The Mongoliad: Book One

CHAPTER 18: THE PARTING OF THE VEIL

Later, after he had killed this giant steel cockroach, Zug would worry about the humiliation of being down on the ground. Of having been sent there with his own weapon! But he had not fought hundreds of combats in this and other such arenas without having acquired certain skills. One of which being that he could draw power from the energy of the crowd when it suited him, but ignore them altogether when they were only honking like excited geese.

Chevalier—as the crowd appeared to name this big Frank—had some experience with pole-arms, and while he wasn’t exceptionally proficient with the naginata, he was good enough. Zug knew he had been lucky—twice!—and such fortune was more than a dead man could hope to receive. He would not be afforded any more such chances.

Lying on the ground, he could not use his legs or his body to put force behind his blocks. He had to get in close, like the Frank had done.

Though unlike the Frank, he was flat on his back.

Zug curled like a prawn, contracting his chest and knees toward each other. As he arched his back to move across the ground, he flicked the blade of the Frank’s sword toward the closest target—the Frank’s right ankle.

Unlike the rest of his body, the Frank’s ankle wasn’t armored. The strike would either take his foot clean off or break bones and cripple him.

The Frank lifted his foot adroitly, just high enough to let the blade hurtle through underneath. But he was off balance and would have to plant the foot again before he could formulate his own attack. He had lost the initiative.

Zug kept the enormous sword moving. He whirled it all the way around as he shrimped across the ground again and brought it back for a second pass—the same strike, but with even greater power.

The point of the naginata drove into the ground in front of him and brought the sword’s movement to an abrupt stop. It was almost an exact mirror of how Zug had stopped the Frank’s second naginata strike a moment ago.

Levering himself up on his right elbow, Zug reached up with his left and grabbed the naginata’s wooden shaft, his hand only about a foot away from the Frank’s. The weapon was neutralized, and Zug had something to lean on.

The Frank’s left knee was exposed, at about the altitude of Zug’s head, in a perfect position to be kicked. Zug pulled his knees up almost to his chin and then lashed out at his opponent’s knee. The Frank, seeing an opportunity of his own to kick Zug in the head, had started to pivot on his left leg, but Zug was faster and drove the other’s knee sideways at the precise moment when all of his weight—and that of his massive coating of armor—was firmly supported by that leg.

The Frank collapsed to the ground, nearly landing on top of Zug. His right elbow was now on top of Zug’s left, immobilizing that arm, and his stinking armpit was almost in Zug’s face. Zug’s right arm, however, was shielded by his body and free to move.

Zug discarded the Frank’s sword, and in a well-practiced motion, he reached to the small of his back and drew out the tanto sheathed there. He brought it around the front of his body in a small, quick movement that the Frank could not even see and jammed it with all his strength upward into the Frank’s armpit. As he did so, he had to control an instinct to flinch away, since he expected a fountain of blood to erupt from the big artery that was pumping life into the Frank’s arm.

But nothing happened.

Haakon had been struck in some painful ways during his training, and Taran had made a point of teaching them to poke each other in certain spots, such as behind the point of the jaw, where it was especially unpleasant. But he had never felt anything quite as bad as what Zug did to his armpit.

He was no longer holding the shaft of the glaive; the impact of the thing in his armpit had made his hand go slack. He raised his arm, more to see whether it still worked than as a martial tactic, and was horrified to see a silver steel blade projecting from Zug’s right fist, going straight up to where it hurt.

Haakon’s mail had stopped a perfectly aimed thrust.

Then, much later than it should have, Haakon’s training came back to him; he grabbed Zug’s wrist with his left hand, palmed the blade with his right, and pushed in different directions. The hilt peeled up out of Zug’s fingers, pinky first, followed by the rest, and then the dagger was in his hand. Forearm-to-forearm pressure kept Zug’s right arm buckled and pinned against his chest. With no real planning or effort, Haakon found that he had brought the dagger into a position where its tip was only inches away from his opponent’s throat. A small movement of his hand and it would be over.

But he could not bring himself to kill this man. From a distance, swinging the huge glaive—that was one thing. But he was so close now that he could see, through the narrow eye slits of the demon mask, the bloodshot veins in the whites of Zug’s eyes.

By almost any fair accounting, Zug had won the duel. Haakon had been standing over him wielding an immensely superior weapon. But this man had taken him down and delivered a perfectly aimed strike that ought to have left him helpless and bleeding to death on the ground.

Sometimes, when he was intensely focused on a fight, he stopped hearing things. Later, when it was over, hearing returned. He thought he was in one of those instances now, but he could hear Zug breathing, the faint jingle of his mail as he shifted his position.

It wasn’t that he had gone deaf. It was that the arena had gone absolutely silent.

He pushed away from Zug, heaving himself up to his feet. He heel-kicked the naginata backward, out of reach, and backed clear of his sprawling opponent.

Zug’s mask was askew, and it no longer seemed to be the face of a ferocious demon. The white whiskers were matted and dirty, and the mouth was stretched sideways, more of a drunken leer than a howling maw.

In a rush, the audience started screaming. A flood of noise that staggered Haakon with its force. Zug flinched as well, and his mask tilted upward as he looked at something over Haakon’s shoulder.

Haakon turned, taking in the blur of a rapturously ecstatic crowd—the entire arena was on its feet, shouting and cheering—until his gaze settled on the Khan’s pavilion. Onghwe Khan, his large frame covered in robes of crimson and gold, stood at the edge of the pavilion, his hands upraised. He brought them together, sunlight sparkling off the multitude of rings on his fingers, and he saluted Haakon.

Haakon had the presence of mind to do the same. He touched the hilt of Zug’s dagger to the forehead of his helmet, and for a second he heard Taran’s voice in his head. Do it! his oplo shouted. You can make this throw. His hand tightened around the hilt of the dagger.

Onghwe Khan brought his hands apart, palms out, as if he were parting a curtain, and Haakon realized with a start that he was doing exactly that. Below him, the Red Veil moved. It was drawn back by invisible hands, and Haakon got his first glimpse at what lay beyond.

The audience, already making enough noise to be heard for leagues, became louder still. Haakon’s chest seized. He couldn’t draw a breath, and all thought of trying to assassinate the Khan fled from his brain. The world seemed to slow down. The shrieking noise of the crowds became a muted roar that buffeted his ears like the slow pound of military drums, and above the thunder of the audience there rose a single chattering voice.

Zug had risen to his feet. His face had changed, and Haakon dimly realized he had removed his mask. His face, while mostly smooth, was not that of a boy. Apoplectic, his eyes bulging, his cheeks red, his mouth spitting out words Haakon did not understand—this was the face of a grown man. Haakon stared at him for a frozen moment, marking all the rage and despair he could read plainly on Zug’s visage; it was a face he would not soon forget.

He bowed to Zug and then turned his back on his defeated opponent and walked toward the opening beneath the Khan’s pavilion.

He had won. The Red Veil had parted.

Dietrich watched as the Shield-Brethren knight disappeared from view. From his position on the western side of the arena, the veil and a section of the tunnel beyond it were visible, though as soon as the knight stepped past the veil, it dropped once again, obscuring everyone’s vision of what was happening on the other side.

The audience was still celebrating, and the stadium was starting to shiver with the rhythmic vibration of stomping feet. The exultation of voices was dying out, enough that Dietrich could make himself heard to one of his companions without having to shout; he had turned to Burchard to speak when a piercing scream rose above the ambient chatter.

Down on the arena floor, the losing competitor was howling. His mask was off, and his outrage was directed at the Khan’s pavilion. Instead of tapering off, his scream ended abruptly as he spun on his heel and lunged for the pole-arm lying in the sand.

The eastern gate was opening, disgorging a quartet of Mongolian soldiers with long poles of their own—tipped with sand-filled bags that would bruise and coerce. The dispersal team, deployed to separate combatants and to shuffle the survivor off to his proper destination, was a well-known sight in the arena, and Dietrich had seen their heavy poles in action on more than one occasion, though usually they were facing a fighter armed with just a sword.

Zug’s weapon was as long as theirs, and sharp.

The first Mongol discovered how sharp the pole-arm’s blade was when it took his head cleanly from his shoulders.

The second Mongol tried to get his pole-arm up to block Zug’s spinning blade, but all he managed to do was deflect the blade up so that it sheared through his skull instead of his neck.

The remaining pair stumbled back, trying to keep out of Zug’s reach.

Dietrich glanced up at the walls surrounding the arena, looking for the Mongolian archers. They were tracking the crazed fighter down below, and one loosed an arrow. Zug lifted his arms, spinning his weapon in a circle between himself and the archer, and the arrow deflected off the ash of the pole-arm shaft.

Burchard grunted in admiration. “Look,” he said, pointing at the pavilion. The pair of archers stationed there had arrows nocked in their bows, but they weren’t drawing them. “The Khan is not ready to lose his champion.”

The pair of archers stationed farther away finally heard the shouted command to hold. The crowd was turning into a clashing sea of opinions: some were chanting Zug’s name; some were raising a cry for clemency; others were chanting for blood, anyone’s blood; and a small part of the crowd was starting to get angry. Down below the Livonians, near the wall, a fight broke out, and from this grunting mass, a body was ejected over the rail.

The body—a Northerner, judging by the pale color of his hair—collapsed bonelessly on the sand. There was blood on his face. His limbs twitched; he was still alive, but knocked senseless by the blow that had catapulted him into the arena. What happened next was not his fault, but he was the one who opened the floodgate.

Two Mongols dropped to the sand, and while one hunched over the supine Northerner to finish him off, the other scrambled across the arena floor, heading for the knight’s discarded sword.

Having scared the two remaining pole-wielding guards back as far as the eastern gate (which had been summarily closed behind them as soon as Zug had attacked the first of the four and which wasn’t being opened no matter the pleas they made to the men on the other side of it), Zug charged back toward the center of the arena, and his pole-arm caught the running Mongol in the back, nearly severing his legs from his trunk.

More bodies dropped into the arena from several locations, and Dietrich realized they weren’t all Mongolian. The archers began shooting. The audience—no longer giving vent to a cry of “Zug! Zug!”—were now responding with fear and anger. They started hurling their own missiles—rocks, mostly—and some were directed down at the men in the arena, but a larger number were directed at the archers and the occupants of the pavilion. The archers responded, turning their attention toward the surging masses around them, shooting into the mob.

Sigeberht pulled at Dietrich’s arm, a clear signal that it was time to leave. Somewhat reluctantly, Dietrich allowed himself to be pulled away from the chaos of the rioting audience. “Fascinating,” he murmured as Sigeberht shoved his way through the crowd, clearing a path toward the stairs at the back of the stands. An idea was beginning to suggest itself, an answer to his nightly prayers to God for insight.

For all their bluster and military superiority, the Mongols were still men. Men who were far from their homes, occupying a foreign land. These men—the fighters who would be doing the bloody work of the Khan—were starting to lose their edge. The army was getting tired, and a tired army was more readily frightened.

Yes, he thought, and frightened men lash out at the things they fear. Dietrich saw the standard of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae in his mind’s eye, snapping in the wind above the ruined monastery, and he smiled.