The Mongoliad: Book Two

by Neal Stephenson

  The knuckles of his outstretched hand brushed a stone wall, and he was reminded not of the safety that a stone wall can offer but of the dry darkness in the tombs beneath the churches in Paris, where the saints lay buried. A maze of narrow passages, with tiny niches carved out of the walls for the wrapped bodies. This place wasn’t cramped, and the ceiling was much higher than the close confines of the tomb—yet something about it was equally unsettling. Moonlight filtered through cracks and gaps in the ceiling. Rodrigo rolled onto his side to examine the rest of the room and realized he wasn’t alone.

  A man sat slumped against the wall on the bench opposite, some ten paces away. At first, Rodrigo thought he was dead. His head was tilted back, and his mouth gaped open, as if he had died of a horrible thirst. A heavy book lay in his lap, open but forgotten. But then a breath hiccupped out of his chest, and his mouth snapped shut. He grimaced, tasting something foul on his tongue, and his eyes opened.

  Rodrigo’s breath hissed noisily out of his mouth before he could clamp his lips shut. The figure heard him and leaned forward, peering into the cold gloom of Rodrigo’s corner. The motion moved his face into a streak of illuminating moonlight, and Rodrigo had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

  It was the man from his dream.

  Older, most of the gold in his hair was rust now, and there were more lines on his face, but the intensity of his gaze hadn’t faltered. If anything, it had only gained strength as the body had aged.

  “You are awake,” he said. In the dream, Rodrigo hadn’t noticed an accent, but now he heard a rough edge to the man’s Latin, as if someone had taken a hammer to the ornate scrollwork of a building and knocked all the grace out of the marble.

  “Perhaps,” Rodrigo replied warily. Again, some part of his mind whispered an alarm to him.

  “This is disconcerting, I know,” the man continued. He noticed the book in his lap, and quietly closed it, running his hand over the thick leather and inlaid stones of the cover. “Please do not be frightened. You are safe. Well, relatively. More than you were a few hours ago, but...” He glanced up at the ceiling, and his mouth worked around the edges of a smile. Then he glanced back down at Rodrigo with an expression of weary compassion. “You are in Rome, my friend. Near the old temple known as the Septizodium. I am Robert, of Somercotes. Once I was the chaplain to the English king, Henry III. Now”—he shrugged—“just one of God’s devoted servants, I suppose.”

  Rodrigo sat silently, growing accustomed to the dim light. His companion was apparently very used to it, for he did not have even a candle with him. Rodrigo pulled his robe snugger, absently worried the extra fabric near his heart, and leaned his weight onto his right hip. “I am Rodrigo Bendrito,” he said eventually. “Lately of Buda, at Béla’s court.” It was his turn to shrug. “Which is no more.”

  Somercotes made the sign of the cross and left his fingertips at his lips. “Salvum fac servum tuum, Deus meus, sperantem in te,” he murmured. “Were you there?”

  “Where the armies of Béla and Prince Frederick met the Mongol Horde?” Rodrigo said.

  Somercotes nodded. “Yes,” he confirmed.

  He shifted his weight again and realized what had been bothering him. His satchel was gone. Hoping he was not being too obvious, he released one hand from his cloak and felt around in the straw for it.

  “You’ve come a long way,” Somercotes said, and Rodrigo grunted vacantly. “Not quite what you expected, is it?”

  Rodrigo found the wall near his pallet and put his back to it. Still no sign of his satchel, but not far from the head of the straw-filled bed was a tray and small bowl.

  “Please, eat,” Somercotes said, noting Rodrigo’s interest. Investigating the two containers, Rodrigo found water in the bowl and, on the tray, three small pieces of bread, a handful of nuts, and some round objects. Olives, he realized as he tentatively ate one. It was enough to wake up his stomach, and he proceeded to devour the food. His fever was gone, replaced by a ravenous hunger. The sort of hunger he hadn’t felt in a long time. I’m going to live, he thought with genuine surprise as he tipped back the bowl and drank the water noisily. God does save those who believe in Him. He felt a little twinge of guilt for having doubted, but that emotion was quickly set aside as his fingers scrabbled for the food on the tray, shoveling it toward his eager mouth.

  “Thank you,” he said to his benefactor when he had finished the meal. His brain knew it had been a meager amount, but the handful of nuts and olives and bread filled his shrunken belly painfully full. The bowl of water had barely slaked his thirst—yet still it seemed like the best meal he had ever eaten.

  Somercotes inclined his head. “A small repast does a great deal to restore a man, does it not? More so, perhaps, than a banquet.”

  Rodrigo found a laugh in his chest, and he let it out as he eased himself against the wall, the straw-filled pallet beneath his legs. “I would have gorged myself,” he said. “I would have eaten like a starved dog until my stomach burst.”

  “Hunger sharpens a man’s spirit.”

  “And his curiosity,” Rodrigo noted. “Where am I? You called it—”

  “The Septizodium,” Somercotes supplied. “It’s an old pagan temple, devoted to a number of the old gods. The only virtue remaining in its walls is their thickness. It is a simple yet effective prison. One that has the added benefit of its obscurity.”

  “A prison? Why?”

  “To keep us focused, to keep our spirits and minds hungry. We are fed, as you can see, but many other comforts have been taken from us.” Somercotes smiled. “It stays hot. All this stone. The walls soak up the sun during the day, and it takes so very long for the heat to fade. Some of us have had some experience with fasting and prayer. Being sequestered isn’t that much of a hardship. But the heat? The heat will break all of our spirits eventually.” Somercotes shifted on his makeshift bench. “But as to why we are here, is that not self-evident to you?”

  Rodrigo shook his head. “Self-evident? No. Such truth is obscured both by these walls and the darkness in which I find myself.”

  Somercotes was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was much softer. Almost conspiratorial. “Why have you come to Rome?”

  “I have a message for the Pope,” Rodrigo said. “As well as news from the north.”

  “Which Pope?”

  “The Christian Pope. The only Pope there is—Gregory IX,” Rodrigo replied. “I don’t—”

  “Gregory is dead,” Somercotes interrupted. “There is no Pope in the Vatican.” He indicated the room around them. “And we are imprisoned here until we elect a successor.”

  6

  An Affable Excursion

  ANDREAS TOOK THREE of the Shield-Brethren initiates and went overland, eschewing horses in favor of being able to move more stealthily through the wooded terrain. Eilif had previously scouted the river that rambled across the fields north of the ruins of Koischwitz, and he led the squad to a low spot in the fields where the stream was shallow. The water was warm, and with their boots and gear clutched in their arms, they waded across.

  Squatting behind a scraggly hedge not far from a mound of burned timber, they dried off and donned their disguises. Over linen undershirts, they wore brigandines—sleeveless vests fitted with stiffened leather and thin plates of metal. They wouldn’t protect one’s vitals as well as a maille shirt, but they weren’t as bulky and made less noise. Over the armor, they wore loose gambesons and cloaks—the most threadbare and patchwork ones they could find among the brothers at the chapter house. Andreas opted for a fustian robe instead, one he had dragged through a fresh pile of horse shit before they had left, much to the dismay of the others. To further his disguise as a nomadic priest, he wore a wooden cross he had made earlier that morning from two pieces of wood, freshly cut from an ash branch, and a long leather cord.

  Eilif, Styg, and Maks had bows in addition to their arming swords and knives; Andreas tucked a knife into the belt
he wore under his robe, and since it would be difficult to draw the blade quickly should he need to protect himself, he also had a crooked walking stick. It was shorter and not as straight as he would have liked, but it was in keeping with his disguise.

  Once dressed, Andreas put his hand over his heart and gave a quick nod of farewell to the others. With a jaunty spring in his step and whistling a half-remembered Genoan sailing song, he strode off toward the hazy smudge on the southern horizon that was the tent city of Hünern. He walked like a man who did not care what lay behind him, and should he have looked, there would have been no sign of the others.

  They had vanished, like the morning mist under the gaze of the warm sun.

  It is going to be a warm day, Andreas noted as he walked. He could smell the pungent effluvium of the makeshift city already—the miasma of unwashed bodies, offal, fermenting ale, and cook fires rolling across the fields like a slow-moving wave.

  Moisture from the previous night’s rain darkened his robe as he walked through the weeds and brush, and the ground squelched here and there beneath his feet. The ground was only going to get muddier as he got closer, and he was reminded of the long walk up Mount Tabor more than a decade ago.

  It had been in the fall, a turning of the season that had been ushered in by a week of torrential rain. They would have all drowned in the mud had they not gained the high ground and taken the citadel. Was the rain a gift or a warning from God? the more pious of them had wondered.

  Andreas thought they worried too much about God’s design.

  Rutger, the grizzled quartermaster who oversaw the Shield-Brethren chapter house outside of Legnica, was one of those earnest thinkers. He had argued with Andreas for several hours last night about sending a party to Hünern. Andreas understood the man’s position; after all, it was the same rhetoric he had heard many times from the Electi at Petraathen. It was our duty to guard and protect, to take no side in a conflict.

  To be invisible.

  To what end? Andreas had asked. The answer had been hollow, empty words that had been repeated so often they had lost their meaning. To Andreas, the true answer had been clear enough, and he had not stayed in Petraathen overlong after his return from his pilgrimage. Perhaps it was his own wanderlust that put his feet on the road again, his own inexperience and youthful exuberance that made him yearn for the company of more open-minded men, and perhaps what drove him out was his hubris as well—his dissatisfaction with the concept of hiding as a viable defensive strategy.

  He had hoped that his northern brothers from Týrshammar were different, and he had been disappointed when he had arrived at the Legnica chapter house to find those who might have been like-minded had already left, gone on some secret mission.

  Rutger, to his credit, had shown that he could change his mind. Eventually.

  The other day, a messenger had arrived from Hünern, a young boy with two letters from a man who claimed to be a Flower Knight—an order of knights whom none of the Shield-Brethren had any familiarity with. The letters were conflicting, and as they learned from the boy, very likely the result of some mischief by the Grandmaster of the Fratres Militiae Christi Livoniae. One stated that Haakon, the young Shield-Brethren who had disappeared through the Red Veil in the arena following his victory, had been slain by the Mongols; the other asked for a meeting between the Shield-Brethren and the Flower Knight. Andreas’s argument with Rutger was that the Shield-Brethren needed to discern which was the true message—though it was not hard to guess which one was most likely crafted by the Livonians.

  Volquin, the last Heermeister of that order, had been an arrogant prick, and more than one flagon had been raised at Petraathen when they heard of the Livonian defeat at Schaulen. The death of any knight was a loss, but no one shed any tears when the Fratres Militiae Christi Livoniae were scattered. Andreas was no stranger to stupid brutality in leadership—he could list Cairo, Jerusalem, the assault on Mount Tabor, and at Cortenuova, even, as examples. In most cases, it was a wasteful tragedy when men were sent to their deaths by their ignoble commanders, but all of the knights serving Volquin had actually chosen to stay with the man. Their deaths were...just. And the Livonians, a blight upon the history of the martial fighting orders, had been dissolved.

  Or so they had thought.

  We cannot be blind, he had argued with Rutger. We have to know whom we face.

  And Rutger had finally acquiesced. Take three men, he had said. Find out their intent. Do not engage them.

  Of course not, Andreas had replied.

  * * *

  Shortly after wandering into the sprawling outskirts of the city that surrounded the Mongolian arena, Andreas spotted a grimy boy watching him. He was a scrawny lad, and he lacked a shirt—though, judging by the sun-darkened color of his skin, he was not concerned overmuch by its loss. Andreas first spotted him perched on a cracked rain barrel near a pair of tents that had once been blue; shortly thereafter, he saw the boy again, crouching behind a block of rubble next to a misshapen oven cobbled together from cracked brick and charred stone.

  Andreas bargained with a fruit vendor for a couple of apples, offering muddled Latin phrases and an exaggerated wave of his wooden cross as a blessing in exchange. The fruit was mealy and riddled with worm-sign, and he threw one of the apples at the boy, who snatched it from the air like a bear grabbing a fish from a river. As soon as the boy had devoured the fruit, Andreas held up the other apple and beckoned the youth over.

  “I’m looking for a boy,” he said. “His name is Hans.”

  The boy scratched his head and shrugged, seemingly unable to understand the Shield-Brother’s Latin. His eyes flicked back and forth, though, betraying him. When he reached for the second apple, Andreas tucked his hand into his sleeve, making the fruit disappear. “I want to find Hans,” he said. “Help me, and then you can have the apple.”

  The boy chattered at him in some pidgin tongue that was part German, part Latin, and a scramble of something that Andreas assumed was the Mongolian tongue.

  It was possible the boy didn’t know whom Andreas was talking about, but the lad reminded him of the youth who had come out to their chapter house. There was an alert watchfulness in his expression, and even as scrawny and ill fed as he appeared, he wasn’t afraid—a sort of brusque defiance that Andreas read as ownership. They might be orphans, but this was their city. If this boy didn’t know Hans personally, he knew someone who would.

  “Hans,” Andreas said one more time, and he flicked the tip of his staff, catching the boy in the shin. “Now.”

  The boy hopped back, clutching at his ankle. He howled at Andreas, his face screwing up in an overblown rictus of pain and anger. Andreas shrugged; adjusting his sleeve to reveal the apple, he brought it up to his mouth and made to take a large bite.

  “No! No!” The boy changed his mind, and his hands were now entreating Andreas to stop. “Hans,” he said, nodding, when Andreas lowered the apple. He took off, sprinting down the muddy street.

  Andreas smiled and looked over his shoulder. Maks was arguing with the same fruit vendor he had gotten the apples from. There was no sign of Eilif or Styg, but he knew they were nearby.

  Andreas wandered on, no real destination in mind. There were three matters he sought to accomplish on his jaunt into the city, and making contact with Hans was the most critical. The boy would provide him intelligence about Hünern, and thus educated, he could complete his other tasks. Until he made contact with Hans, he wanted to get his own sense of the city.

  The battle of Legnickie Pole had taken place just a few months ago, and Duke Henry’s army had been broken and scattered. The orders had lost men too; more than a hundred Templar and Hospitaller knights had fallen. It had been a slaughter, a brutal decimation that should have left a permanent stain on the landscape. And yet, not more than a few verst away, a gladiatorial arena had been erected, and to it had flocked tens—if not hundreds—of combatants, all eager to prove themselves against each other and the most relent
less force Christendom had ever seen.

  They came willingly, filled with that same burning zeal he had seen time and again on the ships bound for the Levant. They wanted so badly to take up arms against the foreign devils who had invaded their homelands. They knew there was no hope on the field of battle—the piles of skulls outside the walls of Legnica were a constant reminder of that fact—and yet they came anyway.

  Andreas could remember that incendiary desire to fight, to rage against a world that seemed to have been forgotten by God, to raise a sword against an enemy that seemed to be both faceless and everywhere. To slice, to cut, to kick, to bite—to blindly lash at the very existence that inflicted so much pain.

  Nothing ever changes, does it? he mused. We fall into this world, and all we do for the duration of our miserable lives is fight. He touched the ragged cross that swung on the cord around his neck. What else do we know how to do?

  * * *

  When the scrawny boy returned, he attempted to haggle with Andreas over the terms of their deal. Apple first, he had insisted, then Hans. When Andreas laughed and stood firm, the boy had screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue. But he relented, beckoning for Andreas to follow him.

  The boy led him down a narrow alley filled with vats of fermenting ale. Brewers, wearing aprons and gloves stained with their work, glared as Andreas passed. He was both an outsider and a priest as they saw him—doubly unwelcome—and the only reason they didn’t run him off was because of his escort. The boy ducked under an ash-streaked tarp that was stretched over a frame of rough-cut lumber, beckoning with a pale arm for Andreas to follow.

  Warily, Andreas lifted the edge of the tarp with his stick. Beyond was a narrow space—stark in its emptiness and open to the sky at the top. A tree stood in the center, though it was so strangely twisted and warped that Andreas could not tell if it aspired to provide shade with its foliage—should it ever grow any—or if it was a nut-bearing tree that had already shed its leaves in preparation for winter. Scattered around its lumpy roots were scraps of wool and linen—blankets, Andreas realized, as he spotted a boy with a face streaked with mud and ash sleeping with his mouth open under a haphazard bundle.