted a deal with some infernal demon to allow these thoughts into his head, he laid the ingredients out in a line, seeing their arrangement in a different light.
The dark powder tasted bitter, not unlike the calcinate that a sand bath would draw out of a cow’s urine, and the red crystals turned to blue flame when he had tossed a pinch into the campfire. He recognized the ash readily enough, though it came from a pleasantly fragrant wood.
As he was wrestling with the ratios, the Khagan and his hunting party passed below
his hiding place.
Yasper pressed himself flat against the rocks, and with an oath, he kicked sand over his tiny fire, trying to put it out. He inched to the edge of the rock and peered down, desperately hoping no one noticed the thin line of smoke.
He counted heads, and was taken aback when he passed forty. He figured the one on the black horse, wearing the gaudy plum-colored outfit, was Ögedei, the Khan of Khans. Yasper stifled a grin. Rædwulf will be so jealous, he thought, when he learns how close I was. He was not a very skilled bowman, but he thought he could hit the Khagan with an arrow from his position.
As he watched, one of the honor guard—a tall muscular Mongol—gave orders to the men, splitting the group into two. More than half were to stay at the mouth of the valley. A rearguard, Yasper surmised, to ensure the bear did not accidentally escape. Little chance of that, he thought, recalling the display that Percival and Rædwulf had erected. Shooting the arrow into the bear’s chest after it had been strung up had been a masterful idea on Feronantus’s part. A taunting flourish on top of an already arrogant display of defiance. It was bound to enrage the Khagan.
“Oh, shit!” The words hissed out of Yasper’s mouth before he could stop them. He had recognized one of the riders in the group that was continuing on with the Khagan.
Graymane.
There was nothing he could do but watch as the Khagan and his much smaller hunting party—including the gray-haired rider who had plagued them so incessantly during their journey—rode into valley. The twenty or so left behind milled about for a while, uncertain of the best way to prevent a charging bear from leaving the valley. After a half hour or so, they settled down. As Yasper kept his vigil, his heart continuing to pound in his chest, they fell into the same routine as bored soldiers anywhere. They ate and drank, sharing among themselves, and eventually someone produced a bag containing some manner of marked bones. While three of them remained mounted, keeping a bored watch, the others passed the time by betting on the bones.
Yasper still had to figure out how to make an alchemical incendiary. The guards had positioned themselves on his side of the vale, making it somewhat easier if he managed to figure out how to send a cascade of rocks down upon them. He had marked a few he thought would bring along other rocks when they tumbled down the hill, and his plan had been to dislodge them by packing a mixture into key cracks. However, in order to ignite them in the right order, he would need a long fuse, one that burned at the right speed and with the right amount of flame.
All the vines he had found during his searches had been too full of juices—there wasn’t enough time to dry and temper them properly. He had found fuses in the satchel, but they were all short, not much longer than the distance from the tip of his longest finger to the base of his hand. Even if he tied them all together, they weren’t going to be long enough.
He sighed and rubbed his scalp vigorously. He was running out of time. It wouldn’t take that long for the hunting party to find the dead bear. He had to act soon. Otherwise, the Khagan could still escape.
What were the right ratios?
He heard a distant cry, like the scream of a hawk as it dives upon its prey, but he knew it wasn’t a war cry of a predatory bird. It was a scream of pain.
Rædwulf was shooting his arrows. The trap had been sprung.
Muttering to himself (and to God), Yasper scooped up the various pouches of ingredients and combined them as equally as he could into two of the larger pouches. After packing in a layer of metal shards, he shoved a fuse into each and tied them as tightly as he dared. He struck his flint against the nearby rock face, scattering sparks. The first fuse hissed, and he blew on it briefly to make sure the sparks became fire. The fuse caught, flaring into a sizzling finger of blue and orange flame.
He stared at the flame. “Alalazu,” he muttered. He didn’t know the history of the Shield-Brethren battle cry, but it seemed an appropriate blessing for his impromptu solution.
He stood up and hurled the bag, aiming for the center of the cluster of guards.
The alchemical incendiary exploded with a delightfully noisy boom, and the concussive sound echoed back and forth between the hills. It was an unmistakable signal, in case the others were wondering when the fun was going to begin. Yasper peered out of his hiding place, trying to see anything through the gray haze that floated over the valley floor. He saw shapes that were, most likely, mounted riders, the men trying to calm their terrified horses. Other shapes materialized—men crawling and staggering. As the haze thinned, Yasper got a better glimpse of the carnage wrought by his device. His gorge rose, and he clamped his hands over his mouth and sat down heavily on his rump, breathing rapidly through his nose.
Several Mongols had been shredded by the explosion. He had seen what bears could do to a human body, and the lacerations and dismemberment wreaked by beast paled in comparison to the bodily destruction scattered about the field below. The only means by which he could tally the dead was to count those still living; the dead were in too many pieces.
His gaze fell upon the other alchemical incendiary, and he kicked it away, horrified to be near such a hellish construct. It slid across the ground, and his horror mounted as he watched it tumble across the remnants of the tiny fire he had built earlier. It rolled to a stop, the prickly tongue of its fuse resting against the ground. Yasper held his breath, praying that the capricious imps who did the Devil’s mischief would not be watching.
They were. The fuse sparked and sputtered, and a thin blue finger of flame began to dance at the end of the fuse, flinging sparks with reckless abandon.
Yasper scrambled forward, burning his hand as he put it down in the not-yet-cold coals of his fire, and he grabbed up the lit incendiary, throwing it down the hill.
He threw himself to the ground and put his hands over his ears, in a futile effort to block out the horrific sound he knew was coming.
They burst out of the forest in a line, riding abreast, their maille glittering in the sun. Feronantus: the Shield-Brethren battle cry on his lips, leaning forward in his saddle as if he were a young man again. Percival: his armor gleaming brighter than the rest, sword in one hand, mace in the other, his horse responding to the lightest touch of his knees—the results of months of continuous training. Vera: sword and shield ready, her face hidden behind the blank mask of her helm; the woman he had kissed in the forest was gone, and all that remained was the indomitable spirit of the skjalddis.
And he, Raphael: veteran of the Fifth Crusade, survivor of the siege of Cordobá, oath breaker, man of God though cast out from the Church. A knight initiate of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, at first for expediency and then because the order was the only family that would accept him. He carried sword and shield, for now was not the time to hang back with spear and arrow.
Now was the time to look your enemy in the eye when you slew him.
They came at a hard gallop, their horses’ hooves pounding at the dusty ground. The Shield-Brethren rode to war, expecting to face insurmountable odds—one hundred, two hundred of the finest fighting men the Mongol Empire could field. They rode, anticipating a bristling barricade of spears and lances, and found...
... an empty plain.
Raphael sat up in his saddle, scanning for some sign of the Khagan’s host. When he and Yasper and Istvan had stumbled across its passage in the forest, they had been somewhat mystified by the size the track suggested, and they had assumed it was the advance party, the scouts who were ranging ahead of the main host.
He didn’t bring that many men with him, Raphael realized.
Nearly simultaneously, he spotted horses coming from either direction. The ones on the left wore matching colors and were riding hard; on the right, the horses were scattered far apart, and a few had no riders. This is it? he thought, and he recalled Roger’s boastful comment at the Kinyen in the chapter house near Legnica. Ten thousand of them means ten thousand opportunities for confusion.
He missed Roger fiercely. How I wish you
were here for this moment, my friend, he thought. You would have laughed, and all our hearts would have been lightened by the sound of your voice. He gripped his sword more tightly. I am sorry, Roger, he offered as a silent prayer to the Virgin and the host of the dead whom she had gathered to her bosom.
And for a moment, he recalled Andreas—the young man he had met once on a German road. Had the Virgin claimed him too?
He might know the answer to his question soon enough.
And then the Mongol riders were upon them, and the time for memory and prayer was done.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
On the Road to Rome
Cardinal Fieschi stared morosely at the scenery as his carriage trundled back to Rome. He had already sent ahead several riders to alert Orsini. By the time his carriage reached the Vatican, the countryside surrounding Rome would be crawling with horsemen wearing the Bear’s colors. Given his recent spate of foul luck, the Bear’s men would stumble upon an overzealous squad of the Emperor’s men and the resulting fracas would be the start of all-out war between Rome, the Church, and the Holy Roman Empire.
Was that Frederick’s goal? he wondered. For as little as Fieschi missed Gregory IX—the man had been a tyrant to his staff, and Fieschi had tolerated it longer than anyone else—he briefly wished the man were still alive. He had an incredibly deft mind when it came to understanding the myriad layers of the conflict for Christendom. Orsini’s effort to hide the Cardinals in the Septizodium might have won the election for the Church, but what did that matter if Rome was immediately overrun by a mangy bunch of Germans and Sicilians?