The Mongoliad: Book One

“Yes,” Kim interrupted, “I know the one.”

Zug nodded. “Go and find him and ask him to write out a message in one of the languages of Christendom and deliver it to the Monks of the Red Plum Blossom.”

“I might not be able to trust him.”

“Of course not. But is there someone you could trust more?”

Kim stalked out of the cage in a state of considerable irritation. No one could make the anger rise up in his face the way Two Dogs could. He did not like being sent out on errands, but he could not defeat the riddle Two Dogs had posed to him, nor could he argue against the simple truth of all that Two Dogs had said.

He had been told never to stray from the immediate vicinity of the Mongol compound and the arena. But Kim knew that this rule would never be enforced so long as he remained in the Khan’s good graces. He had tended to remain close to home anyway. He had been provided with a private ger that was of adequate size, clean, and comfortably furnished. Its situation in the heart of the Mongol encampment meant that it was well guarded at night so that he could sleep soundly. Food, drink, women, and massages were available to him. He did not avail himself of these quite so lavishly as Zug. Yet the mere fact that he could get them gave him little reason to wander past the camp’s defensive lines and out into the slum that had sprung up, like toadstools on a stump, around the arena during the months that the circus had been in operation.

He now disguised himself by casting a hooded cloak over his shoulders and went out into it.

The disguise, of course, would not fool the Mongols guarding the camp’s exit. They knew perfectly well who he was. His reasons for donning it were twofold: one, to show a decent respect for the Khan’s order that he not go out, and two, to prevent himself from being recognized immediately by the young aspirant fighters who had flocked to the arena from all over the known world when Onghwe Khan had sent out his call for combatants. This slum was in large part the monument that such men built to themselves when they tried to settle in one place. Compared to any other city it was oversupplied with adventuresome and cocksure young males, prostitutes, bladesmiths, armorers, and drinking houses. It was lacking in sanitation, cultural refinement, officers of the peace, and decent women. Those who arrived soonest and defended their turf with greatest ferocity ended up in possession of the permanent structures, which, here, were the old stone and wattle-and-daub buildings of a tiny village, burned out and gutted some months ago, now supplied with improvised roofs and doors. The slow and the weak had ended up living in shanties and lean-tos constructed from rubble that had been hauled in from the nearby ruins of Legnica, or mere tents. These had been piled up willy-nilly.

There were no real streets, just wandering and forking paths paved with the shit of humans and beasts. Every time Kim ventured into it, it was bigger and dirtier. Every time he was reminded why he had no inclination to leave the comfort of the camp and his ger. The squalor he could tolerate; what made it truly insufferable was the young fighters who wanted to challenge him. They came to this place because they believed they knew something about fighting and imagined they would find opportunities to prove as much. What they found was an arena to which they had no hope of gaining admission, save as spectators, once a fortnight, when the Khan held his great competitions. At other times there might be preliminary bouts, used by the organizers of the circus to choose the fighters deemed worthy to appear in the next great competition. But these were by invitation only. The way to get invited was to know someone, to bribe someone, to have been noticed in battle, or to distinguish oneself in the informal fights that were staged in a few makeshift dens that had been constructed in the slum by extremely unsavory characters who knew how the system worked and how they could profit from it. It was these places more than anything else that drew in the rootless and damaged young men who believed that they had a future in the Circus of Swords.

The last time Kim had ventured out here, there had been a few yards of open space remaining between the edge of the slum and the old temple of the Christians, which had fared surprisingly well during the initial Mongolian advance. But now the warren of tents and lean-tos was washing around the building’s foundations, with only a small clear space around its entrance so that people could go in and come out.

When Kim went into the temple, a priest was standing at the front of its largest room with his back turned, holding a cup above his head and chanting some sort of mystic incantation. Arrayed round him in a semicircle were three other priests, all raising their empty hands as if in sympathy. Scattered around the main floor were perhaps a dozen Christians all down on their knees. Kim, of course, could make no sense whatsoever of the rite, but this suited his purposes since the man he sought, Father Pius, was one of the three lesser priests standing at the front. He was tempted to go tug on Pius’s sleeve and draw him aside, but something about the way the people in the temple were behaving gave him the idea that this would be considered impolite, and so he stood there quietly and waited until the head priest stopped chanting and began handing out food and drink to the assortment of wretches who had been kneeling and waiting. The amount of food given out seemed extremely small and scarcely worth the trouble. Moreover, the priest laid it directly onto the congregants’ tongues, apparently to make sure they didn’t grab too much of it. Kim thought that if they were a bit more generous, they would not have to husband the stuff so carefully.

But that was neither here nor there. When the serving of the food was finished, Kim approached the one named Pius and made it known that he wished to talk to him. All of the priests gave him dirty looks, and Kim belatedly understood that the ceremony was not actually finished yet. Nevertheless, Pius—once he had seen Kim’s face in the light of a candle and recognized him—assented to break away from the rite and led Kim out a side exit into a little room in the back of the temple that was illuminated by slats of daylight shining in between charred roof planks.

“I require your help in writing a letter to the Monks of the Red Plum Blossom,” Kim began, speaking in Mongol, “and in delivering it to the master of their order. In exchange for your assistance, I offer to give you money, or to make myself useful to you in some other way.”

Father Pius seemed too dumbfounded by all of this to say anything in return. While waiting for the priest to collect his wits, Kim supplied a description of the sigil, or mon, that Two Dogs had earlier scratched on the floor of his cage.

Eventually the priest began to nod. “It is not a plum blossom,” he said, “but a red rose.”

“Very well. The Monks of the Red Rose, then,” Kim said, shrugging to indicate that he did not really care what sort of flower it was or what this order called itself.

But Pius would not let go of the topic. “The rose is a symbol, in the heraldry of the Franks, for the Virgin.”

“Fine. They are celibate monks. We have them too. Or at least we have ones who claim to be celibate.”

“All monks are celibate,” Pius said. “That is not what the rose symbolizes. It means, rather, the Virgin Mary, Mother of God.”

A number of questions came immediately to Kim’s mind, but he forced himself not to utter them, since the conversation had already dwelled on this topic much longer than he had any use for.

Pius was unstoppable, though. “They are the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae,” he said, switching briefly into some other language that made no sense at all to Kim, “which means, the Order of Knights of the Virgin Defender.”

“They are defenders of virgins?”

“No. Well, yes. Of course they defend virgins. But that’s not what it means. The Virgin Defender is a sort of manifestation of the Virgin Mary that once appeared above a battlefield, holding a shield and a lance, inspiring the founders of this order to extraordinary feats of arms.”

“Can you get a message to them or not?”

“Yes. By all means.” Father Pius had begun rummaging in a chest socked away in the corner of the little room. All of its furniture had been burned or looted; this chest had been put in place after the battle. As Kim now saw, it contained the stuff that Franks used to write: dried animal skin, quills, and small clay jars that, judging from the stains around their necks, contained ink. A bit of time was lost now to fussing about with this gear, trimming quills and mixing mysterious fluids into the jars to get the ink to the proper consistency. Kim could see clearly enough that this was a little show that Father Pius was putting on to remind Kim of all the trouble and expense he was going to—trouble and expense for which he would expect to be compensated later. But in due time he got himself situated on the flat lid of the chest with all in readiness: candle, ink, quill, parchment, and Father Pius himself.