The Mongoliad: Book One

gray blankets and rags—scurried out of makeshift shelters that they had erected along the approaches to the priory and abandoned cookfires that they had kindled along the way. Percival turned his head from side to side, observing this curiously, and Raphael sensed from his posture that he was slightly offended by the refugees’ obvious fear of him.

“Are they afraid of Percival?” Roger asked. “Or of what is about to happen to him?”

“Either would suffice to make such people get well clear of the man,” Illarion said.

Percival found himself standing in a clear space before the gates, gazing directly up at the Latin-speaking woman who had addressed him earlier; she was looking down on him through a crenel on the fortification above the portal. Perhaps feeling that it was not the act of a gentleman to go helmed when he addressed a lady whose own helmet was tucked under her arm, he reached up, lifted his own helmet from his head, bent down, and set it on the ground before his feet, then stood up and raised his chin, tossing his hair back away from his face and gazing directly up at his interlocutor.

All of the ladies went silent for a moment.

“Bastard!” Roger muttered.

The Shield-Maidens’ voices were resurgent, not as loud as before, and in a different tone: some of them even more furious, others mock flirting with him, and perhaps a few of them flirting quite sincerely.

Their leader permitted herself a sardonic grin and a little shake of the head. “I am not certain which of your approaches has been more insulting,” she said. “You came to us the first time, brimming over with the most insufferable arrogance. ‘Well done, girls. Thank you for keeping the place tidy for us. Now open the gates that we can make of it a proper fortress. Vacate your barracks and your bedchambers, plump up our pillows, cook up some vittles, and polish our armor that we may tend to important duties.’ When we sent your emissaries away and fought off the inevitable sneak attack that followed, we supposed we’d seen the last of you. But now you are back. And what is your latest stratagem? A handsome face with which to woo the silly girls who hold the keys to the gate. Tell me, are the men skulking behind you as fair to look at?”

“That would be for you and the other Shield-Maidens to decide, my lady,” Percival returned.

“You may address me as Sister Vera,” said the woman. “I am not a lady, and if I were, I would not be yours.”

“Very well, Sister Vera. I am Brother Percival.”

“No brother of ours! We have suffered you to draw this close only to tell you, once again, that you and the other Livonians are not welcome in our city,” said Vera. “If your friends draw near enough for us to form an opinion of their beauty, they will get arrows in the face just like the one you saw.”

“Then it is well that you stayed your hand and held back your flights of arrows until I drew near enough to speak with you and to disabuse you of a grievous but understandable misconception,” Percival said. And he stripped his surcoat off over his head, then shed his coat of mail—not easily done, as it weighed as much as some of the women who were aiming arrows at him from above. This occasioned much more bawdy commentary from the Shield-Maidens, which he pretended not to hear. Having dropped his mail on the ground, he unbuttoned his gambeson and stripped off that thick padded garment to reveal a linen shirt beneath, tired and sweat-stained but, given what they had been through, surprisingly clean.

“If your face did not convince us,” said the lady above, “then, rest assured, neither will your…”

But then she stopped. And over the course of the next few moments, all of the other catcalls died down as well. For Percival had reached across his body with his left hand, grasped the cuff of his right shirtsleeve, and drawn it back to expose the arm as high as the elbow. In the same gesture he extended his right arm up and outward from his body, rotating his palm up to face the sky, and thus exposing to the Shield-Maidens’ view the brawn of his forearm.

Standing behind, Raphael could not see what Percival was showing them, but he hardly needed to, given that the same sigil was marked on his own flesh.

Having seized the Shield-Maidens’ attention and silenced them, Percival now let his left hand drop away. The eyes of the women on the battlements tracked the movement carefully. The left hand was curled into a loose fist. He extended it toward them, then straightened his fingers while turning his hand over to display the palm.

There was nothing remarkable about this. And that, to them, was the remarkable thing. For some moments now he remained posed thus, letting them all inspect the marked forearm and the unmarked palm. A change passed through the women on the walls above, like a gust of wind moving over a sea of grass. No order was issued by Vera. But bows creaked as strings were relaxed. Arrows snicked back into their quivers and swords into their scabbards.

“Brother Percival,” said Vera, her voice suddenly husky, “we have done you an injustice. You and the other Skjaldbr??ur are welcome—more than welcome—inside our citadel.”

Their plan of inquiring after provisions forgotten, the party fell into loose formation: Istvan and Finn (back on his horse) in front, Eleazar bringing up the rear, with Feronantus and Cnan and Yasper and R?dwulf riding in pairs. Once, Cnan would have felt naked and exposed riding in the open, especially without some sort of helm or mail of her own—not that she had ever worn either—but surrounded now by the readied and alert knights of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, she felt…protected.

The sensation was not unlike the one she had felt many weeks ago when she had first entered the Shield- Brethren chapter house for their Kinyen. At that time, such a sensation—while new—was not unexpected for being surrounded by the many knights and the stone walls, but she felt both awkward and elated to feel a glimmering of that sensation again when in the company of fewer knights. She tried to not dwell overlong on the source of her emotions.

They rode up the narrow road that ran alongside the river, keeping the winding track of water on their right flank. The gentle slope of the small hill rose on their left, and ahead the road diverged from following the river, dipping down to hug the base of the slope.

The smell of dead flesh was getting stronger. Either that, Cnan realized, or Yasper’s mint oil was starting to wear off.

They could see the back side of the hill now. On the crown of the smaller hill stood a dilapidated series of low buildings, hidden by a rough wall of hewn timbers. A narrow path—barely wide enough for a horse, much less a cart—wound precipitously down the slope, where it connected with the larger road not far ahead of them.

What caught their attention was the two men pulling a narrow cart up the hill and the armed company following them.

The company was dressed in mail—from coifs to chausses—and their long surcoats were white. Each carried a shield, along with a plethora of swords, axes, and maces. The insignia painted on a number of the shields was a red cross surmounting a down-turned sword. Knights, Cnan realized, like her present company in their armament and in the way they carried themselves. There, however, the similarities ended, for their faces were hard and pitiless, set with grim expressions that told her that these men were of a different breed from her companions. She counted heads. They numbered closer to thrice the number of her present company.

In comparison, the two men pulling the cart seemed almost nonhuman. Both wore filthy and threadbare robes that hung stiffly over their gaunt frames, and the heads that protruded from the robes were topped with tangled masses of hair and beard, so encrusted with dirt and other matter that it was nearly impossible to discern any sort of face. The rickety cart was not much more than a plank nailed to a pair of boards to which rough wheels were awkwardly attached. Piled on the cart was, at first glance, a stack of filthy hides, but Cnan saw a flash of pale movement and realized the bundle was another figure like the two hauling the cart.

Someone spotted the Shield-Brethren and a shout went up from the column of knights.

The company of knights stopped, turning in a block to face Cnan and the Shield-Brethren. The two ragmen began pulling their cart faster. A shriek floated down from the palisade at the top of the hill, more an exhortation of panic than the cry sounded by a bird of prey as it dove on its victim.

One of the knights stood nearly a head taller than the rest of his company, and they parted like water for him as he came down the slope. As he reached the tail of his column, he drew his sword and walked unhurriedly toward them. His men reformed in his wake, like a worm folding back on itself, and fell in behind him.

“Hold,” Feronantus said quietly to the other Shield-Brethren. “Let him make his intention clear.”

Cnan heard the sound of stretching sinew, and glancing over her shoulder, she saw R?dwulf draw his