The Mongoliad: Book Two

32

Two days later, Cnan was sitting in camp when she heard approaching hooves-a party of perhaps half a dozen. “Approaching hooves” was generally not a welcome sound in Mongol-held territory. Nevertheless, she did not even bother to look up from her mending. It would be the war party that Feronantus had sent out before dawn. They would be returning in high spirits. R?dwulf, Finn, Vera, and Istvan, accompanied by Eleazar or Percival, or whichever sentry had first detected their approach and ridden out to greet them. It was always thus. The Shield-Brethren were never surprised, never caught off guard. She was as safe in this camp as an emperor within the walls of the Forbidden City. Perhaps safer.

Which meant that she was useless, bored, and irritable.

The war party’s tale told around the cook fire was, in many respects, a repeat of the fight in the gully in which Cnan had taken part. This time, Istvan had lured the Mongol party into the ambush. Alchiq had increased the size of such parties to a full arban and had changed their tactics.

There was no more leisurely tracking of quarry across the plain: when they had seen Istvan against the skyline, they had sent one of their number galloping straight back toward their main camp, while the other nine had come for him. But only eight had pursued the Hungarian in earnest; one other had trailed along deep in their rear. As soon as R?dwulf’s first arrow had taken the leader of the arban out of his saddle, this other had wheeled his pony and ridden for the main Mongol party.

Beyond that, it sounded not unlike the engagement Cnan had witnessed. R?dwulf ’s bow still had the power to surprise the Mongols with its range, and so he had killed a few. Vera, left without weapons, had been given a crossbow by Feronantus from a pack whose contents Cnan found wondrous indeed.

The other Mongols had tried to circle and penetrate the screen of brush in which R?dwulf had concealed himself, but Vera had killed one with a single, silent boltshot. Two more were killed at close quarters by Finn and R?dwulf while Vera went through the tedious process of redrawing and loading her weapon. A bolt in the back had taken down one horseman who had decided to flee, and Istvan had pursued the last two survivors in a running archery battle across the steppe, eventually killing one with an arrow and the other with his scimitar. Immensely pleased with himself, the Hungarian had returned, trailing a short string of ponies and sporting three Mongol arrows that had embedded themselves in various parts of his armor.

Meanwhile, R?dwulf had recovered all but one of his arrows. One, still lost, had missed and likely lay buried in the grass, and he might have been able to find it had they more leisure to search. But many more Mongols would be coming after them soon, and so they dispersed, flying in all directions as fast as they could ride, driving the spare ponies across the grass to lay false trails and then picking their way down into streambeds to complicate the work of those who would soon be tracking them.

As Cnan knew perfectly well, there would be no rest until the thing was finished. For there was nowhere to hide on the steppe, and childish tactics like running down streambeds could only delay the moment when Alchiq and his remaining threescore and seven Mongols would descend upon them in force.

Without being instructed to, she got ready to ride through the night.

What she had not expected-but, in retrospect, should have guessed-was that Feronantus would order them to seek out the main body of the jaghun and hunt it down as if it were nothing more than a wounded antelope leaving a blood trail across the steppe. Of course, it made sense. What Feronantus did always made sense in some or other insane way. The Shield-Brethren were supposed to be fleeing; the only way, then, to obtain the advantage of surprise was to turn around and attack.

It might have miscarried had the jaghun made its camp in the open. Instead, after a day and a half of hunting the Shield-Brethren across the steppe, the remaining arbans converged on a shambling market town that had grown up on the bank of a river.

The river meandered ten leagues in every direction for every one that it actually moved south. But its overall course was decidedly southbound as it flowed toward the Khazar Sea. Raphael was of the opinion that the river might be the one known as the Yaik, originating in a mountain range that might be the fabled Riphean Mountains that were spoken of by the ancient Greeks. If so, it was a boundary, and everything beyond was unknown territory-past the end of the world, as Alexander had conquered it. This detail wreaked a depressing effect on the other members of the party, who had hoped that, after so much hard traveling, they might at least have escaped, months ago, the boundaries of their known world.

In any case, the town had grown up at a place where it was possible to ford the river during the driest part of the year-which was now. Viewing it from a safe distance in the flat, golden light of the late afternoon, Raphael and Vera-huddled a bit closer together than was really called for, as far as Cnan was concerned-discussed it at some length and seemed to agree on something, which Raphael then passed on to the rest of the group.

“The place is far too small to be Saray-Juk, which is fortunate for us.”

Cnan had actually heard of Saray-Juk. “A garrison town of the Mongols, located somewhere on this same river, where it is crossed by the Silk Road,” she explained. “There, Alchiq would be able to summon as many jaghun as he pleased.”

Feronantus nodded. “Then we shall proceed as planned,” he said, “before Alchiq has had time to send messengers down to the place you named.” Wisely, he did not attempt to pronounce it. “Alchiq’s decision to make his camp in a settled place will favor us; the unfamiliar noises and smells of the town will conceal our advance.”

Our advance.

Cnan’s part in the advance was to sneak around in the dark with Yasper, who had gone ahead of them into the market town in search of Cathayan merchants. The time of year favored them. This part of the world was, as a rule, too dry for growing grain and other thirsty crops. But it seemed that some farmers and orchardists had found ways of coaxing food from the ground, perhaps along the windings of the river or in scattered dells watered by streams flowing down from the mountains that Vera claimed lay many leagues to the north. Where this was not possible, they took advantage of the infinite supply of grass to breed ponies. At any rate, this seemed to be the time of year when such people brought their produce here for sale, and so a warren of stalls and wagons had sprung up on a stretch of floodplain nearly surrounded by a loop of the river. It lay between the riverbank and the village proper, which had been prudently situated on slightly higher ground. The Mongols, having no particular interest in the river or the market, had made their camp farther yet from the riverbank, generally west and north of the village.

Yasper seemed to have spent a stimulating afternoon wandering about the makeshift market, which had attracted an assortment of outlandish-looking sorts from various parts of the continent that stretched before them on the opposing bank, as well as a few Westerners-even a Khazar or two. They had come to trade silver money and valuable goods from faraway places for the produce of the local farms, which they loaded onto river barges or oxcarts. Cnan, infiltrating the place after nightfall, smelled what was unquestionably Cathayan food being cooked and was ambushed by something like homesickness. Not a useful emotion for a Binder.

Rather later-an hour or two past midnight, she guessed-she and Yasper hiked up a gentle sandy slope toward the village, which was tiny and despicable compared to the seasonal market. In doing so, they left the savory smells of the cooking behind them. Certain odors, however, seemed to follow them wherever they went: the fruity aroma of alcohol on Yasper’s breath and a sharper tang that reminded her a bit of rotten eggs, but sharper, like pepper. The latter emanated from a capacious wicker basket filled with rustling objects-but apparently not too heavy-that Yasper kept slung over his shoulder. He patted it nervously from time to time.

The village was an oval compound of small thatch-roofed houses up on stilts, surrounded by a wooden stockade. They circumvented it, taking care not to expose themselves to the view of the Cuman standing guard at its gate, and made their way through a strip of scrub brush and tall grass to the verge of the field that Alchiq had claimed for the night’s camping place.

The Mongols’ ponies, numbering well over a hundred, had been staked out in a wide belt surrounding an inner core speckled with small campfires and the indistinct forms of Mongols lying asleep on the ground, rolled up in their blankets. Cnan had learned that there tended to be about one campfire per arban, and the rule seemed to hold true here, since there were seven such fires. Most were only smoldering since no one was awake to feed them, and the night was warm enough that their heat was not needed.

She numbered the sentries at half a dozen, and as usual in a well-ordered camp, they were all on their feet, moving about, only rarely gathering to converse.

Feronantus had said that nothing would happen until the moon’s crescent touched the western horizon. It was two fingers away from doing so, and so Cnan left Yasper to his preparations, and stole away from the camp back toward the river along the route she expected to retrace later. She had studied the way hastily before sundown, but it seemed prudent to reconnoiter it once in the dark.

North of the village, a screen of trees-the tallest they had seen in weeks-grew between the Mongols’ camp and the bank of the river. It was only ten paces in breadth, but its undergrowth was dense enough for Cnan to become lost in it for a few moments, and she made enough noise passing through to alert Eleazar, who was lurking nearby, almost completely invisible in armor that had been blackened with a mixture of grease and char.

Thinking about that overlong sword of his, Cnan did her best to simulate the sweet song of a lark, which they had chosen as a sort of password. A moment later, she heard the call echoed from the branches of a tree over her head. Her call hadn’t been convincing enough to fool a real bird; this was Vera, perched somewhere nearby, no doubt with her crossbow. R?dwulf and Rafael would be up in other trees, ensconced in shooting positions with clear views of the ground between here and the Mongols’ camp.

Having been thus announced and heralded, she passed out of the tree belt and into open, sandy ground beyond to find Feronantus and Percival, fully armed and armored, standing silently next to their horses and brooding over the river, which ran shallow, and hence rather noisily, through a channel about twenty paces away. This was not its main branch. It divided around a long, slender island, a sandbar that had been colonized and reinforced by leggy trees that thrust from the water and sand like bristles in a brush. The fork they looked over now was the inferior branch, easily forded this time of year. On the opposite side of the little island, it ran deeper. Much of its breadth was suitable for wading, but the middle stretch would require swimming or a boat. A boat ought to be drawn up on that shore. Feronantus had paid for it and offered to pay the same amount again after the boatman delivered them to the far bank-to Asia.

“What news, Vaetha?” asked Feronantus, using the false name that Cnan had given him the first time they had met-this had become a perverse, affectionate habit.

“None,” she said. “Yet.”

“Where does the moon stand?”

“One finger to go.”

“Yasper found what he wanted?”

“The market seems to have satisfied him in many ways.”

Feronantus enjoyed this, but Percival threw her a wounded look.

“One day, your skills as an observer will get you into trouble,” Feronantus said.”

“If this is not trouble,” Cnan returned, “then what is?”

Feronantus considered it, then shrugged. “It is what we do.”

“Attacking sleeping, unarmed men?”

“This undertaking is difficult enough to begin with,” Feronantus said. “You yourself have told us many times that it is nothing more than a slow form of suicide. If we were to forgo the use of stealth and surprise, and restrict ourselves to frontal assaults in broad daylight…” He shook his head. “They will all be awake soon enough,” he said, “and making them so is your responsibility; if you are so concerned with making it a fair fight, then go and do your job.”

With a parting glance at Percival-who declined to meet her eye-she turned back into the belt of woods and slipped through it as quietly as she could. Emerging from its western side, she got a clear view of the moon, just now touching the horizon, and felt shame for being late, followed by annoyance that these men had the power to make her feel shame.

The breeze was light, but unquestionably out of the west, and this told her where to find Yasper-near the eastern edge of the broad oval where the Mongols had staked out their ponies. Downwind, in other words, so that the ponies would not scent him and whinny in alarm. He was expecting her, glancing back nervously in her direction as she scurried among the moon shadows of shrubs and low trees. As she drew closer, her nose detected a new stink: Yasper had put fire to something that was smoldering rather than burning, and spinning out a long braided thread of smoke.

As she crouched next to him, he gripped her upper arm and pointed toward the Mongols’ camp. It was difficult to see much, given that it was dark and that she was peering through numerous ponies. Some of these had lain down so that they could sleep deeply, while others dozed standing up. But her eye was drawn by a flickering in the nearest of the campfires. This, she realized, was caused by the movement of at least one person who was on his feet and stealing toward it. Either Finn or Istvan.

Yasper began huffing and puffing on a twist of some fibrous material, causing the feeble wax to glow bright orange. He was working with a punk that burned slowly once lit. As she watched, he touched another punk to it and blew some more, igniting the second one, which he handed to Cnan. He then set his punk on the ground at a safe remove from his basket, into which he reached with both hands and pulled out a stack of flat packages wrapped in paper. This occasioned a lot of rustling and drew the attention of a nearby pony, but Yasper did not seem to care. He handed the packages to Cnan. “Remember, wait until you hear me-what I’ll do,” he whispered and then stood up in the moonlight and began to walk openly among the ponies, bending from time to time to sever a rope with a knife. This created minor commotion among the horses, which swung about and pawed the ground, snorting, but none bolted.

As Yasper ambled along, he began to hum an aimless sort of tune and then to sing in the slurred diction of the profoundly drunk. This drew the attention of one, and then another, of the Mongol sentries, who converged on him briskly, telling him to get lost. Yasper called back to them in an obsequious, apologetic tone, speaking in his native tongue, a Germanic dialect. More horses began to wake up and clamber to their feet. Now there was whinnying. It all sounded incredibly loud to Cnan, and she reckoned that it must have grabbed the attention of all of the sentries in the Mongol camp, which, after all, was not that large.

Consequently, when some of the formerly sleeping Mongols began to cry out in agony, terror, or rage, the sentries’ response was not as purposeful as it might have been. She saw one of the sentries running toward that sound, only to double over with an arrow in his belly, and reckoned that Istvan must have sheathed his bloody dagger and gotten out his bow. Depending on how much time Finn and Istvan had had to accomplish their task, they might have wiped out an entire arban-and their plan, quite specifically, had been to focus all of their attentions on one arban rather than spread the pain around.

By now, it was obvious that whatever was happening back in the camp was much more important than ejecting a wandering nocturnal drunk, and so the sentries who had been converging on Yasper faltered and turned their backs on him. He took advantage of this to wheel about and slip away. A noise happened, shockingly loud. Soon, ten more-and then a hundred.

Cnan had spent enough time among Cathayans to know what firecrackers sounded like, and so she would have recognized the sound even if she hadn’t spent the whole day preparing for this moment. But the first time she had heard one, as a young girl, she had been stunned by the intensity of the noise-like nothing she had experienced in her life-and had been frozen in bewilderment for several moments. Now, during the interval when she hoped that every Mongol in the camp was in the same condition, she touched the coal at the end of her punk to the paper fuse projecting from one of Yasper’s packages, then threw it into the midst of the horses. As soon as the fuse began to spark and burn, she jumped back and ran, lighted another fuse, and hurled a second packet just as the first began a string of detonations.

The amount of chaos in this place now seemed well beyond anything that they could have hoped for. The few horses that Yasper had had time to cut loose veered to and fro across the camp, starting at each new burst of explosions. Others strained at their lead ropes, some managing to pull their stakes from the ground and gallop off for the wild steppes. Other ponies that were free tripped over the taut ropes of ones still tied. Mongols rolled up to their feet, stumbling over blankets, groping for weapons, converging on the place where Finn and Istvan had been at work.

Still, Cnan felt it would be bad form to return with unused firecrackers, and so she lit the last two packets at the same time and threw them in opposite directions, even while backing away from the scene and toward the shelter of the tree line. Her instinct was simply to turn and run, but she had learned it was sometimes better to know what was chasing you. What she saw, therefore, was Finn and Istvan making a fighting retreat from the camp, pursued by several Mongols who’d had the time and the presence of mind to arm themselves. The melee was eclipsed for a moment by a black shape, impossible to make out in the moonlight. But Cnan understood that Eleazar had moved out of the woods and positioned himself so that Finn and Istvan would lead their pursuers directly toward him. The long blade of his sword glinted like a line of sparks with the flashing bursts of firecrackers. Cnan had seen before what the weapon could do against lightly armed Mongols, and so she did now finally turn her back and make for the shelter of the trees, hoping that the archers would recognize her as a friend.

She reached the tree line without collecting any arrows or crossbow bolts and then could not resist the urge to turn back and look. What she saw, as best as she could make out, was a triangular formation with Eleazar at its apex, facing directly a growing Mongol onslaught, like the prow of a ship beating upstream. Arrayed behind him, protecting his flanks and rear, were Istvan, shooting arrows from a range so close that he could hardly miss, and Finn, wielding his lance. Both kept a wary distance from the blade of Eleazar’s sword, which was describing huge looping arcs; its momentum was too great to be stopped, and so each cut had to be joined to the next like the inward turnings of a Chinese knot. Whenever he felt as though he had the leisure to move, he would call out to the others, who would move back several paces, take new positions, and call back to him; he would then back up until he was told to stop. In this manner, the triad made its way back toward the tree line at a brisk but controlled pace, soon coming within range of the three archers posted in the trees. These began to pick off Mongols who were now trying to outflank Finn and Istvan.

All that had happened thus far was apparently demoralizing enough to bring this phase of their operation to an end. Orders were being called out that Cnan translated for the others: “They’re saying, ‘Fall back into the camp,’” she told them, “‘and regroup by arban.’”

All eyes turned to the Mongol camp, which was now brightly illuminated. The Mongols seemed to have understood that darkness was not their friend, and so fuel had been heaped on the fires and was blazing up, producing, through the shadows of men and horses, a wavering, tossing pool of illuminated ground.

In the center of this, Alchiq stood up in his stirrups, bellowing commands, rallying his troops around him, gesturing. Cnan could not make out his words, but she sensed his impatience. She knew what he was telling them: This is not a bandit raid. Stop treating it as one. This is a military operation. Let us show them what we are made of.

Almost directly above her, she heard the distinctive kerwhack of a crossbow being discharged.

Alchiq’s horse reared up and fell over dead. The leader tumbled roughly to the ground. For a moment, he could not be seen as his men rushed in to surround him. Then he was up on his feet, being dusted off, his teeth gleaming in the firelight as he made some humorous remark that elicited nervous laughter from those around him.

Vera, who had fired the bolt, lowered herself from her tree perch by sliding down a rope. She landed awkwardly, still hampered by her wounds, and paused with hands on knees, breathing deeply.

“I almost had him,” she said.

“It was a great shot,” Cnan said.

“Let’s go,” Vera said, standing. “You shouldn’t even be here.”

None of us should be here, Cnan wanted to say, but she followed Vera through the trees and out toward the riverbank.

Looking to her left, upstream, she saw Percival on his horse with his back to her. Nearby, R?dwulf stalked out of the trees with his bow over his shoulder. Swiveling to look right, downstream, she saw the same thing roughly mirrored by Feronantus and Raphael. All three of the archers were making directly for the riverbank; they entered the stream without breaking stride and headed for the sandbar, a stone’s throw away. Meanwhile, Eleazar and Istvan had emerged from the woods behind Cnan. Istvan headed for the water, following a few strides behind Vera.

Eleazar stood his ground.

A long time passed before Finn emerged. Cnan had decided to get across the river. She heard his voice call out when she was halfway to the island: “Double flanking maneuver,” he said, “probably about one arban to either end.” He waved his hands alternately to the ground in front of Percival and of Feronantus. “Followed by some more up the middle.” He nodded to Eleazar.

“Get to the island,” Feronantus called, “and string your bow, hunter.”

While the others had been making their own preparations, Percival and Feronantus had been setting up trip ropes between the trees and the riverbank. At least, that was the only explanation Cnan could imagine for the way the arbans, charging at the same moment around the ends of the stand of trees, fell apart and went down in an avalanche of tumbling horseflesh and shouting men.

Percival and Feronantus charged at the same moment, riding opposite ways toward the stalled flankers. Eleazar stood his ground in the middle, waiting for anyone who might try to thrash through the woods.

Cnan froze up, caught between wanting to stare at Percival’s headlong ride into the midst of ten foes, and the need to avert her eyes from the same.

One of her feet came down wrong, and she fell on her arse in the middle of the stream. The water scarcely came up to her navel and was not all that cold, but it shocked her back into the here and now; she turned her back on the scene, planted both hands on the river bottom, and pushed herself up onto her feet, then without looking back, made her way onto the island and into concealment before turning around to see what was happening behind her.

The picture had changed quite a bit. She had expected to see Percival dead, all of the Mongols dead, or both. Instead, Percival was alive, and most of the Mongols were simply gone. Seeing the Frankish knight charging toward them in full armor, the unhorsed ones had apparently darted into the trees, while those lucky enough to stay mounted had wheeled around and retreated.

Percival was wise enough not to pursue them. Shield slung over his back to collect any arrows flying out of the trees, he galloped his mount across the stream toward the little island, leaving showers of silvery hoof splashes.

Feronantus, meanwhile, had found himself in more of a fight. Perhaps he simply wasn’t impressive enough to scare off the Mongols with a mere bluff charge, or perhaps the members of that arban had been more high-spirited. Whatever the cause, several of the attackers now lay dead, and Feronantus had abandoned his wounded horse to slog across the river on foot. A few arrows still whicked through the air around him. He hunched and raised his arm as if to bat at insects, then brought it down in a shooing sweep, stood tall, and scowled defiantly over his shoulder.

Eleazar had staged a fighting retreat from the woods and thereby drawn out a few Mongols who had immediately come under heavy attack from the five archers-Vera, R?dwulf, Raphael, Istvan, and now Finn-directly across the channel from him. The arrows had felled a few and driven the rest back into the woods, and Eleazar was now backing across the stream, his giant sword resting across his shoulder as if he had not a worry in the world. He had been hit by a few Mongol arrows, but they hung loosely in his maille, unable to penetrate deep enough to wound him.

Thus covered by the five archers, all of the members of the party made their way to the eastern shore of the little island, which was only a few paces distant, and boarded the little riverboat that waited for them there. During his visit to the market, Yasper had made arrangements for a string of ponies to also be waiting for them-on the far bank.

Percival had formed something of an attachment to the big pony he had just ridden through this engagement and managed to swim it across the short stretch of river that was too deep for wading.

And so the entire party reached the opposite side of the Yaik River-and the threshold of the steppe land of the Mongols proper-in good order and with Alchiq’s jaghun in such disarray as to be incapable of following them.

Earlier, Feronantus had said something to the effect that the jaghun must be “destroyed and, if necessary, killed,” which had made no sense to Cnan at the time. Now, though, she understood. She could only guess how many men under Alchiq’s command had been killed tonight. Probably many more were wounded than slain. But that was not important.

What was important was that they had been reduced to a demoralized remnant and that, when the sun rose and the bodies and the injuries were tallied, Alchiq, if he tried to drive the survivors east over the river in pursuit of the Franks, could be facing something like a mutiny.

Feronantus seemed to be of the same view. Of course, his first desire-once they had reached the east bank in good order and paid the boatman-was to put some distance between them and the Mongols, just in case Alchiq did manage to prod some of his surviving arbans over the river. So they rode until dawn, heading generally east, but also bending their course south.

Benjamin had explained to them that the Silk Road was not a single highway but a loose skein of routes taken at different times by different peoples, depending on all manner of contingencies. Most of those routes passed well to the south of them. Many converged on the garrison town of Saray-Juk, which, from here, was several days’ hard riding downriver. But Benjamin knew of one path that wandered north of the main bundle to cross the river near the market where Yasper had bought the firecrackers. It was their plan to find that road and to meet Benjamin there, at a certain remote, woebegone caravanserai on the steppe.

If the directions he had given them were to be credited, then they could expect to reach it by sundown of the second day.

The night had been long and exhausting, and almost all of them were suffering from minor wounds of one kind or another, and they were hungry. So at first light, they stopped and made a little camp on the east slope of a low hill from whose top it was possible to keep an eye back along the way they had just come.

Within moments, several of them were asleep. Raphael and Yasper made the rounds of those who had been injured, cleaning, stitching, and bandaging their wounds. Percival, who had not suffered so much as a scratch, went to the hilltop to take the first watch. Feronantus got a little fire going. Finn, who claimed he could smell water, draped himself with every waterskin and bottle they had and set out on foot-for he was sick of riding-toward the faint suggestion of a gully that was visible a few bowshots to the north of them.

A bit of time-perhaps the better part of an hour-slipped by as they drowsed, mended, or just sat quietly watching the sun rise.

Then the calm was broken by a cry from Vera. They did not understand the words, since she was speaking in her native tongue, but no one could mistake her tone. She had jumped to her feet and was gazing in alarm to the north. She turned her head toward the top of the hill, and Cnan followed her gaze to see Percival leaning back comfortably against the body of his horse, which had lain down to sleep. Percival, gazing fixedly at the sky, looked no more alert than the horse. His movements were those of a man just stirring awake-or coming out of a trance.

Soon enough, they were all awake and on their feet. Feronantus and Istvan, closest to the ponies, snatched up weapons and mounted.

A lone rider had come across the steppe and achieved the difficult feat of sneaking up on Finn.

From Percival’s vantage point, this interloper ought to have been visible from miles away, but Percival had fallen asleep-or what amounted to the same thing, fallen into one of his visions.

Finn, toiling down in the depths of an overgrown gully, filling his water bottles, had been unaware he was being stalked and had clambered up into the open to find himself confronted by the lone Mongol rider, helmeted and armored, with a bladed lance couched under his arm.

Finn, as always, had his own lance; he’d been using it as a sort of hiking staff as he clambered up out of the gully. Startled by the rider-who came right at him-and encumbered by a heavy load of water, he managed to step back and swing the weapon’s tip down, knocking the tip of the Mongol’s lance down and aside just a moment before it would have penetrated his rib cage. The Mongol rode past him. Finn’s body jerked hard and twisted around awkwardly. He was pulled off his feet and dragged for a couple of yards before the Mongol’s horse stumbled to a halt.

The attacker’s lance had missed Finn’s body but became involved in the tangle of straps and ropes by which the water vessels were slung over Finn’s shoulders.

With the horse stopped, Finn might have had his opportunity to regain his footing and to disengage himself. But his foe was already in motion. The Mongol swung down out of his saddle. As he did, his long mane of gray hair billowed around him in the morning sun. For a moment, he was on the opposite side of the horse from Finn, but he ducked under the horse’s neck and came up behind Finn and wrapped him in a wrestling hold with the speed of a striking snake. Finn’s brothers and sisters on the hill above let out a cry of horror, shame, and grief.

Alchiq’s massive arms scissored, then relaxed. Finn’s corpse bounced on the ground at Alchiq’s feet.

Alchiq then turned and gazed up calmly toward Feronantus and Istvan, who were headed for him at a full gallop, both bellowing with rage and pain. He reached down and pulled his lance free, then was up on his pony’s back and galloping north with the adroitness that only a veteran Mongol warrior was capable of.

North across the steppe, he was pursued by the vengeful Shield-Brethren, but the only thing swift enough to catch up with him were the wrenching cries of Finn’s companions.