The Mongoliad: Book One

ram-shackle sprawl of the new city growing around it—was an old monastery. Abandoned by its previous residents, it housed new penitents now, more martial than spiritual in their inclinations. Their standard, raised above the old hall, was a red rose laid over a yellow thirteen-pointed star.

The Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae.

Gladiatorial fights were the sort of peasant entertainment that used to be the mainstay of the Colosseum in Rome; clearly the Mongolian Khan knew the best way to keep his troops from becoming disenchanted with the lack of opportunities for rapine and pillage. Mortal combat was held once a week. The other days were filled with nonlethal bouts, a slip-shod tourney through which combatants earned the right to fight before the dissolute Khan. As long as the venerable Shield-Brethren could provide ready fodder for the arena, Dietrich suspected that this circus could last a very long time.

Long enough that the impetus to march before winter might be lost.

It wasn’t much of a respite, but it was a start. Every season that passed without the Mongols encroaching any farther into Christendom was time his masters in Rome could use to negotiate a peace treaty. It wouldn’t last. The Mongols, much like the Arabs in the Levant, were heathens, and Rome knew they couldn’t be trusted. But a peace treaty might be enough to make them turn their attention elsewhere…

The crowd was on its feet, shrieking and howling at the spectacle in the arena. The Mongolian fighter, a man dressed in a garish costume, complete with a lurid mask with white whiskers, had lost his weapon; the Shield- Brethren knight had managed to take it, but clearly had no idea how to use it properly. The Mongolian fighter— someone named Zug, if he understood the audience’s chant correctly—had at least traded his pig sticker for something longer. Throwing his short sword at the knight was an ineffectual move at best—a blade like that had no chance of penetrating the knight’s armor—but it gave him the opportunity to seize the knight’s sword. Whether he knew how to wield it effectively was another question; Dietrich doubted the man had any experience with the Great Sword of War.

Some of his knights used such a weapon, but it was much too big and clumsy for his liking. It was a weapon for a man who liked to wear armor, who preferred to be in the thick of battle. In Dietrich’s experience, being that close to one’s enemies meant a mistake in tactics had been made, and such mistakes were invariably costly.

He had heard reports about the Mongolian general, Subutai, from the survivors of the battle at the Sajo River. He used horse archers, incredibly fast and mobile fighters who remained out of reach of the sword and spear. By the time you could get close to them, they could empty an entire quiver of arrows into your ranks.

Costly mistakes.

Burchard, one of his two bodyguards, nudged Dietrich, drawing his attention toward a rippling movement in the crowd. Dietrich came away from his reverie and looked for what had caught his fellow Livonian’s eye.

“A heckler,” Burchard pointed. “He threw something.” The tall German had been a scout for years before he became one of Dietrich’s bodyguards, and his eyesight was well known among the Livonian Sword Brothers.

Dietrich squinted at the tiny object rolling around on the sand and then gave up trying to ascertain what it was. The reaction in the stands was much more interesting anyway.

Some sort of thrill was running through the crowd like a gust of wind across a field of rye, a rippling of bodies as heads were turned toward the enormous pavilion that housed the Khan and his retinue. Some signal passed from within the shade of the tent, and the motion through the throng reversed itself, splitting the audience apart. The crowd drew away from a single man as if he had burst into flames. A Saracen, judging from his clothes. His terror was abject, and he scuttled toward the rim of the growing circle as if to escape notice, but half a dozen hands lashed out and shoved him back. He slid across the floor, and as he passed through the center of the open space, he jerked to a stop, suddenly transfixed by three arrows that sprouted from his body.

Dietrich noticed the fletchings pointed outward in very different directions. Reflexively he glanced around the arena in an effort to note the locations of the snipers. He spotted two readily enough—positioned on fixed platforms around the periphery of the arena. Burchard indicated the third, a Mongol standing just under the edge of the Khan’s pavilion. A fourth stood on the opposite side, though he had not shot his bow.

The Saracen writhed and screamed, and the crowd remained at a distance until two burly Mongols pushed their way through the cordon of bodies. One whipped a roundheaded mace down on the dying man until he stopped screaming, and then they roughly dragged his corpse away.

“A costly mistake,” Dietrich murmured. Burchard raised an eyebrow, and Dietrich waved the Sword Brother’s unspoken question away.

The mood was starting to turn. The audience was getting restless. The Khan was showing signs of boredom. This did not bode well for a continuance of the tournament. Dietrich glared down at the two men on the sand as if to invoke a change in their behavior through the force of his gaze. This game of switching weapons and grappling like drunk peasants is not going to keep the Khan’s interest.

The Shield-Brethren should be more adept than what was currently on display. It had been a number of years since he had actually seen them fight, but he found it hard to believe they had fallen so far from the paragons of martial expertise he knew. Even though the Order had withdrawn from nearly all of their existing commissions, they still held a few citadels of their own, and he had not heard any rumors that their ranks had been decimated in battle. Even at Mohi.

Keeping this competition alive was critical, and he couldn’t risk the safety of his own Order by putting his men into the tournament. Whenever the tournament did finally end, the Mongolian army would return its attention to Europe, and it would serve his Order and his masters in Rome little if the Livonian Brothers of the Sword had earned a reputation as fierce fighters. He needed the Mongols to feel threatened by someone else, but if all that remained of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae was old men and children, then it would be very difficult to focus the dissolute Khan’s attention on the Shield-Brethren.

Haakon’s first instinct upon gripping Zug’s pole-arm had been to adopt what Taran referred to as the Scared Little Boy Pose, which was to say an extended position, aiming the tip of the blade straight out before him. To the extent that his mind was working at all, this was probably an attempt—which any scared little boy would certainly understand—to keep the bogeyman as far away as possible. He began to come to his senses, though, during the pause for hilarity that ran through the arena in the moments after Zug had picked up Haakon’s longsword and thereby effected a complete weapons swap.

Haakon felt instinctively uneasy whenever he stood with his blade held straight out for more than a few moments. Was this experienced fighter going to rush forward and impale himself on its tip? Unlikely. Besides which, he’d seen enough to understand that this blade was made for long, sweeping attacks, and from this position, he couldn’t deliver one.

So he lowered his right arm, dropping the glaive’s tip until it was only a hand’s breadth above the ground. By moving it to one side or the other, he could now block a blow, or deflect a thrust from the longsword at any height. From here, he could swing it to either side as needed to shut out the enemy’s onslaught. And yet, by making a push-pull motion with his hands, he could snap the cutting edge upward, to send it carving into whatever part of Zug’s anatomy might present itself. At the moment, the obvious target was the right leg, which was planted out in front of the left and not especially well armored.

In the moment when they stared at each other, an object had come hurtling into the arena. It had bounced off Zug’s helmet with a clang, and while it hadn’t caused any injury, they were both momentarily surprised.

Haakon had been trained relentlessly in the importance of seizing the initiative. According to Feronantus, fate bestowed blessings upon him who had the courage to act first. Taran’s voice cut through the mysticism: Make him react to you, damn it!

Haakon stepped forward, feinting a low cut (an obvious strike, given the starting position of the blade), then drew back and whirled the glaive end-for-end, bringing its edge all the way back and around and up over his head and finally striking downward.

Zug had been holding the longsword out in front of him, a pose not dissimilar to his own stance. As a guard, however, it was only useful against quick strikes to the hand or forearm. Further evidence that the man was drunk and not thinking clearly. Haakon’s only opportunity lay in taking advantage of Zug’s sluggish reactions.

Zug didn’t fall for Haakon’s feint, and he quickly raised his sword, catching the glaive on the crossguard. The guard—nothing more than a steel bar—stopped Haakon’s blow, but the force of his strike collapsed Zug’s arms, and the blade of the glaive glanced off the side of Zug’s helmet.