He kneed his horse toward Bruno, attempting to come to the Lombard’s aid, but the Mongol was quicker, wheeling his short pony in a tight arc. Bruno was still trying to control his horse when the Mongol rode up behind him and thrust his sword into the Lombard’s back.
Raphael hit the Mongol twice with his mace, but it was too late. The Mongol, his shoulder shattered and his head smashed in, fell off his horse, but his sword remained in Bruno’s back.
Bruno leaned against his horse, his face bright with sweat. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” he said. He punctuated his question with a cough that spattered blood on the mane of horse. He looked down at the pattern of crimson dots, frowned, and then toppled out of the saddle.
There was no time to offer any prayers for the dead. Raphael wheeled his horse, looking for Percival. The Frank was still on his horse, his white tabard splashed with blood in numerous places. “Alalazu!” Raphael shouted, raising his sword high. “Alalazu!” His throat hurt from shouting so hard. He jerked his reins, turning his horse back toward the Shield-Brethren camp, and dug his spurs into the beast’s side. The horse leaped forward at a mad gallop, and Percival shoved his way through a trio of Mongols and fell in beside him.
It wasn’t until he rolled off the Skjaldbrœður and the knife was wrenched out of his side that Gansukh realized the pain in his chest was not from seeing Lian. He sat down heavily, his hand limply trying to find the hole in his armor, staring at the strangely clothed woman wearing the fur-lined cap. “Lian?” he tried, and it sounded like someone else was saying the word.
The knight scrambled away from him, gasping beneath his mask. Gansukh’s attention was drawn by the man’s motion, and he saw the bloody antler-handled knife. It looked like a Mongol knife, but the man was dressed like one of the knights from the West. He tried to focus. There was something awry here; he just couldn’t figure it out. And where was all the blood coming from?
The knight switched his grip on his knife as he readied himself to come at Gansukh again. Gansukh held up his hand, showing the man his reddened hand, as if to say I am wounded already.
Lian—was it really her?—was carrying a Mongol sword and she slapped the knight on the helmet with the flat side of the blade. She was shouting something at him that he didn’t understand, and the man reacted to being struck on the head. He pulled away from her, putting up his hands. She paused, sword still raised for another blow, and he pulled off his helmet.
“I…I know you,” Gansukh said, and the blond-haired knight looked at him. “Haakon.”
“Aye. Aye,” the knight said in the Mongolian tongue. “It’s Haakon. No, wait,” he added as Lian took another step toward him.
“Leave him alone,” she said.
“He’s—”
“Leave him!”
He kept his hands up, nodding that he understood what she was saying.
“I’m…there’s so much blood,” Gansukh said. “You…you stabbed me.” He stared accusingly at Haakon.
Lian rushed at Haakon, and he bent his knees reflexively, dropping into an attack stance, but she only thrust the hilt of her sword at him, gesturing for him to take it. “Find a horse,” she snapped at him. “The others are running. Cnán’s hurt.”
“What about…what about you?”
“Go!” she screamed at him, and then she rushed to Gansukh’s side. He tried to tell her about the hole in his side, the one that was leaking, but she grabbed him and crushed her mouth to his, silencing his words.
Raphael’s horse took an arrow just before he made it back to the hole. He felt its back end skew to the side and then it stumbled. Yanking his feet out of the stirrups, he was ready when it tripped, and he leaped out of the saddle as the horse hit the ground. Raphael’s feet hit the ground first, and he tried to outrun his momentum, but he wasn’t fast enough and his dismount turned into a flailing roll that cost him his helmet. He was up and running a second later, keeping his head down and his eyes locked to Gawain, who was standing beside the protective panel they had made. The longbowman was shooting arrows as quickly as he could pluck them from the ground, and Raphael reached him just as he grabbed and nocked the last one in his line.
“To your left!” Gawain shouted, and Raphael dodged accordingly. He heard Gawain’s bow sing, and felt the ground shake behind him as a horse plowed headfirst into the dirt.
“Burn it,” Gawain shouted, and Raphael watched as Yasper darted toward the edge of one of the many trenches they had dug. The alchemist was carrying a smoldering stick and he thrust it into the trench, which burst into a line of flame. The orange fire raced along the seep-soaked trench toward the covering at the bottom.
The ground was shaking beneath him, the tremors of approaching Mongol horses. Arrows were falling all around, and many were smacking into his maille like angry bees hurling themselves against him. An arrow creased the back of his neck, and he felt blood start to flow along the collar of his gambeson.
The fire in the trench danced happily as if it knew what was coming next. Yasper had thrown himself down on the ground, covering his head as best he could. Raphael meant to do the same, but an arrow caught him high in the upper back, near the armpit, and it twisted him around. It might have gone through his maille; he thought he could feel a tiny pinprick of an itch in that spot. As he turned, the bottom of the hill came into his field of view and he saw the red flame race down and disappear beneath the canvas cover.
He would never forget what happened next. It was burned forever onto the inside of his eyelids.
The dirty canvas rippled and black lines squiggled across it, reminding him of the protective shield on the siege tower as he and his young brothers had charged the Muslim watchtower in the center of the Nile during the siege of Damietta. Barely blooded, so young, and crouching beneath a shield that was covered with Greek fire. The canvas tent over the seep pool turned back in an another instant and then vanished as a pillar of flame erupted from beneath it. The fire, burning bright and hot as the sun itself, leaped skyward, transforming as it flew into a giant bird with wings of a thousand flaming feathers. It screamed as it was born, a righteous howl of hellish fury, and then it wailed again, a heart-rending scream of terror as it died as quickly as it had been born. The ground shook as the earth tried valiantly to thrust this burning phoenix away from it, and the hole belched a geyser of black stones in the wake of the phoenix’s brief resurrection.
Raphael covered his eyes, but it was too late. He had seen the bird. He had seen the branching pattern of its iridescent wings. He had looked upon its face and it had looked back at him, knowing him. It had looked into his soul, and he screamed in horror when it told him what it found there.
CHAPTER 28:
LURING THE DRAGON
Illarion’s sword stopped a hair’s width from the bare trunk of the spruce, hovering there at the end of his extended arm. He drew it back, then snapped the blade out again, powering the blow with his hips. With every repeated strike, the faces of his enemies, past and present, swam before his eyes, mingled with the faces of the countless dead, and the more he swung his sword, the more the faces leered at him. The purpose of such practice was not to hack through a tree trunk, but rather to exercise the control necessary to put the sword in the same place, every single time, without fail. Strike hard; strike with control.
His breath fogged in the cold air as he threw himself into the exercise. The blade was older than the ones he’d wielded in the south, single-handed instead of the two-handed longswords that were becoming common in the rest of Europe. He’d been trained with one such as this, years ago at the behest of his father. When he had fought in Onghwe Khan’s diabolical Circus of Swords at Volodymyr, he had defeated several of the Khan’s champions. He knew it well, and so every stroke was as near to perfect as he could make it.
Such practice, however, did not make the faces go away.
“I’ve never seen a man swing a sword so hard and hit so little so many times,” Nika said behind him as he was returning t
o a ready position. He glanced over his shoulder and noted she was actually smiling. She had, of late, been as somber as he had been on occasion, and he was gladdened to see the return of her acerbic humor.
“I am practicing my restraint,” he said as he straightened and sheathed his sword. “Given our activities of late, restraint is in short supply.”
Almost immediately after his speech in Trinity Church, the Druzhina had begun making preparations to raid into Dorpat. On the one hand, he had felt no compunction about turning them loose, but on the other, he knew the people of Dorpat were innocent of the conflict between the Teutonics and Novgorod. He had selected a dozen older soldiers to lead the raiding parties, and had carefully impressed upon them the distinction between discord and destruction. They were free to show the banners of Rus and to burn homes and fields as they saw fit, but they had to do so with as little bloodshed as possible.
The ruse would not last long, but his hope was that the sudden appearance of the prince’s banner in Dorpat would cause the Prince-Bishop to question Kristaps’s leadership, and according to the few fast-moving scouts he dared send out, it appeared as if the panic was having the desired effect.
Nika held up a folded piece of parchment. “A message from the prince,” she said. “He couches his language very discreetly, but I think he is pleased with your ambition and your willingness to make your own decisions in the field.”
“Is he?” Illarion said as he took the proffered message. He read it quickly, noting the prince’s ability to imply much while saying little of substance. “The Teutonics are marching around the lake,” he said. “It worked.”
“It would appear so,” Nika said. “However, we’re still in Dorpat.” She glanced around the tiny camp. “And the Teutonics are coming.”
“We should not stay long, then,” Illarion said. “The prince suggests we make little effort to disguise our departure, and that we should take the most direct route possible.”
Nika nodded. “I have looked at the maps,” she said. “That route is due east, straight across Lake Peipus, which I am told freezes over in the winter.”
An unexpected shudder ran up Illarion’s spine, and Nika regarded him coolly. “I dreamt of such a lake,” he admitted. “Not two nights past.”
“You and I have seen strange things,” she said, the look in her green eyes becoming unsettling in its intensity. “We have seen the same phantom, which binds us in a way that is not readily dismissed. There can be more to dreams than just old memories that won’t lie still. You know that, and to pretend otherwise is to shame both of us.”
He turned away, fighting to keep the very memories she wanted him to share from filling his mind. They came, ignoring his efforts to forestall them. The twisted tree. The dead knight. The river of dark water. The branding. His left hand reflexively rubbed the place upon his right arm where he’d been marked in his dream.
“I saw the old crone again,” Illarion said. His fingers dug into the flesh of his arm, trying to dig out a wound that wasn’t there. “I saw the old crone. I saw visions of war and death; I walked among the bodies of both friends and enemies; and I felt her touch upon me.” He took a deep breath to master himself. “It was a powerful dream, Nika, but that is all that it was.”
“Then why,” she whispered, “is your arm bleeding?”
He knew what he would see before he looked down. In his agitation, he’d done more than rub the skin raw on his arm. He had torn the flesh. It was not possible that he had ripped his skin in as precise a pattern as was now marked in blood upon his arm, but his eyes told him otherwise. The tiny daggers of pain now lancing up his shoulder told him otherwise. It isn’t real, he argued with himself as he raised his left hand, staring at the bloodied tips of his fingers. It is merely a waking dream.
Nika laid a hand upon his shoulder, and when he looked at her, the frantic fear must have shown in his eyes, for she looked momentarily alarmed, and her grip upon his shoulder tightened. “Listen to me,” she said, “you are not the first to dream of her. There have been others.”
“Madmen,” he answered, “or those soon to be mad.” Perhaps he was mad already, in truth. The shadow of a man once a warrior, now the ghost beside a prince, waiting for a chance to die nobly, or just to die.
“Women of my order,” she insisted. “It is rare, perhaps only once in a generation, but young Skjalddis sometimes dream of the old crone. They do not die, they do not go mad—at least, they do not do so often.” A ghost of the familiar smile flickered across her face, but it did little to dismiss the haunted look in her eyes. “Baba Yaga has long watched the Skjalddis from the shadows,” Nika continued. “When she visits one of us, we listen, for such a visitation is both an honor and a portent. If you have been dreaming of her, Illarion, it is because she is trying to tell you something that you need to hear.”
He shook his head as he wiped his hand across his arm, smearing the pattern of blood into a meaningless shape. The wounds still wept blood, but the flow was sluggish and would soon stop.
“What did she say to you?” Nika asked patiently, and Illarion sighed. She wasn’t going to leave him alone about the dream, and perhaps the burden of it would be lessened if he shared it with another.
So he told her: of the witch woman’s talk of blood and vows; of living and dying again and again. As he spoke, he tried to keep the dreadful fear from his voice, but it crept in regardless. He told her of the mosaic of the knight with the rose in its chest, of his son calling him Ilya, of the black bird made from horsehair, and of the sword that had hurt him. When he was done speaking, his hands were shaking.
Nika said nothing when he finished, and his heart fluttered in his throat. Had he made a dreadful mistake in telling her?
“I think if you tell that story to anyone else, they will think you are mad,” she said, and her words did little to calm his restless heart. “But I believe you.” She leaned against him, her face close to his. Her eyes were bright and clear. “But then, I think I, too, am mad,” she said. “These are not times for people of sound mind. When the world burns, those who stay safe in their houses die first.”
“My house has already burned to the ground,” Illarion admitted with a smile that did not come easily.
“Yet still you live,” Nika said. “The world is not done with you. Or with me,” she sighed as if accepting something she had been resisting for a long time. “You’ve been marked by her,” she continued. “I will not pretend to know why, but I can tell you that for all the terror and dread she inspires, she has never misled those she has advised.”
Illarion looked down at his forearm, and when he wiped the blood away this time, the wounds were nothing more than raised irritations on his skin.
“The mark is as real as you make it,” Nika said. “It is a symbol of a conflict far older than the one in which we currently find ourselves.”
“All wars are,” Illarion said. “Even when it was just boyar fighting boyar over lands or titles, or when it was the Danes or Swedes raiding our lands over a stolen daughter or a murdered son. But that is not the case for this conflict, is it?”
Nika gave a sad smile, and Illarion realized that he’d never once seen her look so tired. “No. It’s older than my order or your Shield-Brethren or their predecessors. It’s older than the stones of Kiev and the lineage of the House of Rurik. I do not know its origin; all I know is that it lies at the heart of the oaths we’ve sworn. It lies at the heart of an old tree that is no more.”
She embraced him lightly, almost awkwardly, but at the same time, he found being enclosed in her arms more comforting than he expected. There was nothing romantic in her gesture; it was more of the comfort brothers and sisters offer one another.
“Let us lead our enemies to the ice,” she said, resting her hands on his shoulders and looking at him directly. “She will show herself to you there, and then you will know what she wants of you.” She offered him a tiny smile, though none of the humor was reflected in her eyes. “
We’ll all know what is to be done.”
CHAPTER 29:
HOMECOMING
Four days after crossing the river, they found Benjamin. The trader, along with four horses, the same number of oxen, two wagons, and a couple of drovers, was sitting beside a fire, idly plucking the single string of a zither as if he had neither a care in the world nor a place to be. His drovers had spotted the five of them when they had crested the hill, and it had taken another half hour for their horses to amble down into the valley and reach the camp.
“Ah, my friends,” the Khazar trader said as Raphael stopped his horse and dismounted. “So fortunate to see you again.” He stood, beaming, and crushed Raphael in a tight embrace that made Raphael’s knees tremble. He clapped Raphael on both shoulders, as if to ensure that the knight would remain standing, and then moved on to Percival, Yasper, and Gawain in turn. He did not hug Evren, nor did Evren seem to mind.
Benjamin was a stocky man who, due to his predilection for wearing copious layers of rich silks and fine cotton, could be mistaken for being fat. When the company had first made his acquaintance, he had come across as a humorless trader who only had time and eye for making a profit, but once the trader had taken a liking to the company, they had discovered an entirely different side to Benjamin’s personality.
“You did not say unexpected,” Raphael noted when Benjamin finished greeting the tired company.
The trader smiled roguishly. “Why would I use such a word?” he said. “That would be so very rude of me, would it not? Guests such as yourselves are never unexpected, especially when I have been instructed very clearly to keep an eye out for your tardy arrival.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Aye,” Benjamin nodded. “They are at my village. They have been there for almost a week.” Some of the humor left his glowing face. “The Binder—Cnán—is not well. She needs a real physician. Alas, my skills are—pffft!—of very little consequence.”
Katabasis (The Mongoliad Cycle, Book 4) Page 30
