The Mongoliad: Book One

CHAPTER 23: A CHANGE OF PLANS

For several days, they traveled east through a seemingly endless landscape of broken marsh and straggling forest. Even with Yasper’s discovery of Mongolian arkhi—a drink Cnán knew well enough to avoid—the pall of Taran’s absence refused to lift. The nights when they made a fire were oppressively dark, and the awareness of higher, greater things—the soughing of the wind, the haze of cold, sharp stars—brought no comfort, even to her, though she loved the wilderness.

When the quiet of an evening was broken, it was more often than not by Istvan, who rambled on at length of Mongol myths he’d once heard, or perhaps dreamed up in the magic haze of his freebuttons—barely coherent stories of endless seas of horses and of a banner, tall and terrible, from whence the Khans drew their power. The Brethren paid him little heed; most turned away, rolled over, tried to ignore the Hungarian. None were inclined to speak with him while the sting of Taran’s death was still so fresh.

Never had Cnán seen a man so alone and so blissfully unaware of his isolation.

In the aftermath of the departure, Roger’s anger at Istvan did not waver or lessen and was echoed, Cnán saw, in the eyes of the others, though none of them were so bloodthirsty. She later heard Feronantus and Roger privately arguing the matter. Given what chaos had been caused by Istvan’s insanity and bloodlust, Cnán was inclined to sympathize with the Norman’s point of view.

“We need him,” Feronantus had said with gentle firmness. “He is mad, he is dangerous, yes. But he is also a fine horseman and, next to Rædwulf, the best archer we have. Furthermore, he is a veteran of Mohi. Few know better how the Mongols fight.”

“Are you certain,” Roger responded testily, “that you’re not remembering a debt to his teacher? The younger boy may have had potential. The man is deranged, and he is not one of us.”

After that, they spoke more often in the Frankish tongue, of which Cnán had less knowledge, but she did not forget what she’d heard. Though Istvan had never been a member of the Order, he’d been trained by a member, or one at least known to them, a man important to Feronantus. The arguments of the Brethren’s leader seemed sound, if overly forgiving, but Roger’s words made her uneasy, and now she wondered, was it wisdom that kept Istvan alive or sentimentality?

The matter of where their road took them next was not broached for several days, until Feronantus spoke, addressing Illarion.

“You must guide us through Kiev,” he said.

“Are you mad?” Roger said from where he sat. The Norman was sharpening one of his axes with a whetstone, the rhythmic scraping sound coming to an abrupt halt as he spoke. “Don’t let me be the one to affront our prowess, but it was as much fortune as skill that left only one of us dead just days ago.” At this, he cast a dark glance at Istvan.

“We have a duty,” Percival calmly asserted. His words, however, lacked conviction. The loss of Taran and his horse had shaken the Frank and left him uncertain in a way Cnán had never thought to see him. It was unsettling to witness, and there again was the memory of the sound of his voice in the woods, alone but for her—and Raphael—unknowingly bearing witness.

When he looked her way, she could not meet his eyes.

“We have been seen,” Feronantus said, not ignoring Percival’s statement, but not standing by it either, Cnán noted. “And not by some stripling fool of a Mongol scout, who alone would have been enough to raise alarm. Enough well-blooded warriors have crossed my path to make knowing a wise one easy when I see him. Word of us will travel back to the greater horde, and they will watch us. We need an excuse to be traveling east, so arrayed, one that does not alarm our enemy.”

He leveled world-weary eyes at Percival and for a moment seemed unable to continue. “Percival has spoken to me, of a role required of us in that city, and while I am unable to fully explain the task”—he glanced at Raphael, who nodded slightly, and then looked over at Cnán as if to dare her to speak—“there is another purpose that visiting Kiev may serve; for there, we may learn something of what has been going on in the world as we kept to the wilderness.”

“What task?” Roger asked of Percival.

The knight shook his head. “I do not know,” he said softly, “but I have been given a sign of what it is that I seek.”

“In Kiev?” Roger pressed.

Percival smiled at him, and Cnán’s breath caught in her throat. How could the Norman not see the light shining from his face?

“I still say it’s a mistake,” Roger murmured, still too caught up in his own disillusionment and anger. “If we’ve been spotted, better to put as many miles as we can between them and us. Mongols and their lackeys run thick here, like flies on a corpse.”

“And that will not change from here to the heart of the Khan’s empire,” Eleázar replied in his accented Latin. He had spoken very little since their journey had begun, and Cnán had not gotten used to the quiet way in which he spoke. It was so unlike everything else about him. “I am with Feronantus and Percival—eleven visiting Kiev will be less strange to their eyes than eleven riding east with no reason. Whether or not they guess our errand means nothing. If they follow us closely—and likely they will—we will be slowed regardless of our motives. We must attempt to shake undue suspicion.”

“I can take you there, though I do not know how much we will find,” Illarion said in his low, sad voice. “I have heard only rumors about the fate of Prince Alexander’s city. If they are to be believed, then the city will be little more than a ruin filled with ghosts.” Suddenly a light came to the Slav’s face, and he actually smiled, then nodded toward Feronantus. “I can think of no better place to shake off pursuit.”

They changed their course the next morning. The fresh horses acquired from the fight made travel a little easier, though heat and the humidity evened their score of misery. As day by day they drew imperceptibly nearer to the city, they passed many tributaries and branches of the great Dnieper as it wound along its southern track, toward the Axeinos, as the people of Rus called it. The Unlit Sea.

The heat bore down during the days and only sometimes relented at night. Cnán found herself more than once thankful that she was unburdened by the armor the Brethren wore, weighing down their bodies and damping both energy and patience as they rode. Watching them, she thought of men traveling in their own ovens, slowly steaming to death, all unawares, like the legendary frog in a witch’s cauldron.

At times, the heavens would show mercy, and the skies would darken with rain clouds that poured down some relief. The armor actually steamed afterward, as did the horses, and the riders trailed a thin haze of mist. The water certainly brought welcome coolness, but then they had to deal with the frustrating tendency of steel to rust and with bedrolls soaked completely through. Despite their best efforts, the armor was slowly tarnishing, and rusty streaks even marred Feronantus’s greaves and mail.

Gradually farmsteads, hamlets, and finally villages became more numerous. Many had been burned, however, and most lay abandoned. The absence of people from even the larger villages gave the landscape a ghostly feel, like riding through a place left behind by all who cared, to be observed again only by those foolish enough to pass through forsaken lands.

Eventually they began to see people, stragglers moving along the goat paths and game trails Finn had found. Small families dispossessed by conflict, some with little more than the rags on their backs, and others with an animal or two, packs of possessions, and downcast eyes hollowed by what they had seen. Most fled at the sight of the armored company, abandoning their animals with an alacrity born of desperate practice.

Here and there, as signs of civilization increased so did signs of atrocity. Hundreds of victims of Mongol plank-crushing lay in shallow, dug-out ditches, the planks long since retrieved for structures or firewood, the corpses left naked, worm-eaten, and shriveled under the sun, their jaws and sunken eyes lost in half-amused, unending screams. Once, they passed an astonishing pyramid of skulls, stacked carefully atop a kurgan—a burial mound of the ancients—to give testament to the power of the conquerors.

The Khans were the masters of Rus, and the Shield-Brethren were riding headlong into its greatest city. Yet Illarion seemed to think, for all the foreboding that hung about him, that they stood a chance therein. Cnán could not help but remember the way Illarion had frightened off a group of Mongols when they had first found him by pretending to be a ghost, back from the dead.

There was a grim determination about the Ruthenian, a grinding set to his jaw, as they drew near the city that Cnán had seen in many a warrior returning home to a place that was no longer home, but knew it could not be avoided. Perhaps more than any of the others, save Istvan, Illarion understood the toll the Mongols would reap upon the conquered.

The bare space on the side of his head offered mute testament to a mortal awareness not all that different from the gaping smiles on the crushed corpses in their ditches. Cnán tried to take what comfort she could from the knowledge that at least the man who was guiding them knew the path well.

And what of this path? Feronantus had refused to tell them any more of what he had learned from Percival, and while the Brethren—after the initial discussion—were stoic in their acceptance of their leader’s decision, she was not held to the same traditions. She hadn’t spoken to any of them about what she had seen in the woods, nor had she seen or heard Percival speak of the vision.

In the lands of the Great Khan, the Mongolians had shamans to whom they went for aid and advice, and she had seen more than one of these mystics perform their strange animistic ceremonies where they were afforded glimpses of other realms and deities, or so they professed. She herself would profess to having seen too much of the cruelty and barbarity of men—and how much they enjoyed it—to believe the claims of divine guidance or inspiration in their actions, but at the same time, she did believe in the presence of a greater spirit. It was what lay at the core of being a Binder, and so she could not completely disregard what she had seen.

The Shield-Brethren had no trouble adopting the mantle of Christian piety, for it was not unlike the true faith they held in their hearts, but she was beginning to see how deep the roots of their belief went. She thought of the orange lilies that would flood the hillsides in the spring. The roots thrived belowground, and every year, for a brief time, they grew new stalks and flowers.

Was Percival’s vision a stalk that was soon to flower? Did it flow from his sense of honor—held dearer to him than life itself? The first few times he had spoken of this honor, she had snorted and rolled her eyes, but since then, she had seen him act under its power—several times at mortal peril.

The memory of him pulling her from the path of the Mongols and slinging her across his saddle, defending her even when his horse fell, weighed on her. She stole a glance at him as he rode, some yards away, on a steed taken from their enemies. For all Percival’s skill in the saddle, the animal would never be as responsive or as swift and powerful as his lost Tonnerre.

Was it honor or grief that drove him? Should she feel pity or sympathy? She looked away, unable to resolve the confusion in her head and heart. In many ways, the unforgiving and savaged terrain of Rus was easier to understand.

When she had come west across the Great Khan’s empire, Cnán had taken care to avoid cities, except where absolutely necessary. She had seen, on more than one occasion, what was left behind by the Mongolian Horde as it swept across the plains. Like Illarion, she was prepared for there to be nothing left but the shattered remains of the crown jewel of Rus. Still, she was taken aback by the vista laid out before them when they crested a rise that brought them within view of the city’s southern walls.

The only sign a city had once occupied the plain was the ragged outline inscribed by the remnants of the city’s defenses. Amidst the rubble and devastation, there were paths—avenues between houses that had not been entirely filled in with heaps of rubble and the charred timbers from houses—but there was little sense in the chaos that a great many people had once lived here. Some buildings still stood, edifices of stone and brick that had refused to succumb to fire and the Mongol pillage, but all that remained of their former glory was a sad struggle to remain upright, like old soldiers who, on their deathbeds, try to wear their armor and lift their swords one last time.

Illarion pulled up his horse. “There is the south gate,” he murmured as the group paused beside him. “We called it the ‘Golden Gate,’ and in the morning light, it would be so bright. But now…” The bitterness in his voice, and the ache, was unmistakable.

Cnán turned her eyes to where he and the Brethren stared and there caught sight of the ruined majesty of Kiev’s fabled Golden Gate. They were tall, wrought of reddish stone that caught the light of the summer sun like dull fire. The wrath of the Mongols had badly damaged the keep about the gate-house, and much of the carved stone had been savaged by the siege, but even from this distance, and through those scars, she could appreciate the beauty the craftsmen had wrought.

They lingered for a long moment, Feronantus watching Illarion closely, but not intruding on his reverie. Cnán took the opportunity to study the city more closely as the others began to talk.

“My wife had family here,” Illarion said. “I had thought… if they had survived, somehow, they might have been of assistance, but…” He didn’t finish.

“On the hill,” Percival said, idly patting and stroking the neck of his mount, as if from long habit. “A church still stands, does it not?”

Illarion pulled himself out of his reverie. “Yes, Sobor Svyatoi Sofii,” he said, and then translated the name for them. “The Cathedral of St. Sophia.”

Roger grunted at the name, but he did not push the matter further, instead looking to Feronantus, waiting to see what he would say.

The old leader of the Shield-Brethren sat on his horse like a judge, scrutinizing the walls, towers, and gates with the eye of a man attempting to discern the safest route across a territory he did not wish to enter to begin with.

Caution, and concern, narrowed his eyes. After a long while, he spoke. “Illarion, what lies beneath the church?”

The Ruthenian glanced at him and then at Percival before answering. “A monastery. Pechersk Lavra.”

“This is your land,” Feronantus said, ignoring both Roger and Cnán’s gazes. “And though the city is a ruin, that church still stands, and its stones must have some power.” He smiled grimly. “The sort of power that would draw pilgrims, penitents who seek solace in the wake of the armies of the Great Khan. It is the sort of place a man such as yourself might go, having survived the ordeal you have been through.”

Illarion nodded. “Yes, that is a role I can play.”

“Take Raphael, Percival, and Roger. They are your escort,” Feronantus said, the plan decided. “We will follow at pace, after we ascertain the intelligence of our pursuer.”