The Mongoliad: Book One

CHAPTER 9: THE MADNESS OF THE MUSHROOMS

At the morning camp, Feronantus took the news of Istvan’s nocturnal malfeasance with irritated resignation. He thanked Cnan, then walked off to the edge of a river, where Eleazar and Percival were idly trying to fish with a weir made of stripped and woven branches. They spoke for a few minutes, then gathered the rest of the group. Cnan watched the leader with no less interest than she had Istvan. She’d had trouble making sense of his name—which sounded vaguely Latin but wasn’t—until she had heard Taran addressing him as Ferhonanths. Then she had come to understand it as an old barbarian name—probably Gothic—that had been Latinized for use in polite company.

Feronantus motioned for the young Binder to join them. “Cnan has been scouting,” he said.

“Gone much of the time,” Roger said brusquely.

Feronantus took exception to his tone. “She returns often enough to keep us on course, and she sees to it we don’t cross paths with anyone who might distract us. But she brings us a problem I’ve been dreading since we gathered at the chapter house.”

He described what Cnan had seen on the lakeshore.

“Surely we can’t criticize a man for his grief,” Roger said.

Percival saw it otherwise. “We are on a quest,” he said. “We work as brothers. Istvan has never truly joined us, and now… It’s not grief. It’s pure, mad vengeance. Why would he kill a family of trappers?”

“He’s after the Mongol guards,” Feronantus said. “He’s tracking tax collectors and studying hamlets that cooperate with the Mongols. Cnan has seen the results of one night’s work. I doubt that this was the first. He has done it before and plans to do it again. This will attract attention—probably has done so already. The countryside is in shock. War parties wander everywhere—Mongol and otherwise. No doubt there will be teams of horsemen riding guard wherever there are goods and money to gather and carry off.”

“We tend away from the main paths,” Cnan said, “but fur traders go everywhere there are woods and fields and water.”

“What you saw,” said Illarion, “was but one small contingent of a larger group. You may be assured that there are other parties just like it, ranging over the country, venturing into every forest and valley where furs are to be had. By this point in the season, they will already have harvested a small fortune in trade goods. Which means…”

“They’ll have protection,” Taran said.

Roger stared at Cnan resentfully. She glared back. A wry grimace came over his face. He looked away for a moment, then glanced back and nodded by way of apology. “It’s not good news,” he explained. “Istvan was one of our bravest and most loyal.”

“Mohi broke him,” Finn said, in rough Latin.

“Illarion saw his family killed and did not break,” Feronantus reminded them. “We can ill afford to lose anyone. I will send a party of three with Cnan—Eleazar, Percival, and Raphael. She will track Istvan, and the three of you will persuade him to rejoin us.”

“With respect, the girl is no rider,” Eleazar said. “Should we get into trouble—”

“For that reason,” Feronantus said, “she will do her utmost to keep you out of trouble. Which is how I prefer it.”

And that was final. All the knights looked on Cnan, some with hooded eyes.

Cnan had not expected to be hobbled by a trio of knights. She stated clearly, in a piping voice, that she could not range wide enough to find clear paths and also accompany Istvan’s search party. “He might return on his own,” she added.

Feronantus waved this aside. “You’ve done a fair amount of ranging already, have you not? He’s a big man, on a big horse, with a distinctive hoof and gait. You will find him quicker than we could, and Percival, Raphael, and Eleazar will jess and hood him, if necessary, before he attracts more attention. We shall tarry in this place for one day, mending our britches.”

Cnan suppressed a smile. This was Feronantus’s all-purpose phrase covering not just britches-mending but sock-darning, meat-drying, herb-gathering, and all the other chores that, if they did them today, would enable them to ride hard tomorrow.

“Then,” Feronantus said, “we shall head east on our present course. Kiev is—at most—a fortnight’s ride. If you don’t find him in three days, return to our track. Our trail will be embarrassingly obvious to one of your talents. We need you, Cnan, to show us a safe route through the outskirts of Kiev. All there is likely misery and confusion.”

“We should not go to that accursed place at all,” Roger remarked.

“Ah, but we must,” Percival said. “It is a matter of honor.” But Feronantus, weary of this argument between friends, held up both hands to silence them.

This region as a whole was inclined to marshiness, and of late the band of would-be Khan killers had been skirting the southern borders of a broad wetland—a mariscus, in Feronantus’s favored tongue—that covered more ground than some European kingdoms. Cnan knew as much because she had recently spent the better part of two months working her way across it from east to west. For the most part, they had been good months, since edible plants were as common in the bogs as Mongols were scarce. With no assistance from humans, plant life sorted itself out from low to high, according to its preferences regarding drainage.

In the bottoms, reeds grew thick and green in rain-swollen waterways; low, shrubby willows populated a patchwork of sandy islands; and other water-hardy stuff grew in such profusion that only the most wretched fugitives were to be found there. Merely to dwell in such a place was to confess oneself an outlaw or a witch. The valleys and ravines that drained into it were choked with trees, generally too small and mean to be of interest to any, save charcoal burners.

The rolling lands above, while hardly high and dry, were at least suitable for cultivation, striped with fields where people still lived, otherwise open grassland that was perfect for conveyance of Mongols.

Cnan favored none of these fens and banks as routes for the party’s expedition. But she soon discovered that, through these wetlands, there was often a buffer—sometimes miles across, sometimes only a few paces wide— between the impassable woods of the damp ravines and the open farm country where trees grew thick enough to provide cover but not so dense as to impede progress.

She had schooled these knights in the way of traveling along the edges of the less brambly forests, slicing briskly over open land when she provided a favorable report but rarely straying more than a few moments’ gallop from the cover of the trees.

The country along Istvan’s likeliest course of travel alternated between stands of oaks and meadows, broken by the odd low rolling hill and a mottle of bogs and small, clean lakes. Rarely, mounds and crowds of rounded boulders poked up through forest and field, as if dropped from the pouches of giants. Cnan knew some of these as hideaways for robbers; on her long trek west, venturing up from the great marsh to filch apples or raid farmers’ root cellars, she had found their leavings on several occasions at the entrances to the tumbled boulders.

The hideaways were empty now. That was not a good sign. Robbers knew when the pickings were too dangerous.

Raphael kept mostly silent as they rode, moving steadily beside her. Eleazar, with his heavily inflected Latin, was more voluble and quick with plaints—to her irritation at first. But as the day wore on she came to understand that it was simply his way, and the way of his people, to say what was on his mind.

Eleazar had been the last of the group to arrive at the chapter house outside of Legnica, and she knew the least about him. During the first day or two of the journey, she had rarely been able to suppress her amusement over the preposterous size of his weapon—a two-handed sword that was slightly taller than he was. It took him