forever simply to draw the thing, hand over hand, out of the long sheath slung along his back, and the other knights had much fun at his expense, discussing how, in the event of an attack, they would set up a defensive perimeter around Eleazar so that he would have time to draw and poise his sword, hopefully before the rest of them were dead.
Percival also kept his thoughts to himself, and dark thoughts they might have been; he rarely smiled.
The first run of tracks they encountered was perhaps two days old. Cnan dismounted from her mare—the only mare in the group, as the knights preferred stallions—and knelt in the sun-dappled mud and grass of a narrow meadow. Raphael and Percival joined her, kneeling on the other side of the run, two steps back. Mongols at this late stage of their campaign often rode horses other than steppe ponies; war, as Feronantus had observed, was hard on horses, and armies continually replenished their stock. When Mongols rode larger and more complaisant Western horses, the combination made for unique tracks. Unhappy mounts tended to sidle when given unfamiliar prods or spoken to in strange tongues.
Cnan pointed out the disarray of tracks to Raphael, who nodded. Percival bent to observe splattered remnants of the stale, less than a day old. He lifted mud to his nose and curled his lip. “Could be a farm beast or sumpter. Lowly black bones are left with the least spirited mounts.”
Cnan knew that gelded animals could serve well in battle, but these knights, by long tradition, preferred stallions and were tough to convince. Mongols, on the other hand, rode mares into battle—sometimes mares in heat, perfectly capable of distracting stallions.
Two of the riders in this group, however, had been mounted on destriers that met the knights’ full approval, likely stallions from the stock of a local voivode. Their stale cut deep into the mud and smelled pungent. The tracks showed that the horses were frisky but contented enough and their riders adept.
She thought that a fair sign that a pair of dukes or their minions were being protected by the Mongols, much as the fur trader had his cohort. Betrayers of their people—opportunists. Survivors.
No wonder Istvan was on a rampage.
Percival walked away twenty paces and followed the verge. Their horses watched with ears cocked, then shook their heads and bent to pick at the weeds and grass. Eleazar, quite rightly, pushed them away from a growth of white-flowering creepers. No need for sick or drunken mounts.
Cnan summed up the facts to Raphael as they watched Percival. “Twelve riders,” she concluded. “Mongols or Tartars. Of middling discipline, bored by their duties. But they are accompanied by two voivode—or at least local officials riding noble horses. Possibly tax collectors or surveyors. Not prisoners.”
“Good,” Raphael said. He smiled at her skill.
“Surveyors?” Eleazar asked sharply. But the look on his face was baffled rather than skeptical.
“The invaders measure their lands and count their wealth,” Raphael said. “They plan to stay.”
Percival rejoined them. “Istvan watched them from the woods,” he said. “Then he rode after. He’s turned wolf.”
No more needed to be said. Cnan also went to the verge to study the tracks of Istvan’s roan, and when she returned, they mounted. The woods here were thick with berries and nettles, the ground boggy, which discouraged passage by riders and possibly all but the local bears. Earlier, Cnan had caught the spoor of several of those. One, interestingly enough, appeared to have briefly tracked Istvan.
“A regular caravan,” Raphael observed. “Whom shall we greet first?”
Eleazar and Percival suggested they follow Istvan and not the tax collectors.
“We will meet with both soon enough,” Cnan said.
Raphael and Percival saw her meaning. The dense woods would soon bring quarry and prey together. Did Istvan truly believe he could outfight such a group?
Eleazar took this news glumly.
Percival nodded. “Istvan is our quarry. It matters not whom he hunts—for now.”
“He rides quickly,” Eleazar observed.
“And so will we, now that we’ve found his trail.”
Cnan had thought she knew the general lay of this country, but she was taken by surprise when the forest spread wide around a shallow oxbow. The greater width of riverbed was a long swale interrupted by mounds of boulders. The swale ran generally west to east, and their little party had fetched up along its southern verge. It did not have a bank as such, for the floodplain was broad, interrupted by a complicated plait of rain-fed streams and willow marsh.
The forest kept well back from this intermittent course, but several farmers had lately taken advantage of the rich soil, and of not having to clear trees, to lay out fields of green oats. They had plowed around the cromlech-like rocks and between the low, damp runnels thick with reeds.
It was late in the day. A warm breeze sprang up from the southwest, spreading waves across the reeds. A low habitation was visible on the opposite side of the river, about a verst away. There was no sign of human activity. Perhaps the locals had planted, then hid—from both tax collectors and war parties.
“There must be a ford we can use,” Raphael said, scanning up and down the bank.
“Let’s not linger,” Percival said. “No high vantage, lots of opportunities for sudden attack.”
Before them the riverbed was overgrown with tall, winding stands of reed and willows through which riders moving east or west, following sandy or shingled shallows, could pass unseen. Warriors, even mounted ones, could rely on scrub-hidden pickets and spring out with complete surprise. Higher banks and even low mounds complicated an already confused landscape—the worst place imaginable for tracking, finding, and avoiding surprises.
Cnan surveyed the skies above this tangle and spotted the greatest concentration of crows and other birds— starlings, blackbirds, even robins—wheeling to the east. No buzzards—yet. She sniffed the air, but the westerly breeze was unhelpful. “Horses and cows that way,” she said. “Another bigger farm, maybe. Birds pick the dung.”
Eleazar gave a low whistle. “Can you tell whether it’s cattle or horses from here?” he joked.
Cnan pursed her lips.
Percival rode between them, wheeled, and looked south into the trees from which they had only just emerged. “Devil’s own woods,” he said. “The fur traders must have crossed—and Istvan behind them. Let us go and find whatever ford they used.”
They arranged their tack and gear for a crossing.
“Istvan won’t fight us, will he?” Eleazar asked.
“Those hellish mushrooms—” Raphael began but didn’t finish his thought. Percival looked downriver, then spun his horse about and suddenly plunged ahead toward the sun-warmed side of a boulder pile.
The rest followed.
“There’s a war party on that hill,” he explained. “Thirty or forty of them. Sun’s in their eyes. Don’t see us yet, I hope. We’re the prey now.”
They skirted into the long shadow of the outcropping and gazed east through the sheltering fronds of tall reeds. Percival was right. The war party consisted mostly of Mongols, riding an assortment of horses.
“The main body, as Illarion predicted,” Eleazar said.
“Maybe. They’re going the same way we are—maybe even tracking us. We can’t go back.”
“Following Istvan too,” Raphael said, and it was difficult to tell whether this was meant as question or assertion.
Percival shook his head. “We can use these rocks to our own advantage—unless they track as well as Cnan. But we must warn Feronantus.” He struggled with a difficult decision: whom to send, whom to keep here to protect their guide and their doctor—whom to sacrifice. He stroked his horse’s neck, his brows drawn tightly together. “The last bloody thing we need is a pitched battle,” he said.
“Not much choice. The forest walls us in on both sides. We can’t escape into the woods unless we dismount,” Raphael observed.
“We can’t walk all the way east!” Eleazar said.
“You have another idea?”
“Outride them!” Eleazar said.
For the first time in quite a while, a trace of a smile stole across Percival’s lips. “Outride a company of
