by Mark Teppo
“You have my word,” Rutger said quietly.
In Hunern, the rats went unnoticed, and that was their strength. In the streets, Hans was invisible, and so he was left to his own devices. He was waiting right now at the base of the tree, the one place he knew would grant him a momentary sense of safety. It wasn’t much, but beneath these branches there was peace.
Hans had shown Andreas this tree, and the big knight’s reaction had confirmed its importance in a way that he had suspected on some level, but not understood, truly, until then.
Several other children were sleeping nearby, and Hans had taken care not to wake them. One of them was the last boy he had sent running to the fighter’s camp. The boy had taken a bad clout on the ear that had left the ear swollen like a vegetable, surrounded by a green, brown, and reddish bruise.
Hans watched him as he rested. He felt guilty about the boy’s injury, but getting the messages back and forth was important. Brother Andreas had told him so, and he was a good man.
The plan was actually very simple and was based on how Hans and the other children had gone about making sure they all had food during the bad times: send a different boy each time, each with a different story, bring the prize back, and divide it among all of them. While the Mongols closely watched the gate to their camp, they seldom interrogated the children who went in and out, running this or that little errand for the people inside. Sometimes they brought ale; other times they delivered something purchased from the local craftsmen.
Making sure that the boys knew which tent they were supposed to find, and remembered the words they were supposed to say, was not hard, because each boy didn’t have much to remember. “How many flowers?” they would ask, and Kim would tell them. The boy would return and tell Hans, and he would pass the news on to Andreas. It was simple, and so far, it had worked, but there was always the chance of something going wrong, and so Hans waited nervously beneath the tree, trying to comfort himself in its presence.
When Andreas had bid him run off behind the alehouse, he’d also worried and had come here, like now, to comfort himself. It was only later that the sounds of the fight at First Field had summoned him to witness Andreas’s duel with the Flower Knight.
It was after that that Andreas had asked him to organize the boys and run these messages-but not without obvious reluctance. He is afraid for me, Hans had thought with an unexpected glow of pride. But I am not the one facing the swords. Fearless for oneself, fear for others-that must be what it means to be a hero.
Knowing that he would have soon aroused suspicion if he did all the delivering himself, Hans had turned to the other rats of Hunern to help him, creating the system they used now. It had held up for a week, so far-and none of the boys had gotten hurt or captured.
It had occurred to Hans every time he worried for one of the children that they were safer than most of the adults, if only because they were beneath notice, but that did not make him worry less. I make them do dangerous things. If any of them gets hurt or killed, it will be my fault.
The sound of footsteps. Someone was coming. He shifted.
A boy stepped out of the shadows cast by the overhanging roofs. He was shorter than Hans, with sun-darkened skin and brown hair.
“Tamas went into the camp. I saw him walk past the guards,” the boy said, grinning. Usually, Hans asked at least one other boy to watch and make sure the messenger got through. This doubled as assurance that any obstacle could be related back to him and as a dry run where the boy who watched could see how it was done. The next time, the watcher would become the messenger.
“Did you see how he did it?” Hans asked. The boy nodded.
“Do you think you can do it next time?” He tried to keep the urgency from showing. The rats had to learn everything the hard way. Rats rarely got a second chance if they made a mistake.
After a moment’s pause, the boy looked at him with narrow honesty and eagerness. “Yes.”
Hans stood. There was a difference between thinking you were ready and knowing it. The boy knew it. He gave a slow nod. “In two days, you’ll go.”
The boy grinned again and folded his arms around himself, and Hans saw the mix of pride and fear in his eyes that he himself felt. Next time, the youth would risk everything so that the channel of communication could stay open, and Hans would wait for news and worry again beneath the tree.
Rats so seldom knew love. These boys knew his love, but not his guilt.
Kim sat outside his tent, listening as a singer performed in a language he didn’t understand. Still, the song stirred him. A man did not need to understand the words to know what was being said. Music, like violence, crossed all languages. These were the oldest and most complete ways of communicating that people possessed.
Kim was waiting for the boy. He credited the youth named Hans for devising a means to pass their messages back and forth, and also felt gratitude and admiration for the courageous youths who came to him every few days to inquire of his progress, to pass on information, and to take his own messages back.
He always knew a messenger; the same phrase was used, and Hans sent only boys who spoke the Mongol tongue. Hans was a most discerning and clever lad, wiser than Kim had initially given him credit for.
He raised a cup of water to his lips and drank, taking a mental tally of those they’d managed to bring into the fold since the last time he’d sent a message. When he lowered it, a dark-haired youth stood before him. He smiled nervously.
“Do you enjoy the shade?” the boy asked.
Kim smiled. “Even on gray days it is a relief, like the branches of a tree.”
The youth took a breath and asked, “Have you found any flowers today?” The boy’s grasp of Mongol speech was not exceptional but would not arouse suspicion.
Kim reached for a small wrapped bundle of cloth beside him and unwrapped it, revealing four blossoms. He put them in the boy’s hand. “Four, this time. Next time, there will be more.” He hoped.
The boy smiled. “I will take them back, thank you.” He turned to go, and Kim moved his attention back to the empty cloth in his hand. There had been no breeze, which reflected his own sense of stagnation, even as events began to move forward.
But then he felt the first stirrings in the air. Looking to the grass beyond the edge of his tent, he saw that the blades were bending back and forth as the first cool breath of wind whispered through the camp. Above came a distant groan and then a roar of thunder.
The storm was finally coming. As he rose and turned to enter his tent, the first drops of rain began to fall.
31
Freedom Lost
She was free.
She clenched the horse’s mane tightly, her fingers aching from the strain of holding on. She had no memory of getting on the horse: one moment she had been crouched among the panicked horses tied to the picket line, her breath fluttering in her throat; then she had been flying, her feet lightly skipping off the ground as she let the horse drag her away from Gansukh.
Part of her wept at leaving him behind, but she had had no choice. If she was going to escape from the Khagan’s camp, this was her only chance. She couldn’t be afraid of the ambushers-they couldn’t be worse than the Mongols. They might even be her own countrymen, and while Lian didn’t hold any illusions that men bold enough to attack the Khagan’s caravan would be any less cruel than the Khagan himself, she was still heartened by the fact that there were still people who fought back against Mongol tyranny.
She bent over her horse’s back, trying to make as small a target as possible. The white blur of tents rushed by as the horse ran. She didn’t try to guide the animal; she let it find its own way, urging it on by beating her heels against its ribs. Run, she pleaded, run as fast as you can.
“Lian!”
She glanced back and spotted another horse and rider pursuing her. Her hair whipped around her face, and she risked letting go to rake her hair out of her eyes. Gansukh. Why couldn’t he let her go?
; Or was he coming with her?
Her horse veered to the right, and she grabbed on with both hands, tightening her legs around the horse. She lashed out with her heels, driving the horse faster. Don’t be a fool, she thought. He’s trying to stop you.
Distantly, she heard a rumble of thunder, and she glanced up at the sky. Behind her, the smoke from the burning tents was making the stars blink like fireflies, but up ahead, the sky was filled with a constant sea of stars. Where was the storm? she wondered, looking for some patch of darkness that would indicate clouds. Rain would slow her down, but it would obscure her trail.
On her right, she heard men shouting, and her heart quickened at the voices. They were speaking Chinese! Her horse blew air noisily from its nose and veered away from the voices, panicked enough that it wanted to shy away from any living creature.
Gansukh shouted her name again, and when she looked, he was closer. His horse was bigger and stronger-he was gaining on her.
Her horse stumbled, grunting deep in its chest. Lian tensed her body, clinging tightly to its mane. When the horse stumbled a second time, her heart skipped a beat. It twisted its head to the side, and she saw foam and blood on its mouth, and then it collapsed. For a brief second, she had time to stare at the thin shaft of the arrow jutting from the horse’s neck-if it had been a little higher, it would have struck her instead-and then she was flying again. The sensation was not the same, though, as she clawed and flailed at the air in an effort to grab onto anything.
She hit the ground shoulder first, and she cried out as her momentum flipped her over the point of impact and slammed her hard on her back. She slid and tumbled, and every rock on the ground hit her like a fist-in the small of her back, on the arms and legs, on the cheek. She tried to curl up into a ball-the same way she had when the Mongol soldiers had first beaten her when they had taken her captive-but her arms and legs wouldn’t work.
Her horse screamed nearby, having broken a leg as it had fallen, and the sound was made worse by the bubbling wetness of its pierced throat.
When she stopped tumbling, Lian lay in a heap. She didn’t know if she had broken any bones in the fall, but it didn’t matter. She had failed. Even if she could stand, she was too bruised to run. Her right hand pawed at her face, a motion she couldn’t understand the genesis of, and there was a strange keening noise coming from her throat.
Hooves thundered past her head, and she felt the impact of a heavy weight against the ground nearby. “Lian!” Gansukh tried to put his arms around her, and her right hand-still wriggling like an agitated snake-vainly pushed him away. “It’s me.” He tried to pin her arm, and finding some unknown reserve of strength, she fought him all the harder.
Somehow she extricated herself from his embrace, even though she didn’t think she had the strength to stand. She could crawl, though, and on bloodied knees, she tottered away from him. Her hair was twisted and matted against her face, and she spat out a mouthful.
She meant to scream at him, but her voice died in her throat.
A line of strange soldiers stood in front of her. They wore haphazard armor, some more complete than others, and the scattered markings on their shoulders and chests were Chinese. Several of the soldiers carried spears, and having spotted both Gansukh and Lian, they lowered their spears.
Gansukh had grabbed her ankle, and he hissed at her as she struggled, but she ignored him. Chinese! A new opportunity had presented itself to her, a sudden and unexpected path to freedom.
“I am a prisoner,” she said in Chinese. She raised her hands, showing them her scraped and bloody palms. “Please don’t kill me.”
“What are you saying?” Gansukh hissed in her ear.
She jerked her leg free of his grip and crawled closer to the line of soldiers. Several of the Chinese soldiers lowered their spears slightly, but their general apprehension did not lessen.
“Please,” she whined, making eye contact with the nearest man. “I am captive of the Khagan. I beg you to free me.”
Two of the soldiers exchanged glances, chattering to one another too quickly for her to follow. The one on the left wanted to continue their mission; the one on the right was considering her request. Prisoners were always useful, he argued.
“Is this man your master?” asked the curious one. His helmet had a plume of dark feathers, and there was a precision to his words that spoke of formal education.
She nodded, letting a small sob escape from her throat.
The soldiers surged forward, their spears focusing now on Gansukh, who muttered an oath under his breath. Lian glanced over her shoulder and tried to catch Gansukh’s eye, but he was too focused on the spears to notice her effort.
A hand grabbed her arm, jerking her forward, and she gasped as the Chinese leader dragged her forward. Gansukh edged forward and then stopped, eyeing the threatening spears. She knew that look in his eye, the same sort of frantic stare a cornered animal has, one that knows what comes next but is powerless to stop it.
“Wait!”
The Chinese man wound a hand in her hair and jerked her back. She struggled in his grip, winding herself toward him, while trying to keep the soldiers from thrusting their spears into Gansukh. “He’s…he’s a special advisor to the Khagan,” she cried to the man holding her hair. “He has value.”
The first Chinese man, the one concerned about his mission, grunted and spat. “He doesn’t look like much.” He nodded his head toward the camp. “We don’t have time.”
“No, wait,” Lian said, frantically thinking how to convince these Chinese men without revealing too much. “They don’t look like much,” she said hurriedly, adopting a more haughty tone. “These steppe warriors are all barely one bath away from being animals, but this one is…special.”
“We don’t have time for hostages,” the first man repeated.
The man who held her hair wound his hand another revolution, pulling her closely to him. “Go,” he said to his companion. “A hostage could be useful…” He scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment and then barked a command at his men: “Tie him up.”
“They want to take you-” Lian started to explain to Gansukh in Mongolian, but the Chinese man jerked her head back, and she cried out in pain.
Gansukh surged forward. The Chinese spears came up, and Gansukh stopped just short of the points. One of the soldiers jabbered at him to back away, lightly flicking his spear point at Gansukh’s chest to make his command clear. Glowering at the man who held Lian’s hair, Gansukh took a step back. His hand remained on the hilt of his sword.
“What were you saying to him?” Lian’s captor demanded.
“I was trying to tell him to not fight,” she insisted, trying to lessen the tension on her hair. “He is a proud man. He will not just lay down his sword because you ask him to.”
Another boom of thunder rolled across the camp, and Lian realized the sound was too slight to be real thunder. It was the concussive sound of Chinese explosives, and she swallowed the lump of fear that had risen in her throat. Fire arrows and explosives, she wondered. What sort of attack is this?
The first man made a cutting motion with his hand. “We did not come for hostages,” he said, and he called to the spearmen. Half of the circle surrounding Gansukh pulled back their spears and made to follow their squad commander. “Kill them both” was his final assessment. His men falling in behind him, he ran toward the tents of the Mongol camp.
Lian’s captor hesitated as Gansukh shrewdly eyed the soldiers still holding their spears on him. He remained still, but Lian could read the subtle change in his breathing. He thought they were going to kill him, and he was readying himself.
“Tell him to lie down,” Lian’s captor hissed in her ear. “Tell him to do it quickly, or my men will kill him.” She heard the sound of a knife being drawn from a sheath, and then the cold touch of blade eased against her throat. “And then I’ll kill you.”
She nodded, trying not to pull away from the man or the knife. “Lie down,”
she said to Gansukh in Mongolian. “They want to take you prisoner.”
“Why?” he growled. His face was like a mask-only his eyes moved, tracking back and forth between the soldiers threatening him.
“I’m trying to save your life,” she insisted.
He glanced at her, and she flinched at the wounded look in his eyes-the naked accusation of betrayal.
“Please,” she whispered. “Trust me. If you don’t, we’re both dead.
” Gansukh didn’t reply, but his hand moved slowly away from the hilt of his sword. Putting both hands out in front of him, palms forward, he knelt on the ground. One of the soldiers reversed his spear and hit Gansukh in the lower back with the butt of his weapon. He collapsed on the ground, and as a soldier put a knee in his back and grabbed at his hands to bind them, he kept staring at Lian. He didn’t look away as the Chinese men hauled him up and, with a nod from their leader, dragged him into the darkness of the night.
As soon as the Khagan sat down to eat, Master Chucai made his excuses and left the feast for the solitude of his tent. He had been working nonstop for nearly a week by the time the caravan had left Karakorum, and with the camp established and the Khagan and his entourage seated for the nighttime meal, he was no longer needed. For a few hours, he could meditate or read-he had brought along a new edition of Zhu Xi’s commentary on the Four Books that he had been looking forward to examining for some time. He found, more and more, that it was not sleep that truly recharged his vitality but more spiritual activities. When he lay down at night, parts of his mind churned over the matters of the Empire, and while he found new solutions to problems waiting for him when he awoke, sleep was never particularly restful. Meditation and reflection were his most treasured activities, and there had been a scarcity of both in the last few weeks.
The shouting of the guards stirred him from his meditation, and his eyes snapped open. His ger had been dark but for a single flame in a small brazier and the ambient light from the camp that slipped through the space he had left open at the top of the tent flaps, but there was more light spilling into his ger than he had expected to see. Not sunlight. Firelight.
