The Mongoliad: Book One

“I’ve been avoiding him,” said Gansukh. “No reason to provoke the man.”

“No.” Lian stood and looked down on him disapprovingly. “That is the worst thing to do.”

Gansukh reacted as if she had slapped him. “Enough,” he barked. “You will not speak to me like that.”

It was Lian’s turn to react, and she sat down quickly, her shoulder brushing his upper arm. She crossed her arms again, hiding her hands in her sleeves, but the motion was submissive this time instead of domineering. “I… I’m sorry,” she said. “I have…I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“Why were you?” The question came more harshly than he had intended.

“Gansukh, Munokhoi has the Khagan’s ear, and not just because he commands a jaghun of the Torguud. He has become a respected companion. If you avoid the Khagan when Munokhoi is with him, you’ll be giving Munokhoi too many chances to criticize you when you cannot speak for yourself.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Gansukh asked, and he smiled at her confusion. “I thought I could only remember the lessons if I figured it out for myself. Are you afraid for me?”

Lian snorted and shook her head. She plucked at the loose strand of her hair and made to tuck it back into place. “I’m serious,” she said. “You should not treat Munokhoi lightly.”

“I never said I was.”

“You said you were avoiding him.”

“I did, but that’s not the same as not considering him as an enemy.”

“Oh, you are…” Lian stood as if to leave, her shoulder roughly brushing him as she got to her feet. “You will find yourself outside the gates soon enough, horse rider, as that seems to be your preference.”

“Wait.” Gansukh stood and laid a gentle hand on her elbow before she could storm off. “Wait, I’m…I’m sorry. I understand what you are trying to tell me—I do—and I appreciate your concern.”

Lian hesitated, though the cant of her body said she was still leaving.

“And your advice.” He released her arm and sat down again.

She relented, but didn’t rejoin him on the bench. Her attention was directed over his shoulder. “Your initial strategy might work outside the walls of the city,” she said, “but you need to formulate a better strategy now. One that keeps you close to your enemies.” Her eyes flickered toward him. “Yes?”

He nodded and turned to look behind him.

There was a commotion near the southern border of the garden. Pairs of men were setting up barriers across the paths. Behind them, others were gathering—members of the court, judging by the variety of colorful clothing.

“You need to seek out the situations where Ogedei Khan and Munokhoi are together and make sure you are there.”

Gansukh shot to his feet. “Well then, the lesson is over.”

“What do you mean? Why?” Lian looked at him quizzically, not understanding his sudden reaction.

“Master Chucai invited me to join a deer hunt with the Khagan and Munokhoi this afternoon. I had declined, citing my lesson with you, but…”

Lian glanced once more at the gathering throng, and then grabbed his arm. “A hunt,” she said. “Yes, that would be a perfect opportunity to impress the Khagan.”

“I will need to prepare. I will need my bow,” Gansukh said.

She started walking toward the main building, where his tiny room was located. “Good,” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “Later, it will be my turn.”

“Your turn? For what?” Gansukh asked, hurrying after her.

“We can meet again here before nightfall. You can tell me about the hunt.” She let a smile creep across her lips. “If you are successful in your efforts, then…”

Gansukh didn’t leap into the void of her words. Letting her lead, watching her walk in front of him, he had a pretty good idea of what she was suggesting.

CHAPTER 7: THE JOURNEY BEGINS

“And the rest shall ride into the East, passing over the Land of Skulls and into the sacred heartland of the Mongols, and find the Khagan. And kill him.”

Feronantus’s words had been clear enough, voiced in well-framed and unambiguous Latin. Yet during the lengthy silence that filled the room in the moments after he spoke them, Cnan doubted that she had heard correctly. The words described an obvious impossibility. It was a sentence that could only have escaped from the lips of an insane man. And yet as she scanned the faces of the Skjaldbr??ur assembled for the Kinyen, she saw none of the reactions that she would deem appropriate. There was some astonishment, to be sure. But no one was looking at Feronantus as if he were out of his mind.

They were actually thinking about it.

She was in a room full of insane men.

She was not in the habit of sitting mute. As Feronantus and the others had been learning since her arrival at the chapter house, she spoke her mind. And yet something about the enormity of this foolishness had rendered her speechless for a time.

“Very well,” said the one named Taran—the big gallowglass—as if Feronantus had proposed that they go down to the tavern for a pint of ale. “But do you suppose we ought to wait a few days until some of our other Brothers can arrive? Brother Andreas, for example. His spear would be a fine companion on a Khan-hunting journey. Plus, he knows how to cook and he doesn’t snore like Brother Eleazar.”

Eleazar was a Spaniard who had only arrived yesterday. After waiting for a murmur of laughter to die down, he said, with great dignity: “Which would do you no good, since I will be with you anyway, snoring as much as I please.”

“I shall be the judge of who shall and shall not join the hunting party,” Feronantus said gently, and Eleazar responded immediately with a bow, deferring to his authority.

Cnan had finally got her voice back. “Hunting party, you call it? As if you were going out to catch a rabbit for your evening stew?”

All heads turned her way. Many seemed surprised that she found anything about the conversation to be the least bit irregular.

“You are speaking of the most powerful man in the history of the world,” she said. “Compared to him, Julius Caesar was a regional governor of modest achievements.”

“But if we put two inches of steel into him, he will die,” Roger pointed out with stinging quickness. He was idly fussing over one of his daggers.

“But your steel is here,” she said, slapping the table hard, “and to get it there, you must journey across two thousand leagues and kill ten thousand hand-picked bodyguards.”

“Hand-picked bodyguards always disappoint,” Raphael said.

“Ten thousand of them,” Roger said, “means ten thousand opportunities for confusion.”

“You do not understand!” she insisted. “You have no conception of what you are speaking of!”

“We did not come here with any expectation of surviving,” said Percival. He did not speak scornfully or brashly, but as if explaining a trivial misunderstanding to an elderly relative. “Dying in some righteous quest is far preferable to dying for the entertainment of a dissolute Khan.”

“It is not merely that it is suicide,” Cnan said, “but that it is pointless and immediate suicide. You will not get ten miles.” She saw the flaw in her statement immediately.

So did Illarion. “You traveled a great deal more than that to fetch me,” he reminded her, “and the same again