The Mongoliad: Book One

by Neal Stephenson

  Breathe. Let energy in; push it out again. You are not a rock.

  The demon—nay, it must be a man—halted near the center of the arena. In its—his—right hand was a pole, half again as long as the demon was tall, tipped with a single-edged blade.

  The noise lessened. Haakon thought he had gone deaf, that he had passed into that void of combat that came before death, where one’s self vanished into a broad ocean of awareness. Fate-sight, Feronantus called it, an excruciating sense of mortality tempered by unwavering sensitivity, a revolving awareness of field and enemy, surrounded by darkness.

  But that wasn’t the case. He could still hear his labored breathing, could still feel his heart pumping blood fiercely through his body. He was still very much in his own skin; it was the rest of the world that had fallen silent.

  The demon had not moved, but the audience had abruptly cut off their collective buzzing roar. From far away, Haakon heard a cry like a baby’s wail, and part of him wondered how a baby could still be alive after what he had seen before the walls of Legnica. More likely it was the cry of some bird.

  But as if that cry were his signal, the demon moved—but not into a combat stance.

  Instead he bowed, a short inclination of his upper body, and from there, with one graceful motion, he shifted his left foot back and lifted the pole. Couched across his body, the glaive now pointed straight at Haakon, sunlight reflecting from its bright blade.

  The demon’s brief bow was so incongruous, so against the threat of his frightening raiment, that Haakon took a half step back. Of a certes, a man, disguised as a demon. Several realizations followed in a clumsy rush: first, his opponent came from a cultured place where people had manners; second, they hewed to their manners even before fighting, suggesting that ritual combat was an established practice.

  Third, this was not a good sign.

  He’s waiting, Haakon realized, wondering if his opponent thought him such a fool that he would initiate an attack against that pole sword. I am not, he thought. With a fluid motion, he responded with a proper bow, planting a leg well in front of him so that the weight of his coat of mail would not simply jerk him face-first into the ground.

  When he heaved himself back up again, he noted the opponent looking at him with what he guessed was curiosity. And why not? While he wasn’t as gaudily dressed, Haakon’s armor was more complex than that of your average infantryman. He had left off several of the extra pieces that were meant to keep a knight alive in the chaotic melee of the battlefield.

  The demon knows, Haakon realized. He’s seen armor like this before. His eye went naturally to the blade attached to the end of the pole; it had an edge on only one side, tapering from a thickened spine that doubtless gave it strength and stiffness. The blade’s curve suggested it would be most effective when accompanied by a drawing or pushing movement, just as a butcher uses when slicing meat. Such attacks worked best against unarmored targets, but the pole’s extra reach and heft made the blade dangerous to armored men as well.

  Most of the techniques that Haakon knew were useless against such a weapon. Haakon’s greatsword was symmetrical and double-edged. Brother Rutger had recommended the tried-and-true method: a short sword in the right hand and a shield on the left arm. If it was good enough for the Romans and good enough for your Viking forefathers—

  The demon let out a bloodcurdling shriek. Even though his mask muffled his voice, the cry was so sudden, so shocking, that Haakon felt like he had been struck by lightning. His muscles jumped, and instinctively he fell back a step as the demon lunged forward. The long blade of the glaive snapped past him, and with a flick of his wrists, the demon whirled the pole in a tight circle. The blade seemed to jump sideways, coming right for his face even though his passing step back had turned his body sideways.

  Haakon threw up his sword, and he heard rather than felt the impact, a grating clang of steel against steel. The demon had struck him with the flat of the blade—a slap more than a slice—and before Haakon could react, the blade was gone.

  A test, Haakon realized as the demon stepped carefully across the sand, whirling his pole in short, deadly circles. Each pass of the blade was in a different place—first high, then low, then high, then in the middle. Haakon wasn’t about to stand his ground against one of them. The slapping attack hadn’t been that focused. Had it been, it would have smashed through his frantic parry. These strikes, while not as fast as the demon’s initial attack, all carried the demon’s full strength. His sword wasn’t strong enough to bear the brunt of a hard swing.

  Zugaikotsu no Yama waited. Not for the Western knight to ready himself after his perfunctory—and somewhat stiff—bow. Not because he was concerned about the man’s armor. Head, shoulders, chest, legs, feet—the Western knight was covered from the crown of his head to the soles of his boots in metal. Zug waited for the sound, the horrible, tearing noise that would spring from somewhere deep within his bag of flesh. That exhalation of grief and rage that never seemed to die.

  The kiai.

  The shout flew violently out of his mouth, rattling his mask. It signified an awakening within him, a sudden birthing of desire and anger. The shout brought life to his limbs, and in the wake of the cry came the muscle memory, the knowledge of what to do, how to fight, how to kill.

  He thrust the skull-maker, and when the knight turned away from his attack, he almost laughed at his opponent’s naïveté. His hands twitched, flicking the flat of his long blade toward the knight’s armored face.

  It would be easy to kill him now, but it was too soon. He circled the frightened knight, letting the skull-maker play for a little while with a complex series of strikes and feints.

  His opponent was cautious, staying out of his blade’s reach, and Zug found himself breathing a little quicker, a little harder.

  Perhaps he was not as clumsy as he first appeared…

  The demon’s blade arced past Haakon, another swing that came up short. He knows his range, so why is he pulling back? The next swing was low, but still short. Haakon only had to slide his left foot back a span to be out of range. He wants me to close the distance. The feints were meant to lull Haakon into thinking he no longer needed to flee the flashing blade.

  Haakon slid his left foot forward as he raised his sword—point high, edge toward the incoming pole-arm. His stomach tightened, a warm ball of force coalescing in his body. He kept his eyes locked on the demon’s wild mask; he didn’t need to watch the blade coming. The sunlight shining off it would blind him anyway. He knew where it was going to be.

  If his opponent was wielding a sword, he was in position for a good crossing of the blades, but against the glaive, such a position was a mistake. He couldn’t stop a full swing with that guard. If he was a full step closer, he wouldn’t even be able to deflect it; the blow would come right through his defense and bite deep into his head or neck.

  But he wasn’t that close. As the blades struck each other, he relaxed his grip, yielding to the demon’s attack. The momentum imparted to his sword allowed him to twist his wrists and flick his blade forward toward the demon’s head.

  Haakon’s sword point fell short of its target, and the demon, having read the measure correctly, did nothing to stop Haakon’s strike. He pulled his blade back and, with a twist of his body, brought it around again in another sweep.

  The demon’s motion brought him incrementally closer to Haakon. As the pole-arm flashed toward him, Haakon took one more step, jerking his sword up so that the blade smacked against the palm of his left hand.

  You never withdraw when you’ve broken the bind. Taran had drilled them relentlessly. A warrior doesn’t flee from a fight. He closes to finish it. Had Haakon been fighting one of his fellow Brethren, they would not have withdrawn their blade from the first contact. They would not have given him the opportunity to go to half sword.

  He braced his sword in both hands and took the demon’s swing. The shock of the blow traveled down his arms, but Haakon let it go. The ene
rgy ran through his chest and legs until it left his body through his right heel.

  He felt the difference—wood against metal. His blade against the shaft of the pole-arm. Inside his range.

  Haakon brought the pommel of his sword down. Much like running his hand along a flat wall, he could feel the demon’s weapon plainly against his sword blade. Using the wooden shaft of the pole-arm as an axis, he performed a complicated finishing technique: levering his weapon so that the hilt could hook around his opponent’s hands, tangling the other’s weapon, and snapping the point of his sword forward with his left hand.

  The demon pulled his head back, avoiding Haakon’s sword point, but all that accomplished was to give Haakon enough room to line up perfectly for a short thrust.

  The demon fled from the unexpected thrust with an almost dainty back step and twirl. He had to let go of his pole with one hand in order to extricate himself from Haakon’s hilt, and as he retreated, the pole-arm dragged behind him, a long tail flapping against the dirt.

  For a second, the demon’s back was turned to Haakon. Desperately, he shifted his hands to a two-handed grip and let loose with the sort of flailing strike one expected from a boy when he first picked up a sword. If it connected, he told himself, pride wouldn’t matter.

  Remember the first rule: do not die.

  The swing missed, and as Haakon recovered for another attack, the demon pivoted and snapped his pole-arm back up.

  Sword and blade connected. They stared at one another: Haakon, with his sword half extended toward his opponent; the demon, crouching as if he were making ready to spring. The pole-arm was pointed up, its blade scraping against the crossguard of Haakon’s sword.

  In the moment where they sized each other up, Haakon became aware of the shouts coming from the audience. By now, he realized, the rabble who lined the arena had seen enough to handicap the opponents, choose up sides, and lay wagers. They were cheering accordingly, and some were calling out, “Che-val-ier! Che-val-ier!” Had he not been so distracted, he’d have enjoyed a laugh over the idea that he, a monk descended from Nordic fishermen, had been mistaken for a knight of the Crusades.

  The remainder screamed out, “Zug! Zug! Zug!”

  The skull-maker wanted blood, wanted to feel bones and flesh separating before its shiny blade. It pulled at Zug, and he had to follow its desire.

  But he knew a mistake had been made.

  As the pole-arm—the naginata—whirled around for should have been the final stroke against the armored knight, Zug felt like a stone falling from a great height. When the knight’s sword connected with the wooden shaft of the pole-arm, a shock went through his body. He gasped, suddenly conscious of the constricting weight of his armor, of how difficult it was to breathe in his mask. Sweat ran down his back, and it felt like claws raking his flesh. His bowels trembled, and he nearly lost control of his bladder.

  Suddenly aware, like being jerked out of a deep sleep.

  Sunlight shivered off the knight’s helm, and Zug squinted against the glare, pulling his head back as his opponent moved closer. Distantly, like the sensation of wind-blown rain sluicing across the felt roof of a ger, he felt the knight’s blade slide along the pole in his hands.

  The knight’s hands came down, metal fingers wrapped around a plain pommel, and a point of metal danced in front of his face.

  Zug hissed. His body responded slowly—the way a boat turns on a placid lake when its occupant has no oars. He had been gone too long, lost in his mind, and the flesh had become a slave to other masters: the crowd, the skull-maker, the arkhi. He had become nothing more than a ghost.

  Not yet, he thought. The naginata’s blade dragged on the ground as he retreated from the knight’s thrust. I am not a ghost.

  His hands tightened on the shaft of the pole-arm, and he knew where his feet were. The skull-maker sang as he snapped it up. The knight was close behind him…

  Haakon spotted a tiny movement of the demon’s—Zug’s—forward leg as the other man shifted his center of gravity. The motion gave away Zug’s intent; he had settled too far into his guard, and now he had to shift his weight before he could execute his next attack.

  Even before Zug started to move the pole-arm, Haakon was already moving. He lunged forward, keeping his blade in contact with the pole-arm. As his blade slide down onto the wooden shaft, he lifted his elbows and locked the shaft between his blade and crossguard. Zug couldn’t extricate his weapon, and as Haakon took another step forward—flee toward danger!—he forced the pole-arm up. With a flick of his wrists, he rotated his sword around the pole-arm and clasped the blade with his left hand again.

  He wasn’t close enough for the half-sword thrust to be deadly, but the move was a replay of a few moments ago. Haakon hoped the repetition would break Zug’s concentration for a second or two as the other man tried to second-guess Haakon’s intention. Would Zug think he was foolish enough to try for the hilt snare again?

  Haakon closed, rolling his sword around the pole-arm so that his arms reversed their position. His point was no longer in Zug’s face, but he was still inside the reach of the pole-arm’s blade.

  With a sharp motion, he snapped his hilt toward the triangular opening behind Zug’s left forearm. It was a similar lock to the snare he had just used, but his target was different. Brother Rutger liked this technique: tangling the other warrior’s arm with the hilt of his own blade before he stepped in and stripped the weapon free. Haakon doubted he could get the pole-arm from Zug—the technique worked best with shorter weapons—but at this range, the pole-arm was about as dangerous as a willow switch.

  Zug was not to be entangled a second time, and his hand darted out, seizing Haakon’s hilt before the lock could be completed. His response wasn’t unexpected; Haakon would have been surprised if the other man’s martial arts didn’t include close-quarters fighting techniques. As Zug pulled at his sword, he let go of his blade with his off hand, grabbing at the shaft of the pole-arm. Zug was caught in a tug-of-war, trying to retain his pole with one hand, jerking the heavy sword from Haakon with the other.

  This divided his energy. Haakon could feel his focus smearing, two flows going in different directions. And right there, in the middle, was a swirling mass of confused energy. Without thinking, Haakon did something Brother Rutger never would have done, something that, if he took the time to fully consider the implications, he never would have done either.

  Haakon let go of his sword, grabbed Zug’s pole-arm, and heaved upward.

  Zug grunted as the lower length of the pole sword slammed into his groin. His stance had been too deep, and during their tussle, the pole had drifted between his legs.

  Haakon was much taller, and he put all the strength of his legs into the dead lift. He had no idea what sort of armor Zug kept down there, but if it was anything like his own, it wasn’t much. Hardly a killing blow, but no man liked getting hit between the legs.

  He lifted hard, twice.

  Zug was either armored down below or Haakon had missed, as the demon-faced man barely shivered and then recovered quickly. He cast Haakon’s sword aside and went for his own blade, the short one in the scabbard at his waist.

  Haakon swept his left leg back, pivoting around his right hip. He twisted his wrists out, trying to throw Zug to the ground, with the pole high and hard between his legs. Zug was still hanging on to the pole as well, his hand firmly in place below Haakon’s.

  Zug jabbed at him with the short sword, quick stabs that slid ineffectively off the metal of his bracers. Eventually, though, Zug would get the point behind Haakon’s breastplate.

  He needed to break this impasse, but what could he do? He had given up his sword. He had his opponent’s weapon, but it was still tangled up by Zug’s legs and hand. What else could he use? His dagger was at the small of his back, and he didn’t dare let go of the pole-arm to reach for it.

  Zug tried to twist around the pole, bending like a snake, and Haakon felt something tear in his side. Zug had found his ma
il.

  Keep your head, Taran admonished him. Focus.

  Haakon stared at Zug’s frozen mask; this close he could see that it wasn’t metal. Zug exhaled noisily as he ground his point against the chain of Haakon’s mail, and even with the mask obscuring his face, Haakon could smell the foul odor of his breath.

  Arkhi. An alcoholic drink the Mongolians favored.

  Zug had been drunk recently. He might even still be drunk, which meant his reflexes were impaired and his balance was off.

  Keep it simple, Taran suggested.

  Haakon snapped his head and helm forward, tucking his chin so that the brunt of the blow came from the hard metal ridge that protected his forehead. The blow landed true; Zug’s head jerked back violently, a grunt of pain escaping from beneath the helmet and crest. But the blow did not knock him senseless. It shoved him off balance. As Zug tried to recover, Haakon shoved him firmly. Zug staggered back, and Haakon kept his grip firm on the pole-arm.

  As he found his balance and sank into a stance, he twirled the weapon around until the blade pointed at his enemy.

  The spectators laughed and shrieked with merriment over this sensational turn of events. Haakon remembered that there was a crowd. And suddenly, just like that, he was out of the fight, aware that he had forgotten to breathe, that his heart was going so fast it felt more like a shivering in the chest than a beat, that sweat was gushing out of him. He realized he was closer to the wall than he wanted to be, and he sidestepped toward the center of the arena.

  Zug put his hands to his helmet, repositioning it on his face. The top edge of his mask had been crushed, and one of the tall spires drooped. Sun fell through a gap between the demon helm and a neck frill of shining black.