Katabasis (The Mongoliad Cycle, Book 4)

by Joseph Brassey

  Gansukh slid off the left side of his horse, hoping to reduce the directions from which he could be attacked. After checking to his left, he peered under his horse’s belly. He saw nothing but brush and snow. And fog. It was too thick. The wolves’ ambush had been exposed; now they were keeping their distance.

  Alchiq swore loudly, and Gansukh glanced over, peering around the withers of his horse. The older man stood, a bloody wolf corpse at his feet. There was blood on his chest and arm, but it didn’t look like his.

  Something grabbed at his left foot, and Gansukh lost his balance, leaning against his horse for support. Instinctively, he pulled his foot in, and whatever held it let go. He swept his bow around in a wide arc as he turned, and he caught sight of an all-white wolf darting out of reach. The beast lunged at him, and he jammed his bow between his body and the animal. The wolf snapped its jaw shut, its teeth closing a mere finger’s width from his arm, and he smacked it across the snout with his bow.

  The white wolf retreated but not very far. It crouched low to the ground, its teeth bared, a low growl rising from its throat. Alchiq yelled behind him, issuing a challenge to the wolves, who answered with angry calls of their own. Gansukh’s horse stamped its hooves and he kept his back pressed against its flank to prevent another wolf from flanking him.

  Gansukh watched the white wolf carefully, and when its front shoulders bunched, he raised his bow and drew the string back in a fluid motion. The wolf jumped as his bowstring sang, and he dropped his bow, reaching for the knife in his belt. The wolf slammed into him. Gansukh pulled his head back to avoid the sharp teeth as he fumbled for the hilt of his knife. He shoved his left forearm under the beast’s chin, and he could feel the wolf’s hot breath on his cheek as the beast tried to bite his face. His knife came free from his belt and he stabbed upward. The blade went deep, and the wolf barked in pain and wiggled away. He lost his grip on his knife.

  His horse, spotting the blood on the snow, tried to bludgeon the injured wolf with its hooves, but the wolf darted beneath the horse, threading its way through the stomping hooves. Gansukh tried to dodge his angry horse while keeping an eye on the fleeing wolf. A bloody smear indicated in which direction the animal had fled, and Gansukh lumbered after it. He caught sight of it, struggling to get through a line of brush. The hilt of his knife, protruding from its chest, caught on the bare branches. The wolf twisted and flexed, snapping at the knife hilt, and Gansukh fell upon it heavily, reaching easily for the slippery hilt. He shoved the blade further into the beast and twisted the blade, getting a good grip on the hilt. He yanked the knife free and blood flew in wild arcs, painting the snow with thin crimson lines. The wolf collapsed.

  It was only then that he realized his arrow had not struck the wolf. Slightly puzzled by how he had missed—the wolf had been less than three paces from him—he pushed up from the dead animal and staggered back toward the pair of horses and Alchiq.

  The horses stood nearly shoulder to shoulder, still unsure which way to run, and Gansukh gave them a wide berth. He was sticky with wolf blood, and he didn’t want to spook them any more than they already were. He found Alchiq standing near two wolf corpses, his short sword in his left hand, his right covered with blood that trickled steadily onto the snow.

  Alchiq sensed his presence and spun around, his sword raised, but he lowered it when he recognized Gansukh. He was breathing heavily, and there were several deep scratches on his left cheek. “Wolves,” he said, gesturing with his sword to the two dead on the ground.

  Gansukh nodded as he cast about for signs of any remaining wolves, but he saw and heard none. The horses were still spooked, but their eyes were no longer wide.

  “It’s over,” he said.

  Alchiq was looking at his right hand, seemingly entranced by the flow of blood from it. “Finger,” he said, waving the bloody hand at Gansukh.

  “What?” Gansukh said, trying to focus on what Alchiq was showing him.

  “Wolf got it,” Alchiq said as he rotated his wrist so that Gansukh could more easily see what was missing. The index finger was gone. There was nothing left but a ragged flap of skin hanging over a shard of bone. “Was only getting in the way,” Alchiq said, his eyes glittering.

  Gansukh crouched and cleaned his blade in the snow. By the time he finished, the excitement of the fight had started to drain away and his hands shook slightly as he slipped his knife back into his belt. Deep in his throat, something like a cough started, but by the time it rose into his mouth, it had become a hiccupping laugh.

  Alchiq’s face split with a wide grin. “They’re going to have to try harder,” he said, holding up his other hand and wiggling all of his remaining fingers. “I still have nine more.”

  Gansukh started to bellow with laughter and Alchiq joined him. The horses stared at the two men, their ears twitching. They don’t understand, Gansukh thought, wiping at his eyes. It’s not the sound of fear.

  Gansukh had a glimmer of insight into what drove Alchiq, and while the other man’s bravado was worthy of recognition in the best Mongol fashion, the rest troubled him. They were chasing a band of Western knights who had crept into the heart of the Mongol empire. As long as he can ride a horse and wield a sword, he won’t stop, Gansukh thought.

  Was he willing to go that far as well?

  CHAPTER 7:

  THE VIRGIN

  They eschewed anything that suggested civilization. They tarried at streams long enough to refill their water skins and allow their horses to drink, and then they moved as purposefully away from moving water as possible. Gullies, depressions, divots, and other variations in the terrain that would provide a modicum of respite from the constant wind of the steppe were passed over as suitable camps. When they spotted herds of the wild deer, Istvan would ride, wide-eyed and screaming, until the herd spooked. They rode several hours past sunset every day, and did not start again until the sun had burned off the meager fog that tried to cling to the scrub. The Turkic lands from the Heavenly Mountains to the wide rivers that carried traders north and south across the steppe were vast and wide, and if the Virgin blessed them, they would be able to pass across these lands without notice.

  When they did stop at night, they lit no fire. Feronantus would jam the Spirit Banner into the ground, flinching slightly every time he did so, and they would huddle around the stave, trying to sleep. Istvan shivered constantly at night; his body still hadn’t recovered from its exposure to the winter snows. It was as if the chill had gotten into his bones; it would take a month or more in a desert climate, Feronantus suspected, before the Hungarian would be warm again. While the steppe nights were chilly, he could recall nights at Týrshammar that had been much colder.

  His bones ached for other reasons.

  He couldn’t have said with any conviction whether the Spirit Banner kept them warm at night or not. Certainly, it didn’t exude heat as it had that night on the gap, when Istvan had staggered into his camp, half frozen, but Feronantus always noticed that the ground around the banner was softer in the morning. The horses always cropped at the scrub closest to the banner.

  He checked their course against the stars when he could see them, and by his reckoning, they were farther west than the rock where the company had met Benjamin on their journey east. In another few weeks, they would reach the river that ran past Saray-Jük, though they were far north of the Mongol-controlled town. Once they crossed the river, he would have to make a decision about where he was going to go. If the Vor hadn’t already told him by then…

  Feronantus had spent his entire adult life devoted to the Virgin, and his reward—nay, to speak of the gift given to him thus was to suggest that he deserved it, that the motivations of his actions were nothing more than an obsequious need to be commended for his sacrifices—his insights were furtive glimpses beyond the veil of mortal existence. He had never been granted a rapturous experience like the one that had come over Percival in the woods after the death of his warhorse; the Virgin had never spoken to him as pl
ainly as she had others. Nor was he a self-deluded charlatan who fancied himself a crude divinatory. When the fate-sight came over him, he simply knew.

  At the Kinyen when Istvan, firmly in the grip of his mushroom-fueled madness, had spoken of the All-Father’s staff, Feronantus had believed the Hungarian was speaking to him. The Virgin was preparing him for the choices he would have to make, and when the company had closed their trap around the Khagan at the cave of the great bear, he had seen the staff. He had found the Khagan in the open and was about to kill Ögedei Khan himself when the Khagan’s champion had intervened, waving the Spirit Banner between them.

  That had been the first choice, and when he had hesitated, the Khagan had fled. When he and the others had caught up with Ögedei, Feronantus had not been surprised to find the Khagan facing off against Haakon, their lost acolyte who had made his way east as a captive of the empire.

  And lying there on the field had been the Spirit Banner. Ignored. Forgotten. Waiting for someone to take it up.

  That had been the second choice, and he had not hesitated that time.

  He knew there was one choice still to make. He had had months to examine the signs: the sigils made by the stars in the night sky, the garbled words tugged out of Istvan’s mouth at night by prescient night breezes, and the directions suggested by the leaning trunks of the wormwood that grew across the steppe. The Vor had one more secret to share.

  The oaks sheltered them, the massive canopy of branches over their heads a verdant sky. Maria often dressed in the local style, but she had forgone the wimple that afternoon, letting her dark hair cascade loose down her back. It had been a long time since he had seen her hair unbound and he marveled at how long it had gotten.

  They walked through the forest without any clear destination in mind, pleased to get time away from the others. The band of merry ruffians was growing and soon it would become inordinately awkward to sneak away. They would have to either confess their relationship or forgo it entirely. Feronantus suspected it would be the latter.

  “Do you believe in signs and portents?” Maria asked. She had plucked a long-stemmed yellow flower, and with the flower tucked behind her left ear, she was tying the remaining stem into an intricate knot. “That the divine can send us messages?”

  “Visions?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” she replied.

  “How do you distinguish between the presence of the divine and a mere hallucination?” he asked.

  She smiled at him, her fingers still working. “Careful, Feronantus,” she cautioned. “That is the sort of philosophical question that will get you noticed by the local parish priest.” She inclined her head. “Even if it is a good question.”

  “A man can learn the rudiments of swordplay fairly quickly, and when all of your opponents know the same techniques and counters that you do, it becomes increasingly difficult to lure them into a crossing that is to your advantage. Our oplo—our instructors—sought to teach us something they called Vor. Fate-sight. If you knew all the remedies and counter-remedies, the only way you could win a fight was to be smarter and quicker. Eventually you would begin to see parts of the fight before they happened; you would just know what was going to happen next before your opponent did.”

  “Has that ever happened to you?” she asked.

  “Once, I think,” Feronantus admitted.

  “You think? You’re not sure?”

  He offered her a rueful smile. “The Vor doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t shake you by the shoulders and whisper tactics. You simply…” He struggled to find the right word. “…know.”

  “Can you feel this Vor when you are not in combat?”

  “No,” he replied.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  He laughed at her question. “What could the Vor possibly show me?” he asked.

  “Do you know the stories of Hildegard of Bingen?” she asked, and when Feronantus shook his head, she continued. “Hildegard was a devoted daughter of God who was visited time and again by angelic visions. Her family had her committed to a convent so that she could be cared for, but few—especially Hildegard—believed her visions to be caused by some malevolent affliction. She painted what she saw, marvelous drawings of angelic creatures with wings filled with eyes and shining spheres of light. Over time, many a bishop and king consulted her, hoping she could divine their futures, but all she had for them were her beautiful—but cryptic—drawings. Since her death, some have claimed that it was the fact that she had foreseen these things that caused them to become true. As if God had made the world through her, and what she drew was merely a pale representation of God’s intent.”

  “You think she felt the Vor?” Feronantus asked.

  “It would seem that she did, don’t you think?” Maria asked in return, glancing down at the knot she was tying. Satisfied with her work, she raised the intricate shape to her eye and looked at him through it. “What would you do if you saw what might come to be? Would you embrace it or avoid it?”

  “I would avoid it,” Feronantus said.

  And she had smiled sadly at him as if she had already known that was going to be his response.

  He and Istvan would ride for days without speaking, and occasionally they would drift so far apart that he would lose track of the Hungarian on the open steppe. Then, when the sun was about to leave the sky, the horizon aglow with orange and yellow bands, Istvan would ride up, his horse blowing heavily. Lidérc, the Hungarian would claim. At night, malignant ghosts would start to swarm; in the encroaching gloom, he would spot the shining beacon of the Spirit Banner and ride as quickly as he could to evade the phantoms.

  Feronantus did not put much credence in ghosts, though he was well aware of the power that faith could have on a man. Just as it could buttress his soul, faith could terrorize. If vengeful spirits came to drag a man down to Hell because he had strayed from the righteous path, then fleeing such foul visitors was merely a way to return to the proper path. Did it matter how a man let his faith guide him as long as he had faith in something?

  It was the sort of question that Maria liked to put to him; in time, he had come to understand why she pressed him so. Her hand was undeniably present in the concessions King John had given to the lords of England and to the freepeople of the island. And when the Electi of Petraathen had exiled him to Týrshammar, he had brought that selfsame spirit with him.

  She was with him now, her hair tangled in the black braids of the Spirit Banner.

  Lately Istvan had taken to muttering a long Magyar word when he approached the Spirit Banner, and Feronantus had tried to piece it together but had given up after awhile, intuiting what it meant without having to know the word. Athena Promachos. Vindex Intacta. The name changed but she remained constant.

  When the Virgin’s grace came over his brothers, they were not given insight into mastery of the martial arts; they were afforded other visions. Was Maria right in stressing that these were merely another aspect of the Vor?

  CHAPTER 8:

  NEWS OF THE WORLD

  The rock was an aberration on the steppe, a slab of stone that stood resolute against the wind—a giant’s finger, forever pointing to the east. The surrounding terrain was as flat as anywhere else on the steppe, and if the clouds were low or the wind was blowing snow, it was possible to miss the rock for there was no indication of its presence other than its black shape. The eastern edge of the rock was higher than the western edge, and in the winter months the northern side was perpetually in shadow.

  There was snow on the ground in the shadow of the rock, and Cnán shivered as she and Vera and Raphael lost track of the sun behind the bulk of the spire. There was less snow than the last time she had explored the north side of the rock. The weather had been warm enough to start melting the ice, but the respite had been short lived, and the snow had a hard icy crust on it now.

  They had been at the rock for several weeks, recovering from their desperate flight through the winter storms. The company
had become separated, and during the frantic efforts to find one another, Cnán and Lian (and their nearly dead horse) had been found by a pair of Western mercenaries. Gawain, a Welshman who spoke the trade tongue with a lilting accent, and Bruno, a dark-haired man from Lombardy, had brought Cnán and Lian to the rock. The pair, along with two dark-eyed Seljuk brothers who were traveling with them, continued to range about the rock, searching for the rest of the company. Over the next few days, everyone had been located. Suffering from malnutrition and exposure, the presence of an established camp at the rock was a haven they eagerly welcomed. Some, like Cnán and Raphael, cycled through fever spells—drifting in and out of bouts of wearying illness. The wound in Raphael’s back had slowed his recovery.

  She searched for the notch in the rock, trying to remember the sequence of bumps and textures that would lead her to the secret hiding place. It was a Binder message shrine, and she had visited it when she had first been well enough to wander about camp. She and Vera had been waiting for Raphael’s fever to subside before they showed him what they had found. The narrow slot in the rock that led to the shrine was difficult to see unless you were looking right at it, and she was almost ready to retrace her steps when she spotted a crack in the rock. When she stood in front of it, the crack revealed itself to be a narrow slot that went back into the rock.

  She could wiggle through readily enough, while Vera had to keep her back absolutely straight; they both waited on the other side of the cleft in the rock for Raphael. He moved slowly, easing himself toward the tight gap, and if he hadn’t been as emaciated as he was from their journey, he wouldn’t have been able to slip through.

  Cnán led them along the tight passage, which made a sharp turn and then spilled out into a tiny grotto that was open to the sky. Sunlight made the opening appear to be dappled with blue and orange, and the ground was free of snow. Banks of green moss ringed the base of the narrow sanctuary, making it appear as if they stood inside the trunk of an ancient tree.