The Mongoliad: Book One

audience. By now, he realized, the rabble who lined the arena had seen enough to handicap the opponents, choose up sides, and lay wagers. They were cheering accordingly, and some were calling out, “Che-val-ier! Che-val-ier!” Had he not been so distracted, he’d have enjoyed a laugh over the idea that he, a monk descended from Nordic fishermen, had been mistaken for a knight of the Crusades.

The remainder screamed out, “Zug! Zug! Zug!”

The skull-maker wanted blood, wanted to feel bones and flesh separating before its shiny blade. It pulled at Zug, and he had to follow its desire.

But he knew a mistake had been made.

As the pole-arm—the naginata—whirled around for should have been the final stroke against the armored knight, Zug felt like a stone falling from a great height. When the knight’s sword connected with the wooden shaft of the pole-arm, a shock went through his body. He gasped, suddenly conscious of the constricting weight of his armor, of how difficult it was to breathe in his mask. Sweat ran down his back, and it felt like claws raking his flesh. His bowels trembled, and he nearly lost control of his bladder.

Suddenly aware, like being jerked out of a deep sleep.

Sunlight shivered off the knight’s helm, and Zug squinted against the glare, pulling his head back as his opponent moved closer. Distantly, like the sensation of wind-blown rain sluicing across the felt roof of a ger, he felt the knight’s blade slide along the pole in his hands.

The knight’s hands came down, metal fingers wrapped around a plain pommel, and a point of metal danced in front of his face.

Zug hissed. His body responded slowly—the way a boat turns on a placid lake when its occupant has no oars. He had been gone too long, lost in his mind, and the flesh had become a slave to other masters: the crowd, the skull-maker, the arkhi. He had become nothing more than a ghost.

Not yet, he thought. The naginata’s blade dragged on the ground as he retreated from the knight’s thrust. I am not a ghost.

His hands tightened on the shaft of the pole-arm, and he knew where his feet were. The skull-maker sang as he snapped it up. The knight was close behind him…

Haakon spotted a tiny movement of the demon’s—Zug’s—forward leg as the other man shifted his center of gravity. The motion gave away Zug’s intent; he had settled too far into his guard, and now he had to shift his weight before he could execute his next attack.

Even before Zug started to move the pole-arm, Haakon was already moving. He lunged forward, keeping his blade in contact with the pole-arm. As his blade slide down onto the wooden shaft, he lifted his elbows and locked the shaft between his blade and crossguard. Zug couldn’t extricate his weapon, and as Haakon took another step forward—flee toward danger!—he forced the pole-arm up. With a flick of his wrists, he rotated his sword around the pole-arm and clasped the blade with his left hand again.

He wasn’t close enough for the half-sword thrust to be deadly, but the move was a replay of a few moments ago. Haakon hoped the repetition would break Zug’s concentration for a second or two as the other man tried to second-guess Haakon’s intention. Would Zug think he was foolish enough to try for the hilt snare again?

Haakon closed, rolling his sword around the pole-arm so that his arms reversed their position. His point was no longer in Zug’s face, but he was still inside the reach of the pole-arm’s blade.

With a sharp motion, he snapped his hilt toward the triangular opening behind Zug’s left forearm. It was a similar lock to the snare he had just used, but his target was different. Brother Rutger liked this technique: tangling the other warrior’s arm with the hilt of his own blade before he stepped in and stripped the weapon free. Haakon doubted he could get the pole-arm from Zug—the technique worked best with shorter weapons—but at this range, the pole-arm was about as dangerous as a willow switch.

Zug was not to be entangled a second time, and his hand darted out, seizing Haakon’s hilt before the lock could be completed. His response wasn’t unexpected; Haakon would have been surprised if the other man’s martial arts didn’t include close-quarters fighting techniques. As Zug pulled at his sword, he let go of his blade with his off hand, grabbing at the shaft of the pole-arm. Zug was caught in a tug-of-war, trying to retain his pole with one hand, jerking the heavy sword from Haakon with the other.

This divided his energy. Haakon could feel his focus smearing, two flows going in different directions. And right there, in the middle, was a swirling mass of confused energy. Without thinking, Haakon did something Brother Rutger never would have done, something that, if he took the time to fully consider the implications, he never would have done either.

Haakon let go of his sword, grabbed Zug’s pole-arm, and heaved upward.

Zug grunted as the lower length of the pole sword slammed into his groin. His stance had been too deep, and during their tussle, the pole had drifted between his legs.

Haakon was much taller, and he put all the strength of his legs into the dead lift. He had no idea what sort of armor Zug kept down there, but if it was anything like his own, it wasn’t much. Hardly a killing blow, but no man liked getting hit between the legs.

He lifted hard, twice.

Zug was either armored down below or Haakon had missed, as the demon-faced man barely shivered and then recovered quickly. He cast Haakon’s sword aside and went for his own blade, the short one in the scabbard at his waist.

Haakon swept his left leg back, pivoting around his right hip. He twisted his wrists out, trying to throw Zug to the ground, with the pole high and hard between his legs. Zug was still hanging on to the pole as well, his hand firmly in place below Haakon’s.

Zug jabbed at him with the short sword, quick stabs that slid ineffectively off the metal of his bracers. Eventually, though, Zug would get the point behind Haakon’s breastplate.

He needed to break this impasse, but what could he do? He had given up his sword. He had his opponent’s weapon, but it was still tangled up by Zug’s legs and hand. What else could he use? His dagger was at the small of his back, and he didn’t dare let go of the pole-arm to reach for it.

Zug tried to twist around the pole, bending like a snake, and Haakon felt something tear in his side. Zug had found his mail.

Keep your head, Taran admonished him. Focus.

Haakon stared at Zug’s frozen mask; this close he could see that it wasn’t metal. Zug exhaled noisily as he ground his point against the chain of Haakon’s mail, and even with the mask obscuring his face, Haakon could smell the foul odor of his breath.

Arkhi. An alcoholic drink the Mongolians favored.

Zug had been drunk recently. He might even still be drunk, which meant his reflexes were impaired and his balance was off.

Keep it simple, Taran suggested.

Haakon snapped his head and helm forward, tucking his chin so that the brunt of the blow came from the hard metal ridge that protected his forehead. The blow landed true; Zug’s head jerked back violently, a grunt of pain escaping from beneath the helmet and crest. But the blow did not knock him senseless. It shoved him off balance. As Zug tried to recover, Haakon shoved him firmly. Zug staggered back, and Haakon kept his grip firm on the pole- arm.

As he found his balance and sank into a stance, he twirled the weapon around until the blade pointed at his enemy.

The spectators laughed and shrieked with merriment over this sensational turn of events. Haakon remembered that there was a crowd. And suddenly, just like that, he was out of the fight, aware that he had forgotten to breathe, that his heart was going so fast it felt more like a shivering in the chest than a beat, that sweat was gushing out of him. He realized he was closer to the wall than he wanted to be, and he sidestepped toward the center of the arena.

Zug put his hands to his helmet, repositioning it on his face. The top edge of his mask had been crushed, and one of the tall spires drooped. Sun fell through a gap between the demon helm and a neck frill of shining black.