The Mongoliad: Book One

“You sent the young ones off to die,” Cnan said. “A diversion for a mad journey. I wish to be certain you are not mad.”

“That forest is a wild place, happier without us. The chapter house will fall quiet. The dead will sleep more soundly, their bones not shivering ever so slightly at the presence of warriors. The deer will return, not to be hunted by such as us. The air will not ring with steel, nor sing and echo with the high voices of whelps and the gutturals of old hounds, all eager for the scrap and the hunt. The wind will blow, the trees will sough, and we now set out to relieve the burdens of others. But we are your burden, Cnan.”

She could not follow much of this, but it impressed her nevertheless. “And why is that?” she asked.

“You are a Binder. You connect those who quest, do you not?”

She grimaced. “Your speech may infect the others, but I am not as easily swayed.”

“Madness, desperation, vision,” Feronantus said. “They define our lives and our time. Would you not say that is true, young leaf?”

“How do you mean, leaf?”

“Yours has not been an easy life,” Feronantus said. “You travel like a leaf. A leaf that grew without a tree.”

The clearing was behind them now, hidden by trees, and their horses took the long winding paths with patience. She patted the neck of her mount, grateful for once to be riding, because it brought her almost face-to- face with Feronantus. She stared at his face, trying to ascertain what he was implying.

“You never knew your father,” the knight said. He glanced beyond her shoulder, suggesting he already knew the truth to that statement.

“Nor did my mother,” she blurted.

“That is a surprise,” he said after a moment. Her horse whickered at something on the path. She patted its neck again. The rough coat was clean, freshly curried. The horse was reasonably cheerful, having cropped grass for days; its gut was full, so the horse was contented and clean and did not mind her, its burden.

“Many will be born now who know not their fathers,” she said, her tone low. “The girl outside Legnica…the one who tended Illarion and brought him willow mash.”

“Haakon said you wished to bring her along or stay to defend her. He was impressed by your sympathy.”

“Knights are surprised by a wish to save damsels?”

Feronantus frowned. “If wishes were armies…” he murmured. “We are few. The flying lance cannot succor fledglings who fall.”

Cnan’s heat did not diminish. The topic had been broached. She would not let this man off lightly, since he had broached it. “If she survives all the men who have their way with her, she will produce children who know not their fathers. They will live in broken villages where such bastards of war are shunned and beaten and perhaps even knifed by bands of young thugs—those who claim purity of breeding—for the bastards’ eyes will slant and their noses will lie flat on their faces, and their skins will be darker. If she has sense enough left in her to love a child, she will not be able to protect her, for the child will remind all of the enemy, even her mother.”

“Hmm…” Clearly the old knight found this conversation unpleasant. “You liked the chapter house,” Feronantus said after a while.

Her horse whickered again, though the path was clear, and she patted its neck a little roughly, which it seemed to enjoy.

“I enjoyed the respite,” she said. “My mother loved me. She was a leaf as well. When we were able to find a place out of the wind, she made a home for me—in old buildings, old towns, places of ghosts and dead history. She swept floors of bones and patched old walls and repaired old furniture. She did not blame me for my father, instead told me that wildness and war made us stronger, that the mix of her blood and his seed would live in me all my life, evil up against her love and… the tradition of the Binders. The tradition, she said, would protect me against whatever ghosts trailed me when I moved. For the sins of all fathers, the deaths and monstrosities, make ghosts that trail after the children.” She spat. “There is no justice. Your Christian God looks down on all and sees every sparrow, but cares nothing for the children. He is a god of birds.”

Feronantus chuckled at this blasphemy. “Birds are more pleasant.”

“Only if you don’t know them,” Cnan said. “They cock their feathers against each other and compete for seeds and grubs. All birds are bastards. But they are prettier.” She looked up through the trees, where, strangely, there were no birds and no birdsong. “And they can fly swiftly. We will all wish we were birds long before we finish this journey.”

“So now I understand you, and you understand me?”

She smirked. “I have not spoken so many words in years. You have said nothing of importance.”

“That girl is not like your mother. Nor like you.”

“She was born soft and protected. She was the daughter of a noble perhaps, and had been born into silks and furs and gentle words, and always a fire burning against the cold, and porridge and roots and bread and game against hunger. Her father might have loved her. Her father is dead. Her mother is dead. But no ghosts haunt her.”

Feronantus looked puzzled. “Why?”

Cnan shook her head. She had taken him far into tale-telling, without intending to. She had no intention of revealing any more of the hidden tales of her kin-sisters.

“Well, we begin in beauty and green, and ride into cold and sere,” Feronantus said. “You told me your name. I am proud to know it and proud to know you. I hope to speak more of this with you.”

“I am a leaf,” she said. “You are a sword.”

“True,” Feronantus said. “But not so different, for all that.”

She snapped out the next few words and regretted them immediately. “What, you are a war-born bastard too?”

Feronantus’s face clouded, but only briefly, and his gaze on her flashed wariness before he smiled again. That infuriating, fatherly smile, which so fascinated her, yet made her fists clench.

Then he looked aside and reined his horse back, no longer riding parallel.

Cnan ultimately had this effect on those who were not kin-sisters, and so had her mother before her, the lashing tongue of truth. The value of the Binders lay in the services and information they offered. Otherwise no one would stand for them.

“Your horse whickers because he likes your manner,” Feronantus said. “He is coming to trust you. Horses are naive that way. Of all the savagery of war, I regret the disappointment and agony of the horses most of all.”

“More than men?” Cnan said over her shoulder.

“Men—knights, at least, and others who ride horses—have some hope of advantage from war. Horses carry burdens and get fed, if they are lucky. Mostly, though, they suffer and die.”

“We will take them north of here, away from the Mongol highways,” Cnan said, feeling a chill. “Will you say prayers for the team you sent to the circus?”

“I will.”

“To a Christian God?”

“Yes. To Him.”

“And to others as well?”

Feronantus dropped back farther and motioned her to lead on. Then he wheeled about to confer with Istvan, and what they said she could not hear. Cnan galloped ahead for a while; she told herself to make certain this was the route she had taken before, but also to be alone. To think.

Her contemplative mood continued as the fiery sunset came to pass. The sky filled with the bushy tails of flaming animals. Slowly the fires died, dusk fell, night came on. Stars held steady and aloof against ghostly wisps.

All of this land was turning into mulch. The aftermath of devastation was a renewed garden. Soon the musty stench of Legnica would fade. The winds would blow, snow would fall thick, the land would be softly quieted…then spring would come, the dead would molder into dust, flowers would push up. Mongol-appointed tax collectors, possibly the survivors of old noble families—the black sheep who never found favor in good times—would hire thugs