The Mongoliad: Book Two

22

The crowd swarmed across the wooden planks of the scaffolds like a ferocious colony of termites, a writhing mass of humanity that twitched and leaped and shouted in response to the two combatants. First Field had three fighting grounds, and as only the center one was in use, the audience had repositioned the scaffolds to more tightly embrace it. In between the scaffolds, crates and wooden beams and chunks of rock made for makeshift platforms from which still more of the commoners could watch. There were patches of color in the otherwise uniform sea of dirty brown, tiny clusters of men in finer robes, surrounded by their mailled guard.

A standard stood next to the ring; Kim caught glimpses of it through the throng. Every time the crowd parted slightly, affording him a brief view of a corner, his desire to see it fully only increased.

His Mongol guards hung back, milling about on the periphery of the excitement. They were outnumbered, and the crush of people was too great, too uncontrolled, and they were hesitant to force a gap through which Kim could reach the fighting ground. Unwilling to wait for them to decide how best to approach the crowd, Kim walked to the back edge of the scaffolding and leaped, reaching for a bracing bar. He pulled himself up, feeling the muscles stretch and pop in his shoulders, and he hung there, a few feet off the ground, face pressed up close to the back of a Westerner. He pulled up a leg, got it hooked on the long plank, and pulled himself over the bracing bar, barreling into the top row of spectators.

They were not amused, and several turned angrily on him as he shoved his way into their midst. Below them, his Mongol guards shouted up at him to come down, and the Western men, hearing these strident voices, suddenly lost interest in pushing Kim off the scaffolding.

Kim ignored the men around him. He was too busy examining the fighter in the ring.

Down below, a tall, powerfully built man in a quilted coat-apparently the Frank-stood near an equally sized, heavier-set man who was lying on his back. The Frank held a wooden sword, and though he was breathing heavily, he did not appear to be overly tired. His brow was damp with sweat, matting his blond hair to his head, and he had a broad smile on his bearded face. As the man on the ground rolled away, the Frank planted the tip of his weapon in the ground and raised one hand in a salute to the crowd.

They reacted in kind, yelling and screaming their adoration of his martial prowess. The Frank turned slightly and bowed to the flag standing in the triskelion beside the ring. Kim could not help but smile. It was the symbol of the Rose Knights, just as Zug had drawn for him in the dirt.

The Rose Knight’s opponent crawled from the ring to a thunder of booing and catcalls. Another man stepped forward, ducking under the ropes. This one was shorter, though no less strong than the previous combatant, judging by the thickness of his arms and legs. He was also a Westerner, darker in skin and hair than the Rose Knight, but his beard was trimmed in a similar style, and his clothing was equally unadorned. In one hand, he carried a thick shield, and in the other hand, a wooden cudgel. He spun his weapon a few times, and the crowd fell silent, leaning forward with intense fascination to listen to the sound the heavy club made as it whirled through the air.

The Frank nodded, acknowledging the man’s right to enter the ring. Holding his blade in a low, close guard, he eased into a ready stance. Kim watched intently, his mind already starting to catalog the Frank’s fighting style, comparing it to his own. Looking for ways it could be beaten. The Frank’s sword was shorter than the staff Kim preferred, but the way the Frank held his weapon suggested such proficiency that to think the Rose Knight would be disadvantaged in matters of reach would be foolish. There was patience in his stance as well, a placid calm not shared by his opponent.

They had not even crossed weapons, and already Kim knew who was going to win the fight. Nevertheless, how the battle played out would be useful knowledge.

The Frank thrust, the tip of the blade driving at his opponent. It was a surprising move, as his stance had seemed more suited for defense, but that was part of the illusion. He had wanted the club-wielder to think he was ceding the timing of the first blow. The other man turned the thrust aside on his shield, stepping forward as he did to bull-rush the Frank. The Frank responded, moving so fluidly that he seemed to have been waiting for that very response from the club wielder. Kim considered the possibility that the thrust, like the stance, was part of the lure to which the club wielder had fallen prey. The Frank’s weapon rotated in his hands, the tip arcing away, and the club wielder found himself rushing toward the hard pommel of the wooden sword.

The pommel slammed into his head, and as the stunned fighter attempted to recover, he stumbled and swung his cudgel and shield as one in the Frank’s direction. The Frank hadn’t stood still. As soon as his pommel strike had landed, he was stepping past the staggering fighter. In the confusion following the strike, his sword had somehow managed to slide past the man’s guard, parallel to his body. The Frank, behind his opponent now, pulled the wooden blade tight against the man’s neck, choking him. His opponent struggled and grunted, dropping both his weapons as he attempted to free himself, but he could neither reach the Frank nor get any leverage against the blade pulled tight against his throat since the Frank’s hip was also at his back, pushing it forward and putting him hopelessly off balance. It was an interesting technique, extremely useful in this situation where the Frank was using a wooden sword, but Kim wondered about its efficacy in combat with a sharp weapon.

By the time the man yielded, the crowd had exploded into noise again. Their voices echoed loudly amid the ruins of Hunern, and Kim knew this was the sound he had heard back at the compound. As the Frank slapped his opponent on the back, sending him staggering toward the rope, Kim lightly slipped under the bracing bar and dropped back to the ground.

His Mongolian escort crowded him, and the one in charge started to berate him for leaving their side. Kim cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I am ready to fight,” he said. “Make a path for me.”

This was his chance to make contact with the Rose Knights.

The man with the shield and club made five, and Andreas had yet to be touched by any of his opponents’ weapons. His arms and legs tingled a bit from the exertion, but mostly he felt warm and loose. The exultation of the crowd fed him as well, their noise a fire that roared through his veins. Virgin forgive him, but he was starting to enjoy himself.

During the first fight, he had been distracted, and his opponent might have landed a blow had he been a better fighter. Rutger had admonished him about the stolen Livonian horses, directing him to return them before he came to the field to offer the open challenge. The command had rankled him, even though he knew the aged quartermaster was right. The Shield-Brethren were not horse thieves, nor were they in open conflict with the Livonians (regardless of how Andreas felt about their machinations); to keep the horses was tantamount to starting a feud that would descend into open violence. The Livonians were still Christian soldiers, and the greater enemy was the Mongol force; for the time being, the Shield-Brethren fought to uphold the honor of all of Christendom.

Andreas, Styg, and Eilif had brought the horses back to Hunern, abandoning them at the first sight of a Livonian patrol (which had taken longer to find than they had anticipated). The Livonians had pursued them for a brief while but quickly gave up when they realized they had stolen back the same horses. Being able to return to their Heermeister with this news seemed to be victory enough that chasing a trio of Shield-Brethren through the ragged streets of Hunern lost its luster.

Which hadn’t quite been what Rutger had meant when he told Andreas to return the horses, but all in all, it seemed like a good solution.

However, Andreas had taken a liking to the Heermeister’s bay stallion, and returning it to a man who did not seem to appreciate it overmuch had put him in a foul mood. A mood that had been quickly driven away by martial exertion, the best remedy for the confusion and consternation that could plague a fighting man.

While the crowd madly cheered his latest conquest, Styg leaned over the ropes and offered him a waterskin. Andreas took it gratefully, the cool taste a merciful respite from the sweltering heat of his gambeson.

“How many more?” Styg asked, partially in jest, but there was enough concern in the young man’s face that his question demanded a serious answer.

“As many as it takes.” Andreas wiped the sweat from his forehead. “We are here to make contact, and I will fight until he shows.” No mention of what might happen should someone manage to best Andreas. Better to not give credence to such a thought.

“You’ve not said a word to any of them since this began,” Styg said. “How do you know you’ve not missed him?”

“Firstly, he is not from Christendom, as most of the previous fighters have been,” Andreas answered, reminding Styg of the obvious reason. “Secondly, our man single-handedly beat a pair of Livonians, each of them on horseback, with a stick.” Andreas took another drink from the skin. “I would hope the Livonians are more skilled than the men I have fought so far. Otherwise, I weep for the future of Christendom.” He grinned at Styg. “Did you not see the runner sprint off for the Mongol camp after I beat the second man? By now, they know we are here. They must be curious, and I am sure their fighters are as bored as we are. The mere suggestion of a decent fight will draw them out. They’ll come.”

Styg was about to reply when a commotion between two of the scaffolds caught his attention. People were scrambling out of the way; a few even slipped under the ropes, using the open space of the ring to more readily avoid the press of bodies being forced to part. “Someone comes,” the young Shield-Brother noted. “You may be right. I think you have caught their attention.”

They could see the source of the chaos in the crowd now. Several Mongol guards were forcing the crowd back with the butts and shafts of their spears, opening a way for a man to approach the arena. He was smaller than the previous opponents, with black hair and almond eyes set in an intent, hard face whose age was difficult for him to assess. He wore loose-fitting clothes that gave him an easy freedom of movement, and by the way he walked, Andreas could see the sort of grace in him that came only from an impressive amount of strength. His face, however, was mottled, with bruises and cuts that had not yet healed, lending him somewhat of a horrific appearance that belied this quiet strength.

A silence settled over the First Field as the newcomer reached the rope. He glanced up at the standard of the Shield-Brethren as it fluttered gently in the afternoon breeze, and he offered Andreas a flash of white teeth before placing his hands together at his chest and bowing.

“Ah, now we are getting somewhere,” Andreas murmured to Styg, passing back the skin. Andreas had eschewed a long-sword in favor of his waster-a wooden sword that squires and knights alike would use for practice bouts in the training yards. It would be insufficient to cut or perforate flesh, but it was as good for leaving bruises and breaking bones as any wood stave, and killing was the last thing he wished here and now. He faced the newcomer and raised his wooden sword until the hilt was before his eyes, a salute that he hoped his new opponent would recognize.

The smaller man regarded him a long moment, then gave a nod of his head. He held out an open hand, and Andreas realized he carried no weapon. He watched with some incredulity as one of the Mongol guards stepped forward and offered the fighter a short hardwood staff. It was an exchange much like the sort of request a knight makes of his squire for his sword, but Andreas realized the reason the Mongol had held onto the weapon was that they did not trust their fighter to walk around armed.

Yes, Andreas thought. This one is different.

His opponent ducked under the rope and entered the ring. The crowd remained silent, breathlessly awaiting the commencement of the fight. Andreas stood ready, his wooden sword held loosely in both hands, waiting to see what would happen next. Waiting to see how much patience the other man could muster.

His opponent snapped into motion with a flourish of explosive movement, the stave whistling through the air as the smaller man whirled and leaped. Despite the strangeness, there was something familiar in it that pulled at Andreas’s memory, reminding him of the flourishes he had seen in his training days as a squire. His opponent was out of measure, and his flourishes were more ornamental than aggressive, a range of motion that was good for fitness, for driving away fear. They were hardly fitting for fully adult men, fighting in earnest. Andreas felt his impression of the man changing, his assumptions about this man’s skill bleeding away. The kicks were head height, exposing all sorts of targets, and surely, what was the point of kicking a man when you had a weapon in hand?

Andreas relaxed into his guard. In his hands, the weight of the wooden sword was a comforting reminder of the years of training drills, both at Petraathen and Tyrshammar. This shouldn’t take too-

Without warning, a foot slammed into his center, past his unmoving weapon, and drove his stomach against his spine. He went down; as he fell, his body instinctively reacted, transforming the fall into a backward roll. Months and years of practicing falls just like this one had built muscle memory that reacted automatically. He cursed himself for failing to see the blow coming and cast forth a silent prayer of thanks to the Virgin for both the padded weight of his gambeson and the years of breathing training. It was because of both of those that he could go without air for a short time while his lungs recovered from the kick. Dimly, he was aware of his opponent’s staff pounding the ground where he would have been had he not managed to turn his fall into a roll.

He was wrong. This fighter was good.

The Frank raised his blade in a salute, and while Kim did not know the exact meaning of the gesture, it was clearly a respectful response to his own acknowledgment of the Frank’s prowess. They had exchanged all the pleasantries necessary, and Kim held out his hand for his weapon. His escorts had insisted on carrying it for him, and he had had to hide his amusement that they thought him so helpless without his staff. While it was a fine piece of hardwood, it was just a stick, and he could have entered the fighting ground with no weapon at all, especially given the Frank’s wooden sword. But since they had brought it, and they expected him to use it, it seemed prudent to keep up appearances. Staff in hand, Kim ducked under the rope and entered the ring.

He appraised his opponent for a moment, eyeing the man’s restful guard. It was the same stance the Frank had taken with the club wielder. Having seen that fight, Kim knew the lack of aggressiveness in the stance was meant to lull him into making the first move. If that was the Frank’s opening gambit, then Kim could respond in kind. He too could lull his opponent into thinking he wasn’t ready to attack.

He began walking forward, his staff held in his right hand, parallel with the ground. Drawing closer, he swept it into circling arcs, his hand gripping it at the center. The spin moved left, right, then left again before his right hand moved as far left as it would go. Then his left flew into motion, and he took a two-handed grip at half-staff.

Moving forward and leading with the butt, he executed three rapid stabs with the end at shoulder level, then three kicks from low, to middle, to high with his left leg, never once letting his foot touch the ground. As his left leg kicked, his right arm drew the staff back, keeping the butt focused upon his opponent. He planted his left leg and launched his right into a rounding kick as high as he could, his hips rotating with a powerful snap that launched him into a spinning leap, his right leg flowing into a crescent kick from outside to inside. Right foot and staff butt met the ground in the same motion. The Frank had slid into a low guard, and his gaze was guarded, as if he were struggling to hide his reaction to Kim’s opening flourish. Was he disappointed that I did not attack him outright?

Kim stalked forward, the stave whipping across his body but ending always with either point or butt aimed squarely at the Frank. His movements were a variation of his previous actions, and while the Frank watched him intently, he could see the big man was not taking in the subtle differences in the motion of his body. Closer, closer.

He reached a distance a mere length of the staff from his opponent. His stance shifted, the right leg now forward, and the point of his staff swept through the dirt, then whipped upward to face level as he skipped forward with a one-step side kick to his opponent’s middle, deeper than the earlier three, with the full force of his turning hips and left heel driving it in. He made contact with the Frank, folding him in half and knocking him to the ground.

Kim was surprised that the kick had landed, and more so that the Frank had managed to take the blow without crumpling completely. His astonishment slowed his response, and the following jab of his staff struck the ground, missing the Frank as he turned the backward fall into a roll. The larger man was surprisingly fast, and though he’d been taken off guard by the blow to his middle, the speed with which he recovered was a measure of his skill. Kim had seen men gasp for breath like fish out of water after receiving such a hit.

But the Frank was already moving again, and Kim tightened his grip on the staff.

Andreas kept moving, launching himself backward until he regained his feet, where he at least looked like a warrior. In the back of his mind, shame warred with excitement: he should have seen the kick coming; this fighter was not like the others.

His eyes narrowed on the Easterner’s hands. This shortened grip on the longer weapon made no sense; surely it would be better to hold it by the end, to take advantage of its greater reach. The pain in his midsection told a different story. Perhaps this Eastern warrior preferred the close fight. Very well.

He darted to his right, snapping his point forward as he moved. It was not the most powerful of strikes and would not be terribly effective against a man in armor, but against an unarmored opponent’s arm, it would be enough to disable the limb. In his mind, he could hear his own shouted commands during the training sessions at the chapter house. Hit first; hit fast!

His blow connected a little off center-so as not to break his opponent’s arm-and the other man’s hand let go of the staff. His opponent whirled away, and Andreas stayed close, intent on pressing his advantage.

The staff whirled toward his head, a one-handed swing that caught him off guard. He beat it down, stepping out of line, and snapped the point of his wooden sword back up. The butt of the staff intercepted his strike, preventing him from landing a second blow on the already bruised arm. With a flick of his wrist, he slid his point along the staff, down into his opponent’s fingers. It would be painful but not debilitating, as pain alone was never enough to stop a well-trained man in the throes of the battle rush.

Even as Andreas’s tip struck the Easterner’s fingers, the staff was already rotating, and the end he’d beaten down slammed with an awful force into his bruised midsection. He clenched his teeth, flashing a grim smile. It would have driven the breath from him a second time, but for the fact that his lungs were already empty. He was leading with his left side, and his gambeson was well padded. The blow hurt, but it did not slow him overmuch.

The force of the Frank’s strike jarred Kim’s arm from wrist to shoulder. His left hand reflexively opened, releasing the staff. Surprised, Kim retreated, flexing his fingers and moving his wrist. His arm was not broken. Curious, as this man seemed skilled enough that had he wanted the limb broken, he might have done so with the opening he’d taken. Mercy? Or foolishness…? The latter Kim doubted. In his experience, foolish men were less likely by far to live long enough to become skilled warriors. Or perhaps these barbarians are merely too stubborn to fall.

The Frank stayed close, pressing in on perceived weakness. Seeking to break his opponent’s momentum, Kim brought his staff about in a one-handed strike aimed at the Frank’s head. The blow did not connect, but by battering it aside, the Frank had to change his direction. He stepped away, bringing his tip up in an attempt to strike the arm again. This time, Kim was ready, and the butt of his staff turned aside the Frank’s point before it could land. The Frank was resourceful, however, and Kim felt pain blossom across the backs of his fingers as the tip of the wooden blade slid down his staff and struck them a blow that was not as hard as it might have been, but painful nonetheless.

He didn’t let go, though, as his opponent had just given him an opening. Kim kept the staff moving, rotating the weapon about and whipping up the end the Frank had beaten aside. With satisfaction, Kim felt it solidly connect, but the Frank was moving away already, acting neither winded nor broken. Leaping back, Kim endeavored to give himself space.

Instead of retreating out of reach as well, resetting their fight, the Frank chased after Kim with serpentine speed. A gloved hand shot out, seizing Kim by the wrist, and he was jerked off balance. The point of the Frank’s wooden blade snapped forward in a sudden thrust. Bend in the wind, Kim thought, letting his body arc away from the point, not quickly enough to avoid it altogether, but far enough to avoid the worst of it. The point loomed in his field of vision, and he struggled to bend farther. He felt the impact more than he heard it-a loud crunching noise that resonated throughout his skull-and he found himself unable to breathe through his nose. He fought against blurring eyes as tears reflexively came.

The Frank had broken his nose.

Through the haze of his vision, he saw the sword whipping around to finish him with a blow to the left side of his head. Disoriented, his stance wobbly and not stable, he was in danger of being knocked senseless. If he let the blow land. Blocking out the pain in his face, he concentrated on his hands, forcing them to respond to his demands. The staff swung up-agonizingly slowly, it seemed-and the two wooden weapons loudly crashed against one another as he fought to remain on his feet.

It was like sparring with Taran, Andreas realized. Getting his hand on the Easterner’s wrist had opened the other man’s defenses, and the strike to the nose-with the commensurate flow of blood-had evened the score. But the fight was far from over. It’s not truly a fight until both are bleeding.

The nose? Taran had laughed once when Andreas had landed a lucky strike. That barely counts. And he had swiftly demonstrated to the younger Andreas just how little a broken nose slowed down a resourceful and practiced fighter.

Andreas kept up the pressure on the Easterner, striking from both sides. Each attack was parried, but he could sense his opponent’s increasing desperation. His opponent’s balance had been direly shaken; Andreas could feel how unstable his stance was in how the staff bounced against the wooden sword. With each strike, the Easterner’s balance slipped a little further. He will have to yield soon, he thought. One of my blows will get through, and then-

The Easterner didn’t try to block the next jab, and his left hand snaked out-the arm he had hit with the staff! — and grabbed the tip of his sword. It was a move that would be dangerous, if not outright deadly, to try with a real sword, but with wood, it was a sneaky, but clever, trick.

Andreas could be clever too, and instead of getting into a tug-of-war for his weapon, he let go of his waster, leaving his opponent holding two long weapons by their ends. His hands free, Andreas made to finish the fight with a grappling move.

As he’d been taught, and had done hundreds of times, his left hand reached toward his opponent’s throat, and his right came up for a hammer blow to the temple. His vision flashed, and his hands were suddenly not where he wanted them to be; his head rang, and rippling lines of agony ran down his frame. Dimly, he realized what had happened: as he had closed to grapple, the Easterner’s thumb had darted out and jammed itself into one of the energy points in his neck.

Again, his conditioning and training saved him, and he reacted with a knee strike, which only slid off his opponent’s thigh, expertly moved to protect the groin. His left hand was over the Easterner’s shoulder, so Andreas shifted to grab his opponent’s neck. He braced the other man as he threw his head forward, trying to smash his forehead against the other man’s broken nose.

But the Easterner wasn’t there; he’d slipped around to Andreas’s left. Andreas was still throwing his weight forward, and combined with the lock the man now had on his left arm, he was hurled off his feet, face-first into the dusty ground.

Spitting out dirt, he rolled to the side, getting his feet under him again. He had fallen on top of his sword, and his hands had unconsciously grabbed the weapon. As he came to his feet, he discovered two things: the first being that his right hand was on the pommel of his wooden sword; the second was that his left arm refused to work. Dislocated, but not broken, he hoped.

His opponent had taken advantage of the throw to go for his own weapon. He held his staff in that shortened two-handed grip Andreas was coming to be wary of, and his face-not very pretty before-was a mass of blood and swollen flesh now.

Andreas turned his body slightly, angling his right shoulder toward the man, moving his sword behind his body to hide it from his opponent. No use trying to do anything with the left arm anymore. He was a single-handed opponent now. His choices were fewer; his tactical options much less complicated.

He had no doubt this was the man who had beaten the Livonians at the bridge. This had to be the Flower Knight. The fight was coming to its inevitable conclusion. One more pass would probably be all it would take. One more chance to deliver his message.

Andreas smiled. If his plan worked, then losing this fight would be worth the reward…

Come at me, then. Let’s finish this.

Kim was surprised at the failure of his thumb strike to the Frank’s energy point. A secret technique of the Flower Knights, the strike should have paralyzed the man’s entire body, but instead, the Frank had only lost the use of his left arm. In any other situation, Kim would have been fascinated by this revelation, for it suggested the Rose Knights had access to esoteric fighting styles, techniques that relied on a man’s understanding of his opponent’s energy centers. As it was, not only was the Frank still standing but he had retrieved his sword and had adopted a truly defensive stance. It looked almost coy, the way he was hiding behind his own body, but Kim was wary of the fact he could barely see the other man’s weapon.

It was a good stance, probably one that was very effective against another edged weapon, but the staff worked better as a thrusting and jabbing weapon, and after a few weak parries on the part of the Frank, both men realized the staff was ultimately going to win. With one hand, the Frank beat each of his attacks back, but he was forced to give ground with each parry.

Kim recovered badly from a wild sweep of the sword after a parry, exposing his left shoulder, and the Frank took the bait, sensing this was his one hope to regain the fight. Kim was ready, though, as the recovery had been a feint, and the butt of his staff effortlessly pushed the wooden sword aside as it came toward him. Kim surged into the opening and, with a sharp snap of his wrist, clipped the Frank on the temple with the staff. The Frank stumbled, grunting in pain, and then crumpled to the ground of the proving field.

The roar of the crowd came back to him, shut out before by the all-consuming focus of the fight. Kim was breathing heavily, and out of the corner of his eye, he could already see an enormous confusion on the other side of the ropes as his Mongol guards tried to calm the surrounding crowd.

A hand grabbed his ankle, and he looked down, surprised. Didn’t the Frank realize he had lost? The Rose Knight was squinting up at him, his mouth moving. Was he praying?

No. He’s trying to tell me something.

He would not be able to celebrate his victory for long. The Mongols would drag him out of the ring in a few seconds. He had so little time.

Kim knelt beside the fallen man, slipping his hand behind the Frank’s head. The man’s gaze was fierce and unwavering, in spite of the blow to the head, and he hissed one word, loud enough for Kim to hear over the roar of the crowd.

“Hans.”

The boy’s name.

In a flash, Kim understood. He and the Rose Knights did not share a common language; it would be difficult for them to communicate effectively. But they did share one thing in common: the friendship of the boy. “Hans,” he repeated.

“Hans,” the Frank said the boy’s name one last time, as if to seal the understanding that had passed between them. The boy would carry their messages. The two of them stared at one another for a moment that stretched longer and longer, until Kim abruptly realized that the guards hadn’t yet come to retrieve him.

The crowd had grown silent, and he saw that the man’s eyes were now fixed on something behind him with a sudden, alert intensity. Kim glanced over his shoulder, and his guts tightened at what he saw: the crowd was vanishing, slipping away like the tide gone suddenly in reverse, rushing away from the shore. They were fleeing before the arrival of heavily armored Mongol warriors, men with plumed helmets and long pole-arms with wickedly curved blades.

The Mongols scattered the crowd, flowing around the ring until the dusty brown of the audience had been replaced with the black armor of the Khan’s personal guard. Within seconds, the two fighters were surrounded by a tight cordon of armed men, their deadly pole-axes lowered ominously toward the ring.

After a few seconds, the ring parted to allow a burly Mongol with a beard twisted into an ornate braid to approach the ring. He wore polished lamellar armor that shone in the sun, and his helm was topped with a horsetail plume that danced in the wind. It was Tegusgal, wearing his ceremonial armor-the armor he only wore when he was attending to the Khan. “Your weapon,” he demanded of Kim, pointing at the staff.

Kim glared at Tegusgal, his cultivated calm dangerously close to breaking. He should have known Tegusgal would have learned of his trickery to come out to First Field, and he should have equally prepared for the man’s personal involvement in retrieving him. But the elation of the victory over the Frank and the subsequent success at making contact had driven all those thoughts from him, and to be so unexpectedly confronted with the vicious and shrewd captain of the prison guards was to be caught off guard. Fighting to keep his face impassive, Kim relinquished his staff, pushing it toward the Khan’s man. Tegusgal picked it up and strode forward, swinging it heavily down on the back of Kim’s leg. “On your knees, dog.”

Kim collapsed forward, his hands clawing at the dry ground of First Field. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Frank looking at him, an expression of something not quite sympathy, not quite anger on his face. Kim turned his head slightly and held the Frank’s gaze, drawing strength and serenity from the Rose Knight’s expression. But then another commotion drew his attention back to the scaffolding again.

The Mongol guards parted, falling away from the edge of the ring, and their retreat pushed the crowd even farther back so that, in a few seconds, the area around the ring was deserted but for Kim, the Frank, and Tegusgal. Kim swallowed heavily, his mouth suddenly dry, as he spotted the reason why.

Ten broad-backed slaves, bearing a red-curtained palanquin, slowly came to a halt next to Tegusgal, who dropped to his knees as well, holding Kim’s staff in front of him like an offering to a god.

Beside him, the Frank pushed himself up to a sitting position with his good arm.

The bearers knelt as one in perfect synchronization, laying their burden upon the ground. The palanquin was enormous, draped with dark silk, edged in gold ornamentation. A pair of snarling wolf heads, made from gold wire and sporting ivory teeth and flashing rubies for eyes, adorned each of the forward corners. A curtain parted on one side, and Tegusgal jerked as he heard the voice issuing from within. The words were too softly spoken for Kim to hear, but he could guess as to their import from Tegusgal’s reaction.

The captain of the guard stepped forward and delicately raised one of the curtains on the front of the palanquin, keeping his face downturned the entire time. He stared at his boots as a thick-bodied figure ducked under the edge of the palanquin’s roof and stood upon the dry earth of the proving ground.

Kim felt the Frank stiffen next to him, and he did not fault the man’s reaction. Here was Onghwe Khan, the man responsible for all their misery. He was dressed in fine silks inlaid with cloth of gold. His beard was thick and oiled, and but for the ostentatious garments, he was a surprisingly unassuming man. But for his eyes, Kim thought, wondering if the Frank saw the man’s eyes as he did. The eyes are like hungry tigers.

The master of the Circus had come.

“What is this?” the Khan demanded.

Tegusgal snapped to attention and, in a quiet voice, began to explain what had transpired, even though he had witnessed none of it. As the Khan’s attention passed from them-they were two dirty and bloody men, sitting in the dirt, not worth his attention-Kim turned his head slowly until he could once more meet the eyes of the Rose Knight. A message, he thought. He must understand.

He raised one hand surreptitiously from the ground, no more than the height of one finger’s width, and with his index finger, he pointed at the Khan. The Frank saw the motion of his hand, and though his brow creased with confusion for a brief second, he gave the tiniest of nods.

Kim raised his hand farther off the ground, making no effort to hide the motion now, and he tentatively touched at his bloody face, as if suddenly aware of how much his broken nose pained him. He slid his hand down to his throat, letting the bulk of his hand hide the motion of his middle finger. He drew it across his neck in a small, but unmistakable, cutting motion.

The Frank stared at him for a long moment, and Kim was afraid Tegusgal would finish his explanation before the Frank understood. He didn’t dare risk making the motion a second time. Please understand, he silently implored the other man.

Something flickered in the Frank’s eyes, a deep-seated and mischievous gleam. Then, with a tiny curl starting at the edge of his mouth, he tipped his head fractionally.

I understand and agree.

They were of one mind: they had to find a way to kill Onghwe Khan.