How long will this last? he wondered. How long will any of it last?
These questions remained unspoken and unanswered, long after Lian had fallen asleep, and he found their roles reversing. However, when he slipped from the bedding, she did not stir.
Gansukh remembered this too. The exhaustion that comes in the aftermath of the first kill. You cannot sleep for all the thoughts racing around your head, he thought, but your body demands it anyway.
He was dreaming about escaping from his cage again, though this time he did not try to steal a horse and ride out onto the steppe. This time, when he managed to get out of his cage, Haakon stole toward the center of the camp. The Khagan slept in the enormous tent on wheels. It was easy to find, and once he sawed his way through the heavy fabric, it would be equally simple to slay the man inside.
It was all very easy in his dream, but Haakon knew the reality would not be as simple. The Khan of Khans was always under the protection of his elite guard, who would not be blind to his efforts to cut a hole in the tent. He would have to fight at least one man, and the noise of combat would draw others, until he fell beneath a sea of Mongol warriors.
It was a fantasy. Nothing more. A way to pass the time, and while he wished his mind would dwell on more practical matters, he did not fret at the presence of such desires in his head. They meant he had not given up, that he still sought to stay alive.
Haakon stirred, sloughing the weight of sleep. His cheeks and left jaw ached, and his throat ached when he swallowed. The physical reminders of his fight the previous night. All in all, his bruises were slight in comparison to his opponent’s. Eating might be a little more painful, but then, the Mongols hadn’t been feeding him much more than a bowl of watery slop. Very little chewing was required.
He rolled onto his side, opened his eyes, and froze.
A Mongol crouched outside his cage, staring at him with evident curiosity.
Haakon stared back. The man’s jacket and leggings were utilitarian and plain, well-worn and well-traveled, and his face, while not as dark as some of the riders who had traveled with the first caravan, was clearly weathered by the sun and wind. He wore no markings, unlike the white-furred men with cruel mouths and hard eyes who made Haakon think of hungry wolves when they stared at him. This one was different. No less feral. Unlike many of the silk-robed Mongols who had wandered by his cage to gawk, there was clear intelligence in this man’s gaze.
Seeing that he was awake, the Mongol made a noise in his throat and indicated that Haakon should sit up. Haakon considered ignoring the man’s gesture, but after a moment he pushed himself up to a seated position and coolly stared at the Mongol. He kept his face expressionless: if he smiled, he might appear a fool; if he grimaced, it might be taken as a threat.
The man seemed familiar, and Haakon suspected he had been at the fight the previous night. He tried to recall details from the sea of faces that had surrounded the ring of stones, but other than the Khagan and a few of the others who had also stood on the raised platform, he could not remember any of the faces in great detail.
The Mongol tapped his chest. “Ghan-sook,” he said.
Haakon nodded. Easy enough to understand. “Hawe-koon,” he replied, drawing out the syllables much like he had for the general weeks ago.
From somewhere inside his jacket Gansukh produced a strip of dried meat. He tossed it close to the cage and watched as Haakon crawled over to the bars to retrieve the meat. He tore off a piece with his teeth and chewed it slowly, letting the taste linger in his mouth. It was fresher than the strips the guards had been giving him, and Haakon suspected it was from the warrior’s own supply. He raised the remainder to his lips and tipped his head in thanks.
Gansukh grunted and stood up, his knees popping. He began to pantomime, and Haakon quickly interpreted the gestures to mean, You fought another man; other man lost.
Haakon nodded again. “Yes,” he said in Mongol tongue. “I fight.”
Gansukh smiled. “You fight,” he replied, and then he said something else, which was beyond Haakon’s limited vocabulary. Reading Haakon’s shrug, Gansukh took to pantomime again, though this series of gestures was harder to follow. He pointed at Haakon, mimed holding a sword, made mock slashes in the air, and then he pointed to himself and pretended to be...
Haakon shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said in his native tongue. He tried to think of how to say the same thing in Mongolian. He could say “no,” but that wasn’t what he wanted to tell the warrior.
Gansukh tried the pantomime again, refining his gestures. You fight was easy to read. I... watch. Haakon nodded, following that much. The last part was trickier.
Haakon smiled as he deciphered Gansukh’s signs. He wants to see how I fight, he realized.
Haakon took his time getting up, stretching his stiff limbs as best he could in the cramped space of his cage. He bristled somewhat at the idea that he was expected to perform for this man, but another part of his mind considered the benefit of this man’s interest. At the very least, he might be able to bargain for more dried meat.
Haakon put his hands together as if he was holding a sword and settled into a simple stance. He had to duck his head forward and hunch his shoulders due to the cage, but Gansukh seemed to understand what he was doing.
The warrior mimed drawing a sword of his own and he held it out before him, the imaginary tip pointed at Haakon’s chest.
Haakon responded, twisting his hands up to beside his head. Imagining his own sword point, he thrust his hands forward quickly, and Gansukh clapped his right hand to his left shoulder, crying out in mock pain.
Haakon laughed. The young warrior played the fool well, and his judgment as to where Haakon’s point would have struck was sound. Gansukh left off his playacting and brought his hands together over his head with a sharp clap. He swung them down, a quick overhead stroke of his imaginary sword, and Haakon reacted instinctively.
In his mind’s eye, he saw where the blade would fall, and he brought up his hands to parry as he slid a half step to his right. He barked his knuckles on the rough ceiling of his cage, and he growled lightly in his throat. He knew the appropriate response—he could hear Taran’s voice, telling him to strike quickly and true, making the long diagonal cut from the shoulder to the groin—but there wasn’t enough room to perform that motion.
Haakon lowered his arms and shrugged. “Can’t fight in cage,” he said.
“A horse can’t run when it is hobbled,” Gansukh replied with a nod. He looked down at his hands as if he were examining his imaginary sword, and then with another curt nod, he departed, leaving Haakon to wonder what the young warrior had hoped to learn from their mock battle.
The shaman’s tent squatted on the verge of the caravan, leaning, like an old tree, away from the rest of the tents. The shaman’s horse, a bony gray gelding, quietly cropped a ridge of dry grass nearby, and an unruly pile of colorful blankets lay near the loose flap of the tent.
As Master Chucai approached the tent, the old gelding raised its head, regarded him for a moment, and then resumed its unhurried grazing. Chucai eyed the pile of blankets, and having gotten a whiff of the smell coming from them he decided to keep his distance. He cleared his throat noisily as he peered past the pile into the dim interior of the tent.
There was a rattle of wood and metal, and part of the pile moved. A bony foot extruded, and soon after—from another side—a hand followed. As the pile quivered and shifted, Chucai caught sight of a cracked set of antlers, festooned with bits of dull metal and shards of bone. The antlers rose up like the ghost of an ancient spirit, and a cracked and weathered face emerged from the blankets. There was a bulbous knob of a nose and a ragged hole that Chucai suspected was a mouth; only one of a set of eyelids managed to flicker open.
Chucai bowed, holding his beard against his belly so that it didn’t drag on the ground. “O servant of the wind and sky, I seek your guidance,” he began. “There is a matter that puzzles me greatl
y as of late.”
The shaman continued to shift around in his expansive layers of clothing as if he were trying to find a more comfortable position. Or perhaps he was simply trying to find something he had lost among the voluminous folds of his robes. Either way, his expression did not change and the gaze of his single eye remained fixed on Master Chucai.
“The great Spirit Banner of the Khagan,” Chucai continued. “Ögedei received it from his father, and I wish to know how his father—Genghis Khan—acquired it.”
“Temujin.”
It took Chucai a moment to realize that the shaman had said something coherent. Temujin. The name by which Genghis Khan had been known before he had become the great leader who had united the clans. “Yes,” he acknowledged. “Temujin.”
“Temujin went into the mountains,” the shaman croaked. “Genghis Khan returned.”
“With the banner?” Chucai asked, trying to interpret what the shaman was telling him.
“The womb of the spirits,” the shaman said. “The belly of Eternal Heaven.”
“Is that where the banner came from? Is there a spirit in it?”
The shaman wheezed and cackled, a nasty barking sound that was strange enough to spook the gelding, which raised its head and snorted noisily at the laughing pile of blankets. “There are spirits everywhere, bearded master,” the shaman explained when the stream of laughter dried up. “If you shatter a rock, do you shatter the spirit too, or does it live in every shard? When you cut down a stalk of grain, does the spirit pass into every seed?”
“I do not know,” Chucai said.
“If you cut off the head, does the body die?”
“Yes,” Chucai admitted. He smoothed down his beard. “I had hoped to learn more about the Spirit Banner, wise one. I have not come to engage in riddles.”
The shaman opened his other eye and stared fixedly at Chucai. “I am talking about the banner,” he croaked. “You are not listening.” A bony finger jabbed forth from the robes. “Why does the body die?” the shaman asked again. “Why? Is it because the spirit has abandoned it?”
“I suspect it has more to do with the head being separated from the body,” Chucai replied, reluctant to play the shaman’s game.
“But you could sew the head and body back together,” the shaman said.
“It’s—” Chucai shook his head and sighed. “I confess the mystery of death is beyond my knowledge.”
“It is not death you should concern yourself with,” the shaman snorted. “Life, bearded master. That is what you should be worrying about. Life.”
“Is the banner alive? Is that what you are telling me in this maddening fashion?”
“The banner is a piece of wood,” the shaman snapped, his voice suddenly harsh and dry. “It is the spirit that is alive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Raphael’s Book
Cnán started awake as Feronantus prodded her gently with his boot. She lurched upright, feeling the sky wheel around her, and she slapped her hands against the ground in an attempt to right herself. Blinking heavily, she tried to recall the last few moments of the previous night, yet there was nothing in her head but a hideous yowling sound. She tried to lick her lips, and found her tongue too dry to provide any moisture.
The sky was shifting away from black, bands of purple and blue sliding into one another, each one lighter than the last, until they became a roseate glow over her left shoulder. A few bright stars still twinkled in defiance of the coming dawn—laughter light from the heavens.
She raised her arms, no longer assailed by the vertigo of being suddenly awoken, and shook the sleep from her frame. She had not drunk as much as some of the others, but her mouth still felt like it was coated with sand. She peered at the misshapen lumps of the other members of the company as Feronantus moved among them, prodding and poking with his boot as he went. There was a great deal of groaning and complaining that rose in the old knight’s wake.
“Up, you lazy dogs,” Feronantus barked. “You lie about like indolent princes, waiting for me to wipe your asses and prechew your food for you.”
“Ach,” Yasper swore, cradling his head in his hands. “That sounds revolting.”
“Which?” Raphael asked.
“The latter,” Yasper shuddered. He put a hand over one eye, tilted his head to the side, and opened and closed his mouth several times. “I should not have slept on my side,” he groaned.
“I’m glad you did,” Eleázar said. “Every time you rolled over, you started to make a horrible choking noise.”
“I did not,” the alchemist said.
“You did,” Vera noted. “I had a wolfhound once that made a noise like that when he was choking on a rabbit bone.”
Yasper popped his lips a few times. “What happened to him?” he asked when his efforts appeared to have little effect on his internal condition.
Vera stretched until something moved into its proper place in her back. “He ate one rabbit too many.”
Cnán, who had been counting bodies, came up one short, and shifted her attention to the horses. “Where’s Istvan?” she asked, discerning a similar shortness in the number of horses.
“Scouting,” Feronantus replied. He rocked Rædwulf with his foot. The Englishman hadn’t reacted to more subtle attempts to wake him.
“In his condition?” Vera asked.
Nimbly avoiding an angry swipe of Rædwulf ’s hand, Feronantus let the big archer’s body slump back against the ground. “His condition roused him before dawn. At which time, he and I had a discussion about Graymane and our route.” He glowered at the Shield-Maiden. “Unlike the rest of you, Istvan can handle his drink, and woke this morning with a clear head and a willing spirit. Which is why I gave him the easiest of the tasks that we will undertake today.”
The last elicited a groan from Yasper.
“What news of Graymane?” Raphael asked quietly, and Cnán recalled the circumstances under which they had found Istvan: ahead of them, bewildered, and lost in a haze of freebutton madness.
“He did not tarry at Saray-Jük. Whoever he is, he no longer concerns himself with trying to stop us. I doubt he understands our true mission, but we did not flee back to the West after our assault on his camp. He must suspect our goal lies in the East. He hopes to beat us there.”
Eleázar shook his head as he folded his blanket. “And raise the entire Mongol Empire against us,” he said.
“We’re doomed,” Yasper sighed.
“This changes nothing,” Feronantus reminded him. He swept his gaze across the whole company. “He does not know whom we mean to strike, or when, or where. He knows nothing of import, and the sheer... impossibility of what he suspects means it will take some time before he can convince anyone to listen to him. Even then, he must mobilize a response, and still find us. By then, it will be too late.”
“Aye,” Percival nodded. “We must be swift and true.”
“We will still meet Benjamin at the rock, and we may still travel with him along the trade route, but speed matters. More so than ever.” Feronantus nodded toward the cluster of hobbled horses. “This will be our last full camp. From here on, we must become like them. We must eat, sleep, and piss from the saddle. Kiss the ground, my brothers and sisters, for you will not rest upon its breast for some time.”
Rædwulf, who had propped himself up on one elbow, lay back down, his arms splayed out.
Feronantus looked down at the archer for a moment, and something akin to a smile tugged at the corner of his stern mouth. “Yasper,” he called. “We are in need of your potions.”
The alchemist, who had been routing around in his saddlebags, paused, his expression suddenly wary. “How so?” he asked.
“Rædwulf—” Feronantus prodded the archer gently with his foot—“will be bringing down several more deer this morning. The meat will need to be cured.”
“That—that’ll take a week,” Yasper complained. “Even if I had the supplies.”
“You have until
first light tomorrow,” Feronantus countered. He shoved Rædwulf again. “Get your bow and knife. I suspect the Dutchman will find a way, but he’ll need as much of the day and night as your swiftest arrow can provide.”
Rædwulf grunted and rolled to his feet, his lackadaisical attitude vanishing like a wisp of smoke.
“Percival, Eleázar,” Feronantus continued, his voice the flat and hard tone of command. “Go with Rædwulf. He will need strong backs. Vera and Raphael: find their water source. Cnán—” he paused, and this time the smile did actually quirk his lips—“help the alchemist find his elusive salt.”
They rode in comfortable silence: Vera, as if she could read the multitude of thoughts whirling through his brain, led their effort to find the stream Rædwulf and Yasper had seen the other day; Raphael let his horse follow hers, while his mind churned. More than once his hand strayed to his saddlebag, where he kept his private journal.
The book was a treasure he had picked up some time ago when he had passed through Burgundy. He and several other Shield-Brethren had provided protection for a group of Cistercians returning to their abbey at Clairvaux, and while one of the brothers recovered from an arrow wound received on the journey, he had explored the abbey. The monks had been pleased to discover a like-minded soul in one of the martial orders, and the abbot had personally given him a tour of the abbey’s substantial library.
He was drawn to the Cistercians’ collection of illustrated manuscripts like a magpie to a piece of shiny brass, and he spent numerous afternoons with the scribes, endlessly asking questions like a curious child and watching—with rapt attention—as they painstakingly copied text from aged scrolls that were in danger of crumbling from the slightest touch. The chief scribe, so amused by Raphael’s guileless enthusiasm, had a book made for the inquisitive knight—a sheaf of blank pages bound between two unadorned boards. The book lacked the extravagance (and weight) of the tomes commissioned by Burgundian nobility, but it was also of a size that fit easily into a saddlebag.
The Mongoliad: Book Three Page 19