“How little you truly know, Feronantus,” Kristaps laughed.
“I know that, even outnumbering us thrice over, you are not sure that you can defeat us in combat,” Feronantus said quietly. “I know that my knight could put a single arrow through two of your men right now because they don’t know enough to not stand in a row. I know that some of the men on your left flank are terrified of what is going to happen when the knight behind me draws that enormous sword of his. And I know that at least one of your number is going to faint when I say that not only does this man”—he inclined his head toward Istvan—“eat human flesh, but so does his horse…”
Kristaps twitched—only slightly—when two of his men fell to the ground. The Livonian tried to hide his loss of composure with a mighty sneer, but to Cnán, his expression looked more pained than fierce. “You and your…degenerate barbarians…are not worth dirtying my steel,” he snarled.
“Nor you mine,” Feronantus answered. “Run along, Kristaps.”
“Next time—”
“Next time, you will be dead before you finish your threat,” Feronantus barked, driving Kristaps to silence with the veritable thunder of his voice.
The Livonian snapped his mouth shut, and his lips stretched across his teeth in a grimace. With a jerk of his head, he gave his men the signal to retreat. They milled about, uncertain if they should turn and flee or simply back slowly from the mounted Shield-Brethren. The two men who had fallen were left behind momentarily until Kristaps gestured angrily that they should be collected. Once the Livonians were all moving—the dazed pair being dragged by their arms—they appeared to remember how to conduct themselves and formed a more orderly procession up the slope.
Kristaps lingered, glowering at Feronantus, but when Yasper could no longer hold his amusement in check and let loose a great peal of laughter, the Livonian hurled a final curse at the company and stormed away.
Rædwulf lowered his bow and joined Yasper and Eleázar in boisterous and polyphonic revelry. Istvan stood in his stirrups and mocked the retreating knights loudly, shouting at them as if they were a herd of frightened sheep.
Feronantus did not join in the persiflage of the fleeing Livonians. He watched the retreating knights with a calm intensity, as if there were clues to some mystery that could be gleaned from their departure.
“Who are they?” Cnán asked. Now that the threat of violence was passed, all that remained was a lingering apprehension. How could they expect to undo the might of the Mongolian Horde if the Shield-Brethren’s old enemies were sprouting from the earth wherever they traveled?
“The Livonian Brothers of the Sword,” Feronantus answered softly. “Though they have not worn that sigil for more than five years. Most of their number were killed in a battle—at a place called Schaulen. A battle that could have been avoided. The pitiful few who survived were taken in by the Teutonic Knights, where they adopted a different livery.”
“Were you there?” Cnán asked, surprised by her own curiosity.
Feronantus gave her no answer.
“I know him,” Eleázar said, joining their vigil. “Years ago I was witness to the aftermath of his butchery.” He leaned over and spat noisily. “What are they doing here? The Livonians tried once before to conquer the northern lands and failed. And they had many more men than now.”
“I do not know,” Feronantus replied. “This bunch, though they dress like the Brothers of the Sword, have not worn the red long…”
The two senseless Livonians had been revived, and the armed party had managed to form a unit as they snaked up the narrow path. When they reached the gate, they stumbled to a clumsy halt, as if they were not quite sure what came next. Faintly Cnán heard Kristaps’s voice, and while he was too distant for her to understand the individual words, it sounded as if he were announcing his presence and not presenting a challenge to those who resided within the walls.
In response to his cry, the gate shuddered and then opened. Keeping their formation, the Livonians proceeded, disappearing through the gate, which promptly closed once more behind them.
“I…I thought they were chasing those men,” Cnán said, trying to make sense of what she had seen.
“Apparently not,” Yasper offered, scratching his chin.
“Cnán…” Feronantus turned to her. “You are the softest of foot amongst us, as well as the lightest. You and Finn.” He nodded toward the buildings at the peak of the hill. “Set your eyes upon the interior of that wall and tell us what the Livonians are doing.
“I was the one who suggested they were chasing those beggars, and in doing so, I betrayed our ignorance as to the Livonians’ true mission. As much as Kristaps desired to engage us, he had a more urgent matter to contend with. A holy mission, he claimed, and I fear he was not speaking lightly.” He waved his hand. “Quickly. We must discern what they are about.”
CHAPTER 31:
DANGEROUS BEAUTY
The palace grounds flooded with music, dozens of melodies collapsing into one ear-ringing, chest-pounding sound. There was the constant clash of cymbals and piercing chime of bells, overlaid with the mad piping and bellowing of horns and flutes and the screeching of sinew-stringed fiddles. Singers too, giving voice to so many different songs that one could only catch fragments of verses at a time—heroic epics, songs of praise for the heavens and the mountains and the Khagan, short ribald tunes sung in a drunken roister, and low, droning throat singing. And beneath all that the steady beat of great drums, like a heartbeat, like the whole palace had become one giant body and all the revelers were the blood in its veins.
Cups of wine were shoved in Lian’s face as she tried to thread her way through the revelers that packed the eastern courtyard to overflowing. Fire pits blazed with such reckless ferocity that she steered well clear, frightened by the way the flames capered and gestured, seductive fingers summoning the drunk and the addled into a fiery embrace. The air was odoriferous with spices, both familiar and exotic, all so mouth-wateringly fragrant that she no longer had the strength to resist when a woman thrust a reed basket filled with warm flatbread at her. Lian dropped a few coins into her hands and accepted a still warm disk in return. She bit into the soft flatbread with relish, savoring the sweet heat of baked onions on her tongue.
She wolfed down the bread, sating a hunger she had refused to acknowledge, and once the bread was gone, she returned her attention to her immediate goal. The celebration was a marvelous spectacle, attracting visitors from across the empire and beyond. It was an endless party that would span many days, and at some point during this chaotic carousal, she might be able to escape.
Slipping out of the palace had been, as always, simple. All she had to do was walk behind any group of concubines or servant girls, or use one of the many unguarded side passages, a trick she had done on occasion when she wished to enjoy some solitude—a threadbare illusion of freedom. Actually escaping the city, however, was much harder.
She had tried to escape once before, very early in her captivity. Naively she had thought it would have been fairly easy to secure passage on a caravan, and once the wagons had left the city, she would vanish. But on the second day of their journey, an arban of the Khagan’s Torguud had surrounded the caravan, demanding her return. Back to the gilded cage of Karakorum.
After that, Master Chucai was much more vigilant. She was a valuable prize, after all, one he had spent considerable time and expense shaping into a useful tool. He could not watch her himself—his duties to the Khagan kept him otherwise occupied, of course—but he could keep himself appraised of her activities. She had to report to him every morning and evening, detailing the list of her lessons and engagements since their last meeting; she knew some of the serving staff were his spies within the palace (she took care to figure out which staff were the most likely suspects), and the concubines were altogether too gossipy. On the rare occasion when she was waylaid by an assignation, she found he already knew when she hurried to tell him.
She—l
ike everyone else within the confines of the walls of Karakorum—was supposed to live in constant awareness that Chucai knew everything that went on at court. What hope could she have for escape if there was no way that she could move about the palace and its grounds without Chucai knowing? Even if she did manage to slip out of the city, how much of a head start would she get before Chucai sent the Khagan’s best trackers after her?
The open steppe wasn’t open enough to hide her. She needed to utterly vanish. She couldn’t rely on some caravan or trader to spirit her away. She had to disappear on her own, at such a time and in such a way that there would be enough confusion about her disappearance that she might get far enough away.
The festival was her chance. If she could use the chaos and confusion of the celebration to muddy her trail, it might be impossible for Master Chucai and his trackers to work out her escape route once they finally realized she was gone.
Part of her wanted to just walk out the front gates of the palace. To take nothing with her. To simply leave. But she knew it wouldn’t be that easy. She had to have a plan. She had to get a sense of the routines of the guards, of the ebb and flow of the crowds.
Wrapping her thin cloak more tightly around herself, Lian made her way through the crowded courtyard toward the gate. More than once, she wished she were taller. She could barely see the gilded dragons that festooned the top of the faux-Chinese barrier that was her destination. But being taller would also attract attention…
A constant flood of people streamed in, jostling and crowding in their rush to join the revelry in the palace. Lian was pressed against the flow of the crowd, bounced around like a leaf on a river swollen with mountain runoff. Elbows and shoulders poked and slammed her body, and she tried to protect herself as best she could. Some men took advantage of the mob to grope at her, and one of them, big and pale and hairy beneath black furs—Ruthenian, judging by the coarse sound of his words—waggled his bushy eyebrows at her as he accidentally pressed his body against her. She turned her head, trying to avoid the stinking cloud of his breath and, in return, sharply elevated her knee as she pushed past him. The Ruthenian doubled over, his breath huffing out, and then the crowd swallowed him as if he had never existed.
An eddy formed in the mob, and enough space opened that she could see the gates clearly. Her heart sank. A trio of guards stood at stiff attention on each side, and the six men scanned the faces of the crowd coming and going with hawk-like intensity. If she put the hood of her cloak up, she would only draw attention to herself and thusly be remembered.
Chucai’s eyes were everywhere. He would know.
One of the guards looked in her direction and she quickly turned away, her hands tugging at the neck of her cloak—fighting the urge to pull up the hood. Her pulse roared in her ears.
It had been a faint hope that the main gate wouldn’t be well guarded, and she hadn’t been surprised to see the vigilant guards. She had needed to silence that part of her that dreamed of an easy escape. It will be difficult, she thought to herself. I have to be steadfast. Otherwise I might as well confess everything to Chucai. I might as well give up.
There had to be other routes—the palace walls, for one. They were not that high. Gansukh—and the thief—had climbed them that night weeks ago; perhaps she could too. She let the next surge in the crowd carry her back toward the palace, slipping away at the first chance into an alley behind a white-painted stone house.
The celebration faded, the crowd’s cacophony dulling to persistent grumbling, the wild light of the fire pits dimming to pale flickering tongues of light dancing along the edges of the roof tiles. She leaned against the wall of the house, letting her eyes adjust to the shadow-filled alley. It was three times as wide as she, the stones dusty with accumulated sand, and the wall of the house was plain stone, featureless save for small window slits. There was nothing to help her scale the outer wall here, but as she started to explore the alley, she noticed a small handcart resting against the rear wall of the next house over. If she stood on it, she might be able to grip the top of the palace wall.
As she passed the corner of the first house, a man’s boisterous, drunken laughter startled her. She ducked back into the alley and pressed herself against the wall. Once her heart stopped pounding, she sidled up to the corner and peeked around.
There, in a small space between the two houses, squatted a trio of soldiers, rolling knucklebones in the dust and swigging from earthenware bottles. Their faces were weather-beaten and scarred.
One of them glanced in her direction, and she tried to duck back out of sight without being spotted, but she knew, even before she heard him call out to his companions, that she hadn’t been successful. “Don’t be shy,” one of the men shouted in wine-fueled good fellowship. “Come on over here.” His words were followed by peals of laughter from the others.
Instinct told her to run, but cold, pessimistic reason told her that running would dare them to pursue her. She understood in that instant what men most loved in hunting—the chase. They wanted their prey to flee, to show spirit—to challenge their skill. Their drunken skill…
Her lips curled and she drew in her breath.
Instead of running, she smoothed her robe, pushed her hair back from her face, and stepped boldly out from her hiding place. She walked toward the men, smiling demurely, but making sure to make firm eye contact—glazed and wandering as all their eyes were—with each of them.
“Well, a pretty Chinese doll,” smirked the one who had spotted her. He grinned, yellowed teeth dull in the flickering light.
“What are you doing back here, girl?” asked another. “Something we could assist you with?”
“I was merely taking a shortcut to bypass the crowd,” she said.
“A shortcut? Where to?” The first soldier staggered closer, and she feared he might try to grab her robe.
“It is none of your concern.” She held her chin high, trying to appear haughty and noble.
“Maybe you don’t have any place in mind,” suggested the third soldier, a man who looked and smelled as if he never bathed in his life. “Maybe you should stay with us. Tarry a while. Try your luck with the bones. And my bones…” He wiggled his fingers suggestively and laughed—awful and snorting.
“Come on, doll, stay a while. We’ll treat you good. Have a drink with us.” The second soldier held up one of the reddish-brown bottles. Lian gagged slightly as she imagined what fermented animal sludge might be inside.
“I am not a cheap whore,” she said, offering them the obvious in case they were too drunk to notice. “I belong to a rather august person, one who has the Khagan’s ear.” She intoned each word carefully. There was a way to extricate herself from this situation, if she could find the right gambit. Wasn’t she always telling Gansukh something similar? There is always a solution to any problem. However, she didn’t want to invoke Chucai’s name; that would be the equivalent of summoning him.
“Do you think the Khagan would be pleased to know you men are not at your posts? That you are gambling in this back alley?” Since she had begun training Gansukh, she found herself starting to think of conversation in terms of combat. It gave her rhetorical victories a certain rousing flair. She snapped the edge of her cloak, as if to suggest their presence was dirtying her, which was not far from the truth.
“Who’s to say that we’re even on duty?” The second soldier stood up, the humor fading from his face. A scar ran across his chin, and without his open-mouthed grin, he was even uglier. His face, with its wandering, half-sunken eyes, looked like the puffed-up visage of a poorly treated corpse.
“I doubt you even know what duty is,” she retorted. A risky response—such flippancy of the tongue—and it might provoke them, but showing fear would invite a response. Half of combat is causing your opponent to think you are stronger than you are, Gansukh had told her.
Scarface’s expression tightened, making his mouth gape even more. “Sharp tongue,” he said, his hand dropping to the h
ilt of the knife in his sash.
“Sharper than your knife,” she retorted, edging a step backward.
“Shall we see?” the man replied, half pulling his knife from its sheath.
“And then what?” she snapped. “Will you gouge out my eyes so that I won’t be able to point you out later to the Khagan’s Imperial Guard? Or will you just cut my throat and leave me here for the stray dogs to find?”
The man paused, her words cutting through the alcohol-suffused fog in his brain. His tongue poked at the edge of his lips, like a pale worm peeking out of a ragged crack in the ground. He glanced at his companions, who were no longer supporting him with their laughter.
“I can scream very loud,” Lian said. She made a show of inhaling deeply.
“Run along, bitch,” Scarface spat. He slammed his knife back into its sheath. The others glowered at her, their mood dark, but no longer ugly.
“Very well. I will take my leave of you, then.” She bowed slightly, keeping to her masquerade as a highly regarded companion of an important official. “If I pass this way again tonight, I hope I do not see you here.” She marched off, her steps a firm, rhythmic mince, miming a purpose she did not feel.
“Better you don’t pass this away again,” Scarface shouted after her. “Next time, it will cost you.” The men laughed, prompted by some physical action of Scarface’s, but she didn’t look to see what it was. She had a fairly good idea.
Let them laugh, she thought as she strode away. Let them think they got the better of me. Most importantly, let them not remember me.
The chaos of the festival might make it possible for her to escape, but it had its risks too. An unescorted female might be too much of an allure to drunken men. In the tumult of revelry, it wouldn’t matter if she was seen by someone who would tell Chucai. Much worse things could happen to her.
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