Katabasis (The Mongoliad Cycle, Book 4)

by Joseph Brassey

  “It isn’t just the weather, though,” Alexander mused. “They outnumber us and their knights are better armored. Why have they held back?”

  “Uncertainty,” Illarion said as he walked over to the table and looked at the map Alexander was considering. “The Mongols have a tendency to feign a retreat. This kuraltai could be another ruse. Had Hermann marched earlier, he might have done so only to discover the horde waiting for him.”

  “This…what did you call it?”

  “Kuraltai. It is the ceremony where the Mongols chose a new Khagan—their Khan of Khans.”

  “And they all have to be present for this kuraltai to happen?”

  “If they want to be considered for Khagan, yes.”

  Alexander shook his head. “And if the previous Khagan, Ögedei, had not died, how different would our lives have been? Batu would still be in Christendom and Hermann of Dorpat would not be nipping at my heels. He is like the scrawny scavenger who only shows his face after the bear has gone.”

  “Aye,” Illarion agreed, his thoughts drifting to the company of Shield-Brethren whom he had last seen at Kiev more than half a year ago. Had Feronantus’s wild mission been successful? Had any of them survived their journey into the heart of the Mongol empire?

  “We will show ourselves at Novgorod, which will make the Veche happy,” Alexander said. “Then we will gather what militia they have and march. Word will reach our enemies and force them to decide whether or not they will move.”

  “Hermann is a careful man, from what I have heard,” Illarion mused. “He will have to see this as a chance to crush you in the field before he commits his men.”

  “That is my hope.”

  “And if you make yourself an irresistible target…” Illarion trailed off.

  Alexander smiled at him. “What good am I to the people of Pskov if I die here, in the woods, a victim to the weather and my own boredom?”

  For some of Nika’s sisters, the tales of the stooped, toothless crone were as real as the ground upon which they stood. That hadn’t been the case for Nika—brave strong Nika who could move through the wilderness with none the wiser to her passing, who could kill a man and be gone before his friends even knew she was there. For her, the stories of Baba Yaga had been nothing more than fairy tales, until the night in Kiev when the mist parted and showed her both the future and the past.

  Since then, the bleak Ruthenian nights had held no comfort for her. The wind was a sinister beast, slithering and moaning in the darkness. During her nocturnal vigils, she would wrap herself in multiple layers of furs as protection against the wind, but when it blew out of the north—as it did this evening—she could still feel its chill touch.

  She heard the approach of two sentries and she turned her head slightly so they would know she was aware of them. They gave her a wide berth, keeping her outside the quivering circle of lantern light. They stared as they passed, and she did not rise to the bait and stare back. The weak glow from the lantern was disturbing her night vision as it was.

  Not all of the Kynaz’s men were happy sharing a camp with the Shield-Maidens.

  The Kynaz had accepted Illarion and the Shield-Maidens into his camp readily enough, but Nika and her sisters still had to establish themselves in the same way they always had to do when faced with those who did not understand or respect them. It had only taken a day or so before a loud-mouthed braggart made the first rebuke, proclaiming loudly to several other like-minded men that a skinny wench like Nika would be much warmer in his tent, on her back on a pile of furs. She had suggested that if he believed her to be so helpless, he should carry her back to his tent, and when he had tried to pick her up, she had knocked him to the ground and broken his arm. Illarion had been appalled at the violence, but the Kynaz had understood why she had done what she had done. Alexander needed experienced fighters, and who had more value: the man in the dirt, weeping and moaning about his arm, or a warrior like her? There will be no more pissing contests, he had said. The Shield-Maidens are our guests and our equals. And that should have been enough, but she knew it wouldn’t be. There would always be those who did not understand them, and hatred would always be coupled with such ignorance.

  As long as such stupidity did not endanger those she loved—or all of Rus, for that matter—Nika did not waste much thought on men like these. People would talk and would stare and would think themselves entitled. That was the way of the world, and weeping and moaning over it did not make it go away. Warriors had to concern themselves with their strength and their ability to protect those who they had sworn to guard.

  The sentries passed, and the light from their lantern illuminated the snow-flecked walls of a row of tents. Shadows squirmed on the tents as the light passed, making patterns in the wind-blown snow that reminded her of the striations in the walls of the caves of Kiev. Cryptic messages left by the dead.

  As the sentries reached the end of the tents, they suddenly changed direction, and Nika saw the reason for their course correction. If there was anyone less liked by the Kynaz’s men than she and her sisters, it was Illarion Illarionovich. They called him ghost and thought him cursed. He was bad luck, a phantom who had returned from the dead. He walked with his head held high, seemingly untouched by the wind, and he did not look at the men as they scuttled out of his way. It was as if they did not exist to him. His eyes were focused on a different world, a realm beyond this one.

  He wasn’t a ghost, Nika knew, but something worse. Death had rejected him, filling his bones with a hellish sorrow that would never go away.

  And Baba Yaga had chosen him.

  She knew the old stories well. Faery tales of princes named Ivan, of Koschei the Deathless and other, older things great and terrible. She knew that there was more truth to the legends than most thinking men imagined, but had thought the older terrors gone from the world since long before the days of Saint Ilya. Koschei had been the last menace to dabble in the black matters best left to the old stories, and he had been dead for centuries. But the enemies of Rus had awakened something when they had ravaged the land. Some things should stay buried, she thought.

  “May your heart keep you warm, little sister,” Illarion said as he reached Nika’s side.

  “And yours you,” she replied a little stiffly. She always felt self-conscious echoing this greeting with Illarion as she knew what he had suffered at the hands of the Mongols. “I saw the messenger,” she said, eager to talk of something else. “Has Novgorod finally relinquished its death-grip on their pride?” Leaders who would not do so in the face of conquest were, in Nika’s opinion, unworthy of their high seats.

  “They have,” Illarion replied. “The Veche have recalled the prince. In the morning, we’re to make preparations to march.”

  “Lord Novgorod the Great,” Nika mused, “I’ve not been there since I was a little girl.”

  That seemed to surprise him, which was not all that shocking. He’d once been a boyar, and those from high places were always surprised to learn how far someone without wealth or status could go, given the chance.

  “We won’t be there long,” Illarion said, staring off into the darkness beyond the camp. “Once the prince has reconciled with the Veche, he hopes to march again.”

  “Against the Teutonic army in Pskov?” Nika asked.

  Illarion nodded. “Aye. There is more, though. I understand that Hermann of Dorpat has Livonians in his ranks.”

  Nika’s hand fell to the hilt of her sword. “Livonians?”

  “Aye,” Illarion said. He nodded toward the smaller cluster of tents behind Nika. “Let us walk,” he said.

  Nika fell in beside Illarion, and they began a circuit of the Shield-Maiden camp. Unlike the sprawling mass of the Kynaz’s camp, the Shield-Maiden tents were arranged in neat arcs. There was no direct path through the tents, and from several key positions, a few guards could watch every approach. The organization of the tents would split any force into discrete lines that would be easier to defend against with
a smaller force. As she and Illarion walked the night circle around the verge of the camp, she spotted the steadfast shapes of several other sisters who were also on the nocturnal watch.

  “I have been troubled by the presence of the Livonian Order in Kiev last year. What were they hoping to find there?”

  “Relics,” Nika said.

  “But we didn’t bring any with us, which would suggest that there were no relics to guard.”

  “Is that the only reason you think we stayed in Kiev?” she asked.

  Illarion shook his head. “No, but when the Shield-Brethren came, you let them down to see the grave of Saint Ilya. And while they were down in the tunnels, they encountered that group of Livonians led by Kristaps. What were they looking for?”

  “The grave is empty,” she said. “It’s always been empty.”

  He stopped and his gaze swung across the Shield-Maiden tents and the sprawl of the Kynaz’s camp. “I do not like uncertainty,” he said, his gaze settling on the darkness beyond the camp. “I do not like the mischief that is spawned by old legends.”

  “It is her way,” Nika said.

  A thin smile creased Illarion’s face and he idly reached up and tugged at the end of his beard. “Alexander accused me of sounding like an old grandmother when I spoke like that to him. You neither agree with nor dismiss my fears. All you say is It is her way. As if that is explanation enough for a weary soldier like me.” He stopped pulling on his beard, and in that moment when he stood still, Nika got a glimpse of the fear that lay beneath the cold mask he presented.

  Around them, large flakes of snow began to fall. The wind had fled, and in the emptiness that followed, the skies were filling with slow-falling snow. A flake landed on Nika’s cheek, a cold kiss that melted into a tear. “I have heard many stories,” she said, “and until very recently, I thought little of them beyond what I learned as a small girl. But I saw her as clearly as you. Do we share a madness, then? Or was she really there? I don’t know, Plank. It is her way may be the plainest explanation I can offer you.”

  “You are asking me to believe something that may run counter to all that I have been taught,” he noted.

  She hesitated as the teardrop slid down to her chin. “Yes,” she said finally.

  Illarion raised his face to the sky and closed his eyes against the falling snow. “Then I choose to believe she was there, little sister. Otherwise, as you say, it is a madness that we share. This world is mad enough that we need not add to it. Let us be clear-minded.” The thin smile returned to his lips. His shoulders straightened, the weight being raised again. Weight makes you stronger. Nika recalled one of the lessons drilled into her by the older Shield-Maidens. If you refuse to be crushed, you will grow to hold it up.

  “Aye,” Nika said, wiping the wetness from her face. “Let us believe.”

  “I do not intend to tell the prince of…what we saw that night,” Illarion continued. “But I need to know. I need to know what you think is out there, watching us. Waiting for something to happen.”

  “There are stories of Baba Yaga that have been passed down by my elder sisters,” Nika said. “She used to come more often—before we began to worship in accord with the priests in Kiev. She would come both in times of plenty and of sorrow.” Nika whispered, stepping closer to keep any others who might hear from listening. “Men talk of domovoi, or think they see gamayun flitting through the trees, but they do not remember. She is wisdom, yes, but she is also terror. She is the wrath of the land, and that fury has never been very discerning. Do you understand?”

  “Aye, I do.”

  “I do not know if you mean to follow Saint Ilya’s steps, or whether it is a hero or monster that lies in your heart,” Nika said.

  “Are they all that different?” Illarion wondered.

  “What has singled you out is as fickle as the wind and as terrible as the winter,” Nika continued, undeterred by Illarion’s query. “She is the harbinger of all the things that should stay in the dark forests at night. I do not know if the Mongols awakened her when they came from the east with their strange sorcery and foreign gods, or if the Livonians disturbed her with their meddling, but she is here now.” She swallowed heavily. “This is what I believe, and it makes me afraid.”

  “Why,” Illarion asked, “does she hold such power over you and your sisters? You said she was to be obeyed, but why do you follow what terrifies you so?”

  Nika took a deep breath. “If the stories are true, then once, long, long ago, she was one of us. Baba Yaga was a Shield-Maiden.”

  CHAPTER 6:

  WOLVES

  Alchiq brought his horse to a stop, raised his right arm, and curled his fingers several times. His wispy beard was as pale as his hair, and his skin was dark and weathered from many years spent in the saddle. He was old enough to remember Genghis Khan’s rise to power and was a much better hunter than Gansukh, who was no slouch himself when it came to tracking prey, even though he had spent the last six months ensconced at the Khagan’s court in Karakorum.

  Gansukh gently pulled on the reins of his own horse, drifting behind the older man. Alchiq wasn’t stretching his arm; he was sending Gansukh a signal. The curling motion of the fingers mimicked the way Alchiq laid his fingers around the end of his arrow when he laid it across his bow. However, the signal didn’t distinguish between whether they were being hunted or there was an opportunity for game. Either way, the response was the same.

  Gansukh pulled the mitten off his right hand and pushed it into the front of his fur-lined coat. With his left hand he slid his bow out of the leather sheath that hung from his saddle. Alchiq leaned forward in his saddle, his head cocked to the side. Whatever he was hearing was getting closer.

  More than a dozen paces separated the two of them—an old habit of Mongol riding parties—and Gansukh was far enough back that he couldn’t hear what was commanding Alchiq’s attention. Which also meant that whatever was out there in the mist most likely wouldn’t hear him either as he slipped his bow out of his quiver and leaned forward, stroking the neck of his horse to calm it.

  The weather had improved since they had crossed the gap in the Heavenly Mountains: the afternoons were normally clear and dry, but the nights and morning were still bone-numbingly cold and shrouded with fog. They rarely spoke to each other, a silence that was neither uneasy nor uncomfortable, and when they did, it was usually in short sentences.

  Three nights ago, Alchiq had pointed out a line of tracks in the snow and had said a single word. Wolves.

  The fingers of his right hand now warm from having stroked his horse’s neck, Gansukh drew an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. He tapped his horse’s barrel lightly with his heels, nudging the animal forward, as he strained to hear. The fog muffled all but the sound of his horse’s exhalations.

  Two mornings ago, the wolves had come into their camp. They had known the beasts were out there; they had seen the glint of their eyes beyond the light of their fire each night. The wolves were wary of the light and heat of the blaze, and the first night the men had fed the fire throughout the night, which meant neither of them slept well. The second night, Gansukh had fallen asleep almost instantly after brushing down his horse, and when Alchiq woke him hours later, he had been dreaming of Lian.

  An hour later, when the fire was nothing more than a bed of fading coals, the wolves came. He killed two with his bow, and chased off the rest with a pair of freshly lit torches, but not before the gaunt beasts had killed one of their three horses.

  Gansukh had hoped it would be enough. With two dead and a fresh kill, the pack could gorge themselves.

  But hunger was a cruel spirit that always returned.

  Gansukh glanced at Alchiq’s raised right hand. The index finger didn’t bend like the others. There had been an altercation several weeks ago with a party of Oirat riders. Alchiq had wanted their extra horses and they hadn’t been terribly eager to sell them. In the subsequent fracas, one of the Oirats had pulled Alchiq out of his saddle,
and while the pair had been fighting on the ground, the Oirat had latched onto Alchiq’s fingers. Alchiq had killed the man before losing any digits and, no stranger to battlefield injuries, he had kept his fingers clean and wrapped. The skin was healing on both fingers, but there was something wrong with the knuckle on his index finger.

  Alchiq could still pull his bow, but the motion was slow and Gansukh could tell the crooked finger pained him.

  Gansukh’s horse exhaled noisily, setting to the left and then reversing course to the right. Gansukh heard the wolves too, a whisper of paws against the hardened crust of the snow. Alchiq dropped his arm and drew his short sword. They’re coming from the sides, Gansukh thought, and he caught a flash of motion at the edge of his vision.

  He loosed an arrow and reached for another before he was consciously aware of what was coming at them. He heard a yelp of pain as he tracked another target. His horse pranced sideways, whinnying in fear, and his second arrow went wide. As he reached for his third, Alchiq’s horse reared, hooves flailing.

  Alchiq was out of his saddle before his horse could fall and pin him, and as the older man got his feet under him, a gray and white shape darted out of the fog and slammed into him. Gansukh heard Alchiq grunt as man and wolf went down on the snow-slick ground. He didn’t bother trying to put an arrow into the wolf. It would be a difficult shot as the two wrestled on the ground; besides, Alchiq had a sword.

  Gansukh loosed another arrow at a wolf that was snarling and snapping at Alchiq’s horse, and the beast spun away, the shaft of the arrow protruding from its neck.

  Alchiq was shouting now, the wolf answering with short yelps and growls. Gansukh could smell fresh blood, and when he glanced down at the ground, there was crimson spatter staining the snow. Alchiq’s horse snorted and stamped, its eyes wide with fear, and Gansukh’s horse was no less afraid. They wanted to run, but they didn’t know which way to go, which meant there were still more wolves surrounding them.