Through the trees and the snow, Kristaps caught the glint of half-helms and heavy cloaks. He saw them coming, marching with an order rare to see among peasant levies, though not so perfect as free mercenaries such as were to be found in Germany or Northern Italy. He snapped his sword tip forward as he dug his spurs into his horse’s flank.
The order was given, and the First Sword of Fellin was leading the charge.
Trees whipped past him, undergrowth groaned beneath the pounding of hooves and snow and earth flared upwards in a wild spray as the war horse carried him forward. The sound seemed to swell as he moved, echoing in the thunder of hundreds of others, rippling outward before them in a wave their enemy was becoming aware of too late. They burst from the edge of the trees in a panoply of furious steel, driving up the ground before them as the ordered line of Novgorod’s citizen soldiers desperately tried to turn to meet the coming wave. One of the Danish riders had outdistanced Kristaps by the body-length of his horse, and he caught a glimpse of the rider driving his grey-tipped spear through the face of the foremost man, a flash of blood seeming to whip past before Kristaps himself was among them like a whirlwind. Faces swirled around him like a river of flesh and bone and stupefied surprise.
He killed his first man before the soldier had managed to raise his weapon. The second died beneath the hooves of his horse. He hewed a man’s arm from his shoulder and opened the face of another, cleaving his head in half and catching only a flash of the explosion of flesh as he whipped past like an avenging angel.
He wheeled his horse about as the charge spent itself, and surveyed the scene of blood-drenched chaos. The gambit had worked, the initial charge ripping what order had existed of the Novgorodians into bloody shreds. On the entire stretch of space their forces had occupied, the snow was stained with blotches of red where bodies had fallen, and across the mass of moving humans, men fought with desperate, chaotic abandon. It appeared that he had lost only a handful in the initial assault, and now his knights and the Danes rode back and forth through the chaos, hacking heads and running men through as a handful of Ruthenian men on horseback desperately tried to rally them. Druzhina. Turning his horse towards one of them, Kristaps flicked his sword to free it of excess blood and charged.
The Druzhina spotted him at the last possible second and managed to block Kristaps’s strike, but was nearly unhorsed in the process. Laughing, Kristaps wheeled his horse about and cut low with a backhanded flick of his blade. The Druzhina screamed as the blade sliced across his thigh. As Kristaps came at him again, he got his sword up and thrust it at Kristaps’s face. Kristaps turned the point aside and jabbed his blade low again. The man was too slow with his shield, and Kristaps felt his blade grate against maille and then penetrate something softer. The metal of the north isn’t as strong…His sword came away with a heavy sheen of blood.
To his credit, the young Ruthenian did not give up. He launched a desperate strike at Kristaps’s horse, hoping to down the Livonian’s steed. Snarling, Kristaps beat his blade aside with the back edge and pulled his mount closer to the other man’s horse. Before the man could get his shield in between them, Kristaps drove his sword through the Druzhina’s armpit, where the inferior maille would be weakest. The sword pierced the armor, cut through the padded gambeson beneath, and pushed up through the man’s flesh until the point came out again near his neck. The Druzhina jerked back violently, his helmet falling off his head, and Kristaps saw the face of a man less than twenty years old, his beard still spotty on his cheeks and chin. The Druzhina dropped his shield and grasped Kristaps by the shoulder in a dying effort to pull the Livonian out of the saddle with him. He dropped his sword as well and steel glinted in his hand as he tried to stab Kristaps with a short-bladed knife.
Kristaps released his reins and hammered his fist down on the other man’s wrist, trapping the arm against his thigh. The man wiggled, desperately trying to get the knife turned so that he could stab Kristaps, and Kristaps grabbed his wrist. He rotated his arm up, twisting the Druzhina’s arm violently, and the knife spilled out of the man’s grasp. Still holding the man’s arm, Kristaps jerked his sword free of the Druzhina’s armpit and, reversing the weapon, hammered the man in the face with the pommel. At the same time, he shoved with his left hand, and the bloodied and dying man fell out of his saddle.
There were no other combatants around him and, somewhat surprised, Kristaps assessed the battle. The path was littered with dead and the few remaining Ruthenians were attempting to flee, and as he watched the Danes ride down the scattered remnants of the Novgorodian force, Kristaps finally spotted the trampled banner of the prince lying in the mud beside the stream.
One banner.
This was nothing more than a raiding party. They had not found the main force.
The sun set over a carpet of dead, clouds parting long enough to let the yellow-red glow of evening color the killing ground the hue of bloodstained gold. Kristaps sat atop a rock near the stream, watching as the Danes stripped the bodies of the dead of anything of value, and those who were not yet dead were hastened on their way with a swift thrust through the heart or a hastily cut throat. The singers could weave their beautiful melodies about glory and honor, but ultimately every battle came down to the brutal task of glorified knife-work.
Kristaps had taken no wounds, and he cared little for the taking of plunder—none of the men dead before him on this field had anything that he might have wanted. What spoils there were would make the Danes happy. What Kristaps sought had not been present.
They had decimated a raiding party. If his scouts had stayed long enough to investigate the numbers of the men they had spotted, they would have realized the prince’s army was not large enough to constitute any real threat to Dorpat. He did not believe that the prince would have sent only one raiding party into Tartu, and as he watched the Danes pillage the dead, he realized the prince’s clever ploy.
The prince wasn’t in Dorpat. All that was needed were a few men, a handful of mounted Druzhina, and a banner flying the prince’s colors. Nevsky could scatter a dozen such raiding parties across Dorpat and the reports that would get back to Hermann and Kristaps would be conflated into the alarming news that the entirety of the bishopric was under attack. It was bait, and he and Hermann had fallen for it. The Teutonic army was rushing back to defend Dorpat, which was not under any true threat.
“I’ve never seen a man look so dour after a victory,” Svend said as he knelt by the stream to clean the gore from his sword.
“Commoners with axes are not much of a victory when you are hunting a prince,” Kristaps replied.
“Ah, but they are his people. We have pricked him, and we shall see how he bleeds. That is something.”
“Aye,” Kristaps said. “We’ve bloodied him.”
“And now he must answer,” Svend said happily. “Blood calls out for blood. He will come.”
Kristaps looked along the path in the direction from which the ambushed party had come. Would the prince come? he wondered, though he privately thought the prince would not. He’s a fox, he thought, recalling Illugi’s words. Having been seen, he wants to be chased.
Kristaps would oblige him.
CHAPTER 27:
…THERE IS FIRE
Yasper started awake and blearily looked up at Raphael. The sky behind Raphael was purple, and the stars were twinkling. The alchemist groaned and closed his eyes. It was almost dawn and what little sleep he had managed to snatch was not nearly enough. Raphael shook him gently again and Yasper brushed the bothersome hand off like he was shooing away a fly. “I’m awake,” he groused.
“It’s time,” Raphael said, belaboring the obvious reason he had woken Yasper.
“I know. I know,” Yasper said. He opened his eyes again and flapped his hands at Raphael. “I’m getting up. I don’t need any help.”
His back and shoulders still ached from all the digging he’d done during the night. The ambush he’d planned required careful consideration, and it
had been insane even to try to put it together in the course of one night. And then Raphael and Haakon had come from their nocturnal excursion and, after a whispered conference with Gawain and Vera, had informed him they were going to abandon the depression sooner than planned. Once Yasper had finished sputtering and complaining about the change in plans, he had realized that it meant he had to be less concerned about blowback.
The only reason he had allowed himself any sleep at all was the comforting thought that his plan had been made easier.
Yasper sat up, pulled on his boots, and stood up. He was already stiff, and the idea of spending the day on a horse wasn’t a pleasant one. It could be worse, he thought as he ran his tongue over his teeth. I could be dead in the next few hours.
Cheered by that thought, he rummaged in his saddlebags for a few strips of dried meat. After washing his mouth out with a swallow of night-chilled water from his dwindling water skin, he gathered up a swaddled bundle and wandered toward the hole in the ground to check on his alchemical masterpiece.
He had conscripted all of the company to help dig trenches, raise foundations, and build partitions. Crisscrossing the depression were a maze of pathways that had been carefully filled with seep-stained dirt. The pool at the bottom of the hole still burned, but the flames had lessened, dying down to a height of less than that of a man. They would burn for years, he suspected, an eternal flame in the middle of the desolate steppe.
But they could also be snuffed out.
Bruno ambled up beside him, yawning widely, and Yasper winced slightly at the amount of air the Lombard was inhaling. The air coming off the fires of the seep made his head ache and his vision blur. He had spent enough time in closeted alchemical laboratories to know that many experiments vented strange gasses that were poisonous. And yet Bruno was sucking up the dirty air of the seep as if were as rarified as sea air.
“Are you ready?” he asked the Lombard.
Bruno grunted, idly scratching along his jaw.
Yasper led the way, the bundle held carefully in his arms. Beneath the layer of heavy cloth was the metal tube of a Chinese hand cannon. They had found it in the woods while tracking Ögedei’s retinue, along with a satchel filled with various alchemical powders. Yasper had used most of the powders during their escape from Burqan-qaldun, but with the rest, he had figured out how to make the burning cakes that he called phoenix eggs.
Shards of the cakes, when crumbled and scattered across hot ash, would smoke wildly, and he had used most of one during the raid at the rock. The remaining portion of the first cake was sealed inside the Chinese tube, along with every other combustible ingredient in his possession. Rope was tied around the tube and the other end was knotted in a narrow loop.
Down near the pool of fire were two poles, the trunks of two young spruce trees that Percival had felled during the night. The branches and bark had been stripped from the trunks and the tops of the poles were lashed together, forming an X.
Yasper was sweating by the time he and Bruno reached the bottom of the depression. They had gone over what needed to be done several times so that there would be no confusion once they started. Yasper wasn’t sure how long they would have, and he really didn’t want to be dawdling near the lake longer than necessary.
He put the bundle down near the X of the poles and uncovered the tube and the looped rope. Slipping the loop over the tips of the two poles, he grabbed the other end of one of the poles. Bruno grabbed the other and when they carefully raised the poles, the tube dangled down between the angled poles.
“Quickly,” Yasper gasped, and Bruno grunted in agreement. They sidestepped toward the pool, and Yasper had a momentary panic that he had judged the size of the pool incorrectly, but they ended up on either side. Bruno shoved the base of his pole into the ground, and Yasper did the same, trying to dig the butt of the spruce trunk into the ground enough that it would remain upright. The poles were leaning against one another, a precarious triangular structure, and slowly, carefully, he let go of his pole. The structure wobbled for a second, the tube swinging over the flames, and Yasper gasped. But it settled, and Yasper waved for Bruno to let go of his end as well. The Lombard did, and Yasper did a quick mental five-count—waiting for the poles to fall over.
The poles didn’t move. The tube turned lazily on the rope.
“Go,” Yasper hissed at Bruno, who needed no further instruction. Yasper was right behind him, and both of them charged up the slope of the depression, trying to clear the hole before the tube heated up enough that its contents transformed. Ignio, Yasper thought as he scrambled over the lip of the hole and threw himself flat on the ground. Here it comes.
Bruno lay next to him, and the Lombard had his eyes squeezed shut and was covering his ears. As they waited, Bruno started to grit his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter. His expression was comical enough that Yasper almost laughed, but for the growing panic surging in his chest. Why hadn’t it gone—
The ground rippled beneath them, a single shudder that made the hair on Yasper’s neck stand on end. He held his breath, peering up at the sky with one open eye. A black mushroom-shaped cloud was roiling into the sky, but there was no column trailing after it.
Using his elbows, he carefully worked his way to the edge of the hole. There were a few scattered strands of fire burning in the hole—thankfully none of them was in any of his crazy trenches. More importantly, the surface of the pond was still. The fire had been smothered.
He slapped Bruno on the leg. “Get the tents,” he said. “Let’s build the phoenix nest.”
Dawn came on slowly, lightening the eastern horizon into a pall of gray clouds. The sun remained hidden away, and there was only a rosy glow that indicated it had risen at all. They kept the glow behind them, riding steadily.
There were five of them: Vera, Cnán, Lian, Feronantus, and Haakon. They had four extra horses and most of the drinkable water. Raphael’s instructions had been to ride west until they reached the mighty river they had crossed once before. After finding a way across, they were to turn north and west again until they found the remote Khazar village where the trader Benjamin lived.
They could wait for the others there, if the Khazars didn’t find their presence troubling, or they could leave a message with Benjamin that they had made it that far. After the Khazar village, they would head for Kiev, a journey that would take a month or more, following a route that Vera knew.
The decision to split the company gnawed at Haakon as they rode. After all this time, it seemed tantamount to failure to leave some of their company behind—a decision that did not, in his mind, seem to be in keeping with the tenets of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. Though Raphael had kindly told him that doing exactly what they were doing—staying behind to protect the rest of the company—was not uncommon in the history of the order. They were not martyrs; they merely understood the burden of being an initiate in the order.
Lian, who was showing signs of becoming an accomplished rider, brought her horse alongside Haakon. Her black hair has bound up in a ponytail and she wore a fur-lined hat and a shapeless cloak. From a distance, she could be mistaken for a man.
She had Raphael’s crossbow and a small satchel of bolts. She had insisted that she knew how to fire a bow, and Raphael had had her show him with Ahmet’s bow. She was far from proficient, but she knew how to aim and hold the bow steady. It would be skill enough with a crossbow if the Mongol riders got close enough.
A better weapon than a knife, Gawain had muttered to Vera while Haakon had been standing nearby.
Aye, Vera had answered, but there is no reason to not give her both.
“Did you see them?” Lian asked. Her tone was casual and she didn’t look at him, as if she were merely passing some of the endless hours.
“I did,” Haakon replied.
“Did they…Did you know any of them?”
“Aye,” Haakon said. “One of them was Gansukh.”
She nodded lightly, seemingly unmoved by
his news, but he saw how tightly her hands were holding her reins.
“They’re coming after us,” Haakon said. He nodded toward Feronantus. “They want the Banner.”
“Of course,” Lian said quietly.
Haakon nudged his horse closer to Lian’s and leaned over, touching her on the elbow. “When he…just before he left, he said your name,” he told her.
Lian turned her head and looked at him, and he was startled by the shining light in her eyes in contrast with the frozen mask of her face. “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she whispered and then she pulled her horse away, leaving him to wonder what he had just done wrong.
They put the hole with its intricate trenches and swollen canvas covering over the black pool behind them, so that, initially, the Mongol riders wouldn’t be able to come at them from all directions. The extra horses were hobbled nearby, though based on what little Yasper had told him, Raphael expected them to bolt when Yasper birthed the phoenix. He and Percival were wearing the full kits, and the weak links in the back of his maille had been repaired. Bruno and Gawain were wearing an assortment of greaves and leathers they had taken from Haidar’s Muslims, and Gawain had meticulously counted and checked each of his arrows.
He had three dozen. If the Mongol commander, Totukei, had only four arbans and Gawain hit every one of his targets, the fight might be extremely short. But Raphael didn’t think the Virgin was going to bless them in such an extraordinary fashion. There would be more Mongols than that, and Gawain had been tasked with doing as much damage as he could to their ranks with his arrows.
Katabasis (The Mongoliad Cycle, Book 4) Page 28
