The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Rutger leaped to his feet as the spear sailed through the air. The collective voices of the audience turned from raucous cheers to screams of panic. The Shield-Brethren in attendance at the arena wore maille and carried weapons under their cloaks and plain robes in preparation for the culmination of Andreas’s plan. But everything had gone horrifically wrong the moment one of Dietrich’s men had walked into the arena instead of one of the Khan’s fighters. The Shield-Brethren had all been waiting for the fight to end, hoping that their brother would be triumphant, but fearing they would be forced to watch him fall. Forced to watch one of theirs die, unable to do anything to prevent it. And their plan would have come to naught, undone by the Livonian Grandmaster’s desire for revenge. Everything undone.

But Andreas-bold, stupid, heroic Andreas-had refused to give up. He had tried to save them anyway.

Rutger’s eyes followed the path of the shaft as it vanished between the curtains of the Khan’s box. He stared at the billowing curtains, trying to ascertain if it had hit its target. His lips moved in a silent prayer. Give me some sign.

A Mongol swathed in silks and drenched in blood, staggered into view, the spear through his midsection. He was thin, dressed like a functionary.

Andreas had missed his target. The gambit had failed.

Everything was undone.

The death of the Khan would have made for much more confusion, which they had planned to use to their advantage. As it was, their enemy was simply aroused and angry, actively seeking the presence of enemies within the crowd. They had to flee the arena before anyone realized they were there. Before anyone thought to look more closely at their bulky clothing. They could not afford to be caught in a riot.

Hans wanted to scream, but his throat had seized. Wedged as he was between two watchers in the common stands, the cacophony of the crowd would have drowned him out anyway, yet he struggled to make his voice work. As if the sound of his voice might somehow change the gruesome scene before him. He struggled to make a noise as the Livonian’s hand brought the heavy sword down on the Rose Knight’s shoulder. The blade did not bounce off the maille, but sheared through the mesh, cutting deeply into the body underneath. I told him there would be a friend.

The deafening roar of the crowd overwhelmed him, hurting his ears and making the wood floor tremble and shake. The world is falling apart, he thought, and we will all fall through the cracks.

Andreas fell, a violent spray of blood all around him-in the air, in the sand. Hans wanted to look away, but his eyes-like his mouth-refused to obey. He could no more look away than he could stop what was happening with his tiny voice. Get up! he silently begged, though he knew Andreas would not. He had seen blood like this, when the Mongols had sacked Legnica, and he knew the wound was fatal. He knew there was nothing God could do to save the Rose Knight. Nothing anyone could do.

They knew, he realized, staring at the red cross on the other man’s chest. Somehow, the Livonians had known of Andreas and Kim’s plan. And if they had known…

The others. I have to warn the others. Now it was his legs that wouldn’t move. He had to do something-anything-but he was frozen in place, held captive by the horrible spectacle.

He did not want to watch, but he couldn’t tear himself away as the Livonian raised his sword again.

The crowd was shrieking now, no longer cheering the wild battle down below. The Livonian had struck Andreas at the shoulder, and the greatsword had sliced through his maille, splitting Andreas from shoulder to hip. The sand was a filthy pit of red mud, and Andreas-somehow, by the Virgin! — was still alive.

Rutger forced his way to the rail, trying to ignore what was happening as he looked elsewhere. The gates were open below, and Mongol guards were streaming into the arena. In the stands, panic was already tearing through the crowds as some of the onlookers tried to flee the riot they knew was coming while others surged toward the rail. He spotted several of the Shield-Brethren, confusion and frustration writ over their features. Nearby, Styg was openly weeping, his mouth screwed up into an expression of inescapable horror. As he watched, something died inside the young man and his mouth snapped shut. He surged forward, shoving his way toward the rail.

“No!” Rutger intercepted him, hauling him back from the wooden barrier. The pain in his hands made him gasp, but he held on, holding the young man back.

Styg fought him, great sobbing gasps quaking his body. “We can’t let him do this!” Styg shouted at him, and Rutger stole a glance over his shoulder at the killing floor below. “That’s our brother!”

The Livonian was still cutting, his sword rising and falling like a butcher’s cleaver, even though the body beneath his blade was clearly dead.

“Aye,” Rutger snarled, hauling the young man around so that he would no longer look upon the bloody spectacle of the field. “And if you go down there, you will join him. Others will follow you, and it will all be for naught. We are done here. Get to the horses!”

He barked at the other Shield-Brethren within earshot. “Go, now. Get back to the chapter house.”

He wasn’t sure if they heard him, but they could read his command in the anguish of his face, in the bared ferocity of his teeth, in the wild fury of his gaze. They understood him, and obeyed, fleeing the retribution that was to come.

To the chapter house, he thought. They would regroup, grieve briefly, and then they would ready themselves. His mind raced, leaping across a dozen different courses of action as his men melted into the teeming chaos of the fleeing crowds. He gave Styg one last shove, ensuring that the young man was moving in the right direction, and then he spared one last glance back at the arena and the Khan’s box.

A Mongol dignitary, wrapped in bloody silk, the spear jutting out of his body, sprawled against the railing of the Khan’s pavilion. The curtains had been pulled close around the box, and the roof of the pavilion was swarming with the Khan’s archers.

Andreas, he thought as he let himself fall back in the crowd. It should have been me.

Roosting crows cawed irritably from the rafters of the barn. Hunern had become a ghostly ruin. The Mongols had withdrawn into their camp, barring their gates and shielding their Khan. The streets were empty but for a few stragglers, too drunk or senseless to seek shelter. Even the birds had gone into hiding.

Dietrich knew the silence wouldn’t last. The Mongol retreat was a strategic withdrawal so that they could order their ranks. Once they got over the initial shock of the assault, they were going to ride out in full force. While their main focus was going to be on the Shield-Brethren, there was little doubt in his mind that every living soul between them and the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae was going to be counted as an enemy.

If they survived, there was still the issue of Kristaps’s actions to be dealt with. War had been declared between the two orders.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Dietrich snarled at Kristaps when he found the man. “I didn’t tell you to kill him while his back was turned.”

Kristaps stood before a water trough in the barn that was serving as a basin, washing Andreas’s blood from his sword. From tip to hilt, the weapon had been coated with the blood of the Shield-Brethren, and no one had dared try to take the blade from Volquin’s Dragon.

“I’ve likely saved our order, Heermeister,” Kristaps replied with an unnerving calm. The knight looked at Dietrich, and the Heermeister was struck by the utter lack of feeling in the man’s unflinching gaze.

“By starting a war?” Dietrich snapped. He was in no mood for double-talk, and Kristaps’s implacable stare was unnerving.

“By making our intent clear to those who truly hold the power here,” Kristaps replied bluntly. “When the knight made his dash to throw his spear, how would it have looked if I’d let him live? Especially given that you bribed my way into the fight. They would have seen two Western orders putting aside their differences to defy the Khan. What vengeance comes next would as likely fall on our heads as theirs. To save us, I had to defend the Khan’s honor.”

Silence hung between them, filled by the chatter of crows in the rafters. In the distance, a bell started to toll. Dusk was upon the city, and the dolorous tone of the bell made Dietrich shiver involuntarily. Night was coming, and only God knew if any of them would see another sunrise.

He had ordered his men to start striking their camp. They had to be ready to ride at a moment’s notice. The compound had served as suitable shelter for his order, but it would not protect them at all when the Mongolian wrath was unleashed. Even if Kristaps was correct in his assessment, it would only buy them a little time. The Mongols would turn their attention to the other orders once they finished destroying the Shield-Brethren. He couldn’t overlook what had happened at Mohi. The Mongols did not discriminate.

There was something else, though. A thought nagged at Dietrich and he stared at the First Sword of Fellin, trying to elucidate his concern. “You made your point when you killed him,” he said, now holding his knight’s gaze. I will not be cowed. I am your Heermeister. “You did not need to mutilate his body.”

Kristaps said nothing, though whether his silence was due to genuine regret, which Dietrich doubted, or because there was no proper way to excuse his behavior, was not apparent.

The big knight had already doffed his maille, and he slowly slid the sleeves of his gambeson up to his elbows. He raised his forearms to Dietrich, revealing circular scars on both arms. Old burns, seared deep into the meat of his forearms. In the fading light of the day, they looked like heraldic devices, though smeared and stretched across the skin.

Kristaps’s blue eyes flashed. “They mutilated me first.”

But for the evening birds and the distant tolling of a bell in Hunern, the Shield-Brethren toiled in silence. Armor was being donned, swords sharpened, and those horses that were not yet readied were being saddled. Rutger felt the pain in his joints acutely, a grinding heat in the knuckles of his fingers. It had robbed him of his place in the order years ago, and the succeeding years had slowly buried his disappointment until he had come to accept the lesser role of quartermaster. But there was a need to hold a sword again.

Eventually, the Shield-Brethren gathered around a pyre erected from the remaining firewood. Rutger counted thirty somber faces. Full knight initiates, squires, and the untested like Styg and Eilif who had more than proven their worth in the past few weeks. Andreas had been right, Rutger realized as he looked at the assembled men. They were boys no more. He was surrounded by his brothers-the only family he had ever known-and their hearts and minds were as focused to the task ahead as their bodies were ready. There were no other men among whom he would rather stand when it came time to die.

The Mongols had taken what was left of Andreas’s corpse and nailed it to the walls of the arena. While he would have preferred to give Andreas a proper burial, dying in an effort to retrieve the body was an utterly foolish way to honor their fallen brother. What few personal items that remained would be enough, a symbolic gesture that would hearten the men and honor the spirit of their departed companion.

A torch was offered to him, and he managed to wrap his stiffening fingers around the piece of wood. Thirty pairs of eyes turned toward him, and he knew it was time.

Time to tell them why. Time to tell them the reason they all took the oath.

“We are all dying,” he said bluntly. Feronantus would have done a better job. His old friend was a much more gifted orator, but as the most senior brother present, the duty was his now.

What happened to all of them was his responsibility. He tightened his grip on the torch, afraid that his clumsy fingers would betray him and let go of the flaming brand before he was done speaking.

“High-born and low, peasant or king,” he continued, “our lives come to the same end. The Virgin claims our souls, and the earth and sky claim our flesh and blood. She whose honor we have sworn to defend measures our deeds in life, and those who are found worthy are taken to her hall where we spend eternity beneath the tree that is the root of all. Those of us who remain honor the memory of our worthy dead by hanging their pommels in the Great Hall of Petraathen.”

Rutger paused, a lump at the back of his throat, a wetness swelling behind his eyes. “Brother Andreas was worthy,” he said, his voice breaking. “Honest in word and deed; unflinching in his courage; first to act when the call came. When we floundered in our duty, he remembered. When we wished to hesitate, he struck. Andreas was everything that a knight of the Shield-Brethren must remember to be. When we forget who we are, when fear seizes us or when doubt assails our hearts, we need only think of our brother Andreas to find our strength again.”

Styg raised a longsword encased in a worn leather scabbard. Upon its pommel was a design similar in composition to the sigil of the order, but unique. Every brother owned a blade, given to him when he proved himself, that bore his own symbol. When he died, it was the sworn duty of his brothers to return the weapon to Petraathen. The blade would be reused, given to a new initiate, but the pommel would be struck free and permanently housed in the Great Hall. Andreas’s sword would have been lost with his body, but for the fact that he had not carried it with him into his final match. The blade had stayed here at the chapter house, and so they possessed it still.

Rutger carefully transferred the torch to his left hand. With his right, he drew Andreas’s sword from its scabbard. His hands felt like they were on fire, each knuckle a burning coal beneath the skin. “This blade is the finest steel our smith could forge, and when we go into battle, this sword is our virtue and our strength. But our brother did not take this sword into battle. Instead he took his faith and his love.” He raised the blade. “It is our tradition to break and reforge a blade once its wielder has fallen, but I submit to you that this sword should never be broken. It should hang, whole, in the Great Hall for all eternity as a reminder of our brother’s faith. It never faltered. He never faltered…” His voice wavered, threatening to lay bare his grief, and he tightened his grip around the hilt, the pain in his joints hardening his resolve. “We are the Knights of the Virgin Defender. We are the Shield of Saint Mary.”

He said the older name next, the Greek words hard in his mouth, and he saw confusion on the faces of some of the younger men. It is time they knew. “We have stood fast for many lifetimes,” he explained. “We live to see our brothers die in battle. We too will die violent deaths. But our vows remain. Our strength remains.” He raised the sword high and let his pain fill his voice. “Andreas,” he cried. “Alalazu!”

His brothers answered with the same. The still air was filled with the sound of swords being drawn and voices raised in salute. Alalazu! Alalazu! The battle cry of the Shield-Brethren shook the branches of the trees and rattled the old stones of the ruined church, and before the echo of the first salute had died away, a second followed. And then a third.

In the wake of their salute, they heard the sound of horses. The rhythmic rumble of hooves against the hard ground. The jingling sound of steel against steel.

“Mongols,” Styg spat.

“No,” Rutger countered. Too heavy. “Mongols don’t ride chargers.”

The sun had nearly set, a redness bleeding in the western sky, and the horsemen riding into the camp appeared to be swimming out of a sea of blood, the last light of the day glinting off helmets and shields and maille. White surcoats marked with red crosses and black ones marked in white hung on the riders as they filed into the clearing, their combined numbers several times that of Rutger and the Shield-Brethren about him.

Rutger lowered Andreas’s sword and stared at the host of Templars and Hospitallers. As he waited for some sign as to their presence, the lead Templar slid from his horse. His short hair and closely cropped beard were steel gray, and his face was a stone-etched mask. “I am Leuthere de Montfort, commander of the Templars at Hunern,” he said in a rough-edged voice turned hoarse from many years in the field. “Who commands here?”

Rutger stepped forward from among the circle of Shield-Brethren. “I am Rutger, knight initiate of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. My brothers look to me for guidance.” Having said the words, he felt their weight settle upon his shoulders. I will lead them, Andreas, he vowed. “Do you come for blood?” he asked plainly. The Livonians had made themselves enemies of the Shield-Brethren today, openly and with all the hatred that could be mustered. He was somewhat surprised that the other orders would feel the need to mete out justice.

One of the Hospitallers dismounted and strode forward to stand beside the Templar. “I am Emmeran, commander of the Knights of Saint John,” he said. Like Leuthere, he was armored for battle. His face was kinder, however, though at the moment it was etched with a solemn expression. “The Livonian atrocity committed upon your brother was ill done. You should know that their Heermeister, Dietrich von Gruningen, had come to both our orders previously, speaking ill of you and your brothers.”

Leuthere nodded in agreement with the Hospitaller. “I apologize for the bluntness of my question,” he said, his gaze still unreadable. “Your man, when he threw his spear at the Khan today… was he acting alone?”

A desperate hope seized Rutger as his mind warred with itself over whether or not to tell the truth. He was surrounded by a host of knights that was several times larger than his small company of Shield-Brethren. He exhaled slowly, and in his mind’s eye, all he saw was Andreas, smiling at him. Wouldn’t you rather choose the manner of your death?

Rutger opened his eyes and looked at the unlit pyre for their fallen brother. I hope you rest in the arms of the Virgin, he thought. With a grunt, he threw the torch atop the bundle of wood, and it clattered across the pyre, scattering wisps of flame. As the oil-soaked wood ignited with a huff, he turned back to the Templar and Hospitaller. “The plan was of his making,” he said, “but it was done with our knowledge and support. Our brother did not act alone.”

Emmeran and Leuthere exchanged a look, and then the Templar’s mouth cracked into a smile. It looked almost bizarre on that stony face. “Surely he did not think he could take on the entire Mongol host by himself?”

Rutger shook his head, trying not to let the small hope burning in his chest erupt into something larger. “No,” he said, his eyes flickering back and forth between the two men. “Such an action requires more men.”

The Hospitaller’s eyes glittered in the leaping firelight. “That is our thought as well,” he said. “Which is why we have come to join you.”