The Mongoliad: Book Three tfs-3

by Neal Stephenson

  “Am I the frog?” she asked.

  “Are you?” Chucai raised his hand and mimed dropping a heavy stone. He leaned forward as if he was examining the results of his action.

  “Munokhoi fears change,” Chucai said after staring at the results of his imaginary stone. “He does not like being outside the city walls. Too provincial. Too many wild animals, untamed creatures like… ponies.” Chucai laughed. “Yes, our brave Torguud champion is afraid of a young pony.”

  The serpent twisted even higher up Lian’s spine. The young pony, she thought, and in thinking of him, was afraid for his safety. And hers, as well.

  “What is to become of me?” she heard herself asking.

  Chucai raised an eyebrow as he sat back in his chair, running his fingers through his long beard. “What should become of you?” he asked in a somewhat bored tone.

  And she knew, in that instant, that Chucai was done with her. The failed escape attempt, the relationship with Gansukh, the threat of Munokhoi: these were all matters he no longer wished to concern himself with, and he had, in fact, realized a simple solution to all three. When she walked out of Chucai’s ger, it would be for the last time.

  She should have been more thrilled. Chucai had, in effect, freed her, but where could she go? They were days from Karakorum, and if she tried to ride off again, Munokhoi would relish the opportunity to hunt her down. And Gansukh. Would he follow her? Would he protect her against Munokhoi?

  She put her hand over her mouth to stop a half sob, half giggle from escaping. After all these years, what she had yearned for was being offered her, and all she could think of how to reject this freedom. How could she restore her usefulness to Chucai?

  At least until the Khagan’s caravan returned to Karakorum.

  “The Chinese,” she started, grasping at a fleeting memory from the night of the attack. “While I was being held captive by the Chinese, I heard one of their commanders talking about…”

  The Khagan’s advisor remained slumped in his chair, but his fingers were no longer idly stroking his beard. “Go on,” Chucai said carefully.

  “He spoke of a sprout, and… and a banner-”

  Chucai leaped out of his chair, startling her into silence. He leaned on his desk, looming over her. “What did he say?” Chucai demanded, his voice sharp.

  Lian swallowed nervously, her hands fluttering in her lap. The change in Chucai’s demeanor was not what she had expected, and she squirmed under his intense gaze. Her mind raced, trying to recall the conversation between Luo and the other Chinese man. “They… they said they wanted a sprout-that was why they attacked the Khagan’s caravan, but… but they were not able to find it. And so they tried to steal a banner instead.” She sat up, realizing which banner Luo and the other man had been referring to. “The Khagan’s Spirit Banner,” she breathed.

  “Hssssst,” Chucai uttered, slamming himself back into his seat.

  Lian fell silent. She kept her gaze on her lap, mentally calming her fingers and her breathing. Now was not the time to speak. Whatever she had heard from the Chinese meant something to Master Chucai; it was best to let him tell her, versus her trying to puzzle it out.

  For now, at least.

  “A sprout,” Chucai said eventually.

  Lian let her gaze flick up, but Chucai was staring into the space over her head and did not notice. “Do you know what he was talking about? Have you seen such a twig?” he asked.

  Lian shrugged. “A twig, Master? I have seen many twigs.” She felt unduly coy in saying it, but sensed a change in Chucai’s mood. If there was a way she could benefit from this change, she had to try to take advantage of it. “Perhaps you could enlighten me a little more.”

  Chucai snorted and shook his head. “You would know it if you had seen it,” he snapped. “I’m not talking about the sort of branch of flowers that Jachin has her handmaidens bring her. This would be…” He waggled his fingers at her, glowering.

  Chucai doesn’t know either, she realized. She dropped her gaze so that he couldn’t read her expression. “I have not, Master,” she said. “Though I would be more happy to keep an eye out for it, while I…” She left her sentence unfinished, hoping he would fill it in for her.

  “While you what?” Chucai asked, his demeanor returning to its previous stony state.

  The panic returned, squeezing her body. She was like the frog, swimming frantically in an enormous pond, with no shelter in sight. No lily pads. Just open water.

  “While I… do nothing, Master,” she ended lamely. Her dreams of freedom were nothing more than childish whimsy.

  “Exactly,” he replied with finality.

  The frog, waiting for the stone to drop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A Fateful Choice

  Tegusgal was not the most physically imposing of men, but there was a quality in his gaze that Dietrich found both refreshing and worthy of a modicum of respect. They sat across from each other in a tent in the Mongol compound, separated by a narrow table on which a small pitcher of airag and two cups sat, both untouched.

  To one side stood the priest, Father Pius, a nervous look on his face as he waited to translate for whomever would speak next. His eyes darted between the two dangerous men, looking rather like a mouse caught between two cats.

  “Will he take the deal?” Dietrich asked when the silence overtook his patience. The priest turned and spoke rapidly to Tegusgal in the Mongol tongue. As he did, Dietrich loosened the pouch from his belt, laying it on the table with a jingling sound that no man, no matter his creed or homeland, could fail to recognize. The Fratres Militiae Christi Livoniae had lost many things, but its wealth was still in some part preserved, and Dietrich had brought enough coin with him to finesse certain situations.

  Tegusgal reached for the leather pouch, loosening the string and digging out a single coin. He held it aloft between callused fingertips, and his eyes were dark and hooded. He flipped the coin and caught it, then said something in his own language.

  The priest nodded in his nervous way, then translated. “He wishes to know why.”

  Dietrich frowned, suddenly in muddy waters where the stones on which to put one’s feet could not be seen. A clumsy answer could upset everything the coin was about to purchase. Still, the coins were already on the table. It was too late to turn back.

  “Because there are times,” Dietrich said, “when a higher purpose must be put before all other things. When honor must be defended, even if doing so seems mad and foolish.”

  That was the truth of it. There were other benefits to this arrangement-matters which Tegusgal could ascertain for himself easily enough-but the settling of accounts was of paramount import to Dietrich. His return to Rome would not be coated in shame. His masters would not be able to accuse him of failing in his assignment or speak derisively of his efforts at protecting the honor of his battered order.

  “This is such a time,” Dietrich finished, and let it lie there in the space between them, with the coins.

  The priest translated the words into the Mongol tongue, and Tegusgal’s only response was a soft grunt. The Mongol’s attention was on the sack of coins, his fingers dipping in and drawing out coins at random. Finally, the man’s dark eyes flickered toward him once more. Tegusgal’s lips curled into a cruel smile and he said a single phrase, short and direct.

  The priest translated. “He finds your deal agreeable.”

  Zug hustled beside Kim through the maze of tents that formed the fighters’ camp, an air of energy and urgency informing their pace. They rushed passed fires where meat roasted on spits, dodged around clumps of men bent over impromptu games of knucklebones, and diverted from their path to avoid a crowd forming around two men who were settling a disagreement over a camp girl by bare-knuckled brawling. They were running out of time.

  They had not been able to speak with Madhukar. He had been impossible to find since word had come from the guards that he was to fight next in the arena. Worse still, they had been
waiting for confirmation from the street rats that the Rose Knight, Andreas, would be the Western fighter. Zug had thought it too risky to warn Madhukar of the plan far in advance, and now they only had a few minutes before Tegusgal’s men arrived and escorted the wrestler to his bout. By the time they reached the tent, Zug and Kim were both winded.

  Gasping for breath, Kim flipped back the flap on the wrestler’s tent and stared in shock. Madhukar was calmly seated on a mat, a girl massaging each of his massive arms while a third tried to dig her delicate hands into the hard muscles of his shoulders and neck. He was wearing a narrow loincloth that was only a token nod toward modesty. He was not even remotely ready to fight in the arena.

  “What has happened?” Kim asked, and Zug could hear the strain in his voice. Zug felt at a loss as well, and he struggled to keep his panic in check.

  Madhukar glanced up, his face twisting into a dour mask of displeasure as he did. He gave a gesture with his right arm, speaking bluntly in his halting grasp of the Mongol tongue. “Tegusgal changed his mind,” he grunted. “Said other man would fight instead.”

  A cold fist wrapped itself around Zug’s gut and tightened into a viselike grip. Did the Khan’s man know something of what they were planning? No, he pushed that fear aside, if he knew, Madhukar would be locked in a cage now, not having his limbs massaged by lithe slave-girls. Tegusgal might toy with them, but he would not take any chances. If he knew, he would have come for Kim and himself already.

  “Why?” Zug asked; at the same time Kim asked, “Who?”

  Madhukar answered both of them with a shrug that only confirmed what they already feared. Why would Tegusgal have explained anything to the big wrestler? He barely treated the fighters in the Circus as anything above well-bred dogs, even at his most generous.

  As there was nothing else to be learned from the taciturn wrestler, Kim and Zug turned away from Madhukar’s tent. They wandered, somewhat aimlessly, toward the middle of the camp, somewhat stunned and unsure what to do about the chance for freedom that might, even as they stood there, be slipping away like grains of sand through their open fingers. Zug felt a fury boiling inside him. It was a reaction to the futility of their circumstances, he knew, a response that was distracting to a warrior, but it was not unexpected. He wanted to scream, to grab any of the slaves and other oppressed fighters wandering blithely past and shake them. Grab them by their hair and force them to face the visceral truth of their circumstances. He inhaled slowly and deeply, drawing air in through his nose and letting it back out even more slowly through his pursed lips. Embracing such a fury would be a fatal mistake, and all chances of their plan ever succeeding would vanish.

  “The boy,” Zug said, looking at Kim. “We could still get word back to the Rose Knights.”

  Kim’s face was drained of color, the ashen pallor of death. “He’s already come and gone,” the Flower Knight said, as though hope were a delicate vase suddenly dropped and shattered on the ground, the reality only now sinking in.

  “Then everything rests on him,” Zug said, looking toward the arena. “One man. Fighting alone.”

  Kim jerked his head back, a smile fighting its way onto his lips. “We tried to make it otherwise, didn’t we? But that is the way it always is, in the end.”

  There was cheering in the streets when he came. Hunern was a town inundated with violent men and aggressive souls whose lust for battle had brought them from lands far and wide. Where the fighters passed, common men got out of their path, women hid themselves, and children stepped aside.

  Not so with the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. The people raised their faces to look up at the banner of the Rose Knights as it passed. Every story they had heard was instantly solidified as an unassailable truth in their minds. Every hope they had ever harbored in secret was suddenly given new life. Even those who had not been there when Andreas had come to First Field and demanded to be allowed to fight for all of Christendom would remember that day as if they had stood next to the knight when he had issued his challenge. The crowds looked upon the Shield-Brethren, and loved them.

  The memory of the crowds was a balm on Andreas’s mind as he walked down the long tunnel of the arena. His mind was agitated, more so than usual, spinning around on all the aspects of the plan that were out of his control. When he had dismounted from his horse and had been about to enter the arena, a small figure had launched himself out of the crowd and thrown himself into Andreas’s arms. Hans had held him tight and whispered a message into his ear. You will be facing a friend. He will guard your back as you do what must be done.

  Despite his courage, there was fear written plainly across the boy’s face. Only a fool would presume that whomever went into the arena with such intentions would walk out again, whether the Khan lived or died.

  The plan-like all good plans-was simple, and Andreas’s fingers flexed about the shaft of his spear. When he and his ally stood opposite one another, they would have the opportunity to strike at the Khan directly. Andreas was well practiced at hurling shafts, and that practice had not stopped since the arena fights began. He had a good arm for throwing, even battered as he was. With a man to guard his back, the only other thing he would need was a wind that was kind.

  “Be careful,” Hans had said as the crowd separated them. Andreas had not had time to answer, and he could only nod grimly before the boy’s tear-streaked face vanished into the press of bodies.

  The light at the far end of the tunnel summoned him. His heart quickened as his thoughts became less hurried, less confused. The plan was simple. His action would be clear. Now was the time when the Shield-Brethren would live up to the legends spoken of them. They had accounted heroically for themselves in the lists, and Andreas had endured blow after blow at First Field, holding onto their place long enough to buy their allies the time they needed to gather what friends they could. Now, at last the efforts were coming to fruition. Their days of hiding were coming to an end, and today would be the spark that ignited all of Hunern.

  He had only to throw his spear, and throw it well. The rest would be in the hands of the Virgin.

  He reached the final archway, and paused for a final quick prayer, and then he stepped into the arena proper, where he was immediately assaulted by the deafening roar of an aroused crowd. Distantly, he marveled at the physical weight of the sound that fell upon him, glad of the thickness of his helm, and he tried to push all of that confusion aside as he looked around the killing ground for his opponent.

  Andreas drew in a sharp breath at what he saw. Across the sand stood a tall, broad shouldered knight, wearing full maille armor and a steel helm that gleamed in the sunlight. Steel plates of the sort many knights had begun to add to their maille adorned his shoulders, and his steel-sheathed hands rested upon the hilt of an unsheathed, broad-bladed greatsword, its point resting in the dirt. A white surcoat draped across his chest, reaching down to above his knees.

  Stitched on the unblemished fabric was the red cross and sword of the Fratres Militiae Christi Livoniae.

  Andreas blinked several times, glancing around the arena with some vain hope that he was mistaken in what he saw. Or what he didn’t see. There was no one else. He was alone before the Livonian.

  The man raised his sword in a formal, seamless salute. Andreas’s heart was now pounding in his ears as he faced his unexpected foe. Memories of the alehouse, of staring down at the Livonian Heermeister from the saddle of a stolen horse flashed through his mind. Had their allies in the Mongol camp been compromised? Had Hans? Was this a deliberate gambit on the part of the Khan, or merely the revenge of a Grand Master humiliated in the street? Uncertainty started to give way to something else, something less noble.

  With a calming breath and a tightening of his grip on his weapon, Andreas forced the fear away as he returned his opponent’s salute. This was not the first time in his life that Andreas had endured an ambush, nor the first time that he had been taken unawares. When thrust into an unfamiliar situation against expectati
on, it was the way of the untrained novice to falter in the face of reactive terror. Andreas was a knight initiate of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae-branded, blooded, and proven. This was a complication, and not a failure of the plan.

  The roaring chant of the crowd faded to a distant din as Andreas focused his attention on the task at hand. Had they stood in the open field, the greater length of Andreas’s spear would have been more than enough to keep his foe at bay. Here in the arena, the space was smaller, limited. He would not have the room necessary to keep the Livonian at bay forever, and the thick maille that swathed the man from head to toe would be an obstacle even in the face of strong thrusts. It made no sense to wait, then. Time was not his ally today.

  He exploded forward, charging across the sand, and as he closed the distance he unleashed a series of rapid thrusts at the Livonian’s body: head, feet, chest, head again, feet. Each strike was more rapid than the previous one. Forced to back away or check each attack with the strong of his blade, the Livonian gave ground. With each strike, Andreas shortened his grip upon the spear, bringing him ever closer to physical reach of his target. The Livonian continued to retreat, checking each thrust, his attention on the flickering point of Andreas’s spear.

  Closer, closer. Then his chance came.

  Andreas aimed a thrust at the Livonian’s groin. The Livonian’s blade snapped into a ward to drive it off, but now Andreas was close enough to grapple. The butt end of his spear shot across the Livonian’s arms, entrapping them together as Andreas hammered him hard in the neck. Hips beneath the other man, his tireless reminder to his students rang in his head as he leveraged his foe and sent the Livonian sprawling.