The Mongoliad: Book One

by Neal Stephenson

  “I would have thought you a subtler man, Finn.” Yasper chuckled.

  Finn raised an eyebrow at the alchemist and hefted his boar spear. “Subtlety is for when you are stalking fleet prey. It has no purpose otherwise.”

  A slow smile spread across Yasper’s face as he turned to address Cnán. “How many of those ragged…monks…did you see?”

  “Just one, but there must be more,” Cnán reluctantly replied. “Unless they went with the Livonians.”

  What Yasper was suggesting seemed like madness, but she could see some virtue to his plan. They had given no thought to the Livonians’ purpose previously, and the raiders had managed to disappear from under their very noses. If they were to follow the Livonians, there might be no other way to catch up to them quickly enough to discern their purpose. “The hide workers,” she pointed out, “they skin the animals up there, so I presume they have some tools…”

  “Lead us,” Yasper said, exchanging a glance with Finn that was half mad excitement, half fear.

  Cnán felt the same emotions rising from the pit of her stomach. Was this the infectious spirit of her companions driving her into like-minded madness?

  “If Saint Ilya offers you no guidance, Brother, then perhaps what…we…seek is not down in these caverns, and we should allow Sister Vera to resume her normal duties above,” Raphael suggested. “Unless you can supply some meager hint as to what the object of your quest might be.”

  “Hints, perhaps. I have seen little and been illuminated as to its meaning less,” Percival said, getting to his feet. “There is a relic guarded ardently in a secret place. A chalice—searched for by many, protected by the worthy—I had hoped that perhaps it might be found here.”

  At this, there was silence. Raphael recalled a conversation he’d overheard between Percival and Taran, wherein the late oplo had been questioned at length by Percival about cauldron myths from his native Ireland. They’d talked late into the night as Raphael had tossed and turned, wishing they’d shut up. Raphael had thought naught of their conversation until now.

  Percival sought the Grail, and he had hoped to find it in Kiev.

  “We have protected many things over the march of years,” Vera replied. “But the Holy Grail is not amongst them.”

  Percival gave a respectful nod, though he could not hide the look of disappointment that flashed briefly across his face. “But you do protect something.”

  Vera said nothing.

  “We will help you regardless of whether you divulge your secrets,” Percival said quietly. “Know that.”

  A look of consternation—or was it well-hidden exasperation?—flashed over Vera’s face. She had said moments ago that this was a good place to speak of secrets. Clearly—to Raphael, at least—she had been urging Percival to divulge his secret. But he had taken it the other way and leapt to the assumption that Vera had something to reveal.

  She considered his words in silence, the only sound the faint hissing of the melting tallow in the rushlight that illuminated her face. She looked next at each of them and finally relented. “I will tell you the closest thing we have to a holy secret in this place. According to legend, the grave of Saint Ilya guards the Egg of Koschei the Deathless.”

  Percival did not try to hide his interest. “Tell us more of this sacred egg.”

  Roger, unable to contain himself, turned his back on them, stalked to the nearest wall, and pressed his forehead against the cool stone.

  “It is not sacred,” Vera said. “Rather the opposite—it contains the soul of the evil spirit Koschei, and whoever has it in his possession has Koschei in his power.”

  “Is it perhaps contained in a sacred relic—something shaped like a goblet or chalice?”

  Vera was now looking at Percival very oddly indeed and seemed unwilling to speak plainly for once.

  Roger turned to face the center of the chamber and stepped slowly toward Percival. “My brother!” he exclaimed. “How can you not understand her words? It is not here. We have come all this way to hear a fairy story about a hobgoblin who keeps his soul in a fucking egg! Whatever purpose led you to steer our path toward Kiev had some other end in mind—some end that is going ignored and untended to while we stand in this sewer prating about Koschei the Deathless.”

  Another man might have been offended. But no anger was on Percival’s face as he locked eyes with Roger. Long was the silence that followed.

  It stretched out even longer as first Vera, then Roger, then Percival, and finally Raphael began to glance toward the chamber’s exit, distracted by approaching sounds that could not possibly have been made by rats. At first these were human voices, echoing distantly along the intestine twists and bends of the cavern’s walls. But as they listened, they began to hear too the metallic clank and jingle of steel—steel worn on the body as armor and steel carried in the hand.

  “We are not alone down here,” Raphael said.

  CHAPTER 33:

  AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT…

  The monastery gate was as weak as Finn surmised, the timbers splintering after three strong kicks from Finn’s boot. Using his spear as a wedge, he ripped and tore the rotted wood away until there was a large enough hole to pass through. After ducking and looking, he went first, leaping nimbly through the gap. Cnán followed, more readily and eagerly than she had anticipated, and Yasper came close on her heels.

  Seeing the slaughtering grounds up close, Cnán was repelled at the number of bodies strewn about the ground. Blood, caked and dried to a black tar, was smeared everywhere, and in some places, it still had a sheen of dampness. Black clouds of flies hovered over carcasses, and some of the bodies wriggled with a false skin of maggots. The noise of the flies was a drone in the air.

  Had she been by herself, she would not have been able to compose herself in time to address the approach of the two Livonians guards. However, Finn and Yasper were not as incapacitated, and as the two Livonians charged, the Shield-Brethren were ready.

  The first Livonian never reached them. Finn’s thrown spear struck him forcefully in the throat, lifting him off his feet. He collapsed, squirming and clutching at the shaft of wood protruding from his neck, his bright blood spattering on the ground.

  The second, sensing the sudden disappearance of his comrade, hesitated, and Yasper flung out his left hand. The Livonian cried out, ducking his head as something flew into his eyes. He never saw Yasper’s quick sword thrust.

  Finn went to retrieve his spear, twisting it slightly to finish his man. “Come,” he said. “Let us not tarry to meet the monks who haunt this place.” He led them toward the well house.

  It seemed almost too easy, and Cnán eyed the monastery buildings with some suspicion as they ran toward the tiny shack. She couldn’t help but wonder about the residents. Were there more? Where were they hiding? And were they allies of the Livonians or were they like the rest of the locals—frightened and eager to please?

  Finn yanked open the door of the well house and ducked inside. Yasper waited at the door, panting slightly. “Awfully quiet,” he said as she reached the well house. The glee he had exhibited earlier was gone, and his face was a mask of shadowed grooves.

  In spite of the tense silence in the courtyard, Cnán was gladdened by the Dutchman’s concern.

  “It’s very dark,” Finn announced, appearing in the narrow doorway of the well house. “And there is no well.”

  “Ah yes, in that case, the Virgin has blessed us and our inquiry,” Yasper smiled.

  Someone screamed, and even though they had heard this voice—this cry—before, they flinched. They were much closer to the throat from which it originated, and the howl was such a blend of human and beast that they could not tell from which type of throat it issued. It had to come from a man, Cnán found herself hoping as she caught sight of the black-robed apparition who had emerged from one of the buildings. To believe otherwise would be to believe in monsters.

  The scream was a signal, for out of the other buildings poured a h
ost of ragged men. They were more than filthy, their threadbare robes encrusted with shit and blood. Hair and beard were tangled and matted into one another, and their mouths were dark holes. Arms and legs, streaked with raw wounds that looked as if the skin had been flayed off by a ragged whip, poked out of the robes like broken sticks. They carried all manner of implement: knives, sticks, scythes, cudgels, awls, anything that could cut, smash, or tear an enemy’s flesh.

  “Defilers,” the screamer shouted in heavily accented Latin, his voice like the wail of a dozen frightened children. “They must not interfere with God’s holy warriors.” He raised a long stave; mounted on its end was the horned skull of a ram, doused in some black, slick substance that dripped ichor onto the ground.

  “Well,” Yasper noted dryly, “I guess that settles—”

  From within the building, another monk emerged, a lit torch clutched in his bony hands. He lifted the torch toward the end of the apparition’s staff, and with a whuff, the ram skull burst into flame.

  “Oh,” Yasper noted, “how clever.”

  “Inside,” Cnán shouted. “Now!” Grabbing a handful of the alchemist’s tunic, she dragged him toward the shack.

  Finn was waiting for them inside, and she stumbled as her feet collided with a hard surface. Her eyes adjusted maddeningly slowly to the dimness. Finn had said there was no well, and what she found was a ring of raised stones. Rough steps, hewn out of the rock, led down into nothingness.

  Finn pulled the door shut, hiding everything in darkness, and Yasper bumbled into her. “Careful,” she snapped as she stumbled again on the edge of the stairwell. “There’s a hole.”

  “Of course there is a hole,” he replied, fumbling around in the dark. “How else would the Livonians have slipped away?”

  Finn grunted as something slammed against the well house door.

  Muttering under his breath, Yasper tripped over the lip of stone and managed to not fall down the stairs. Cnán heard his feet slap against the steps as he began to descend into the utter darkness. “I will see what I can do about light,” he called back, his voice floating in the void. “Keep them back as best you can.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Cnán grumbled, regretting she had ever acquiesced to their plan.

  Finn bumped into her, and his hand found her arm. “Down,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “They can only come a few at a time. Kill enough of them, maybe they leave.” He chuckled, low in his throat. “Or maybe not. We’ll see, hmm?”

  A body slammed against the door again, and Cnán—abruptly aware that Finn was no longer beside the door—let out a tiny cry of despair. But the door remained closed, and Finn had not let go of her. “Down,” he said again, tugging at her arm. “There was a beam to block the door. It will hold for a little while.”

  Mollified, Cnán began to descend the stair, her right hand tracing along the rock wall. The staircase was an impossibly tight spiral, straight down. By the time she thought to count her steps, she had already gone far enough she couldn’t remember how many lay above her. Eventually her right hand slipped off the wall, trailing into empty space, and with her heart in her mouth, she took two more steps and found herself on solid ground.

  A thin green light bobbled in front of her, and as she stood at the base of the stair, terrified but unable to know which way to run, the glow drew nearer.

  It was Yasper, holding a tiny piece of curved glass in his hand. The surface shifted and shimmered as he walked, and the light was bright enough for her to see the nature of the catacombs in which they stood.

  The chamber extended farther than the illumination offered by Yasper’s witch light. A nearby wall was inset with niches from floor to ceiling, extending endlessly in either direction. Cnán swallowed, seeing in each the bones of the long dead, some beneath cloth so thin as to be transparent under the gleam of Yasper’s light. Empty eye sockets stared at her, and skeletal mouths gaped—expressions frozen somewhere between awe and terror.

  “Where’s Finn?” Yasper asked, peering over Cnán’s shoulder.

  “He said something about forcing them to attack him one at a time.”

  “Not on the stairs,” Yasper sighed. “Finn,” he hissed, trying to catch the hunter’s attention, “down here. Where it is flat.”

  Cnán stared at the liquid in the tiny bowl, trying to ken how it generated light. It was a mystery—one of Yasper’s alchemical tricks—and most likely well beyond her knowledge. But staring at the light was more agreeable than gazing upon the staring eyes of the dead.

  They heard Finn coming, his feet light and quick against the stone. Yasper grunted and motioned for her to follow. Holding his witch light carefully, he led them deeper into the catacombs.

  As they reached an archway, Cnán realized she could see more of the room, and their shadows were stretching, eager to run down the hall before them. She glanced over her shoulder and saw why: the yellow glow of torchlight spilling out of the stairwell.

  “Here they come,” Finn said, shoving her lightly. “Into the tunnel.”

  Yasper complied, and they departed the burial chamber. The tunnel ceiling was even lower, and with her head canted forward, Cnán took note of the smoothness of the floor. Worn down by the passage of innumerable feet, over the course of countless years. How many generations had brought their dead down here? she wondered.

  When they reached the first corner, Finn hung back, ready to face their pursuers.

  The first died without a sound, Finn’s spear thrust driving through his ragged robe and into his chest. The hunter shoved the monk off his weapon and moved to the right side of the tunnel to await his next victim.

  The monk had been carrying a cudgel, and the wooden club lay in the tunnel, not far from Finn’s feet. Cnán stared at it, her fear warring with her desperate desire to uphold her Binder vows. But she had killed once already, she reasoned, there was already blood on her hands. Her mind flashed to the slaughtered animals aboveground and the persistent stain of their blood on everything.

  At some point, the amount of blood no longer mattered.

  The second man came around the corner and took Finn’s spear low in the belly. He collapsed in a heap, writhing and moaning, until Finn dispatched him with a quick flick of the spear tip.

  Cnán darted forward, snatching up the club. She positioned herself on the other side of the tunnel, ready to bring the weapon down on the head of the first man foolish enough to stick it around the corner.

  Behind them, Yasper cursed. Cnán dared to look and saw nothing but shadow. Yasper’s tiny light had gone out.

  Finn grunted, and she whirled around to stare into the face of one of the filthy monks. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was opening and closing. His breath—how could it be possible?—was even worse than the corpse-rot stink of the courtyard. His hands scrabbled feebly at the ash shaft of Finn’s spear, protruding from his chest. He grunted and strained, broken Latin spewing from his mouth. Cnán caught a few words—vengeance and reclaiming among them—and then the breath rattled in his throat.

  He was dead, but she hit him on the head anyway. Just to be sure.

  The howling monk came next, the flaming skull-crowned staff roaring before him, and Finn hauled Cnán back, blocking the clumsy swing of the flaming staff with the steel tip of his spear. Sweat sprang on his brow and arms, coating him against the heat of the fiery ram skull. The monk swung the staff to and fro, forcing Finn back; he started chanting in time with his swings, an obscene liturgy.

  Cnán stumbled down the hall, fleeing the fiery beast on the end of the pole. The tunnel filled with boiling orange light, and the heat—the waves of it, rolling over her—were too much, too much like…

  And she was back in the burning house again, eight years old. The fire monster had her mother in its burning clutch, and it snapped and snarled at Cnán as she tugged and pulled at her mother’s heavy hand. Her skin blistered as it snorted fire, and her tears sizzled to steam on her face, burning her eyes as s
he shed them. Wake up, she cried, wake up.

  The monster roared closer. Stark horns protruded from its fiery flesh, and its eyes were a maelstrom of black and red flame. Its mouth yawned open, fire gushing from its empty throat, and she remembered screaming, as if the violence of her cry could force the beast away. But the monster only howled with glee as it devoured her mother, its fiery tongues licking the skin from her face and arms, leaving nothing but black ash.

  A shadow interposed itself between her and the flame beast, a phantom that shattered her memory. She came back to the present and found herself sprawled on her ass in the subterranean tunnel. Finn, his hand grabbing at her clothing, was dragging her away from the ragman priest and his fiery stick.

  They passed Yasper, who—as soon as they were behind him—threw the fat jug he had scavenged from the ruins. The crazed monk shrieked and waved his flaming skull-crowned stick at them, and he paid no mind to the tumbling jug. It struck the stone floor in front of him and shattered.

  The hallway erupted with blue flame, and a concussive wave of superheated air filled the tunnel. Yasper flung himself down on Cnán and Finn, or maybe he was bodily thrown by the wave of force—she wasn’t sure of anything after the explosion of light and sound. Fingers of heat crawled across her skin, stroking her cheeks and eyebrows. She didn’t dare open her mouth, for fear those hot tendrils would fling themselves into her throat and chest.

  And then the tiny sun went out, leaving smoke and shadow and tiny strands of blue and yellow flame in its wake. The stench of burned meat filled the tunnel, and somewhere in the near distance, a pitiful creature mewled and whimpered.

  Coughing, Yasper dragged himself off Cnán and leaned against the tunnel wall. His face was streaked with ash and sweat. “Such a waste of good aqua ardens,” he sighed.

  Finn snarled something in his native tongue, and Yasper only nodded absently as he shoved himself upright. “But I didn’t kill us,” he replied, indicating the burned and smoking heaps in the hall. “The Virgin protects the truly clever.” He stamped out several tiny fingers of flame that were dancing on the floor.