The Mongoliad: Book One

by Neal Stephenson

  “It is of no consequence,” he grinned. “These are rude times, and the only true incivility is that which is not recognized as such.”

  “Speaking of which…” Rædwulf interrupted, drawing their attention toward a trio of scruffy natives who were approaching their party. To say the three men were dressed would be to call the scraps of cloth and twine and bits of fur that partially covered their gaunt bodies clothing. They shuffled slowly, bent at the waist, their grimy hands raised in supplication. The foremost one, pressed by the other two to be their spokesperson, babbled at them in Ruthenian.

  “Cnán,” Feronantus called, “do you ken his words?”

  She let her horse wander closer, her head cocked to the side as she tried to follow the man’s discourse. There was a repetition to his cadence that made it a little easier for her to pick out words she knew. “He’s saying the same thing over and over,” she reported. “Something about gifts, I believe. No, tribute.” She interrupted him with a few words of Tartaric.

  One of the other two men shrieked and fell to his knees, groveling in the dirt. The spokesperson’s mouth hung open, but words no longer spilled from his blubbering lips.

  “Well now,” Yasper opined as he joined Feronantus and Cnán, “that is a mighty invocation. Mayhap you could teach it to the rest of us…”

  “I just asked him if he understood what I was saying,” Cnán pointed out.

  “In the Mongolian tongue,” Feronantus reckoned. When Cnán nodded, he squinted at the shantytown, looking for movement among the hovels and detritus. “They’re terrified of us,” he said. “But we are clearly not Mongols…”

  Off to their right, Istvan snorted noisily, and the attention of the three men darted to the Hungarian. His scowling visage only engendered more fear, and the kneeling one tried to press himself even lower against the ground.

  “Finn,” Feronantus called, not taking his eyes off the shantytown. “We are not alone, are we?”

  “Aye,” the hunter responded.

  Cnán looked around for Finn. He was crouched a ways off, examining the track of the road they were on.

  “Horses,” he said, pointing at the dirt. “Shod, like ours. Less than a day ago.”

  “The red cross and sword. I thought the Livonians were no more…” was Roger’s response upon recognizing the sigil on the dead knight.

  “Hell could not hold them,” Raphael suggested.

  “Or simply found their company tedious,” Roger scoffed.

  “Whatever their reason for straying into Rus,” Illarion said, “it is gratifying to see that one, at least, found the fate he deserved.”

  “Which leads to the question, are there others?” Raphael said. “For this one is comparatively fresh, and the Shield-Maidens—if my guess is correct as to who yonder women are—seem to be expecting more of them.”

  The question was an important one and caused all four men to take their eyes from the red cross and sword for the first time since they had seen it. Instinctively they formed up in a loose circle, facing outward, scanning the ruins around them and the jumbled slope below for any signs that they might have been followed. Hands strayed to sword hilts and ax handles. But they saw nothing untoward.

  “Brother Raphael speaks correctly,” Percival said, “when he says that we must learn—and soon—whether there are other Livonians nearby. But there are only four pairs of eyes among us. Those eyes are peering through burnt vines and rubble piles over a new and unfamiliar landscape. Behind us, many more eyes, used to this place, scan the city from a better vantage point, and so the quickest way for us to learn the answer is simply to approach the gates, state our business, and ask the Shield-Maidens to share what they know.”

  “Good luck with that,” Roger muttered.

  “I shall go alone,” said Percival. This was an ultimatum, not a suggestion. Again that light seemed to play about his face. Raphael wished it would stop; it was most unsettling. Perhaps it came from a withdrawal of blood from the knight’s already pale skin.

  Percival removed his sword and scabbard and handed them to Roger, then turned about and began walking directly toward the gates that barred their passage through the inmost and highest of all the priory’s walls.

  The Shield-Maidens on the battlements above were divided in their response. Nearly all of them were speaking in the local tongue, and so Raphael could not make out what they were saying, but half were merely derisive, while the rest seemed nearly out of their minds with rage. As Percival strode the last hundred paces to the gate, the surrounding rubble heaps suddenly came alive, like a nest of ants disturbed by the blade of a plow, as ordinary persons—mostly wretched sorts, unarmed, not so much clothed as bandaged in improvised swaddlings of gray blankets and rags—scurried out of makeshift shelters that they had erected along the approaches to the priory and abandoned cookfires that they had kindled along the way. Percival turned his head from side to side, observing this curiously, and Raphael sensed from his posture that he was slightly offended by the refugees’ obvious fear of him.

  “Are they afraid of Percival?” Roger asked. “Or of what is about to happen to him?”

  “Either would suffice to make such people get well clear of the man,” Illarion said.

  Percival found himself standing in a clear space before the gates, gazing directly up at the Latin-speaking woman who had addressed him earlier; she was looking down on him through a crenel on the fortification above the portal. Perhaps feeling that it was not the act of a gentleman to go helmed when he addressed a lady whose own helmet was tucked under her arm, he reached up, lifted his own helmet from his head, bent down, and set it on the ground before his feet, then stood up and raised his chin, tossing his hair back away from his face and gazing directly up at his interlocutor.

  All of the ladies went silent for a moment.

  “Bastard!” Roger muttered.

  The Shield-Maidens’ voices were resurgent, not as loud as before, and in a different tone: some of them even more furious, others mock flirting with him, and perhaps a few of them flirting quite sincerely.

  Their leader permitted herself a sardonic grin and a little shake of the head. “I am not certain which of your approaches has been more insulting,” she said. “You came to us the first time, brimming over with the most insufferable arrogance. ‘Well done, girls. Thank you for keeping the place tidy for us. Now open the gates that we can make of it a proper fortress. Vacate your barracks and your bedchambers, plump up our pillows, cook up some vittles, and polish our armor that we may tend to important duties.’ When we sent your emissaries away and fought off the inevitable sneak attack that followed, we supposed we’d seen the last of you. But now you are back. And what is your latest stratagem? A handsome face with which to woo the silly girls who hold the keys to the gate. Tell me, are the men skulking behind you as fair to look at?”

  “That would be for you and the other Shield-Maidens to decide, my lady,” Percival returned.

  “You may address me as Sister Vera,” said the woman. “I am not a lady, and if I were, I would not be yours.”

  “Very well, Sister Vera. I am Brother Percival.”

  “No brother of ours! We have suffered you to draw this close only to tell you, once again, that you and the other Livonians are not welcome in our city,” said Vera. “If your friends draw near enough for us to form an opinion of their beauty, they will get arrows in the face just like the one you saw.”

  “Then it is well that you stayed your hand and held back your flights of arrows until I drew near enough to speak with you and to disabuse you of a grievous but understandable misconception,” Percival said. And he stripped his surcoat off over his head, then shed his coat of mail—not easily done, as it weighed as much as some of the women who were aiming arrows at him from above. This occasioned much more bawdy commentary from the Shield-Maidens, which he pretended not to hear. Having dropped his mail on the ground, he unbuttoned his gambeson and stripped off that thick padded garment to reveal
a linen shirt beneath, tired and sweat-stained but, given what they had been through, surprisingly clean.

  “If your face did not convince us,” said the lady above, “then, rest assured, neither will your…”

  But then she stopped. And over the course of the next few moments, all of the other catcalls died down as well. For Percival had reached across his body with his left hand, grasped the cuff of his right shirtsleeve, and drawn it back to expose the arm as high as the elbow. In the same gesture he extended his right arm up and outward from his body, rotating his palm up to face the sky, and thus exposing to the Shield-Maidens’ view the brawn of his forearm.

  Standing behind, Raphael could not see what Percival was showing them, but he hardly needed to, given that the same sigil was marked on his own flesh.

  Having seized the Shield-Maidens’ attention and silenced them, Percival now let his left hand drop away. The eyes of the women on the battlements tracked the movement carefully. The left hand was curled into a loose fist. He extended it toward them, then straightened his fingers while turning his hand over to display the palm.

  There was nothing remarkable about this. And that, to them, was the remarkable thing. For some moments now he remained posed thus, letting them all inspect the marked forearm and the unmarked palm. A change passed through the women on the walls above, like a gust of wind moving over a sea of grass. No order was issued by Vera. But bows creaked as strings were relaxed. Arrows snicked back into their quivers and swords into their scabbards.

  “Brother Percival,” said Vera, her voice suddenly husky, “we have done you an injustice. You and the other Skjaldbræður are welcome—more than welcome—inside our citadel.”

  Their plan of inquiring after provisions forgotten, the party fell into loose formation: Istvan and Finn (back on his horse) in front, Eleázar bringing up the rear, with Feronantus and Cnán and Yasper and Rædwulf riding in pairs. Once, Cnán would have felt naked and exposed riding in the open, especially without some sort of helm or mail of her own—not that she had ever worn either—but surrounded now by the readied and alert knights of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, she felt…protected.

  The sensation was not unlike the one she had felt many weeks ago when she had first entered the Shield-Brethren chapter house for their Kinyen. At that time, such a sensation—while new—was not unexpected for being surrounded by the many knights and the stone walls, but she felt both awkward and elated to feel a glimmering of that sensation again when in the company of fewer knights. She tried to not dwell overlong on the source of her emotions.

  They rode up the narrow road that ran alongside the river, keeping the winding track of water on their right flank. The gentle slope of the small hill rose on their left, and ahead the road diverged from following the river, dipping down to hug the base of the slope.

  The smell of dead flesh was getting stronger. Either that, Cnán realized, or Yasper’s mint oil was starting to wear off.

  They could see the back side of the hill now. On the crown of the smaller hill stood a dilapidated series of low buildings, hidden by a rough wall of hewn timbers. A narrow path—barely wide enough for a horse, much less a cart—wound precipitously down the slope, where it connected with the larger road not far ahead of them.

  What caught their attention was the two men pulling a narrow cart up the hill and the armed company following them.

  The company was dressed in mail—from coifs to chausses—and their long surcoats were white. Each carried a shield, along with a plethora of swords, axes, and maces. The insignia painted on a number of the shields was a red cross surmounting a down-turned sword. Knights, Cnán realized, like her present company in their armament and in the way they carried themselves. There, however, the similarities ended, for their faces were hard and pitiless, set with grim expressions that told her that these men were of a different breed from her companions. She counted heads. They numbered closer to thrice the number of her present company.

  In comparison, the two men pulling the cart seemed almost nonhuman. Both wore filthy and threadbare robes that hung stiffly over their gaunt frames, and the heads that protruded from the robes were topped with tangled masses of hair and beard, so encrusted with dirt and other matter that it was nearly impossible to discern any sort of face. The rickety cart was not much more than a plank nailed to a pair of boards to which rough wheels were awkwardly attached. Piled on the cart was, at first glance, a stack of filthy hides, but Cnán saw a flash of pale movement and realized the bundle was another figure like the two hauling the cart.

  Someone spotted the Shield-Brethren and a shout went up from the column of knights.

  The company of knights stopped, turning in a block to face Cnán and the Shield-Brethren. The two ragmen began pulling their cart faster. A shriek floated down from the palisade at the top of the hill, more an exhortation of panic than the cry sounded by a bird of prey as it dove on its victim.

  One of the knights stood nearly a head taller than the rest of his company, and they parted like water for him as he came down the slope. As he reached the tail of his column, he drew his sword and walked unhurriedly toward them. His men reformed in his wake, like a worm folding back on itself, and fell in behind him.

  “Hold,” Feronantus said quietly to the other Shield-Brethren. “Let him make his intention clear.”

  Cnán heard the sound of stretching sinew, and glancing over her shoulder, she saw Rædwulf draw his bowstring back. He appeared unconcerned that he might have to hold that position for some time. Behind him, Eleázar was looping the reins of his horse around the knob of horn mounted on his saddle. He needed both hands to wield his two-handed monstrosity of a sword, she noted, and the only way to control his mount would be with his legs. Should the situation come to that…

  She shivered, suddenly chilled, and she wondered if this sensation was what they all felt at the approach of violence. She wanted to vomit.

  The tall knight stopped a few horse lengths from them. Tufts of sandy hair curled out from the edge of his coif, and his beard was streaked with red. He laughed, and Cnán caught sight of strong white teeth. “Feronantus,” the knight called, “you are far from your rock, old man.”

  The familiarity with which the man spoke stunned all of them, save Feronantus, who remained unmoved by the man’s taunt. If anything, Cnán thought, he was even more like a stone than per usual.

  “And you wear the colors of an order that fell ignobly, Kristaps,” Feronantus replied.

  Kristaps spat. “Schaulen. We were betrayed.”

  “The only betrayal you faced was that of your master leading you into that trap.”

  “Heermeister Volquin was a great leader, Feronantus, and a better man than you—”

  “His leadership is no use to anyone now that he is dead,” Feronantus said sadly. “What am I to make of your motley band? Is this all that remains—this sad bunch of deserters—or is there some mischief brewing that requires you to dress ill-informed fools as real knights?”

  Several of the knights behind Kristaps drew their swords and shuffled back and forth, clearly eager for an order to engage the Shield-Brethren. Istvan’s horse snorted and began to fidget, mirroring the Hungarian’s own restlessness. Cnán heard the thin creak of Rædwulf’s bowstring.

  “I wonder the same of you, Feronantus,” Kristaps replied, unswayed by the tension between the two groups. “Are you lost?” He raised his hand. “Petraathen lies that way, does it not?” He gestured somewhat aimlessly as if he could not be bothered to make certain of the correct direction. “Though perhaps it will be gone by the time you get back.” He showed his teeth. “A long time has passed while you have been hiding on the rock, old man. The world has passed your Shield-Brethren by.”

  Feronantus replied with a humorless smile. “Is this all that is left for you now—wandering far from your home, like mad dogs, rooting for scraps left on the battlefield?”

  One of Kristaps’s men took a step forward, but the tall knight
stopped him with a hand upon the shoulder. “We are God’s servants, on a holy mission,” he answered.

  “‘Holy mission?’” Yasper snapped, unable to hold his tongue. “Is that what you call terrorizing the innocent people of this beleaguered city?”

  And Cnán inferred what Feronantus and the others had already discerned: the people in the shantytown had mistaken them for men like these and had been trying to appease them with tribute, to forestall some persistent threat of violence.

  “There are no innocents before God, only the sinful and the righteous,” Kristaps replied with icy calm, as though explaining something as obvious as the rising and setting of the sun.

  Feronantus forestalled any reply from Yasper with an upraised hand. “Calm yourself,” he said quietly. He stared at Kristaps and the other knights, and Cnán noticed how his gaze lingered upon the sigil marking their surcoats. It means something to him, she realized, more than a simple identifying mark like the red rose of the Shield-Brethren. There was something else here that troubled his mind.

  “Cowardice suits you. As always.” Kristaps’s gaze roved across the company, his smile widening slightly as he looked at Cnán. She suppressed a shudder; it had been some time since a man had looked at her in that way.

  It was strange, then, when Istvan drew his curved sword and urged his horse forward. She couldn’t believe he was reacting to the way Kristaps had looked at her—that was a reaction she would have expected from Percival, after all—but the sudden movement on the Hungarian’s part startled and confused her.

  Istvan kept a tight grip on his horse’s reins and didn’t allow the animal to traverse the open ground between the two groups, but his stance was aggressively clear. In contrast to the prancing motion of his mount, the Hungarian was a carved statue—eyes locked on his enemy, knuckles white about his sword hilt.

  Kristaps stood easily, his stance that of a man who thought the horseman an amusing diversion more than a credible threat.