The Mongoliad: Book One tfs-1

by Neal Stephenson

  Cnán had no idea what the Vor was, but the argument seemed decisive to everyone else. Some sort of gibberish from their oplomach, as they called their arts of fighting.

  In the few days she had been a guest of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, she had learned everything she could about this Feronantus—save, apparently, for the most important thing, which was that he was not of sound mind.

  She had learned he had been of a high rank within the Order, which meant that if he stayed alive and made no mistakes, he was likely to end up presiding over Petraathen itself one day. As a way of preparing him for that honor, they had sent him out to run Týrshammar, the fortress/temple/monastery they had been maintaining in the North Sea for the last nine hundred years or so—an offshoot of the more ancient Petraathen and, by tradition, a place where future leaders of the Order were groomed.

  Whether by accident or design, the Mongols had flanked Petraathen to the north and south. The southern branch, under Batu Khan, had advanced into Hungary and defeated most of Christendom’s armies at a place called Mohi. The northern branch, under Onghwe, had come here and defeated the rest of them. Among those who made a study of Khans, it was believed that Batu was the more important, and that the southern prong of the advance was therefore the real one, and that Onghwe’s efforts were more in the nature of a diversion. Accordingly, most of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae who were actually based at Petraathen had gone south into Hungary, and those who had survived the battle along the Sajó River were there still. When Onghwe had sent out his challenge for the Circus of Swords, the responsibility had consequently fallen to Feronantus, who had come out from Týrshammar with Taran and Rædwulf and a few others who had been on the island at the time.

  “I will go into the East, with no expectation of returning,” Feronantus said. “The road will be long. We shall travel light. This means we shall have to feed ourselves by hunting for game along the way. I hope that Finn will come along to make up for our shortcomings in the chase.”

  This was translated to Finn, who beamed and nodded and said something that was translated back into Latin as, “Yes, provided you make up for mine as a warrior.”

  “Rædwulf complements Finn in the hunt, and we will need the power of his bow to penetrate Mongol armor from a distance,” Feronantus continued.

  Cnán blushed in spite of herself, recalling how the two had tracked her through the woods. Yes, between Finn and Rædwulf, no deer between here and Mongolia would stand much of a chance.

  “Illarion Illarionovitch has already done us the honor of volunteering,” Feronantus said, exchanging a nod with the Ruthenian. “Though we have little hope of outriding the Mongol hordes, we shall need the finest horseman at our disposal—the matamoros, Eleázar.”

  The Spaniard looked pleased. Istvan, the Hungarian rider, did not.

  “As much as I would like to believe that we could accomplish the journey without illness or injury, we shall require the services of a physician, and so I call upon Raphael, who may also be able to help us with the language of the Saracens.

  “Percival has already spoken in a way that tells me of where his heart leads him, and so I summon him on this quest. I would not dare separate him from Roger, and so Roger joins the list, if he can bear our company.”

  “And if you can bear mine,” Roger said.

  “Though, like Finn, he is not a member of our Order and is but an honored visitor in our camp, Yasper and his knowledge of alchemical matters might serve us well, and so I invite him to come along with us.”

  “I thought you would never get around to it!” Yasper said. Though in truth Cnán fancied he looked more nervous than any of the others, which only made her favor the man since it meant he was the least insane of any of them.

  “Taran really ought to stay here, to be the oplo of the younger men who will have to fight in the stead of those who are going east. But with a broken heart he will be useless, and since it will break his heart to leave him behind, I summon him on the quest. Brother Rutger is more than ready to step into his place here.”

  The range and intensity of emotion that had flashed across Taran’s face during this little speech had been almost frightening to Cnán, but he ended up red-faced and close to weeping, nodding his head vigorously. “Yes,” he muttered, “Rutger will serve brilliantly.”

  “We have ten,” Feronantus said. “I hope and pray that the one who calls herself Vaetha will be our twelfth. Which means we need an eleventh. Any man here would serve well. But I am not oblivious to the gaze—perhaps ‘glare’ is a better word—of Istvan, who I think fancies himself as expert a horseman as Eleázar. Perhaps he is. But there is no doubting that he knows the ways of the Mongols better than any man from farther west, and so I offer to let him share our quest and our fate.”

  “Accepted,” Istvan proclaimed before the sentence was even finished. He had been rocking back and forth on his chair as if it were a horse and he were even now riding it into battle.

  All faces now turned again toward Cnán.

  In no way did any of this make sense. They would ride hard and live like wild animals for as much as half a year before dying full of arrows on a frozen Mongolian steppe.

  But she knew fate when she saw it—or rather, when it closed its grip around her throat.

  “My name is Cnán,” she said, “and since it appears to be my doom, I shall, as soon as you have finished with all of your pompous words and grand gestures, get up from this chair and turn my back on the setting sun, whose warmth and beauty have been my only solace over many months’ striving, and hie to the sacred threshold of the Great Khan’s tent, as long as breath remains in my lungs. If you eleven choose to follow me, you shall find your road shorter and safer, and I may even be glad of your company from time to time.” She could not prevent her eyes from straying to Percival’s as she said this last. He was, finally, paying attention to her.

  An hour later they were on the road.

  Feronantus looked back on the clearing with an expression Cnán could not read. She stayed close to the leader of this group of madmen, hoping to riddle his reasons before he got them all killed.

  The clearing, the old monastery, converted into a chapter house—the planks of half-rotten wood laid out to form tables and benches, the Order’s standard now flying from a pole mounted to a scalable edge of the ruined roof—the cemetery with its silent dead. Here she had come to be part of this group; here they had taken her in as an equal—mostly. She had guided a few of them across the dead lands to find Illarion, including the wise Raphael, with his Semitic countenance, and the young Haakon, with his awkward searching for whatever sort of manhood might be made available; she had watched them absorb the nastiness of Legnica and fend off Mongols with inspired trickery that, should it have been planned, would have utterly failed.

  Here she had watched the beautiful Percival, and she had longed for something else, something other; trying, like the blundering Haakon, to find her way into an unobtainable embrace. A companionship she could never have.

  She had listened to Illarion’s story. She had watched the knights train, and then had watched Feronantus devise a plan sure to fail. Sure to get them all killed.

  Still, she would miss this place. And Feronantus? “Sorry to be leaving?” she asked.

  He shook his head and smiled. “You wish to know my mind.”

  “You sent the young ones off to die,” Cnán said. “A diversion for a mad journey. I wish to be certain you are not mad.”

  “That forest is a wild place, happier without us. The chapter house will fall quiet. The dead will sleep more soundly, their bones not shivering ever so slightly at the presence of warriors. The deer will return, not to be hunted by such as us. The air will not ring with steel, nor sing and echo with the high voices of whelps and the gutturals of old hounds, all eager for the scrap and the hunt. The wind will blow, the trees will sough, and we now set out to relieve the burdens of others. But we are your burden, Cnán.”

&
nbsp; She could not follow much of this, but it impressed her nevertheless. “And why is that?” she asked.

  “You are a Binder. You connect those who quest, do you not?”

  She grimaced. “Your speech may infect the others, but I am not as easily swayed.”

  “Madness, desperation, vision,” Feronantus said. “They define our lives and our time. Would you not say that is true, young leaf?”

  “How do you mean, leaf?”

  “Yours has not been an easy life,” Feronantus said. “You travel like a leaf. A leaf that grew without a tree.”

  The clearing was behind them now, hidden by trees, and their horses took the long winding paths with patience. She patted the neck of her mount, grateful for once to be riding, because it brought her almost face-to-face with Feronantus. She stared at his face, trying to ascertain what he was implying.

  “You never knew your father,” the knight said. He glanced beyond her shoulder, suggesting he already knew the truth to that statement.

  “Nor did my mother,” she blurted.

  “That is a surprise,” he said after a moment. Her horse whickered at something on the path. She patted its neck again. The rough coat was clean, freshly curried. The horse was reasonably cheerful, having cropped grass for days; its gut was full, so the horse was contented and clean and did not mind her, its burden.

  “Many will be born now who know not their fathers,” she said, her tone low. “The girl outside Legnica…the one who tended Illarion and brought him willow mash.”

  “Haakon said you wished to bring her along or stay to defend her. He was impressed by your sympathy.”

  “Knights are surprised by a wish to save damsels?”

  Feronantus frowned. “If wishes were armies…” he murmured. “We are few. The flying lance cannot succor fledglings who fall.”

  Cnán’s heat did not diminish. The topic had been broached. She would not let this man off lightly, since he had broached it. “If she survives all the men who have their way with her, she will produce children who know not their fathers. They will live in broken villages where such bastards of war are shunned and beaten and perhaps even knifed by bands of young thugs—those who claim purity of breeding—for the bastards’ eyes will slant and their noses will lie flat on their faces, and their skins will be darker. If she has sense enough left in her to love a child, she will not be able to protect her, for the child will remind all of the enemy, even her mother.”

  “Hmm…” Clearly the old knight found this conversation unpleasant. “You liked the chapter house,” Feronantus said after a while.

  Her horse whickered again, though the path was clear, and she patted its neck a little roughly, which it seemed to enjoy.

  “I enjoyed the respite,” she said. “My mother loved me. She was a leaf as well. When we were able to find a place out of the wind, she made a home for me—in old buildings, old towns, places of ghosts and dead history. She swept floors of bones and patched old walls and repaired old furniture. She did not blame me for my father, instead told me that wildness and war made us stronger, that the mix of her blood and his seed would live in me all my life, evil up against her love and… the tradition of the Binders. The tradition, she said, would protect me against whatever ghosts trailed me when I moved. For the sins of all fathers, the deaths and monstrosities, make ghosts that trail after the children.” She spat. “There is no justice. Your Christian God looks down on all and sees every sparrow, but cares nothing for the children. He is a god of birds.”

  Feronantus chuckled at this blasphemy. “Birds are more pleasant.”

  “Only if you don’t know them,” Cnán said. “They cock their feathers against each other and compete for seeds and grubs. All birds are bastards. But they are prettier.” She looked up through the trees, where, strangely, there were no birds and no birdsong. “And they can fly swiftly. We will all wish we were birds long before we finish this journey.”

  “So now I understand you, and you understand me?”

  She smirked. “I have not spoken so many words in years. You have said nothing of importance.”

  “That girl is not like your mother. Nor like you.”

  “She was born soft and protected. She was the daughter of a noble perhaps, and had been born into silks and furs and gentle words, and always a fire burning against the cold, and porridge and roots and bread and game against hunger. Her father might have loved her. Her father is dead. Her mother is dead. But no ghosts haunt her.”

  Feronantus looked puzzled. “Why?”

  Cnán shook her head. She had taken him far into tale-telling, without intending to. She had no intention of revealing any more of the hidden tales of her kin-sisters.

  “Well, we begin in beauty and green, and ride into cold and sere,” Feronantus said. “You told me your name. I am proud to know it and proud to know you. I hope to speak more of this with you.”

  “I am a leaf,” she said. “You are a sword.”

  “True,” Feronantus said. “But not so different, for all that.”

  She snapped out the next few words and regretted them immediately. “What, you are a war-born bastard too?”

  Feronantus’s face clouded, but only briefly, and his gaze on her flashed wariness before he smiled again. That infuriating, fatherly smile, which so fascinated her, yet made her fists clench.

  Then he looked aside and reined his horse back, no longer riding parallel.

  Cnán ultimately had this effect on those who were not kin-sisters, and so had her mother before her, the lashing tongue of truth. The value of the Binders lay in the services and information they offered. Otherwise no one would stand for them.

  “Your horse whickers because he likes your manner,” Feronantus said. “He is coming to trust you. Horses are naive that way. Of all the savagery of war, I regret the disappointment and agony of the horses most of all.”

  “More than men?” Cnán said over her shoulder.

  “Men—knights, at least, and others who ride horses—have some hope of advantage from war. Horses carry burdens and get fed, if they are lucky. Mostly, though, they suffer and die.”

  “We will take them north of here, away from the Mongol highways,” Cnán said, feeling a chill. “Will you say prayers for the team you sent to the circus?”

  “I will.”

  “To a Christian God?”

  “Yes. To Him.”

  “And to others as well?”

  Feronantus dropped back farther and motioned her to lead on. Then he wheeled about to confer with Istvan, and what they said she could not hear. Cnán galloped ahead for a while; she told herself to make certain this was the route she had taken before, but also to be alone. To think.

  Her contemplative mood continued as the fiery sunset came to pass. The sky filled with the bushy tails of flaming animals. Slowly the fires died, dusk fell, night came on. Stars held steady and aloof against ghostly wisps.

  All of this land was turning into mulch. The aftermath of devastation was a renewed garden. Soon the musty stench of Legnica would fade. The winds would blow, snow would fall thick, the land would be softly quieted…then spring would come, the dead would molder into dust, flowers would push up. Mongol-appointed tax collectors, possibly the survivors of old noble families—the black sheep who never found favor in good times—would hire thugs as riders and set up their tables as farmers harvested new crops, woodsmen harvested the forests to rebuild, lime kilns were restacked from old toppled bricks.

  Her kind of leaf blew across the land until it too found the anonymity of mulch, but always in the wilderness, never in a field or a garden…never to help push up shoots or flowers.

  They stayed away from the known routes, and after a few days they entered a dense forest of great oaks, oaks old enough to revive a deep sense of reverence in Cnán and keep the knights more than usually quiet. Cnán remembered these trees had been sacred to the Slavic war god, Perun, now fled (or tempered) by the Greek Christos. The high-arching green branches
reduced what little sunlight passed through the thick, eastward-sweeping clouds to a few silvery shafts, and as the summer rains began, water dripped constantly from the leaves, leaving the litter boggy and the horses moody.

  Cnán watched the riders, both as they traveled and as they pitched their spare camps in forest and field. She studied the knights’ interactions with their leader, Feronantus, and closely observed each member of the party, as her mother had taught her.

  “We study all men as we would the beasts. Thus we know them better, and they learn nothing of us,” her mother had said. “No one has known our people, nor will they ever.”

  The eleven travelers in turn paid her little attention. They now seemed to regard her as an irritating little sister, or perhaps a dog, if they thought of her at all. She liked being ignored, even by Percival, who had never shown her much interest anyway.

  As they rode between the big oaks, at the prompting of Feronantus, the group spread out thirty or forty paces and assumed a loose double V, such that whatever foes they met could easily be drawn into a fork by simple sweeps one way or another.

  Cnán often moved off from the main body, reconnoitering, scouting for war parties or any of the stray, crazed, bloody-minded fragments of dying armies—whatever might have scattered over this broad, flat portion of the Empire of the Great Khan. She also looked for the signals and cryptic marks left by other travelers—and in particular, Binders. Knotted cords and an array of marks had guided her from the East in the first place. When they weren’t tying knots, Binders left messages by looping sapling branches around thicker limbs, notching big trees near the base, or draping anonymous, cleverly torn shreds of bog-dyed brown cloth. On occasion, if the skeleton of an animal (or a human) presented itself, messages could be left in the apparent scatter of gnawed ribs. Larger marks scored in the dirt or arranged in rocks could be seen only from high up in trees; still others were obvious only in winter.

  Travelers from other societies worked their own signs into the far-stretching earth. Along her paths east and west, traveling with her mother as a child and with other Binders or alone, she had noticed long lines of tight circles cleared with sticks from the litter and grass. Binders could not read them, and the lines couldn’t have lasted more than a few seasons, yet they were always there—as if magically renewed.