“That is very likely,” Alchiq said, “But I never claimed to be a storyteller. I have chased these men from the edge of the empire to its very heart and back again. I know how they think, and I know their weaknesses. You need me.”
“I need you?” Totukei sputtered. “Why would I need you?”
“Because you’re tracking them,” Alchiq said. “You have been since your men stumbled upon the Persians at the rock, and eventually you are going to find them. And then you are going to die.” He offered Totukei the wolfish smile that Gansukh knew well. “Unless you have my help.”
CHAPTER 25:
WHERE THERE IS SMOKE…
Behind him, Feronantus heard Istvan shouting at the tiger and the tiger’s answering scream of anger. He managed to get his hands on the reins of his horse, but Istvan’s mount pulled away from him, the whites of its eyes showing. He lunged for the reins, missed, and swore loudly at Istvan’s horse as it bolted, charging up the slope to get away from the angry tiger and Istvan’s flaming sword.
His horse wanted to flee too, jerking its head in an effort to pull the reins from his hands. He went hand over hand on the leather straps, dragging the horse’s head down toward him.
The tiger shrieked again and this time there was more pain than anger in its cry.
Feronantus glanced over his shoulder as he struggled with his horse. The cloud cover above the depression seemed to have thickened in the last few minutes, filling the sinkhole with more shadows. In stark relief against the shadows and among the fat snowflakes were Istvan’s flaming sword and the angry orange and black shape of the tiger, circling one another.
He had to make a choice. If he let go of his horse so that he could go to Istvan’s aid, his mount would flee too. They might both survive the tiger attack, but they would be without steeds. If he left…well, he couldn’t leave.
Why not? Part of him argued. You left the others.
No, that wasn’t how it had been.
Others before them too, the voice continued. How many have you left behind now?
He clamped his jaw shut to keep the voice from getting out. It was the venial self-doubt that plagued any warrior as he entered battle. Feronantus had endured it before, and he had even learned to suppress its voice. The Vor had shown him how, though it was much easier when the shimmering path of his future was visible.
But there was no such path available to him in the depression. He was both below ground and trapped beneath the cloud cover, invisible to the divine graces that might gaze down on him and deign to provide assistance.
Muttering an oath, he left off trying to control his horse’s head and reached for the Spirit Banner instead. It was attached to the horse’s saddle by several leather loops, and as soon as he started to pull the long wooden pole free, the horse jerked away from him, fighting to get clear of the obstruction and flee. He grabbed at his saddle, trying to reach his sword too, and the horse hopped slightly, its hooves pounding against the ground.
“Stop fighting me,” he growled. What he really wanted was the small crossbow hanging off the back of his saddle.
Another scream ripped through the air, and this time it didn’t come from the tiger’s throat. Both Feronantus and his horse paused in their tug-of-war, and Feronantus turned halfway to look for the source of the cry.
Istvan was down on one knee, his smoldering sword no longer held as dramatically. He wavered as if he were falling asleep and then jerked himself upright as the tiger came charging at him. The beast veered away at the last second, dodging Istvan’s slow-moving sword. It swiped at Istvan again, and Istvan managed to bring his sword around enough that the tiger pulled its paw back from trying to swat him.
They were at an impasse, and the tiger continued to circle Istvan, who made no attempt to get up from his position. The feeble movements of his sword cast few shadows, and with each wild swing, the tiger grew bolder. The second time it darted at Istvan to strike him, Istvan didn’t get the sword around in time.
Feronantus left off struggling with the Spirit Banner and concentrated on drawing his longsword. He managed to get the weapon out of its sheath, and he let go of his horse’s bridle as he crashed across the dark and lumpy surface of the depression.
Istvan was on his back, straining to reach his sword which had fallen out of his hand. It lay on the ground just beyond his straining fingers, and as he got his fingertips on the pommel, the tiger pounced and landed on his legs. Istvan left off trying to get his sword and sat up. The tiger bit at his stomach and was rebuffed by the maille. Snarling, it bit at his face and he shoved his left arm into its open mouth.
Feronantus was halfway there.
Istvan screamed as the tiger bit down on his arm, and Feronantus saw his right arm rise up, his hunting knife clutched in his fist, and then Istvan drove his arm down, plunging the knife into the side of the tiger’s neck. The tiger shook him like a child’s doll, but Istvan held on. When the tiger paused, Istvan pulled his knife free and stabbed again. The second time the tiger shook him, his arm separated—forearm and hand remaining inside the tiger’s mouth.
Just as Feronantus was about to reach the beleaguered Hungarian, the black ground beneath Istvan’s discarded blade burst into flame. Feronantus slid to a halt, staring at the flicking flame as it danced across the stained ground.
The tiger roared, spitting out Istvan’s arm, and its eyes were bright with reflected fire. Istvan tried to stab it a third time, but the tiger brushed his arm aside and closed its mouth, with its many sharp teeth, around the front of his head.
The fire leaped across the ground, suddenly creating a wall between Feronantus and Istvan. It kept snaking across the ground, leaping from dark patch to dark patch. With growing horror, Feronantus tracked where the flame was going, and realized it was heading right for the slow bubbling center of the seep. The black heart of the upwelling.
Feronantus ran. He heard the tiger growl deep in its throat and he heard the sizzling hiss of air burning, and then the ground shook beneath him, and he felt the fiery hand of an unleashed giant lift him up and fling him out of the depression and into the endless emptiness of the snowstorm.
He tumbled, spinning like a leaf caught by a zephyr, and dimly wondered why he hadn’t hit the ground yet. He flew away from the eruption of orange and red light, his eyes closed against the glare. He could still see the strange outlines of fiery phantoms, dancing across his field of vision. They were hollow creatures, nothing more than the outlines of ragged dolls drawn in luminous fire. They twitched and darted away from him as he tried to focus his gaze on them, and when the bright light behind them faded, they faded too, turning to ash.
A light breeze caressed his face, and when he tried to open his eyes, the breeze held his eyelids down and he struggled to open them. If he knew where his hands were, he could raise them and push up his eyelids, but he had to see his hands in order to find them. But his hands were connected to his arms, which were connected to his trunk, and his head was attached to the top of his trunk. He should be able to feel his hands, shouldn’t he?
He felt the breeze on his face, but otherwise, he was numb.
There was no light anymore, and even the ashes had turned black. He could see nothing. He could hear nothing. Other than the wind, he could feel nothing. Was he even breathing? As panic laid claim to his mind, he felt none of the physical sensations that accompanied fear. The more he struggled (in his mind, for he had no idea what his body might be doing), the stronger the wind blew, until it was a stinging storm, slapping him on the cheeks. The tempest increased, and he could feel the skin on his face rippling and sliding. Finally, with a herculean effort, he wrenched apart his lips, and the wind hurled itself into the cavern of his mouth.
Like a blacksmith’s bellows, he inflated, and as he filled out, awareness of his body returned—from his neck to his chest to his arms, waist, legs, hands, and feet. He swelled up, and his ears popped loudly. His eyes snapped open too, and he found himself lying on his back, sta
ring up at a white sky, filled with fluffy clouds and drifting snowflakes.
He lay still, watching his breath float away. His back was cold, and as he explored the ground with his fingers, he found it slippery and wet. Ice, he thought as he slowly levered himself upright.
He was not on the steppe. He was lying on a field of ice—a lake, he surmised. To his left were vague shadows that suggested a treeline. To his right, partially behind him, a small shape in a ragged cloak crouched on the ice. The figure was holding a long pole, and a string attached to the end of the pole disappeared into a hole in the ice.
Feronantus peeled himself off the ice and staggered toward the crouched figure. When he touched it lightly on the shoulder, the figure shifted slightly and then fell over. Skeletal hands peeked out of the cloak, and when Feronantus pulled back the hood, he found a mummified face. Judging by the shape of the hands and face, the body was that of a woman, and without taking the robe off the corpse, he had no idea how she had died. Both cloak and body were frozen stiff, and it would take a proper fire and many hours to thaw the corpse enough to remove the cloak.
The pole was longer and thicker than he thought a fishing rod should be, and when he pulled it free of the skeleton’s hands, he realized it was the Spirit Banner, burned black and bereft of its horsehair streamers. The hole in the ice was two spans of his hands in diameter, and the water beneath the ice was a pale blue.
He pulled on the string, and felt a weight at the end. The water was cold, even colder than the ice, and the string burned his hands as he pulled it out. He pulled and pulled, and was starting to wonder how long the string was when he noticed a shadow in the water. Coiling the slack of the string around his arm, he gave another strong pull on the cord.
A frozen hand and arm emerged from the lake. Feronantus braced one foot on the edge of the hole, holding the arm out of the water. It felt like there was an entire body at the end of the string, and when he tugged the string, the resistance increased.
The body wouldn’t fit through the hole.
The hand and arm were bare, though covered with a fine sheen of ice. The fingers were half-bent as if the hand had been holding something that had been yanked free shortly before being frozen in place. Grunting with the exertion, Feronantus rotated the arm. There was a scar on the forearm, the circular brand of the Shield-Brethren.
The ice distorted the sigil slightly, smearing the finer details, but when Feronantus pushed up his right sleeve, he thought the old scar on his forearm was a fairly close match.
He let go of the string, and the outstretched arm disappeared into the lake. He picked at the knot on the staff first with his fingers and then his teeth, loosening the string from the pole. He pulled the string free of the pole and let it go, watching it snake across the ice as its burden descended farther and farther. His heart seized for a second as the end of the string wiggled across the rim of the hole, but he didn’t dive for it. He held fast and let it go.
His hands were black from the layer of ash on the banner, and he suspected his lips and teeth were black too. Using the staff to test the ice, he started to walk toward the tree line.
This was nothing more than a dream, and the sooner he reached the boundary of its imagination, the sooner he would wake up. One foot in front of the other. Just keep walking.
Feronantus…
Once he reached the trees, he wouldn’t stop. He would walk as far and as long as necessary. Dreams could not survive a methodical assault. The more order he forced upon this environment, the less it could sustain itself. It lived off fear and uncertainly. He knew where he was going. He was—
Feronantus.
—heading for the trees.
The staff poked against the ice, and he listened to the rhythmic shuffle of his feet against the slick surface. Poke. Step. Step. Poke. Step…
“Feronantus!”
As the Shield-Brethren company rode toward the boiling column of smoke, they regarded it with curiosity. What could generate that much smoke on the steppe? How long would someone have to gather fuel for such a fire? Was it a signal? Was it, like Lian thought, a marker indicating where they might find Feronantus?
But when they got closer, Yasper realized what it was: an alchemical fire. Naphtha, he explained to the rest, was a concoction used by the Byzantines and Muslims, and it was made from a combination of oil and water. The source of the smoke was a naturally occurring seep of the oily liquid used in naphtha.
The column of smoke had lessened by the time they found the depression from which it was issuing, and the winter storm that had been squatting over the hole had moved on, leaving the skies clear but for the smudges of dark smoke still lingering.
Raphael, Percival, Gawain, and Yasper dismounted from their horses and walked the last hundred paces to the edge of the depression. The ground around the depression was boggy, as if a heavy rain had recently fallen, and there were dark stains on the ground that Yasper explained had been expelled from the seep. Raphael wasn’t sure what they were going to see when they reached the rim of the depression, but as they approached, he strained to hear any noise coming from the fire. The air felt oily, and when he inhaled there was a metallic aftertaste left in his mouth.
A haze filled the depression, and many of the seep stains were on fire, albeit with thin wispy flames. They were like tiny worshippers, emulating the image of their god who roared and danced in the center of the depression. The burning seep was a pond of black oil, and the flames that danced atop it were taller than any of them.
“Well,” Yasper said, breaking the stunned silence of the quartet, “it’s not as bad as I thought it might be.”
“It is the very presence of Hell upon this world,” Percival said.
“Aye,” Gawain said. “The only thing missing is—no, wait, what is that over there?”
The others peered in the direction he pointed, and Raphael felt his gorge rise in the back of his throat. “It appears to be…”
It wasn’t a man, that much was certain, though it appeared to be struggling to wear a man’s shape. It had too many appendages, and there was no telling what was the front and what was the rear. The entire shape was blackened like a log that had been charred in flames for hours, and it was half-twisted around itself. Raphael found himself thinking that the creature had been simultaneously trying to curl into a ball like a tiny child and to run away. The result was something that looked like a crisped snail, flesh burned into an ashen husk.
“Whatever it is, it is dead,” Yasper said.
“How can you be sure?” Gawain asked.
“Go down there and poke it with your sword,” Yasper said. “If you really want to know.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“No,” Yasper shook his head.
“I am,” Percival said. He reached over and grabbed Yasper’s tunic. “Come, little alchemist. Let us see what the Devil has left for us.”
“What?” Yasper sputtered, struggling in Percival’s grip as the Frank started down the slope. “What are you doing?”
“I’m bringing an expert opinion with me,” Percival said.
“It’s not safe,” Yasper squawked. “You don’t want to breathe this air. Trust me. I’ve done alchemical experiments. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Breathe shallowly and walk quickly, then,” Percival said, his grip not faltering.
Gawain looked at Raphael, expressing his question with a raised eyebrow. Raphael shook his head. “I trust their examination will be sufficient.”
“Lian spoke of Feronantus when she saw the smoke. He is the one you are searching for, yes?”
“Yes, he is,” Raphael said.
“Do you think that monster down there is him?”
“No,” Raphael said. He had been glancing around the rim of the depression while he and Gawain had been talking, and he had spotted an irregular lump on the far side of the depression. “But I wonder whose horse that is.” He pointed out the hump to Gawain.
�
�That would appear to be a much less frightening corpse to examine,” Gawain said.
“I concur. Shall we walk around the rim of this stinking pit?”
Gawain snorted. “I’m not going down there.”
While the knights of the order went ahead to investigate the column of smoke coming out of the ground, the rest of the company milled about, uncertain what to do. It was too early in the day to make camp for the night, and while none of them said as much out loud, they all had a desire to be far from the burning hole by nightfall. That meant watering, feeding, and changing the horses—tasks that reminded Haakon that, regardless of the sword he wore, he wasn’t much more than a glorified stable boy.
“I’m going to scout ahead,” he told Evren, making the signs they had come up with to explain rudimentary commands: two fingers, pointed at his eyes; four fingers, mimicking the gait of a horse; one finger, pointing in the direction they were headed.
Evren acknowledged his signs with a quick tap of several fingers against his forehead and a nod. Haakon caught sight of Vera looking at him as he climbed onto his horse, but he didn’t bother saying anything to her as he slapped his reins and let his horse run. Evren can tell her, he thought bitterly as his horse galloped in a wide arc around the smoke-filled depression.
He knew this hole was going to be a beacon, summoning every rider within a hundred miles or more. Their group had happened to get here first, but he knew if they stayed too long, they would have company. Judging by the hoofprints he and the Seljuks had seen over the last few days, the visitors would be Mongolian. Haakon needed to spot them before they stumbled upon the aimless Shield-Brethren company.
His eyes swept the open plain restlessly, moving quickly over the long swathes of short grasses and the clumps of wormwood and scrub trees. He had seen all of it a thousand times over and most of the landscape had become little more than a blur. What he was looking for were aberrations—moving shapes or flashes of color that were out of the ordinary.
Katabasis (The Mongoliad Cycle, Book 4) Page 25
