The Mongoliad: Book One

CHAPTER 20: THE DEATH OF A FRIEND

A messenger does not kill; a Binder does not take life. But there was blood on her hands and on the knife.

“Do you need help?”

Cnán heard Raphael’s voice distantly, and for a moment she thought he was asking the question of her, but when she raised her head to reply, she saw he was speaking to Percival.

“I raised him from a foal,” Percival said. His face was a mask; his lips barely moved as he spoke. “I will do it alone. Help the others see to Taran.” The solemn knight turned and walked into the woods, following a trail of blood and crushed grass.

The silence of the field and forest closed around Cnán. Her knife still dripped blood into the hoof-trodden dirt and grass. She stared, seeing but not seeing the trees at the edge of the woods in their strangely placid beauty. Yasper’s lingering smoke rendered the sight eerie and ghostlike. The dagger in her hands felt light as air, and that seemed wrong. She wanted to be rid of it, but at the same time couldn’t make herself throw it away.

They had wrapped Taran in a cloak and taken him back to camp, where a grave would be dug. The Dutchman wandered the field, dousing the flames, and about him the remaining smoke wreathed and whirled. She stepped over the corpse of a Mongol, facedown in the dirt, the body positioned just as Taran’s had been. She suppressed a shudder and moved on, feeling as though she would be violently ill.

How far had she fallen, to permit herself to arrive here and to use this tool, a killing tool, as it was meant to be used? She wiped the blade clean with a clutch of dried leaves, shock wearing away slowly, like feeling coming back into a sleeping limb and, with it, the first prickles of returning conscience.

Not what she wanted to feel.

She took another step, planning to get away from the company and be by herself. Her feet took over. As she walked, she heard arguments behind her: Roger’s raised voice, Feronantus’s reply. The words were empty and distant, intrusions into an awful dream. Was this the penance for what she had done?

A strange, sad sound reached her, seeped into her mind, and pulled her along the direction in which she walked. Tall weeds brushed against her legs. She stopped at the edge of the wide open stretch through which Mongols had rushed only a short time ago, and her focus returned with a sickening lurch as she realized that she had not been wandering aimlessly, but following another’s footsteps across the field and back toward the woods.

Cnán stood still, watching as Percival knelt by his mount. Obeying some instinct that had told it to seek refuge, the horse had staggered into the shelter of the trees and then collapsed.

The knight’s frame caught the rays of sun falling through the canopy of high trees, mail over muscle moving with a deliberate, gentle softness so utterly at odds with his violent motion before. Cnán heard again the husking, ragged sound that had pulled her from her malaise—deep whimpers from Percival’s mortally wounded destrier.

His own breath seemed to blend with the slow panting of the large horse where it lay amidst the ferns.

Her stomach clenched, and a lump formed in her throat as he removed a mailed glove and ran a callused hand over the animal’s thick neck. A shaft jutted from the animal’s flank. The horse gave a louder moan, and its chest heaved. Percival stood back a few steps as it thrashed and then twisted in agony.

So often in her short life, she had witnessed horses and men fall, had absorbed the horror of the image and moved along—as was required of her. Yet this was different. Here and now, the sight stopped her, stilled her; she was suddenly unable or unwilling to move from where she crouched half concealed among the ferns that grew along the forest’s edge.

As Percival tried to soothe the beast that had borne him across the miles, it seemed as if she were watching an essential part of the great, noble man suffer and die.

What sort of world was this, she thought, that made such a man? A person for whom violence could be summoned like an obedient hound, then put away with the sheathing of a sword.

How immediate the violence had been for her, how utterly sudden and desperate. Was it the same for Percival every time he drew his sword? Did he feel the same shock as she did? If not, how easily a person might be pulled into a life where the hound of violence became a mad wolf, pulling at its chains, ready to come out whether its master wished it or not!

But now he knelt on one leg as if in prayer, and she saw in this stance that it was not just the destrier that drew forth his silent grief.

Her throat constricted. Her eyes grew wet. She was shaking. This aftermath, this horror and shock, was what Percival endured, what they all endured, every time they were called to fight.

Abruptly Percival’s voice broke through her gray misery, speaking to his horse. “I have asked so much of you, Tonnerre. You have crossed miles and endured hardships, many of them meant for me. Always, you have been loyal, patient, and kind. A man could not reasonably ask for a tiny share of what you gave.”

The horse’s tail twitched, as though in answer. Cnán saw its head rise, and she caught a look of sorrowful intelligence in its dark eyes. There was pain, but also a remnant of questioning innocence that brought Feronantus’s words back to her heart. The lot of their faithful mounts: food and burdens, suffering and death, for the sake of the men who raised and trained and rode them.

“You have traveled far and served us wonderfully well,” Percival said, his voice almost too low to hear. He moved beside the great head and leaned over, gently taking one ear and angling it toward his lips. “I cannot take away the pain, nor ask you to run again. And so I will not keep you here to suffer, Tonnerre.”

As Cnán watched, the knight drew his dagger with the reticence of a man who would sooner cut off his own hand than do what he was about to do.

Her view of him blurred, and she felt hot tears roll down her cheek.

Her knife, in desperation; Percival’s, in mercy.

“We are lessened by your departure,” Percival said, his voice breaking. Two companions lost, one at the hands of the enemy, one he must now release himself. Again, she had seen this last rite many times across the years and across the miles. Animals so grievously hurt that it was a mercy to put them down rather than leave them to suffer and die slowly.

But never before had it been like this. The truth of that was etched in the way he held the blade and in the quaver of his eternally calm voice. Cnán turned away and tightly closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to look.

There came a spasmodic pounding of hooves, a brief, rustling flurry of violent shuddering, and then stillness.

The trembling and heaving of the Mongol she had killed flashed before Cnán’s closed eyes. She clenched her teeth. When she forced herself to look again, she found Percival standing alongside the unmoving animal. He turned toward her slowly.

In the shadows of the woods beyond, she also saw Raphael, arms crossed, watching with that analytical expression she sometimes found so irritating. How could the physician not be moved?

Percival, however, saw only Cnán. He opened his mouth to speak. His cheeks were slick with tears. But he said nothing. He faltered. Slowly his body turned sideways to her, and his eyes rose up in his head until only the whites showed. He sagged to both knees and dropped his chin to his chest. He might have been sleeping, but his head moved slowly from side to side, as if he were listening to secret music. Then, impossibly, he smiled, as if at the sight of a long-absent friend. He raised his eyes to the branches and sky overhead and stretched out both arms, palms upward, as if catching a warm rain. From the former rigidity of grief, she saw the knight’s body loosen, and then he jerked once, twice, at some inner paroxysm.

He began to murmur in Latin, and she strained to hear his words. “Ego audio Domine. Animus humilis igitur sub ptoenti manu Dei est. Mundus sum ego, et absque delicto immaculatus. Verbum vester in me caro et ferrum erit.”

The glow upon his face—impossible in the morning light, in the woods! He looked around, seeing nothing earthly, but beaming like a small child, and the light of his expression seemed to flash through the forest.

Light without shadows.

Stifling a cry, Cnán fled. Her feet carried her out of the ferns and into the open field, wonder, guilt, and memory hot on her heels. At twenty paces, she paused, stood with shoulders stiff as stone, then—she could not help herself—she turned and looked back.

Percival had not moved. Raphael, who had witnessed this moment as well, was walking away—not toward Percival, she noted—a bemused look on his sun-browned face.

Cnán ran once more, slipping through the mouse hole in the hedge wall, getting out into the large field beyond, where she could have some privacy. The old snag that she had climbed earlier was a short distance away. She ran to it, circled around to the other side where no one could see her, and sank shuddering to the tangle of roots at its base. Pressing her fingers against the ancient bark, she wept until her entire body ached, for the pain, the grief, and in the middle of grief, the unexpected, impossible beauty of Percival’s illumination.

Sometime later, chest still full and cheeks tight with dried tears, she made her way back to the camp. The voices of the Shield-Brethren, less ghostly now, seemed to be handed from tree to tree across the field before Cnán caught sight of them. Yasper’s smoke had long since faded, and the air was clear. In the aftermath of the battle, silence had given way to anger. The Shield-Brethren were at odds now, and the former battleground resounded with the din.

“Roger, stop!” The shout rose over all as the camp came back in view. Raphael had interposed himself between the Norman and Istvan. The former held a drawn hatchet and arming sword.

“Stand aside,” Roger said. “He’ll be the death of us all, one by one. He doesn’t deserve your protection, much less your faith.”

“We are not barbarians,” Raphael said sternly, “to cut down one of our own when the enemy is yet near. Lower your weapons. For God’s and all our sakes, be reasonable.”

“Reasonable?” Roger snarled. “Taran is dead, and that man”—he leveled his sword in the direction of the Hungarian—“as good as drew down upon us all the Mongols who killed him. It is madness to keep him—and his insanity—in the company; reason demands he be put down before he gets us all killed. It would be a mercy to him—and to us all!”

“Enough,” Feronantus said, rising from where Taran lay. Illarion still sat on the opposite side of the body, and the two had been speaking in low voices. As she drew closer, she saw that the Brethren’s leader wore an expression between grief and grim determination. There was a calm hardness there that would brook no argument. “His foolishness has cost one life; let it not cost us more. Break camp and round up the spares we have found; we set out as soon as we have properly seen Taran to his rest.”

Roger, his weapons poised, did not move. Istvan’s hand rested on the hilt of his curved blade, his eyes set on the Norman’s with a hard glare bespeaking a ready willingness to do more violence, even to take joy in it.

The blood and dust in the Hungarian’s beard had caked to muddy black. He looked more demon than man.

Raphael remained between the two, eyes leveled steadily on Roger’s. The others waited, hardly daring to draw breath, none wishing to make the move that would provoke their brother into retaliation.

Roger broke his stance first. “So be it, then,” he said as both sword and hatchet dropped. He half bowed and stepped back, moving his attention toward Feronantus. “On your head be this, Ferhonanths. God and the Virgin save us all if this…if this…”—he cast his eyes once more on Istvan—“mad dog cannot be kept to leash. He is nothing to me—no companion, no warrior. He is a demon-ridden butcher, and I am done with him. He should be staked to a tree and left for the Mongols.”

Istvan received this imprecation with a courtly nod, his assurance unbroken, his arrogance galling to all around him—with the exception of Feronantus.

Disgusted, Roger turned on his heel and stalked away. The group slowly dropped their shoulders, shrugged them out, and then set to breaking camp.

Only Istvan seemed to notice Cnán’s arrival, though she raised her shoulder to avert his look. A demon-beleaguered man, cursed by his comrades, yet still defiant and proud. She understood nothing, clearly, about Feronantus and his intentions.

When Percival returned, they set about the finality of laying their comrade deep under foreign soil. Together, two on each side, they grasped Taran’s cloak, carried him a few steps, and lowered him into the fresh-dug grave, then wrapped him against the coming fall of dirt.

Slowly and in silence, the oplo’s comrades, eyes downcast, gathered around the grave. Feronantus spoke a quiet eulogy. Cnán understood the old Latin words well enough. She had some passing familiarity with the ways Christians buried and blessed their dead. She knew that they laid the bodies in the earth intact, in the belief that, upon the final Day of Judgment, their God would raise them up again and that any whose body was destroyed would have no vessel in which to return. It was a strange practice to her, no less so having now seen it, so unlike the burials she had witnessed in the East. Though in truth, one way of disputing the finality of death was as odd and pointless to her as the next.

Feronantus’s speech was short, but imbued with an ardent affection and sense of loss in every word. “God keep you, Taran, oplo to many, and best amongst us. The world may not remember, but we will never forget.”

Now he began to speak in a different language, one she had seldom heard before and only sparingly. Low-voiced, yet strong, he chanted rhythmically in the tongue of the Northmen who had given the fortress on the rock its name. She knew nothing of what was being chanted, but soon the others joined their leader. Something in the rhythm and the hard guttural words of the chant told Cnán that this was also an old, old ritual, perhaps older than Christianity itself—a ritual of which the Church they supposedly served would never approve.

When the chant was finished, all had tears in their eyes, and one by one they knelt, and each dropped a handful of earth into the grave.

It struck her then, the true meaning of the word they used to refer to him: oplo. Taran had been their friend, but for some of them, he had been more: their teacher, their confidante, their calm and patient tutor. In the way they lingered at the grave, and in the way they let their loss wash over them, she saw the first hints of uncertainty. One of the best warriors amongst them had fallen. No amount of confidence would remove the hard truth that they all faced this same fate—if not on this journey, then on another. Miles of hardship and toil, with nothing at the end but a ragged hole in the ground. What dirges would be sung would be voiced by fewer and fewer still.

Cnán watched as Feronantus quietly took Taran’s battle-scarred sword, removing the scabbard from the fallen man’s horse and affixing it to his own saddle, clasping the hilt with closed eyes and whispering a prayer.

The others finished filling the grave and built a cairn of stones over it, then pounded a cut shaft of wood, tall enough to serve as a staff, at its center. The shaft rose from the ground, already ancient looking, their pronouncement of ageless grief.

Cnán remembered Percival’s whispered words to Tonnerre. Only now was it sinking in to all of the group that, on this journey, they were all expendable—no different from horses.

“I need a drink,” Yasper said as he brought his horse in line with Raphael’s. They had been riding for several hours, traveling more south than east by Raphael’s reckoning, and the company had been lost in their own thoughts. Raphael had been reflecting on the siege of Córdoba, remembering those—both Moorish and Castilian—whom he counted as friends, and he was glad to be interrupted by the Dutchman. The litany of loss that always came on the heels of battle was the perpetual wound sustained by the survivors.

“A drink, you say,” he replied, glancing shrewdly at Yasper. “I suspect that you are not seeking permission to drink so much as to inquire if I would like to join you.”

Yasper nodded, his eyes twinkling. His hair was still stained by the smoke from his alchemical smoke pots, and Raphael smelled the acrid aroma of his chemical reagents. If it was not evident from the proliferation of pouches and pots as well as the curling spouts and narrow mouths of other arcane containers that peeked from his bulging saddlebags, then the pervasive smell that surrounded the smiling Dutchman was ample clue enough as to his profession. “Of course, Raphael. You and I have traveled together long enough that my preferences are well known to you.” He thrust a round object at Raphael.

It was a leather skin, and Raphael noted that, among the panoply of equipment burdening Yasper’s mount, there were several others just like it, each hanging from a cleverly tied loop, identical to the strap on the one in his hand. The skin—horsehide from the feel of it—was oblong, narrow at the top, much like their own water skins, and when Raphael lifted it to his lips, his nose was assaulted by the smell of the liquid within.

“This is putrid,” he said.

“That is the point, I believe,” Yasper chuckled. He motioned with his hands, indicating that Raphael should drink.

Dubiously, Raphael tried again, expecting the taste to be as foul as the smell. The liquid was thicker than he expected, though not unpleasant, and it tasted like… “Almonds,” he noted. “Where did you get it?”

“The Mongols. Each of them had a skin, as well as…” Yasper shuddered.

“What?”

“Under their saddles.” Yasper made a face and indicated Raphael should either drink again or give back the skin. “Meat, wrapped in oiled rags.”

“Raw?”

Yasper took a huge pull from the skin and nodded as he wiped his mouth. “It was,” he said, and Raphael noted there was a note of admiration mixed in with the revulsion in his voice, “the most tender meat I have ever seen. But…” He handed the skin back to Raphael.

“We are not that hungry,” Raphael said. He tried the drink again, noting that the back of his throat tingled as he swallowed.

“Not yet,” Yasper agreed. He leaned toward Raphael, lowering his voice. “But this”—he indicated the skin—“this is pretty good. Not strong enough, in my opinion.”

“Can you make it stronger?” Raphael asked.

“Probably. But I will need assistance. And some supplies.”

Raphael glanced over at Istvan, who was riding ahead and to the right of the main party. Far enough away to be out of range of simple conversation but close enough that they were aware of his presence. “We already have one member of our company who wanders off, looking for supplies. I do not think another will be tolerated.”

Yasper snorted. “Nothing as illicit as what he seeks. I can find what I need in any good-sized settlement. Provided we travel near one.”

“I hesitate to offer any hope in that matter, my friend. We are far from any settlement I would call friendly.”

Yasper took the offered skin. “I agree, and in reflecting on the matter, I have begun to wonder about this journey of ours.”

“Begun?” Raphael responded.

Yasper quirked his lips. “If, as you say, we are far from friendly lands, and as I judge, we are but a fraction of the way to our destination, what is our plan for the supplies and aid that we might require?” He drank from the skin of Mongolian liquor. “We are accustomed to long marches and sleeping under the stars, but after this morning’s…loss, a man’s mood darkens. It becomes more difficult with each passing hour to sustain his…enthusiasm. A man begins to think of a warm fire and a bed—a roof overhead, even. If only for one night.”

“Every soldier dreams of the night when he can put aside his armor and sleep without care,” Raphael said. “It is a familiar part of our burden to be denied such comforts—or any comforts.” He returned the skin bag. His words were slurring. “As you say, we have all marched to war before; these hopes and disappointments are not new.”

“True,” Yasper said. “But in the past, I have always found solace with hope of our destination, of knowing that we will—someday—reach a shining goal. If my destination is a place I have never visited, there is usually someone in my party who has, and I can persuade them to tell me tales of that place so that it becomes more real to me.”

“None of us has visited this destination,” Raphael pointed out. “We knew that when we accepted Feronantus’s call to join the company.”

Yasper laughed. “I’m not a member of your Order, remember. I volunteered.” He took one more swig from the skin and offered it back to Raphael, who held up his hand in denial, then relented and accepted another swallow. “But,” he said, all levity gone from his voice, “it has occurred to me since we buried Taran that you and the others are good soldiers. You will follow Feronantus wherever he may lead you, and that is all you need to know. But me? I fear not the repercussions of curiosity, nor of insubordination, and so I do wonder if that man knows where he is going. Where he is taking us all.”

Raphael recalled the look on Percival’s face in the woods, the serenity of knowing, and he mentally noted how cleverly Yasper had maneuvered their conversation. He knew the alchemist to be an intelligent and inquisitive man. The strange and esoteric matters that he strove to comprehend and master with his experiments were much more arcane and mystic than simply crafting smoke pots and figuring out how to distill this Mongolian liquor into something stronger. Of all the company, the Dutchman was probably as fluent in as many languages as he was himself, and he didn’t doubt the man could read and write all of them as well—even, very possibly, Arabic. If he knew the Greek physical sciences, then it followed he knew their rhetoric and philosophy as well. The man was no fool, as much as his countenance and his jangling pots and potions suggested otherwise.

Raphael nodded. “‘It is an ill plan that cannot be changed.’”

“I raise my drink to the wisdom of Publilius Syrus,” Yasper said.

Raphael lightly kicked his horse. “And I will go inquire after our leader’s mood.” He rode ahead, leaving the Dutchman to his depleted skin of fermented drink.

Feronantus was in conversation with Cnán, the dark-skinned Binder who had proved to be an interesting addition to their company. She was not the first Binder Raphael had met. She carried herself with the same distance and arrogance that most Binders did, but over the course of the last month, he had had time to observe her. She conversed mainly with Feronantus when she was with the main party, and Raphael knew the bulk of their conversation dealt with her reports of the surrounding terrain and the route they were taking. Once or twice, she had found some excuse to talk with Percival, whose deferential responses were so off-putting to the young woman that she never stayed long in the conversation.

He knew she had seen him in the woods, watching Percival. He did not know if she understood what she had seen, but she had seen enough.

He rode up to the pair and caught Feronantus’s eye. “A moment, if you please,” he said, and then nudged his horse farther on. He kept the pace for a little while, until Feronantus joined him.

“Raphael,” the old veteran of Týrshammar said, “what is on your mind?”

“A topic on Yasper’s mind, actually,” Raphael said. “I did not have a suitable answer for him.”

Feronantus twisted in his saddle and looked back at the column of riders. “What is it that Dutchman seeks to know?”

“Our route to Karakorum.”

“I do not know that route. That is why we have brought the Binder, why we have Illarion. He knew that before we left, and nothing has changed. Our route will be revealed to us as we travel, by—”

“When?” Raphael interrupted.

Feronantus’s face darkened. “By what our scouts discover, and by the information they glean from local sources,” he said. “You know this, Raphael.”

“Of course. Nor do I doubt it. But, as you have just said, our route will be revealed. My question remains. When?”

Feronantus pursed his lips and considered Raphael’s question for some time. His hand fell to the hilt of Taran’s sword, not in a threatening way, but unconsciously, the way a man might put his hand against a wall or a rock to steady himself on uneven ground. “I would ask that you speak plainly, Raphael,” he said. “So that there is no confusion.”

“Have you had a vision?” Raphael asked bluntly. “Has our path been revealed to you?”

Feronantus’s hand tightened on Taran’s sword.

When it was clear that Feronantus wasn’t going to answer, Raphael continued. “I saw Percival in the forest, when he went to put down his horse. I was there when the Virgin came over him.”

Feronantus shook his head. “That cannot be.”

Raphael glared at him. “I saw it. Cnán did as well, though I doubt she understands it. We have been given a sign, Feronantus. We would be foolhardy not to recognize it.”

Feronantus did not relent, nor did his hand leave off from clenching the hilt of the dead oplo’s sword. “You presume much, Raphael, to speak to me of prophecy and visions, as if I were a slow-witted shepherd who seeks council and guidance from phantoms—”

“I was at Damietta,” Raphael interrupted, “when one of the Brethren was granted a Visitation. The legate, Pelagius of Albano, did not care for our Brother’s vision, and so he had one of his own fabricated. They even approached me to translate it into Arabic for them so that it would seem more authentic. When I refused, they wanted to drive us out of the city, and were it not for Saint Francis, we would have been cast out. We stayed behind while the army marched up the Nile.” His voice grew bitter, choked by the memory. “We stayed, while our friends and fellow Christians were led to their death by the pride and arrogance of the bishop.”

Feronantus released his grip on the sword, and the ferocity of his gaze softened, transforming his face into the visage of an old and tired man. “I am sorry, Raphael,” he said. “Too many, over the years, have been lost for similar reasons. Too many…”

Surprised by his own outburst, Raphael found he had no more words, and he nodded, his throat tight with emotion. Too many… His arms ached suddenly, as if his body had finally decided to accept the strain from this morning’s combat, and all he wanted to do was to let go of the reins of his horse and let it find its own way. Part of him hoped it would turn west on its own accord…

“Ride with me a little while longer, would you?” Feronantus asked. “I would appreciate your company while I give some thought to what you have said.”

Raphael flicked the reins of his horse, and the animal shook his head, as if to deny that it had been thinking of turning back. “Of course,” he said to Feronantus, and he sat up a little straighter in his saddle when he saw the comfort his presence gave to the old veteran.