The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER FORTY

A trio of billowing columns of gray smoke marred the otherwise clear sky. The late afternoon sun winked through the twisting plumes, and Dietrich shook his head in disbelief as his horse galloped around a copse of oak trees that hugged a bend in the river.

The bridge was on fire.

No wind stirred the scene, and the pluming smoke billowed and roiled at its own whim. The plain near the bridge had been flattened by the passage of so many horses and men that it was nothing more than a flat field between the high banks of the river and the verge of a narrow band of trees that demarked fallow fields to the west. There was no shelter on this plain-it was exposed ground that Dietrich had hoped to cover swiftly before his Mongol pursuers could get within arrow range. His goal had been the bridge, but that hope died in his breast as soon as he realized where the smoke was coming from.

The road to Hunern was blocked.

Desperate, Dietrich urged his horse toward the river, pulling up short of the steep incline of the bank. Had he the presence of mind when they’d earlier crossed, he might have paid more attention to the depth and speed of the water. To misjudge either would be the death of him, especially dressed as he was in armor, and he did not have time to discard it. With the Mongols at his back, he dared not even try. He could force his horse into the water, but the animal would probably drown trying to carry him and swim. It was too great a risk, and it would take too long to discard his maille.

He heard the Mongols coming, their voices echoing with equal parts glee and anger. Dietrich suspected they would not kill him quickly.

His horse snorted and tossed its head. It sensed his panic and wanted to get away from the smoke. Dietrich glanced at the bridge one last time, his brain struggling to put together a viable plan, and his brow furrowed as his frenzied mind finally focused on a fundamental peculiarity of the scene.

The smoke was pouring from a quartet of squat barrels. There was no real fire, just lots and lots of smoke. Dietrich tugged on the reins and urged his horse toward the bridge. The animal balked, and in a flash Dietrich understood the nature of the obstruction.

The smoke would keep the horses away, but the bridge was intact. He couldn’t ride across, but he could walk. In fact, if he could move one or two of the barrels, he might be able to lead his horse across.

After a quick glance to make sure they weren’t looking at him, Rutger ignored the guards as they became agitated. They were looking behind him, and if he looked, he suspected that he would see the rising plumes of smoke from the bridge. The fires had been lit. Everything was going to happen in short order now. He allowed a tiny grin to crease his lips as he kept his head down. He was within bowshot of the walls. The plan could still come undone.

He heard the sound of the horses approaching, and the pair flashed past him. They were Mongol ponies, with a pair of stocky Mongols clinging to the saddles. He offered a silent prayer to the Virgin as the pair approached the gates. Let them pass. One of the guards shouted down to the men at the gate as the others jabbered and gesticulated at the approaching pair.

Sentries from the bridge, bringing news.

Wood rattled behind the walls, and with a groan the heavy gate creaked open. The two sentries galloped toward the gate as Rutger gathered up the reins of his stolid dray horse. His knuckles burned, but he clenched the straps tight in his fists.

As the two horsemen reached the gate, they suddenly pulled back hard on their reins. Their horses jerked and bucked at the sudden bite in their mouths, and everything became chaotic at the gate. The two horsemen slid off their mounts, and sliding steel from their sleeves, they slit the throats of their steeds.

Rutger snapped his reins and shouted at his draft horse, spooking it. Behind him, beneath the heavy tarp covering the bed of his wagon, he heard the pair of hidden Shield-Brethren stirring. Slapping the reins again and again, he drove his startled horse toward the open gate.

The first Mongol sentry died with a surprised look still on his face as one of the two new arrivals-Shield-Brethren, wearing the clothing and armor of Mongol warriors-drew his sword and hacked the man’s head from his shoulder in a single, fluid strike. The second sentry had lifted his spear into a ready position, but the weapon was useless against the second knight’s thrown hatchet. The hand ax struck him in the face, knocking his conical helmet askew and splitting his skull.

In the sentry towers, the four Mongol archers were hurriedly readying their bows, and Rutger spared only a quick glance at them as his horse and cart closed in on the confusion at the gate. Two of the guards jerked back and disappeared from view as arrows launched from hidden Shield-Brethren positions near the Black Wall struck them, and the remaining pair ducked out of sight behind the mud wall.

And then Rutger was at the gate. His horse tried to avoid the two dead horses, but it was hampered by the heavy cart and its cargo. The horse stumbled and the cart lurched as its wheels struck the unmoving mass of a dead horse. The horse screamed and reared, flailing with its front hooves, and the Mongol sentry, standing in front of the panicked horse, jabbed it with his spear.

The sentry realized almost immediately that he was focusing on the wrong target, and he tried to pull his spear back, but the point was lodged in the chest of the horse. When a Shield-Brethren sword caught him under the chin and slit his throat, he died with a disappointed frown on his face.

The two Shield-Brethren in the cart threw off the oiled tarp cover that had been covering them and leaped from the wagon, swords drawn. They joined the pair disguised as Mongol riders, and the remaining Mongol guards found themselves outnumbered.

Rutger reached behind him and snatched up the longsword lying in the bed of the cart. It was Andreas’s blade, and the worn impressions of the younger man’s hand in the leather grip only made him grip the weapon more firmly. With two large swings he cut the tethers and straps holding horse and cart together. The dray horse, bleeding copiously from the spear wound in its chest, staggered a few steps away from the gate and collapsed.

“Alalazu!” Rutger shouted, raising his sword and signaling to the men who were hidden in the rubble of Hunern. They came, pouring out of the alleys and shattered doorways, a ragged host of armored knights, swords and axes and spears held ready.

He scrambled down from the wagon, crossed the threshold of the open gate, and raised his eyes to the guard towers. The surviving sentries were hiding from his archers, and as he looked up, another flight of arrows skipped and bounced off the wall and wooden braces of the sentry towers. Of the two surviving guards, only one was still unhurt. Shooting back at the Shield-Brethren archers meant standing long enough to become a target, and since the fracas at the gate had begun, retreating to the ground meant closing with the invading Shield-Brethren. They had panicked, and the sole survivor hadn’t realized he could shoot down at the men inside the gate yet.

He cast about for how to climb up to the tower and spotted the narrow stairs on the right side of the gate. As his four men clashed with the remaining Mongol gate sentries, he ran for the steps, taking them two at a time. The Mongol guard saw him coming, and stood up, reaching for his spear.

Rutger paused, a half dozen steps from the top, and stared up at the snarling Mongol. The man coughed suddenly, the anger draining from his face, and the spear slipped out of his hands. He coughed a second time, blood flecking his lips, and he stepped forward, his foot coming down on empty space. He fell off the wall, and Rutger counted three arrows jutting from his back as he plummeted to the ground.

Rutger continued up the stairs, pulling a strip of red cloth from within his dirty shirt. He waved it over his head as he crested the tower, and when the fluttering banner was not immediately pierced with arrows, he stood tall and proud, waving the banner wildly. “Alalazu!” he shouted.

The second wave came, sprinting across the pomerium. His archers, coming forward to provide support for the knight initiates who were already inside the walls. They scrambled over the wagon and the dead horses, pouring into the Mongol camp.

They had taken the gate. Now they had to hold it.

As soon as they heard Rutger’s battle cry, Styg and Eilif rose from their supine positions next to the wall and darted up the imbedded stakes. Styg pulled himself up to the narrow top of the wall, lay flat, and then swung his legs up and over, letting his momentum carry the rest of his body along. He bent his knees to absorb the shock of landing on the hard ground. As Eilif thumped to the ground beside him, he eased his sword out of the scabbard strapped to his back.

The attack on the gate would draw most of the Mongols’ attention, leaving them free to find and free the Khan’s captive fighters. Rutger’s plan called for the warriors of Christendom to break the Mongols’ spirit, and there were two prongs to their assault. The first attack was a bold initiative against the front gate of the Mongol compound, a noisy assault intended to slay as many Mongols as possible before the knights were overwhelmed by the Mongols’ superior numbers. The second strike was more precise: free the prisoners and point them at the Khan’s private tent. Of all the fighting men present, the captives had the most incentive to risk what would probably be a suicide mission.

It was the sort of mission Andreas would have loved, and Styg hoped they could execute it well enough to honor Andreas’s sacrifice. Virgin steady my hand, he prayed, that I might do even half as well as he.

Eilif freed his blade as well, and with a nod they crept into the maze of tents, paddocks, and cages that made up the Mongol encampment. This area had been uncultivated land before the Mongols arrived-open meadows and fields of wild grasses-and the native grasses had been trampled so thoroughly that only tenacious clumps of parched weeds still grew around the bases of some of the tents.

Here and there, men would pop out of these tents-Hans had referred to them as ger. With helmets askew and weapons bared, the Mongols would race for the sounds of violence at a mad, disorganized dash. Styg and Eilif moved slowly and stealthily, freezing whenever panicked warriors dashed for the gate, hoping to remain unobserved. The Virgin was watching over them, shielding them from the eyes of the alarmed Mongols, but such favor would not last indefinitely.

According to Hans, the ger most likely holding the prisoners was rectangular with orange walls, and it was located within the second rank of tents along the southern wall. They had tried to pick a spot to climb the walls as close as possible, but they still had to hunt through the maze to find the one ger.

It was a race. Could they find the prisoners before being discovered?

Eilif hissed, and Styg caught sight of movement behind the half-opened flaps of the ger beside him. A tall Mongol with a long mustache ducked out of the tent and stopped in his tracks, staring at Styg for a long, unblinking moment, and then his face broke into an ugly smile.

Styg darted forward, and the Mongol ducked back, disappearing into the darkness of the tent as he dodged Styg’s thrust. When he returned he had a blade of his own. And a friend.

The first Mongol lunged at him, and Styg responded by sidestepping the man’s attack, bashing the blade even farther to the side, and then snapping his own sword straight at the Mongol’s face. He buried a good three inches in the man’s forehead, and when he jerked his hands back and down, teeth and bits of skull ripped free along with his blade.

The second Mongol had to step around his dead friend, and he used that wide step to drive a powerful two-handed backswing. Styg’s hands and blade were low-he couldn’t get them up quickly enough to block the Mongol’s attack-and he swept a leg back as he raised his sword nearly parallel with the Mongol’s stroke. The curved sword slammed against the quillons of his longsword, and Styg kept moving, pushing off against the Mongol’s blade. His hands rotated, right over left, and his blade whirled around into a diagonal slice that connected with the back of the Mongol’s neck.

As the Mongol collapsed, blood spurting from a cut that nearly separated head from trunk, Styg blinked and remembered to breathe. His heart pounded in his chest like a thunderous drum. The attack had happened so quickly. If he had stood and thought about what he should have done, either of his Mongol attackers would have succeeded in cutting him instead. He had simply reacted, letting his training guide his arms and sword. You must stop thinking about holding your sword, Andreas had told them during one of their first training sessions. It is an extension of you, here and here. Touching his head and his chest. We will do these exercises until you understand this. I want to forget all of your names and see only swordsmen on this field.

Styg shook off the thoughts, sensing the melancholic trap that a fighter could easily fall into after combat. He had used his sword to take a life. That act changed a man-there was no doubt of that in his mind-but to stop and dwell on that transformation would be as foolish as thinking while fighting. If he survived, he could dwell on his first blooding all he liked.

He looked about for some sign of Eilif, and saw none. The orange tent, he reminded himself, and he jogged to his right, getting away from the two corpses before someone stumbled upon the scene. If Eilif was still undetected, Styg mused, it might fall to him to lead the Mongols away from the tent to give his friend enough time to free the prisoners.

That is, if he hadn’t been spotted.

Continue with the mission, he chided himself. He came around the curve of another tent, and was surprised to find a thick post standing in the middle of an open space. A man, his hands bound by leather straps that, in turn, were lashed to an iron ring set in the top of the post, half leaned, half sat on the ground. His hair was long and unkempt and he wore no shirt. Styg could make out the puckered edges of a still suppurating wound on the man’s back.

A coarse shout sounded behind Styg, and he glanced back toward the tent with the two dead men. The bodies had been found, and already a Mongol was running toward him, sword drawn.

Styg darted toward the block of wood and, as he came abreast of it, he swung his sword. The blade severed the leather straps, and he pivoted around the block, swinging his sword in a wide arc in his wake. The Mongol drew up short, avoiding Styg’s wild swing, and once the blade had passed, he leaped forward with a howl. Styg caught the Mongol’s cut on the strong of his blade and let the momentum of his enemy’s attack drive his pommel upward and into his enemy’s face with skull-cracking force.

The freed prisoner stared uncomprehendingly at the senseless Mongol lying on the ground next to him. Styg kicked the Mongol’s curved sword toward the man, hoping the sight of the weapon would bestir the man. The man reached for the weapon finally, fingers wrapped around the hilt with a practiced familiarity.

We all know what to do with a sword, Styg thought as he moved on, seeking the orange tent.

He caught sight of a piece of orange felt, and relief washed over him that he hadn’t been running in the wrong direction. Drab and worn down with mold and rain, the tent’s coloration was not unlike that of a rotting gourd, left too long in the field.

His elation was momentary, cut short by more shouts behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted three more Mongols rapidly approaching. They all carried spears.

His hand tightened on his hilt, memories of watching Andreas fight the Livonian in the Circus filling his head.

Spears against swords. Not a good match.

The smoke burned Dietrich’s eyes and throat as he slid off his horse and dashed toward the bridge. He didn’t have time to figure out who had put these barrels on the bridge or why. The Mongols were coming, and if he could clear a path, he might still escape.

His boots clattered on the wooden boards of the bridge as he approached the first barrel. Up close, he could hear the hissing frustration of the fires inside the nearest barrel as it tried to devour the green and wet wood that was the source of the smoke. The barrel was surrounded by a primitive fire circle, and he kicked the broken rock aside. Clenching his eyes shut against the billowing smoke, he wished he still had his cloak to cover his nose and mouth. Trying to breathe as little as possible, he bent and shoved with his shoulder. The barrel slid across the bridge, rocking slightly, and he staggered against it, inhaling a lungful of smoke.

Coughing, his eyes watering, he hunched over. His eyes were filled with tears, and his throat ached, but he couldn’t stop to hack up all the smoke he had inhaled. He had to shove the barrel off the bridge. He had to keep moving. The Mongols were coming. He had to get his leg to move.

Wiping tears from his eyes, he stared stupidly at his recalcitrant leg. He had removed the arrow earlier. The one that hadn’t penetrated his armor. Why was it back? Forgetting about the smoking barrel for a moment, Dietrich reached down and touched the long shaft of the arrow protruding from his right thigh.

It was longer than the other one, he dimly realized, and the fletching was different.

Through the haze of smoke, he saw horsemen approaching. More arrows began to land around him, skipping off the planks of the bridge, burying themselves into the wood of the barrel next to him. Shorter arrows, fired from Mongol bows.

“No,” he coughed. This isn’t fair. This isn’t the way it was supposed to end.

He wasn’t going to die like Volquin. That wasn’t his destiny. He grabbed his stiff leg and hauled it with him as he staggered around the barrel. He was going to survive. He was going to escape.

An arrow punched him in the shoulder, spinning him around, and he tried to arrest his fall, but his right leg crumpled under him. A brilliant spike of pain shot through his hip and made him cry out. His head rebounded off the bridge and his vision darkened. No. I will not die today. God is protecting me.

Sprawled on the bridge, Dietrich found he could breathe more easily as there was less smoke. He could see more readily as well. The edge of the bridge wasn’t too far away. Could he crawl that far? He dragged himself through the talus scattered across the bridge, one agonizing inch at a time. Arrows continued to fall around him, and he dimly heard shouts and the clanging sound of steel on steel. The Mongols had been engaged by another host, and if his world had not been reduced to nothing more than this painful crawl, he might have wondered who had sprung this trap on the Mongol host.

It was only as he tipped over the edge of the bridge and fell into the river that he caught sight of the arrow in his leg again. The white fletching. Chicken feathers.

A Templar arrow.

And then the water closed over him, and he knew nothing else.