The Mongoliad: Book One

around and say the words for whatever object first presented itself. So on successive days he might be known as “Barnacle,” “Stray Cat,” “Cresting Wave,” or “Bucket of Fish.”

Kim—who had been chased down to Byeokrando after the Last Stand of the Flower Knights—had found employment as a sort of constable, maintaining order along the waterfront. Even at that age, he had been tall, broad of face and shoulder, heavily bearded, and serious looking. These qualities, which intimidated most of the rough characters who hung around the docks, had only provoked the many-named Nipponese vagrant. They had had many fights. Some of these Kim had won. Kim considered this to be the normal and expected outcome, given that he was, as far as he knew, the last living embodiment of a martial tradition reaching back for over a thousand years. But it always seemed to astonish the man who would later be known as “Zug.” When Kim did lose, which was extremely remarkable as far as Kim was concerned, this outcome seemed to confirm to Zug that all was as it should be.

It would be too much to say that Kim and the Nipponese man had become friends, but they had established a relationship of wary respect. Enough so that Kim had once insisted that the other tell him his real name. He had responded, “Shisha,” which Kim suspected, and later confirmed, meant “Dead Man” in Nihongo.

Exasperated, Kim had looked out the window of the tavern in which they were having the conversation, saw a pair of dogs copulating in the street, and dubbed the man “Two Dogs Fucking,” later shortened to “Two Dogs.”

In due time the Mongols had extended their control over the entire Korean peninsula. The royal court had taken ship at the docks of Byeokrando and sailed to exile on the nearby island of Ganghwa, visible only a short distance offshore, from which they meant to organize a military resistance. The Mongols had been hot on their heels, and so it had been deemed necessary to fight a delaying action to prevent the docks from being overwhelmed before the king and his court could get away. In this manner, Kim and Two Dogs had found employment in the capacity for which they were best suited: dying in a hopeless, valiant struggle against vastly superior numbers.

Fighting back-to-back, they had killed an inordinate number of Mongols and thereby drew the attention of the young Onghwe Khan, who had ordered his men to down their arms. Through an interpreter, he had called out to the two exhausted fighters, asking them their names. “Kim Alcheon, last of the Flower Knights,” Kim had answered, which was the truth. Two Dogs, who had been quite busy with his naginata, had taken a quick look around and answered, “Zugaikotsu no Yama,” which meant “Mountain of Skulls.” The name stuck.

Rather than having them killed on the spot, Onghwe had inducted them into his Circus of Swords, to fight in what had been their occupation ever since.

All of which helped to explain why when Kim was made aware that Zug was going through histrionic death throes in a locked iron cage, he only rolled his eyes. It served the idiot right for having gone crazy and beheading all of those Mongols after his defeat at the hands of the Frankish knight.

When the “death throes” extended into their third day, Kim went to visit the cage and insisted to the horrified guards that the door be unlocked and that he be allowed to venture inside.

The situation there was really quite disgraceful. Given the nature of the circus’s operations, it was naturally equipped with a number of cages suitable for confining human beings. This was not the first time that Two Dogs had been confined in one. Normally he had the presence of mind to make use of the bucket provided. But whatever demon had taken him now had caused him to lose control of his bowels, and so there was diarrhea all over the place. Two Dogs was lying in the middle of it, trembling all over, pawing and scratching frantically at his skin. Quite understandable when one was covered in his own shit, but Kim suspected the frantic clawing was something else. He had heard stories of drunkards who, deprived of drink, had come to believe that insects or small rodents were crawling all over them.

When questioned, the guards, somewhat gleefully, confirmed that, by express order of Onghwe Khan, Zug had been deprived of alcohol. It was clear that had they been given freedom of action, they would have inflicted far greater injury on Zug than simply taking away his liquor. So Zug’s current state pleased them, and they were in no rush to ease the Japanese man’s torment.

Kim patiently explained to them that if Onghwe had wanted one of his favorite gladiators dead, he would have simply killed him. As that was not the order he had given, it followed that the loss of alcohol was a mere punishment. To deny Zug medical treatment might be the same as a death sentence. One of the more quick-witted guards leaped at Kim’s suggestion and saw to it that a Chinese doctor was brought in to treat the ailing patient with an extract of poppies.

Once the drug had calmed Zug to the point where entering the cage was no longer considered to be instantly and invariably lethal, slaves were sent in to clean the place up a bit and wash the shit off of him. Thanks to these ministrations, his condition improved. Over the next few days, he was weaned from the poppies, and eventually he grew lucid enough that talking to him was not a complete waste of time.

“We have been reduced to the condition of slaves and are no longer fit to live,” he answered to Kim’s general question about his state of health. He was speaking in the language of Korea, which he and Kim used when they did not wish to be understood by the Mongols.

“You are only just realizing this now?” Kim asked. “Because in that case your dementia is even worse than I had supposed. Either that or you have begun to believe the stories that the Khan tells of you.”

Two Dogs waved him off with a trembling hand. “I have known it for years,” he said, “as have you, O Flower Knight.”

Kim had been trained to endure great pain—and had been for years—but the casual declaration of Zug’s words cut deep, and he struggled to not react visibly to what the other had just said. “The world is full of slaves,” he said carelessly, “most of whom are in a much more degraded condition than we.”

“Some would say that they are less degraded, in that, being shackled and whipped, they are unable to delude themselves as to their true condition,” Two Dogs returned. “The events of the last few days, thrashing around in my own shit and begging on my knees to be given a swallow of wine, have left me with a very clear understanding of how things really are. And I do not care to continue living in these conditions.”

“This is not the first time you have expressed such dismay at the state of your existence,” Kim reminded him. “Three times? Or is it four? I cannot remember. But what would you do to change things?”

“Kill the Khan and get away from these people.”

“Get away to where? You are an infinity of miles from your home.”

“I don’t want to return to my home.” He struggled to sit upright and leaned toward Kim. “But I no longer want to die here. Do you?”

Kim regarded Zug carefully. Why not? he shrugged. He’s right. My cage, while cleaner than his, is still a cage. “No,” he replied. “I do not. But how do you propose to accomplish this…this mission, though? There are only two of us, and you’re half dead and locked up in a cage.”

“We must form an alliance with the Monks of the Red Plum Blossom.”

Kim shrugged. “Who are these monks? Some martial order in your native country…?” Suddenly he wondered if Zug’s dementia might be subtler than he had first thought. An imaginary order of assassins…?

“No, they are here. I have seen them. The Frank I fought in the arena. The man who—”

“Who defeated you?”

“He did not defeat me,” Two Dogs insisted. “I had my tanto in his fucking armpit. He had better armor, is all.”

Kim did not think it was fitting to belabor a sick man, and so he allowed this to pass without comment.

The floor of the cage was dirt. Two Dogs arose from his litter with some difficulty and then used the tip of a stick he had scavenged to scratch out a design—a five-lobed flower resting upon a sunburst design with many sharp-pointed rays. “The warrior monks who use this as their mon are different from the other Franks. I think that they are like us.”

“Like we used to be,” Kim corrected him.

Two Dogs waved his hand as if the distinction were trivial. “They will become like us, or be destroyed, if the Mongols are not stopped. We need to get them a message to that effect.”

“How do you suppose this is possible, given that we have no language in common with them?”

Two Dogs raised a quivering index finger, drawing attention to the following important point: “In the village of scum and rabble that surrounds this circus, there is a Frankish priest who has spent years among the Mongols and speaks their language nearly as well as his own.”