The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

After the death of the Rose Knight, Hans remembered very little. He had managed to avoid the tumultuous press of bodies throwing themselves out of the arena, mainly by virtue of his size, but the streets had been so chaotic, filled with so many Mongol warriors with bared weapons, that he had gone to ground. Like a frightened rabbit. He knew a half dozen routes back to his uncle’s brewery and the safe haven of the tree, and most of those paths could only be traversed by a boy his size or smaller, but he hadn’t felt safe.

Nowhere was safe.

And so he hid. Beneath the southern stands of the arena, he found a corner of the foundation where the Mongol engineers, in their haste to assemble the edifice, hadn’t quite closed off the foundation. The hole was narrow and dark, and he managed to rip his shirt and scrape his shoulder, but he got in. Crawling around in the dark until he felt stone and wood behind him on two sides, he curled up in a ball. Only then did he let himself cry, and he bawled until he had no tears left.

He must have fallen into an exhausted stupor-not quite sleep, but not quite consciousness either. When he came to his senses, wiping the crust of dirt and dried tears from his stiff eyelashes, he heard nothing. No pounding feet. No screams. No shouting, nor clashes of steel. Stiffly, he pried himself out of his corner sanctuary and gingerly crawled back toward the dim light of his entry hole. Distantly, he heard the raucous screams of angry crows, the sort of cries the black birds made when they were trying to intimidate each other. When they were trying to drive other birds away from a prize of putrescent carrion.

Hans cringed at the thought of what lay outside, scooting back on his hands and rear until he was pressed into his safe corner again. It wasn’t Hunern outside any more, it was Legnica-the day after the Mongolian engineers had breached the city gates and the mounted warriors had streamed into the city.

He wasn’t old enough to fight with the rest of the men in the defense of the city, but he was old enough to understand what the women were planning should the walls fall. He was old enough to know that he should hide, someplace where no one could find him. Not even his own family. Their children would not become slaves, the mothers of Legnica vowed, and when the Mongols came, the women took their children to the wall.

He was not the only boy to survive the hammer and hilt, blade and knife, that took every boy and girl child of Legnica, the frantic solution laid upon each child by their parents to keep them safe from the ravenous pillaging of the Mongol Horde. They were all marked for having been cowards-a darkness each could easily read in the eyes of the others; bound by this shadow, they swore oaths to one another beneath the cracked branches of the old tree in Hunern. Never get caught. Never betray one another. Never give succor to the enemy. Think of the living.

He had survived the fall of Legnica. Days after the Mongols had finished plundering the city, he had crept out of his hole, shivering and weak from hunger. The city stank of death, and the stone walls of those few buildings still standing were smeared and stained with blood. There were corpses everywhere, bloated and stinking with maggots and flies. The sky had been dark with crows and vultures.

He forced himself away from the stone wall and crawled toward the hole in the arena’s foundation. It can’t be as bad. Hunern was silent, daring him to find out.

The arena was empty, but some sense-that same animal cunning that had kept him sane and safe while hiding in Legnica-warned him to stay hidden. He crept slowly along the edge of the stands, eyes and ears alert.

Wood creaked overhead, and he froze, pressing himself against the wood. Barely daring to breathe, he listened intently for the sound to be repeated, and after a few moments, he heard the weak groan of the timber as it was forced to support a heavy weight once more. Voices followed, guttural snatches of conversation, and Hans listened intently, trying to discern what the pair of Mongols was discussing.

They hadn’t seen him: that much was clear. The men were both bored and on edge-guard duty, Hans guessed, watching the arena. But why was the unanswered question. Satisfied that he wasn’t in danger of being spotted, Hans crept toward the back of the arena, a dangerous curiosity tugging at him.

Each of the arena’s numerous exits was typically sealed by a heavy wooden gate, but they were all an after-thought, and their timbers were the leftover scraps from the initial construction. There were gaps in the gate, and most of them didn’t quite marry with the well-worn path. There was a gap large enough to squeeze through beneath the gate nearest Hans’s hiding place, and he-gingerly, carefully-eased through the hole.

Once through the gate, he lay flat on the ground, trusting that dirty dinginess of his clothing and hair would make him blend in with the rough and knotted wood of the gate. Raising his head not much more than the width of two fingers from the ground, he let his gaze roam around the open field outside the arena for any movement.

There were a few huddled shapes. Corpses, he assumed, judging by the interest being shown by numerous crows. A few sported the familiar fletching of Mongol arrows, and after examining the position of these bodies in comparison with the others, Hans was able to discern a history of what had played out in the field.

Most of the dead had probably died in the riot, cut down by Mongol swords or trampled in the madness that had followed Andreas’s valiant attempt on the Khan’s life. The remainder-the ones sporting arrows-were closer to the wall, grouped in a cluster, almost as if they died trying to reach a specific spot on the arena wall.

Curiosity dared him to look, and he crawled belly down along the gate until he reached the wall. The gate was inset slightly, and with a final, nervous glance around, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. Leaning forward, he peered around the corner, directing his attention up.

At first he couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing. A leg. An arm. The ragged edge of a maille shirt. And then a horrible realization hit him: a body had been nailed to the wall. It was in pieces, the limbs hacked from the torso, and little effort had been applied in putting the pieces back in their proper position. Hans leaned out farther, trying to spot some identifying mark, and he finally spied the head.

“No,” he sobbed, sinking back against the wall, and as soon as the word had slipped free of his lips, he wanted to take it back. He wanted to grab the sound with his hands and shove it back into his mouth, as if by swallowing the word, he could reverse time and erase the image burned into his brain.

Andreas.

Overhead, the timbers creaked as the guards reacted to his tiny cry. They began jabbering at one another, and before they could investigate, Hans was on his feet. He sprinted away from the arena, his feet flying across the dusty ground. Behind him, the guards shouted, and he heard the whistling hiss of an arrow as it flew past him. Dodging the dead, he kept his head down and his eyes forward. His whole body-lungs aching, heart pounding-was solely focused on reaching the welcoming embrace of the nearest alley and the shadows that would hide him from the arcing arrows of the Mongols guards atop the arena walls.

He didn’t look back. He had seen enough.