The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

The sky above Hunern was alight with purple, gold, red, and orange-the sort of sunset that would cause a bard to spontaneously break out into song. But the beauty of the sun was lost on Hans. He wandered through the ruins of the Mongol camp as if in a dream. The painted sky was as unreal to him as the whimpering cries of the wounded and dying.

The scavengers of Hunern were beginning to converge, the bravest had already crept through the open gate and begun looting the bodies of the dead Mongols. Others would follow, timorous rodents that would strip the tents clean. In the wake of the battle, there would be a period of lawlessness as the people of Hunern came to pillage the Mongol camp. There was no reason to stand in the way of this restitution. The survivors had lost everything, and what wealth they could scavenge from the camp was poor compensation.

He still felt nothing. In the brief instances when he blinked, he saw Tegusgal’s panicked face. The Mongol’s eyes large and round before Hans had driven the dagger into the left one. The sound the man had made as the steel point went through the eye and into his brain. The way his body had bucked and quivered as the life left him.

Hans never wanted to close his eyes again.

The knights of the various orders were collecting the bodies of their fallen comrades, and Hans saw a group of Shield-Brethren gathered around a row of supine figures. He didn’t know where else to go. The Rats, who had come to his aid, pelting the Mongol commander with rocks, had kept their distance after Tegusgal died, their dirty faces pinched and stretched with horrific expressions. Throwing rocks at a hated enemy was a childish act, the defiance of the innocent. Killing a man was something else entirely. Hans was no longer one of them, and they had fled when he had tried to reach out to them.

He was covered in blood, very little of it his, and as he wandered toward the group of Shield-Brethren, he saw how he looked more like the battle-weary knights than like the dirty urchins of Hunern.

The Shield-Brethren dead were laid side by side, arranged as naturally as they could be, their longswords laid across the bodies. Hans counted them slowly-fifteen in all-marking each face in his mind, and when he looked upon the peaceful features of the body at the end of the row, his body shook and he started to cry.

Several of the knights hovered awkwardly nearby, and one finally touched Hans lightly on the shoulder. “He was the best of us,” the man said gruffly. His own face was streaked with dried tears.

The words made little sense to Hans. Had they not said the same of Andreas? Why did the best keep dying? Why were they-the worst, the unworthy, the frightened ones-why were they allowed to live? He drew in a long, shuddering breath and took a few tentative steps closer to Rutger’s body. The quartermaster’s hands, the right wrapped with a filthy cloth, were clasped over the hilt of a longsword, and his brow was slightly creased as if there were unspoken words still trapped inside his skull. Unlike the ones next to him, his body did not have an apparent fatal wound.

“Why are you gone?” Hans whispered as he collapsed next to Rutger’s body.

“It happens,” the gruff one said. “Sometimes she claims them even though they have not suffered grievous wounds.”

Hans looked over his shoulder at the knight. “That isn’t fair,” he said.

“Little is, boy,” the man said. “That is why we grieve. Later, we will celebrate that it wasn’t our turn.” He shrugged as if that was all the explanation anyone would ever require.

Beyond the knight, Hans spotted a group of men approaching. One of the other knights saw the approaching men as well, and his hand fell to his sword for a moment. Of the approaching group, two were wearing the colors of the Shield-Brethren, and Hans recognized them: Styg and Eilif. With them were Kim, Zug, and another freed prisoner.

“There you are,” Styg said as he reached the row of bodies. “When we heard Maks had fallen in battle, we did not know what happened to you. Where have you been?”

Hans shook his head. He did not want to say the Mongol commander’s name out loud.

Kim pushed past the others and rushed to Hans’s side. He knelt and put his hands on the young boy’s shoulders. Kim’s face was dirty and bloody, and Hans flinched as he looked in the Flower Knight’s eyes and saw a flickering reminder of what he had done.

“It’s okay,” Kim said, nodding slowly. “Did you have any choice?”

Hans shook his head.

“Then you did the right thing,” Kim said.

“Te… Tegusgal,” Hans stammered. He started to cry again.

Kim wrapped his arms around the boy and squeezed him tight. “You most certainly did the right thing,” he said. There was a note of pride in his voice, and Hans clung to that sentiment as firmly as he held on to the Flower Knight.