by Mark Teppo
Occasionally, he could catch a guard’s attention, and through pantomime at first-but more recently, using some of the Mongol words he had learned-he would ask for water. Once in a while, they would bring him a small amount in a crude cup, barely enough to lessen the drudgery of eating the meat.
The bowl, to his surprise, contained a watery rice gruel. Still a little warm, even. It was, Haakon decided, a reward from the Virgin for his patience. He meant to savor it, but his fingers scooped it quickly into his mouth.
For the next hour, until the man returned for the bowl, he sucked at its rim, making sure he got every last drop.
The following morning, the thin man arrived again with both meat and gruel. Haakon ignored the bowl at first, beginning the laborious project of softening the meat instead, and his stomach cramped. His body yearned for the watery rice paste, but the change in routine had made him wary. Why were they feeding him better? Had he reached the end of his journey?
There was more activity along the line of carts this morning, and he pressed himself against the bars to get a better view. Several groups of men were slowly moving down the line, assessing the cargo. They were dressed in much finer clothes, colorful silk jackets instead of the heavy and plain garments he was used to seeing.
Leading them was the largest man Haakon had ever seen.
Though tall and broad shouldered, the man’s greatest bulk lay in an enormous midsection, wider than a karvi, or a snekkja, even, longboats that could carry up to two dozen warriors. Haakon reckoned it would require the strength of two, maybe three men to lift this giant off the ground-and more to push him over.
Unlike the others, the giant wore armor of overlapping leather plates-the entire skin of at least one adult ox, Haakon reckoned. Around his neck and over the armor, he wore many necklaces-gold and silver-and a huge gold medallion glittered at the shallow hollow of his throat.
The gold had been worked into the snarling visage of a wolf.
One of the caravan guards, in awe of the giant and his retinue, nervously gibbered as the group paused near Haakon’s cage. Haakon listened to the guard’s stammering speech, catching a few words. The large stranger stared at Haakon all the while, grunting occasionally in response to the guard’s story, and Haakon realized the guard was telling the giant about the fight in the arena. With a wild cry, the guard launched into a clumsy impression of Haakon’s final assault on Zug with the demon’s pole-arm. The giant-who, Haakon guessed, was one of the Mongol generals, perhaps even one of the other Khans, a relative of the dissolute Khan who lorded over Hunern-glanced briefly at the guard as the nervous man finished his exhibition, before returning his piercing gaze to Haakon.
Haakon shrugged. “I fight,” he said, hoping that he had learned the word correctly from the caravan drivers and that he was not claiming to be a farm animal.
The giant laughed, and Haakon reasoned it made no difference if he had gotten the Mongol word right or not. His life was entirely in this Mongolian’s hands, and as long as the man appeared amused by his words, then whatever he had said was the best response. Haakon realized the general’s visit was probably the reason he had been given the gruel-if the prizes were to be inspected, it followed they should be somewhat healthy. He picked up the bowl of uneaten gruel and raised it in a gesture of thanks.
The general grunted in response and took several ponderous steps closer to the cart. His round face was oddly childlike, but his eyes were too quick and focused to be mistaken for a youngling’s innocent gaze. His retinue darted around behind him, like a pack of scavengers waiting for the larger predator to finish with its kill.
Not knowing what else to do, Haakon sat down and started to eat the gruel. The general watched, studying Haakon not as a curiosity but as a warrior would carefully watch the simple movements of his enemy in order to learn something of how he might carry himself in combat.
When the bowl was empty, the general pointed at himself with the forefinger of his right hand. “Soo-boo-tie,” he said. He said it again and then pointed to Haakon.
“Hawe-koon,” Haakon replied, touching his chest.
The Mongolian general nodded and tried Haakon’s name several times, sounding as if he were trying to speak around a stone in his mouth. Haakon decided to not undertake the same effort, fearing the general’s humor might dissolve should Haakon display a commensurate clumsiness with the Mongolian name. Instead, he saluted with the bowl again, and as it was empty, he offered it to the general.
He had wanted to show some deference to his captor, the sort of noble gesture that Feronantus would have expected of him. Even though he was a prisoner, he was still a member of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. The bowl was the only thing he had to offer. His fealty was not available.
Soo-boo-tie stared at the crude bowl for a moment and then plucked it from Haakon’s grasp. He spoke a few words to his retinue, and they scattered, rushing to continue their inspection of the caravan’s prizes. Soo-boo-tie lingered for a moment and then laughed once more as he turned to depart, waving the bowl at Haakon.
The caravan guard stared at Haakon, open mouthed, and when Haakon met his gaze and shrugged, the guard spooked-jerked back, dropped his jaw, and raised his hands in deference. Then he recovered, straightened, snapped his mouth shut, and ran bandy-legged after the general and the others, leaving Haakon to wonder what had just transpired.
The next morning, the caravan moved on, and no more gruel was offered. The caravan masters returned to throwing a single strip of dried meat into his cage, once a day. But the pieces were bigger and not quite as hard.
Haakon dreamed about the bowl. In the dream, he had not given it back, and the general had let him keep it. During the day, he hid it beneath his ragged shirt, tucking it against his side and holding it in place with his arm. On the nights when it rained, he pushed it out of his cage to catch the rainwater.
The shallow bowl of his dream was turned from a piece of knotty wood, and he could feel the tiny divots in its center where the woodworker had finished his work with a chisel. Was its maker still alive, or had he been killed when the Mongols had conquered whatever city he lived in? Haakon and the bowl had that much in common: they were spoils of war.
During the endless caravan ride, he had seen, firsthand, the aftermath of Mongol victories. From the older Shield-Brethren who had gone to the Levant to take part in the Crusades, he had heard stories about the atrocities perpetrated by the conquering armies (with the exception of the legendary Salah-ad-Deen, whose name Haakon could barely pronounce, though Raphael had spoken it several times). The reality, however, was much starker than his imagination.
Everything and everyone in these dying lands seemed to have become a prize to be split up, argued over, and ultimately taken away, killed, or enslaved. A Mongol commander’s worth became measured in how much treasure he controlled, and Haakon could imagine how the constant lure of fresh conquests would be irresistible to those hungry to prove themselves to their generals. One bowl was not much in and of itself, but when wagons laden with such prizes returned to the Khagan, the wealth became substantial. One man made little difference, but cart after cart of prisoners made the victory all the greater.
In Haakon’s dream, he imagined using the long-lost bowl to escape, beating a guard who came too close to his cage, smashing it over the Mongol’s head until bone broke. The bowl itself was too knotty to break, a twisted piece of an ancient tree that was older than any living Mongol today.
Haakon dreamed even while awake. Once free of the cage, he would find a blade. How many could he kill with blade and bowl before the Mongol archers filled him with arrows? Could he steal a horse and ride away?
How far from Legnica was he?
Free of his cage, surrounded by dead Mongols, he found himself in possession of a map, a yellowed piece of parchment like the old map of the known world the Shield-Brethren kept in the great hall at Tyrshammar. The eastern edge of the map was the great winding length of a Ruthenian river. The Volg
a? That name sounded right, but he wasn’t sure. He had only seen the map once after word of Onghwe’s challenge had come to Tyrshammar’s cold rock. Feronantus had used it to show the Shield-Brethren where they were going, but had only gestured at the eastern edge of the map to show where the invaders were coming from. None of them had imagined they would ever actually go there.
Still free of his cage, the bloody bowl clutched in one hand, he found himself riding one of the squat Mongol ponies, his body rocking back and forth as the pony galloped free. Did it know where it was going? In Haakon’s other hand the parchment map streamed out like a banner; he tried to look at it as the pony fled through the sea of grass. The moon was a pale sliver in the dark sky, and the markings on the map were faint lines in the ghost light. Here was a river, there a mountain range, and then-the rest of the parchment rippled out like an endless ribbon of moon-white blankness.
Still, Haakon kept riding, hoping the pony was going in the right direction, toward the river and the mountains.
Otherwise, he was going to tumble over the edge of the map, into the endless, frozen depths of Hel’s terrible domain…
A voice.
Haakon opened his eyes and stared at the cage’s slatted ceiling for a few moments, then shivered to toss off the fleeting, terrible fragments of his dream. Hel herself had gripped him with hideous claws of icicles and bone. Her tangled gray-white hair had been crusted with the frozen brine of mourners’ tears…
He lurched and cried out in abject misery. Such a fool he had been, riding that stupid pony over the edge of the known world! Why hadn’t he checked the stars? If he had put the Dvalinn, the sleeping deer, on his right, then he would have been heading west.
He looked away from the cage ceiling, trying blearily to recall the open night sky.
“Wake up, fool,” the voice said again. Something banged against the bars, and Haakon turned his head. One of the Mongolian short-legged ponies trotted alongside the slowly rolling cart. Its rider was leaning over and banging a bowl against the bars to get Haakon’s attention. White liquid slopped out, and Haakon scrambled up to the bars, his throat constricting in panic at the sight. The rider grinned and let his horse drift away from the cage so that Haakon had to squeeze himself against the bars and strain to reach the bowl.
The horseman finally relented, with a grunt. Haakon grabbed the bowl and tugged it into the cage, where he held it in wonder for a few seconds. The bowl contained thickened rice paste, a strip of meat, and a residue of sweet rice water. Using the piece of meat as a utensil, Haakon scooped the paste into his mouth. His belly, shrunken to almost nothing, filled quickly, so he chewed the piece of meat slowly, taking his time with it, and made sure to suck down every drop of rice water-and then to lick the bowl clean.
Gruel and meat. And the rider did not come back to take away the bowl. Something had changed. The caravan was going to halt soon.
The terrain had changed again. A few days ago, they had passed within sight of a small village nestled in the crook of a long and glittering track of river, and since then, isolated patches of pasture had started to break up the endless expanse of steppe grass.
During his long journey, Haakon had come to understand just how nomadic the Mongolian people were, and the familiar signs of civilization struck him as oddities on the steppes.
At first, they had passed through regions conquered by the Mongol Horde, savaged lands that had been stripped of any value by the voracious appetite of the raiders. And then came the desolate places, lands too sere or remote for any people to find hospitable.
His belly full, Haakon wedged his shoulder against the bars of his cage to brace against the motion of the cart, steadying his eyes to watch these strange scenes pass by. They had certainly gone off the edge of any map he knew, of any map anyone he had ever met might have known-with the exception of the Binder girl, perhaps.
He stared at the wandering clumps of herd animals-sheep, goats, camels, the occasional yipping dogs and shaggy cows-and the tiny clusters of ger that sprouted from the grasslands like gray mushrooms. He was the first of his brothers to come to this place, and for the first time in many days, he found himself looking forward to what lay beyond the horizon.
Does Zug’s home lie out there? he wondered.
When the rider returned for the bowl, Haakon asked him if this place had a name. The Mongol answered brusquely, and Haakon repeated the single word to himself for the rest of that day, trying to dispel the unease it left in his belly.
It sounded like the noise ravens made. Kara-kora-hoom. He couldn’t stop thinking about the black birds he had seen on the ruined walls of Legnica. Ominous harbingers.
The Shield-Brethren swore their oaths to the Virgin Defender, a warrior maiden whose face they would never truly see until they died. She was Skuld, and yet she was not. Some of the other boys from his tribe clung tenaciously to the stories they had absorbed from their mothers’ breasts, but Haakon had looked on the vastly different faces of the students at Tyrshammar and understood each knew the Virgin in his own way. When the priest in the Christian temple spoke of “Mary,” he was talking about the same goddess.
Even back then, before Haakon had learned how to hold a sword and how to carry a shield, he suspected the world was larger and more mysterious than he could ever truly imagine.
Hearing the raven-squawk name of the place where he was being taken, he found comfort in the idea that the world, in all its cruel vastness, was but a grain of sand in the Virgin’s palm. It did not matter where he died. As long as he died in the Virgin’s service, he would finally see her glorious face.
After his inevitable and bloody warrior’s death, the icy fingers of Hel would twitch empty, and the queen of the dead would scream in disappointment.
The Virgin herself would be waiting for Haakon. She would garland his neck with a wreath of cornflowers and clasp him to her spring-sweet bosom.
This he knew, and it gave him strength.
3
Thirsty Work
Before the battle of Legnica, Hunern was little more than a collection of farms clustered haphazardly around a blacksmith and a church. A small hamlet that grew, almost by accident, out of a desire for farmers to have a place where they could pray and drink without having to travel to the city of Legnica. When the Mongol army assembled to fight Duke Henry II of Silesia, Hunern was abandoned and then overrun. The church remained, its awkwardly tilted spire rising over a landscape of crooked and broken walls, like eggshells scattered across a chicken coop after a fox’s rampage.
When the Mongolian engineers began to build their arena, mercenaries, fighting men, traveling merchants, and other vagabonds summoned by Onghwe Khan’s challenge reclaimed the ruins of Hunern.
Invariably, the first structures rebuilt after the sacking of a city were one or more churches. The dead must receive absolution before they could be interred, and the survivors-in the absence of strong battlements and armed soldiers-had only their faith to protect them. A house of prayer meant they had not been abandoned; within the sanctuary of the church, they could open their hearts in prayer and hope to be sustained.
Inevitably, an assortment of dilapidated taverns followed, because laying stone and raising walls-especially those of a church-was thirsty work. In the absence of salvation, what else could a man do but drown the pernicious voices that whispered incessantly of one’s coming damnation? If God had abandoned you, what use was prayer? Drink was better.
In Dietrich’s opinion, the closest approximation of a real drinking house in Hunern was a battered, slant-roofed shanty with only two real walls, two tables, a few benches, and a handful of wobbly stools. Known as The Frogs-after the amphibians that hid in the cracked rubble and called to one another in high peeps and groans at dusk-the tavern was permanent enough to warrant a staff of three.
If God had abandoned his Church and his Faithful, at least He had left them a place that served real ale and not the horse’s piss the Mongols guzzled. A few hours in the
afternoon at The Frogs quenched both thirst and burning soul.
Dominus custodiat introitum meum et exitum meum, he thought, hoisting his dented tankard. Foam slopped over his arm and onto the floor. Sanctuary is all we have ever sought. I will confess to this blasphemy, Dietrich assented after he quaffed half the contents of his flagon, the next time I am in Rome.
Dietrich had brought a full squad with him to The Frogs this afternoon. Usually he was only accompanied by Burchard and Sigeberht-he never left the Livonian compound without his bodyguards-but the incident at the bridge required the Livonian Order to show its strength. Rumors needed to be silenced; the people needed to see the power and presence of his knights. They needed to be reminded.
The man who ran the tavern, a Hungarian with a whistling voice and a tongue that he couldn’t keep fully in his mouth, had managed to acquire an oak chair-a heavy piece with a tall back, much like a lord’s seat at the head of the table. He allowed no one else to sit in it, and he always made a fuss when Dietrich showed up, running a rag over the seat and arms before letting the Livonian Grandmaster sit, asking him several times if he was comfortable enough, providing him a barrel on which to rest his tankard.
Gratitude and obedience. At The Frogs, the relationship between a knight and the people was clearly understood.
Dietrich and a company of Fratres Militiae Christi Livoniae-nearly a dozen knights and twice that number of men-at-arms-had arrived in Hunern the first week of June, to establish their presence among the Western fighting orders at the Mongolian Circus.
