The Mongoliad: Book One tfs-1

by Neal Stephenson

  “Perhaps four arban.” Seeing how this word meant nothing to him, she explained. “They ride in groups of ten,” she said. “Ten arbans—ten of ten—is called a jaghun.”

  His face relaxed. “Then I don’t see any difficulty.”

  Cnán barely restrained a snort—and then thought of Istvan’s handiwork. “You have very little time to get ready,” she warned.

  “Getting ready is something best done before one’s camp has been overrun by horse archers. We have been getting ready ever since we arrived,” Feronantus pointed out. “Now…young Binder. Are you acquainted with the way of the lapwing?”

  Cnán was.

  “Then might I ask that you go back a ways and be flushed from cover, then flee in panic toward our camp…? Men on horses like to chase things, and Mongols are no exception.”

  Cnán sniffed. “These last few years, I have become rather good at not being seen, much less flushed.”

  “I understand,” Feronantus said. “Today we shall all be doing the unexpected.”

  When Feronantus put it that way, Cnán found it difficult to refuse. She had been riding hard all night, fording rivers in the dark and taking risks that she never would have considered had she not been caught up with these Brethren and their insane quest.

  Meanwhile, Feronantus had been taking his leisure in camp with the six others who had stayed behind: Taran, the big Irish oplo; Rædwulf, the English archer; Illarion, the Ruthenian nobleman; Roger, the Norman who carried too many sharp things; and two who were not actual members of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, Finn the hunter and Yasper the alchemist. Both were men of northwestern Europe and speakers of languages that troubled Cnán’s ear. Most in the camp had been asleep when Cnán had galloped in on her last surviving horse, but now they were awake, armed and armored with an alacrity that suggested they slept in steel.

  Which Cnán would too, were she fool enough to pitch a camp and light a fire in this country.

  She felt woolly headed. The light of the morning was flat and bleak in her tired eyes. Every instinct told her to get out, get rid of the noisy, smelly beast she had been riding, and use her formidable skills to simply disappear. Instead Feronantus wanted her to become, for a few moments, like a mother bird leading predators away from her nest—as conspicuous and vulnerable to enemies as she could possibly be. Had he made the request in the wrong tone of voice or with the wrong look in his eye, she would by now already be so thoroughly gone that only Finn, with luck, would have been able to find her again.

  But Feronantus—damn him—had asked politely and in a way that made it clear he well knew what he was asking: for her to humiliate herself in front of foes and friends alike.

  She pushed past Feronantus with an attempt at a swagger, made more ridiculous by her exhaustion. “Then get ready to greet my pursuers,” she said and mounted, with less grace than before. She wheeled her pony and rode in the direction whence she had just come.

  Her brief pass through the camp enabled her to view the Shield-Brethren’s preparations, some of which (stringing ropes between trees at the level of a rider’s neck, planting sharpened poles in the ground) were obvious, others (Yasper lighting torches in broad daylight) baffling.

  All through the hours of darkness, Cnán had been riding across open territory, substituting speed for wit and relying on the four behind her—Percival, Raphael, Eleázar, and Istvan—to draw the attention of the pursuing Mongols. The route she had taken into the camp only a few moments ago was still marked out by a gash of trampled grass crossing over a pasture that was perhaps a verst in breadth and notching the skyline of a grassy rise.

  The pasture was bordered on its lower slope by a tumbledown stone wall. Purple-flowering thistles and pea vines had thrust their roots between the rocks and turned the old wall into a wild hedge that was far too high to be jumped. A gap in the wall—an old gate or stile—had been narrowed by the lush greenery to a sort of mouse hole through which only one rider could pass at a time. Beyond the wall spread an abandoned field of rye, now feral and losing a war against more potent weeds. Like most arable fields, it was much longer than it was wide so that the farmer would not need to turn his team around frequently while plowing. The hedge wall ran along one of its long sides. The opposite side, perhaps a hundred paces away, was not fenced, unless one counted a stubble of old stumps where the farmer had cut away some trees. Dense black alder and ash came up to that side of the field and extended down a gentle slope for perhaps half a verst before falling decisively into the endless marsh.

  So much for the field’s long sides. The short ends were defined, at one end, by more forest. Pines lunged out into the grassland, forming a salient where the land’s former occupants had erected their hovels—deserted for a year or more—and, at the other, by a line of rubble trailing across the ground, scarcely knee-high. Perhaps the remnants of another stone wall that had been pulled apart by scavengers in need of building materials.

  The knights had pitched their shelters a few days ago back in the pines behind the hovels. The place was not quite a clearing, for a few ash trees of some size were salted through it, but the undergrowth was sparse—a consequence, obviously to Cnán, of a fire that had hurried through earlier and destroyed the young trees, while not burning long or hot enough to kill the big ones. Farmers often set such fires, but this one had probably started from a lightning strike in dry weather.

  As she passed from the rye field through the mouse hole and out into the big pasture beyond, her eye picked out a blasted snag, lonely and stark along the skyline over which the Mongols would soon be coming. Echoes of many unwelcome sights witnessed during her long trek across the Mongols’ empire.

  She nudged her pony to a canter and rode up the trail she had trampled in the grass earlier, retracing her path until she drew near the crest. But before exposing her head, she dismounted and led the pony across the slope until she reached the snag—a moribund ash.

  She threw the pony’s reins over a low side branch, which she then used to get a leg up and ascend to a higher bough. The ash was not as big as it looked from a distance, and its branches were dry, burnt, and brittle. They would not have supported any of the men in the party; they barely supported Cnán. With some care, however, she was able to climb about twice a man’s height to where the trunk forked into two roughly equal parts, a secure cradle from which she could look out over the other side of the rise and see what was coming.

  Her fear, strangely, had been that she would see nothing at all, since this would mean that Percival and the others were dead. Further evidence that being around Percival had destroyed her wits, since their deaths would have been the best possible result if her only purpose were to save herself.

  But a rooster tail of dust, catching the low light of the morning sun, was growing visible in the west—much more dust than could have been made by four men. A sizable host was on its way, pursuing one or more fugitives.

  Since the ground’s gentle swell was blocking the near view, she climbed higher and, after some anxious waiting, noticed four glinting Vs, like the formations of wild geese, cutting across a wide stretch of river she had forded at dawn.

  She was looking at the wakes made by four horses as they waded across the shallows.

  Turning her head around, grabbing the trunk as a branch crunched under her, then rebalancing her weight, she picked out Rædwulf, perched behind the hedge with his bow slung across his shoulder, gazing at her. She tucked her thumb into her palm and held up four fingers. Rædwulf nodded and dropped out of view. She felt that she should inform them too about the size of the pursuing host, but then reflected that Finn would soon know this by listening to the ground.

  The points of the Vs plunged into the near bank of the ford. Cnán began softly singing a little song, a tune of the Binders that moved to the steady and compulsive beat of a dance. It sounded best with a shawm playing the melody and a daf pounding out the beat, but she could conjure the memory of hearing it played with such instr
uments around a fire in happier times and better places. Reaching the end of the chorus, she stuck out her thumb and began the song again.

  Finishing for a second time, she stuck out her index finger.

  Her ring finger was up when the first Vs appeared at the far side of the ford. Their vertices struck the bank at about the time she raised her pinky; when she had progressed to her other thumb, the host had become so congested that it was no longer possible to make out individual wakes. And yet she did not think it was any larger than the group she had seen at yesterday’s twilight.

  They had not, in other words, been joined by more arban during the chase. But just to make sure, she tore her gaze away from the group thronging the riverbank and stared across the greater distance for other plumes of dust. She saw none.

  It was all as she had described to Feronantus. No need to fly back to camp with a correction.

  The wait that followed was long and gave her time to consider how she might best carry out her duty. It was an ugly word, duty, from which part of her recoiled as she might have jumped back from a snake. But she had grown accustomed to ignoring that voice, and she ignored it now.

  She was still up in the tree, still repeating her song, when Percival led his group of four up the hill, their mounts foaming and sweating, half dead. She made sure that the men saw her, which was not difficult since they were using the snag as a landmark. Once she had their attention, she waved them vigorously toward the mouse hole through the hedge wall. Istvan, riding a couple of lengths out ahead of the others, took her meaning immediately and veered toward the opening. Raphael and Eleázar, who came along next, hesitated.

  “Clog it up, why don’t you!” Cnán shouted down to them. “Like drunks rolling out of a burning tavern.”

  They responded by showing her their teeth and followed Istvan. As they went, Raphael and Eleázar jostled each other playfully, acting the role of the panicky drunks, just to amuse her. In their relief at still being alive, they acted like little boys. She was pleased that they appreciated her wit.

  Percival pulled up suddenly and stopped near the tree. “Go on,” Cnán called to him, “do as the others.” Looking away, she resumed singing, beating time with her fist.

  “My lady,” Percival began. He had called her that yesterday, and she had guessed it was some kind of elaborate sarcasm. But this didn’t seem like the time for unpleasant jibes. Maybe it was just the way he’d been raised. Cnán wished she could meet Percival’s mother. “I cannot recommend that you remain in that position,” he said, “considering that hostile archers, in large numbers, are about to surround you.”

  She did not respond. She was nearing the end of the chorus and did not want to lose her place.

  “And if you do remain,” he continued, “you might leave off singing. Your tune is beautiful, but it will soon draw many arrows.”

  She stuck out her thumb and said, “It’s part of a plan—Feronantus’s plan, if that impresses you—which you are currently fouling up. Go and fight for a place in that hedge hole.” With a quick scowl in Percival’s direction, Cnán took up singing again and stuck out her index finger.

  “Ah, you are to be the lapwing,” Percival guessed. He turned and looked toward Raphael and Eleázar, who were about halfway to the gap. “You will run toward yonder gap and find it blocked by those selfish clods. You will then divert round the other way in—the low rubble wall at the end of the field. Which happens to be much better suited for Mongols anyway.”

  Next came her long finger. She badly wanted to climb down out of the tree, but it was important that the Mongols catch sight of her first.

  Percival looked up at her and said, “The performance will lack verisimilitude if I fail to give way to a lady in distress. For it is my duty as a knight to see you safe to your destination—as difficult as you sometimes make that.”

  Cnán thrust the current finger at him and interrupted the song long enough to shout, “You’re fucking it up! Go!” Then she noticed movement along the rise—the tips of Mongol lances bobbing up and down.

  “I shall follow you in,” Percival said thoughtfully. “The ruse shall work just as well.”

  “Suit yourself,” Cnán snarled. She could clearly see the broad faces of Mongols beneath their helmets, and one of them pointed directly at her, calling excitedly to his brothers.

  Cnán began to descend the tree. This went slower than she’d hoped, since a branch broke under her foot and forced her to dangle for a few beats of the song while she flailed for a handhold.

  Percival, adroitly maneuvering his mount underneath her, took her ankle and guided her down over her patiently waiting pony, then saw to it that her ass slammed directly into the saddle. Even as she reached for the reins, he smacked the pony on the buttocks. It bolted. Percival cut behind, getting between Cnán and the Mongols.

  Cnán, finally securing a grip on the reins, rushed along the same path that Istvan, Raphael, and Eleázar had followed. Trying to ignore whatever Percival might be doing behind her, she rode hard in the direction of the mouse hole, a ride long enough, she hoped, to let the Mongols get some sense of what she was trying for.

  Raphael and Eleázar were overplaying their roles, berating and shoving each other in front of the narrow opening.

  She could hear the Mongols shouting as they turned to follow her. Cnán veered the pony into a sharp turn. The pony veered onto a course roughly parallel to the hedge and maybe ten paces distant. She would have to cover about one bowshot, then execute a full reversal and jump the low barrier of rubble in order to gain entry to the field. Concerned about the pony’s ability to make such a tight turn at full gallop, she guided it away from the hedge wall.

  The disaster came so quickly that she was tumbling ass-over-ears through the rye before she was fully aware that something had gone wrong. She used the last of her momentum to roll back on her feet. A loud snapping noise was fresh in her ears. She looked back. The pony lay in a motionless heap. Perhaps it had stepped into an animal’s burrow, broken a leg, tossed her…landed on its neck.

  Dazed, she stood tall in the weeds and stalks—not the best strategy when archers were taking aim.

  Two noises sounded at once: the hiss of an arrow by her left ear and thunder rising through the soles of her feet. She turned to see more arrows arc across the sky—and Percival riding for her at a high gallop.

  Again, if it had been anyone else, she’d have hesitated, thinking it through, not knowing what was on his mind, what his intentions might be. But because it was Percival, she knew instantly. He would save her or die trying. She didn’t want him dead. So she stuck her hand up in the air.

  Percival’s steel-clad arm came swooping from the sky like a bright-winged falcon, whirling in an underhand movement; his gauntlet slammed Cnán’s upraised arm between elbow and shoulder and clenched it in an excruciating grip. A sharp bolt of pain—her arm was being jerked out of its socket—compelled her to grab for a fistful of bunched mail, swing her other hand up, and hook her fingertips over the edge of the steel cop that covered his elbow. For a time, she held on with all the strength she had left, seeing in bumping, spinning glimpses Percival’s thigh, the saddle, the horse’s pumping flank, the sky above, and the reeling ground beneath. Clods and grass flew up to strike her in the face.

  She pulled her knees in just before Percival heaved her up like a bag of grain and slung her sideways across the front of his saddle. Had she been expecting a longer ride, she’d have slung her leg over and struggled upright, but this position felt more secure even though she was being punched in the stomach and ribs by the saddle. So she held on to whatever bits of tack her flailing hands could discover and tried as best she could to review their situation.

  The horse was definitely turning—making that wheeling maneuver into the open mouth of the long field.

  Something streaked past the horse’s left flank and embedded itself in the ground ahead. Even more impressive thunking noises startled her—arrows hitting Percival in his b
ack, which was at least partly protected by his slung shield. But his mount had no such protection.

  The horse gave out an awful scream and lost its gait, staggered for a couple of paces, tried to return to the gallop, but staggered again and fell into an off-rhythm, off-balance diagonal stride that felt like a slow descent. The saddle stopped pounding her belly. Rubble flashed beneath her, a plunging hoof cracked down on a big rock, and then the ground came up fast.

  Sky and rubble and rye vied for her attention as she and Percival skidded and tumbled over each other. Ending up on top, she rolled to unsteady feet, sucked back the wind that had been knocked out of her, and turned to face the enemy, wondering how many more times she would fall off a dying horse today.

  Four Mongols abreast rode toward them, with many more negotiating the turn behind. One archer had drawn his bow and nocked an arrow. He pushed the bow forward, loosed the arrow. Another was in the act. Both arrows found their target.

  With the apparent strength of a Hercules, Percival hefted body, mail, and armor from a crouch and swung his shield off his shoulder. Three arrows stuck out of it. Another shaft flew his way—no, for Cnán—and he extended the shield just in time to catch that one as well. Another whanged off his steel helmet.

  The knight staggered sideways, turned, crouched, and hurled the bristling shield into the pounding legs of the nearest Mongol horse. It fell in a heap, its shriek cut off as its muzzle plowed into green grass and dirt. The rider somersaulted out of control and slid across the grass like a child on a sled. Percival abruptly halted the Mongol’s glide with a downward, double-handed thrust of his sword, pinning him to the ground.

  The other three Mongols hurtled past. Cnán knew that their next move would be to pivot in their saddles and loose Parthian shots. So she turned to face them just in time to see them go down—one, two, three—as arrows from sides and front pierced their leather armor.

  Istvan was the only archer she could actually see; the other shots had come out of concealment. The Hungarian now galloped to the fore, leaning in his saddle, and shot a second arrow through the neck guard of a wounded Mongol lurching to his feet. The Mongol dropped again to his knees, hands reaching, unable to cry out—the arrow had pierced his wind-pipe and come out the other side, almost clean through.