The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Dietrich had to run. If he paused to consider his flight from the abandoned Shield-Brethren chapter house, Tegusgal’s Mongol archers would end his life. Was that not justification enough for his actions? To flee meant to live. His brothers-in-arms had not fled at Schaulen, and they had died. Was that not the ultimate lesson the Fratres Militiae Christi Livoniae should have taken from that morning at the river crossing? Outnumbered, overwhelmed, and caught in the open: the enemy had surprised them. Retreating so as to find better ground, to face the Samogitian rabble another day, was an expedient solution. A practical one.

But his predecessor, Volquin, had stood his ground. Lithuanian light cavalry, much more nimble in the swampy lowlands around the river, had shattered the main body of the order’s cavalry, and as the Livonian Heermeister had tried to rally his men into an effective wedge against the approaching infantry, he had been struck by an errant spear. Before he could regain his footing in the muck, the pagan foot soldiers clashed with his men. Volquin was struck again and again, beaten by sword and club until his armor split. Until the river turned red with his blood and the blood of his faithful.

Dietrich von Gruningen was not Volquin. Nor did he aspire to be. He simply wanted to live.

His horse wanted to dally as it approached the verge of the forest, and Dietrich beat his heels against its barrel, drumming his desire mercilessly into the reluctant animal beneath him. An arrow whistled past his right ear, burying itself into the knobby trunk of an oak instead of the back of his head. He mentally cursed his hubris for not wearing a helm, and his shoulders tightened instinctively as if they could collapse in on themselves and make his body a smaller target. He ducked lower across his horse’s neck as the first branches of the forest whipped by, and he heard the desultory thunk thunk of arrows striking the trees around him.

He missed the first curve of the path, his horse plunging into the undergrowth. He cursed as the unruly branches of the oak trees clawed at him. Holding the reins tight in one hand, he struggled with the clasp of his cloak before a branch snagged it. Such an ignoble death: to be pulled off his horse by a tree branch. His horse, grunting and snorting, blundered through a tangle of ferns and spindly shrubs-leaves and branches alike slashing and whipping at the animal’s flanks.

A heavy bough loomed, and Dietrich threw himself flat against his horse’s back. His cloak went tight against his throat, and he clenched his neck muscles. Digging his fingers between the tight fabric and his neck, he felt it tear and the pressure against his neck vanished. Gasping, he sat up and looked back. His abandoned cloak hung from the thick branch, a ghostly shadow of the man he once was.

His horse stumbled across the path, and he jerked its head to keep it from blundering into the undergrowth again. His horse was bigger than the Mongol steeds, and while keeping to the forest made him a harder target, he couldn’t move as fast.

Was he only delaying the inevitable? Once he broke free of the woods, there was nothing but open land between him and Hunern. Could he outrun the Mongols? And then what? Run back to the Livonian compound like a wounded animal and cower in the shadows of the wrecked barn? He couldn’t imagine his men-especially Kristaps! — cowering with him.

As he weighed his choices, his mount reached the narrow gap he and the Mongol party had recently used to enter the forest. His horse leaped through the slot between the trees, leaving the forest behind, and he blinked heavily in the sudden light. The sun had passed its zenith and was starting its long tumble toward the horizon. It hung in the western sky, God’s dazzling eye, and he felt himself being pulled toward it. There were a few hours of daylight left. The ruins of Legnica lay to the west. Could he find somewhere else to hide until nightfall?

He turned in his saddle, blinking away the radiance of yellow and white spots that suffused his vision. The forest shook behind him, the trees seeming to caper and dance in his wake. A rank of many-armed monsters, gesticulating wildly so as to frighten him away. He swiped at the tears clouding his sight, and noticed the arrow caught in the links of his chausson.

The practice of war often relied upon both patience and deception, and the exercise of the latter invariably relied upon a concerted use of the former. Every year the encroachment of winter froze his hands a little more-the numbness in his fingers, the tingling in his joints, the constant ache in his wrists. The only real practice Rutger got anymore was in exercising his patience.

For many years he had trained in the yard with the younger men, and occasionally he had been called to be their oplo. But more often than not, he was simply one of the experienced swordsmen whom the trainer called upon when he needed to make an example of a student’s failure to properly follow the lesson. For Rutger, since the teeth of winter had started gnawing away at his joints, holding his sword poorly was something he had gotten very good at.

His mind, however, compensated for his lack of martial dexterity, and he studied assiduously the records maintained by Tyrshammar’s lord, learning the more subtle arts of combat-the devious ways in which a commander can forestall engaging an enemy, the violent methods of reducing the number of combatants one must face before ever having to draw one’s sword, and the artful practice of patience. Of waiting for your enemy to blink first.

Fog had rolled into the valley overnight, a damp layer that had clung to the wreckage of the city. His joints ached fiercely, and he had wanted nothing more than to sit by a roaring fire, cradling hot stones wrapped in an old scrap of leather, but the phantasmal fog had made it easier for the Shield-Brethren to slip into the chaotic squalor of Hunern. The sun had slowly burned off the fog without stirring up any wind, and the day had collapsed into a slow, torpid afternoon. After the death of Andreas and the following riots, the city seemed content to lie still, licking its wounds.

The Mongol compound was surrounded by walls built of bricks made from sun-baked mud-the choice of a foreigner clearly, though the weather had been unexpectedly mild over the last few months. A palisade of logs would have been a better permanent solution, but perhaps the use of mud was simply a reminder to all that the Mongols never intended to stay long. The Mongols had cleared a wide pomerium, though had not bothered to dig much of a ditch along the base of the walls. There was one gate-two panels of oak planks covered with hides and iron studs-and it stood between a pair of narrow towers, both made from a combination of brick and lumber. Each tower housed two Mongol guards, and they had spotted Rutger and his wagon almost as soon as he emerged from behind the Black Wall.

He was coming from one of the main routes through the area of Hunern that Hans had called the Lion Quarter, and his route was one taken every day by merchants as they brought their meager wares through the ragged city to the open markets near First Field and the arena. A man and a cart were not unexpected along the edge of the pomerium closest to the ruins of Hunern, and as he had anticipated, his presence did not unduly alarm the watching Mongol guards.

The wagon trundled and bumped along beneath Rutger, its wheels thudding over the uneven ground as he kept the horse moving at a slow, ponderous pace. It hadn’t taken much to disguise himself as a poor laborer, filthy haired and rag-clad, and truth be told it was even less difficult to feign physical weakness when every bump of the wagon made his joints complain. He kept watch on the towers, however, taking stock of the presence of the guards and their attentiveness.

Or lack thereof, which only increased the chance that his plan might actually work.

The odds were against the Shield-Brethren. The Mongols had too many men, and they were all sequestered within a highly defensible compound. A frontal assault would be so damaging to his numbers that they would fail before they even breached the wall. The only possible solution was to trick the Mongols, and given their paranoia-panic and dread in equal parts-such a trick would require as much luck as it would deception.

If it all came down to luck-regardless of how much favor the Virgin gave them-they were already dead, and Rutger tried to keep those thoughts far from his mind.

He expected at least ten guards at the gate-the Mongols ate, slept, shit, and patrolled in groups of ten. Four in the towers meant at least six more inside the gate. Would there be more? He didn’t know, and Hans’s only insight was that there were usually two arban-the Mongol word for the ten-man squad-scattered near the gates during normal circumstances. There was also more foot and cart traffic then, and Rutger would have put more men on the gate himself, but would he keep that same level of security if the gate were closed?

It depended on several factors: the number of able-bodied men at his disposal, the expectation of an attack (and the size of the attacking force), the amount of time the garrison would have to respond to any alarm. Also, in his experience, more men on the wall didn’t increase the chance of spotting sneaky attackers. Too many men, and they would get lazy in their watchfulness, assuming the man next to them would be as watchful or more. Fewer men meant more responsibility, for no man wanted to be the one who missed seeing the enemy approach.

The four sentries were armed with spears, curved swords, and bows. Of the three, only the last caused him any concern, and even though he knew there were twice as many Shield-Brethren archers scattered within the ruins on his left, the range was great enough to stir his blood as he crept along the verge of the pomerium. It was a tricky path to follow: too close and the guards might become suspicious; too far away and they might be suspicious as well. If he had nothing to hide, then why would he be riding as far away from the camp as possible and still be taking this route? When the time came, would he be close enough?

He didn’t dare look over his shoulder, though the urge to do was nigh unbearable. The signal would be plain enough, and it didn’t matter if he saw it. The Mongols were the ones who had to spot the plume of smoke.

It was hard to do nothing. After that fateful day when he had first met Kim in the church, and all during the following weeks when he had sent numerous boys through the gates of the Mongol compound for the sake of passing messages between the Flower Knight and the Shield-Brethren, Hans had been at the center of a secret web of intrigue against the Mongol invaders. He had no illusions about actively fighting the Mongols, but what he had been doing felt just as important. Earlier, when the Shield-Brethren quartermaster, Rutger, had been asking him questions about the layout of the Mongolian compound, he had strained to remember every little detail that the boys had relayed to him. The Shield-Brethren had listened intently, committing it all to memory.

Now, Hans could only watch as the two Shield-Brethren scouts, Styg and Eilif, prepared to scale the wall of the Mongolian compound. The fourth member of their group-a long-faced young man named Maks-crouched next to Hans behind the jumble of brick and burned logs that hid them from sight.

He wanted to be going with them. After all this time of watching others do the dangerous work, Hans chafed at staying behind. He had argued strenuously with the three Shield-Brethren when they had first approached the wall, but Eilif had cut his arguments short with a single statement. If what you have told us is true, we don’t need you; if it isn’t, we’re all dead.

It was a brutal assessment of his value to the Shield-Brethren, coldly delivered, and Hans had been stunned by it.

In the past, there would have been guards patrolling the entire length of the walls. The top of the wall was wide enough for one man to walk along, and sentries patrolled the entire circuit of the wall via a series of easily anchored ladders. Before Styg and Eilif had approached the wall, they had waited and watched for what had seemed like an interminable amount of time, and had seen no sign of a patrol.

Styg thought it was highly likely that the ladders had been taken down on the far side of the wall. The Mongols had decided the height of the walls was security enough, and the presence of men on the walls would only attract archers.

In which case getting up this side of the wall was the easy part. Once at the top, Styg and Eilif could take a quick peek. Hopefully they wouldn’t be peering into a nest of suspicious and angry Mongols, waiting for foolish knights to do exactly what they were doing.

Using a wooden mallet and tent stakes, Styg cautiously ascended the mud-brick wall, leaving behind a trail of hand-and footholds for Eilif to follow. Hans sucked in his breath and held it as Styg reached the top of the wall and-very gingerly-eased his head up until he could peek over the top of the wall. Styg risked a quick glance, and then raised his head slowly to take a longer look at the Mongol camp. Hans half expected the Shield-Brethren’s head to snap back, a Mongol arrow in his eye, but nothing happened. After a slow and methodical examination of the compound, Styg retreated down the stakes to join Eilif at the base of the wall. He looked toward Hans and Maks’s hiding place and flashed them a quick smile.

The route was clear. All they needed was a distraction.

“That’s it,” Maks breathed. “They’re ready.” Letting out a huge whoosh of pent-up air, he clapped Hans on the shoulder. “Let’s go, my friend. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

Hans hesitated, staring at the series of stakes pounded into the wall. Maks’s hand tightened on Hans’s shoulder, as if he sensed the direction of Hans’s thoughts. He held Hans back like one would hold a hound back from a downed bird.

Hans stared at the stakes. In his mind, he was already scaling them…

Dietrich felt no pain from the arrow, and the fletching bounced in response to the motion of his horse and not in time with it, suggesting that the head of the arrow had failed to fully penetrate the maille of his chausson. He grasped the shaft, and without applying much pressure at all, worked the arrow free. Mongol arrows were shorter than those used by Christian archers, and the tips were less uniform in construction. This one was a ragged shard of white bone lashed to the wooden shaft, and the very tip of it was stained with blood.

A more religious man would have attributed his safety to the hand of God, slowing the arrow’s flight so that it barely creased his flesh, but Dietrich recognized that his luck was more due to the animal between his legs than divine intervention. He threw the arrow away, and squeezed his legs more tightly around his horse’s barrel.

His thoughts went to Father Pius for a moment, and he wondered as to the priest’s fate. There was no point, however, in dwelling on what had happened to the priest. He’s with God now.

What had he said to Tegusgal earlier that afternoon? God willing, he wouldn’t die today. So far, God appeared to be listening, but He was certainly taking others to His breast. How long do I have? Dietrich wondered.

His horse crossed fallow farmland at a gallop. Hopefully the open terrain and his charger’s stride were increasing the lead he had on the Mongols. He glanced back once, but his horse was running so hard that it was difficult to judge distances with the constant juddering motion of the horse. Far enough for now, he thought. As his horse leaped over a narrow streamlet and reached the rougher ground along the river, Dietrich made up his mind and turned his mount south. Back toward Hunern.