The Mongoliad: Book Two

by Neal Stephenson

  At first, Raphael had been dismayed by the number of skjalddis whom Vera had brought, worrying that their numbers would have diminished the ranks of those who remained behind in Kiev, but she had scoffed at his concern, pointing out that thrice this number of Shield-Maidens remained in Kiev. And there was only ever room enough for a dozen on the walls at any given time.

  For the purposes of this evening’s council, the twelve Shield-Maidens were posted as sentries, forming a large and loose ring around the fire, about a bowshot in diameter. Only Vera joined the Brethren to discuss the next day’s maneuvers. She sat to the left of Cnán. The Binder had, at first, found the Shield-Maidens impossibly strange and had pointedly avoided their company, but as the weeks had gone by, she had adjusted to their ways and been drawn into their society.

  On Vera’s left side was Feronantus. Even more so than usual, the old man had kept to himself during the weeks after Kiev, and Raphael had often noted him riding far out in front of the others. Not, he suspected, out of an intention to scout the way, but because he enjoyed the illusion that he was alone on the steppe. He carried Taran’s sword always, as Percival now carried Roger’s. Cnán had remarked on this during the journey, and Raphael had explained to her that each man was honor bound to bring his fallen comrade’s weapon back to the hall of arms at Petraathen to be mounted alongside those of other Brethren who had fallen in battle over the ages. “Then we had best stop losing people,” she had remarked, “or the survivors will have to carry an insupportable burden across half the world.”

  Percival sat left of Feronantus. Small sideways movements of the latter’s eyes reminded Raphael of the strange tension that had existed between these two men since the vision, hallucination, or angelic visitation that Percival had experienced on the day of Taran’s death. Percival himself was oblivious to this. For a fortnight after Roger’s fall, he had spoken barely a word to anyone, ranging far off to the caravan’s flanks, staring into the distance, mourning and thinking.

  Thinking, as Raphael could easily guess, about his quest, and the folly into which it had led him, and the consequence of that folly.

  Of the surviving Brethren, only Raphael knew about Percival’s quest. Percival had first mentioned it in the presence of Vera, Raphael, Roger, and Illarion. Roger was now dead. Illarion had decided to stay behind in Kiev. His health had not fully recovered. His country was calling to him; he felt that he could strike a harder blow against the Mongols by remaining there, regaining his full strength, and confronting them directly rather than taking a chance on surviving the trek to the Great Khan’s capital. So the only witnesses to Percival’s odd behavior concerning the quest were now Raphael and Vera, and since Vera had not known Percival before, it meant little or nothing to her.

  Continuing around the circle leftward, then, the next was Eleázar, who was relaxed and happy, as he had been enjoying the company of the Shield-Maidens almost too heartily for a celibate monk. Then Yasper, bored and morose. In the aftermath of the cave fight, they learned that the Livonian leader—the one named Kristaps—had escaped from the tunnels by returning to the monastery near the river, emerging from the well house, and stealing Yasper’s horse, which had been laden with all of the scraps of metal that the alchemist had been patiently assembling for his still-making project, as well as a jug of aqua ardens. Since then, of course, they had seen nothing except open countryside, and Yasper had been reduced to the status of a mere herbalist. Next to Yasper was Istvan, somewhat pointedly placed directly across the fire from Feronantus so that the two men could look each other in the eye over the flames. Then Raphael, then Finn, then Rædwulf.

  Finn and Rædwulf had only just arrived back in camp with the gutted corpse of a small antelope slung over the back of a spare pony. They had been absent for two days. Finn, never one to sit still during a solemn discussion, busied himself butchering the animal. Raphael tried to prevent his mouth from watering as he thought about the roasted meat they would be enjoying later. The steppe was replete with small burrowing animals that were hardly worth the effort expended in catching them. It was becoming increasingly obvious why the Mongols derived so much of their diet from mare’s milk. Antelope meat, stringy and gamy though it might be, was a delicacy.

  “We are pleased to help you eat your bycatch,” Feronantus said, “but this is not the game you were hunting for, is it?”

  Finn, perhaps not trusting himself to interpret the dry humor, pretended not to hear, and so eyes moved to the face of Rædwulf.

  “I saw him clearly,” the Englishman announced. “As you all know, I scoffed louder than any of us when Finn told us, a fortnight ago, that he had seen a man tracking us and recognized him as the grizzled Mongol who eluded us after the fight that killed Taran.” For they had made a habit, all during the journey, of letting Finn range across the countryside in their wake, secreting himself in covert places to look for any who might be pursuing them. “But I have seen him now, and there is no mistaking his gray hair. It is the same man. I have apologized to Finn for doubting him.”

  “How close did you get to him?” Feronantus asked. The others were all letting out exclamations of surprise, but he still needed convincing. Or perhaps, Raphael realized, that was what a leader must do: play the role of skeptic even when—especially when—all others had swung round to a shared opinion.

  “Well within a bowshot.”

  “A Mongol’s bowshot, or—”

  “Mine.” Rædwulf could shoot an arrow a long way.

  “Did you consider taking the shot?” Feronantus asked, with the faintest trace of a smile.

  “Of course,” Rædwulf said, “but he knew where I was.”

  “Still, you could have shot him!” Istvan blurted.

  Rædwulf’s eyes swiveled to study the Hungarian. “It was odd, to my mind, that the man allowed himself to come within my range.”

  “Have you an explanation for this oddity?” Percival asked.

  “I do,” Rædwulf said. “I think that he is unfamiliar with the characteristics of the Welsh longbow and the arrows that we use.”

  “He thought he was safe,” Feronantus said.

  Rædwulf nodded. “I could have disabused him,” he said, “but the wind was swirling, and—”

  “If you had missed,” Percival said, completing his sentence, “you would never have been given another chance.”

  A silence ensued, broken only by the snap and hiss of the fire and the swift, slick movements of Finn’s knife through the antelope’s carcass.

  “What are we to make of this Graymane and his dogged pursuit of us?” Raphael asked finally.

  Feronantus looked mildly annoyed and did not answer immediately. Of course, this was precisely the question on his mind.

  “He is a man of some authority,” Feronantus said, “or else he would have gone immediately to his superior and handed the matter off to him. Instead, he devotes weeks to following us, studying us. Why?”

  “He wants to know what we are about,” Raphael said. “We have aroused his curiosity.”

  “And perhaps he has his own reasons for traveling to the East,” Eleázar suggested.

  “Further evidence, if true, that he is a man of some consequence in the councils of the Mongols,” Feronantus said.

  “It is a fine riddle,” Vera said, “and pray enjoy it at your leisure. I must know whether you wish to cross the Volga tomorrow or not.”

  “If we cross over,” Rædwulf pointed out, “then Graymane will suspect that our errand must lie far to the east.”

  “Oh, I think Graymane knows that already,” Feronantus said. “No. The journey already drags on far longer than I had hoped. We cross over with no further delay. And if Graymane follows us, then we set a trap for him—and this time Rædwulf lets his arrow fly.”

  * * *

  It did not happen as quickly as Feronantus had hoped. The larger settlements along the river, where ferries were easy to come by, were garrisoned by the Mongols, and so two days were lost in scouting up
and down the Volga’s bank to find a way across. Vera’s second-in-command, Alena, located a fishing village whose inhabitants were willing to ferry the party and their horses across the river in exchange for a tariff that Feronantus claimed to find shocking. But the Shield-Brethren had made it obvious that they were trying to hide their movements from the Mongol authorities, and so it was inevitable that they would end up paying dearly. Rather than paying double to ferry the Shield-Maidens over as well, and then paying yet again to bring them back a few days later, they made the decision that Alena would remain with the other women on the river’s west bank and await the return of Vera.

  In truth, Vera was of little use to them once they had reached the eastern bank. Her fluency in Slavic languages had, of course, been indispensable near Kiev, and her expertise in the geography of the steppes had seen them to the great river more quickly and safely than they’d have been able to manage on their own. But she and Alena had been able to communicate with the fishermen only with great difficulty, and they had finally resorted to drawing figures in the dirt. The few locals on the eastern bank who were willing to come anywhere near them were of another race altogether and did not speak a single word of Russian, Greek, Latin, or indeed any of the languages of Christendom.

  Cnán identified them as a sort of Turk and found a way to talk with them. Her skills had been of little use to the group during the journey from Kiev, and she had become little more than a shadow following in the wake of the company. Now, once again, they were unable to continue forward without her assistance. Raphael found himself to be inordinately pleased by this turn of events, realizing he had come to enjoy Cnán’s presence when she was an active part of the company.

  “You know what I am looking for,” Raphael told her as they approached a small settlement of such Turkic-looking people, “so feel free to ask whenever you sense that the time is right.”

  A long conversation followed, in the hut where the headman of the village lived. Cnán served as translator for Feronantus and Raphael. Or that was the plan going in. But after a few initial pleasantries, she stopped translating altogether and would sometimes speak to the headman for as long as a quarter of an hour without bothering to turn round and say a word to the knights. It was obvious, however, from tone of voice and facial expressions, that she was busy satisfying the chief’s curiosity and assuaging his concerns about this armed band of Frankish interlopers who had just presented themselves on his doorstep. So Feronantus did not bristle but merely sat still, looked formidable, and behaved himself.

  Raphael, with nothing better to do, doodled on a blank page of the book that he carried with him as a sort of diary and sketchpad.

  Finally, Cnán turned and addressed them. “I think it is safe now to ask him.”

  She spoke in Latin, and her words—as Raphael saw, when he looked up from his sketching—were directed at him. Surprised, he gave a little shrug and glanced at Feronantus, who nodded.

  Cnán turned back to the headman and spoke to him for a little while, and in that speech, Raphael thought he heard words very like Khazar and Jew, Ibrahim and Musa—words that he had been hoping would be known to the natives of this land.

  The chief responded immediately. Cnán turned to Raphael. She almost never smiled. But she was smiling now. “He says that they are not all dead yet,” she announced, “and that he can show us the way to where they live. In exchange for a small consideration, of course.”

  “Of course,” Feronantus said.

  * * *

  At a certain point, perhaps three centuries ago, the Khazars had converted to Judaism. Lacking rabbis, they had sent some of their young men down into Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cairo to study at the great yeshivas. The intention, of course, was that they would return home once they had completed their studies. And, indeed, that was how it happened during the first century or two, when the Khazars’ empire had stood at its zenith. But the decline of their power had led to gradually increasing emigration and reduction of the populace.

  Jewish Khazars, dispossessed of land by the empire’s shrinkage and decline, or simply feeling insecure about the stability of the place, had traveled south with what possessions they could carry. The tiny colonies of Khazari rabbinical students in the great cities of the west and south had swelled into neighborhoods, clearly defined at first, but growing more diffuse with time as the descendants of the first waves of emigrants had intermarried with the indigenous Jews. Still, they could be identified, if you knew what to look for, as a small but distinct minority.

  During his travels through the Islamic world, Raphael had seen traces of them as far west as al-Andalus. In Toledo, he had befriended a young man of Khazari descent named Obadiah. Raphael’s curiosity about the Khazars’ past had earned him an invitation to Obadiah’s home for a Passover seder at which he had plied Obadiah’s incredibly ancient great-uncle with endless questions. From this and other researches, he had learned that the Khazars’ wealth and power had derived largely from their position astride the Silk Road and that, during their heyday, it had been considered no great thing for a Khazari trader to range over a territory bounded on the east only by the ocean that washed the shores of China and on the west by the capitals and trading cities of Christendom. They had been so pleased to meet a young Christian who actually cared about their history that they had, in truth, burdened his mind with far more information than he really desired. For Raphael, in those days, had been curious about everything, not just the Khazars, and Obadiah had been only one of a number of friends he had pestered with innumerable and sometimes impertinent questions.

  Recently, though, he’d had cause to wish that he’d consumed a little less wine at that seder and listened more carefully to Obadiah’s great-uncle. For the company of Shield-Brethren had a problem, which was that summer was already drawing to a close, and still they had a vast distance to cover and little time in which to cover it. Without Cnán’s guidance, of course, they would have traveled even more slowly. But even with her help, they were not moving nearly fast enough. Raphael had conceived an idea that they might get across the steppes more quickly and more safely if they could form some sort of alliance with traders going into the East to trade for silk. People, in other words, who actually knew what they were doing—who took those routes routinely, for a living.

  So it was that, the day after the conversation in the hut, they rode up a winding path into dark hills that brooded over the east bank of the Volga. They were dark because they actually had trees on them—not everywhere, but in their declivities and on sheltered slopes. The few people eking out livings in those hills were a far cry from the generally prosperous and well-fed urbanites Raphael had known in his youth, but certain details in their appearance, their clothing, and their language made it clear to him that he was looking at the last of the Khazars and that this godforsaken range of hills was the rump of their empire, the final refuge into which their beleaguered ancestors had retreated hundreds of years earlier. Like everyone else, they must be paying tribute to the Mongols, but the Mongols seemed to be leaving them alone, and no wonder, since the wooded hills were not well suited to their ponies.

  Vera pointed out that she had ceased to be useful to them some days ago and was about to become a positive impediment, since if these Khazars knew anything of their own history, they would remember that women of her order had marched in the invading army of Sviatoslav.

  Feronantus reluctantly agreed and detailed Finn, Rædwulf, and Eleázar to escort her back to the bank of the Volga so that she could buy passage across and be reunited with Alena and the others. The rest of them said their good-byes, and Raphael found himself powerfully affected, knowing how unlikely it was that he would ever again look upon this handsome woman with whom he had fought back-to-back in the tunnels. They embraced front-to-front, and then he turned away from her before the pain in his face became too obvious.

  That contingent rode away in the company of their guide, who had been paid the agreed-on amount by Fero
nantus.

  Feronantus, Raphael, Istvan, Yasper, Percival, and Cnán now began what they assumed would be a slow and halting project of making themselves known to, and trusted by, these last remnants of the Khazar Empire. Even Raphael, who had come up with the idea, gave long odds that it would work. But they had to cross through this territory, or other territory like it, in order to get where they were going anyway, and they could not move too quickly lest they make it impossible for Vera’s escort to reconnect with them. No harm in being friendly with the locals en route.

  They came upon a hill-bound village of scattered huts and even a few grand log houses, with great central halls, the moss and decay of which spoke hauntingly of lost glory. Cautiously, they made their way to a central square and arrayed themselves around a stone-faced well, to be unavoidable and yet demonstrate they meant no harm. For a time, the inhabitants kept their distance, perhaps remembering the Varangians who had once harried their towns—but need finally drove them in.

  They were a picturesque lot, with broad, flat faces not unlike the Mongols themselves, though wearing long black robes with gray-and-silver embroidery over gray loose pants, and broad-brimmed fur hats. The women wore white-and-gray and dun skirts, long and full, and their blouses were adorned with luxurious sable—thick, well cured, and neatly sewn. Some were bold enough to display, as they drew water from the well in wooden buckets, ornate gold torques and other jewelry that Raphael recognized as Greek in craftsmanship but Scythian in design.

  Working in concert with Cnán, who knew how to make herself understood (for the Khazar language was yet another Turkoman dialect), Raphael began attempting to strike up conversations with old men whom he guessed were rabbis, showing by various gestures of respect that he knew a little of these people, their history, and their religion and that he’d had friendly dealings with some of their long-lost cousins in the Diaspora. At first, he received very little response, which was to be expected, but on the third night of their sojourn, he was at last invited into the well-kept home of a rabbi of some importance, who had traveled to Jerusalem and Baghdad and who could speak Hebrew and Arabic. Raphael spoke a few words of the former and was reasonably fluent in the latter, and so it was now possible to have something like an actual conversation. The great bulk of this was given over to pleasantries and chitchat, but at the end, Raphael was able to make some allusion as to their errand: they sought assistance in traveling far into the East, preferably as quickly as could be managed.