The Mongoliad: Book One

Cnan let Finn tell Feronantus and the others what they had seen. He seemed annoyed at being asked to speak at length, but after a few sentences, he fell into a surprising loquaciousness.

When they had first departed from Legnica, the hunter’s rough version of Latin had been almost incomprehensible to her, but now, after being in his company for nearly two months, she found she could understand him.

“What could they hope to find in these caves?” Feronantus asked when Finn finished.

The hunter shrugged. “There is nothing of value within those walls. What the Livonians want lies elsewhere, but they have to go through the caves to get it. Otherwise they would have brought their horses.”

“A raiding party,” Eleazar spat.

“But raiding what?” Yasper asked, stroking his beard. He looked at the church on the other hill, the onion- topped domes peeking over the top of the crumbling walls. “The cathedral?”

“Percival…” The name was out of Cnan’s mouth before she could stop it, and she mentally kicked herself for the slip of her tongue. It was her heart, she fumed, still beating so hard from the run downhill that had betrayed her.

“Yasper,” Feronantus ordered, “stay with Finn and Cnan. Keep a watch on the monastery. If the Livonians return, follow them.” He gathered up his reins and snapped them, getting his horse’s attention. “The rest of us will ride for the cathedral, to warn our brothers.”

Istvan chortled, kicking his horse in the ribs. Clearly the Hungarian was eager for another opportunity to cross paths with the Livonians. His horse sprang forward, and he led the party as they galloped along the road, heading around the hill.

Yasper waved away the dust kicked up by their departing companions, and then he hooked a leg over his saddle and slid to the ground. “Well…” he started, rustling around in his saddlebags, gathering a few oddments and trinkets. “I guess we’d better get started.” He grabbed one of the two jugs he had found earlier and forced it and the rest of the items he had selected into a large satchel he hung around his waist.

“Started…?” Cnan asked.

Yasper squinted up at the monastery. “Uh-huh.”

“Feronantus said we were to wait and see if they returned. He didn’t say anything about going up there.”

Yasper shrugged. “He didn’t say we shouldn’t, either.” He toyed with the small vial of mint oil. “Did it really smell that bad?”

Cnan snatched the vial from his hands. “Worse than you can imagine,” she said. She smeared the ointment liberally on several fingers and slathered her nose before returning the bottle to the alchemist. “We’re just going to keep an eye on them,” she said. “From outside the walls.”

“Of course,” Yasper said nonchalantly, as if she had just commented on the weather or the color of his tunic. He rubbed the ointment into his mustache, twirling the long strands idly with his oily fingers. “Only two?” he asked.

Finn nodded, a wide grin spreading across his face.

Yasper turned his attention to the decrepit wall around the monastery. “Should I bring some rope…?” he offered.

“You think too much,” Finn snorted. “Door is weak. Go up, knock it down, fight Livonians.”

“I would have thought you a subtler man, Finn.” Yasper chuckled.

Finn raised an eyebrow at the alchemist and hefted his boar spear. “Subtlety is for when you are stalking fleet prey. It has no purpose otherwise.”

A slow smile spread across Yasper’s face as he turned to address Cnan. “How many of those ragged… monks…did you see?”

“Just one, but there must be more,” Cnan reluctantly replied. “Unless they went with the Livonians.”

What Yasper was suggesting seemed like madness, but she could see some virtue to his plan. They had given no thought to the Livonians’ purpose previously, and the raiders had managed to disappear from under their very noses. If they were to follow the Livonians, there might be no other way to catch up to them quickly enough to discern their purpose. “The hide workers,” she pointed out, “they skin the animals up there, so I presume they have some tools…”

“Lead us,” Yasper said, exchanging a glance with Finn that was half mad excitement, half fear.

Cnan felt the same emotions rising from the pit of her stomach. Was this the infectious spirit of her companions driving her into like-minded madness?

“If Saint Ilya offers you no guidance, Brother, then perhaps what…we…seek is not down in these caverns, and we should allow Sister Vera to resume her normal duties above,” Raphael suggested. “Unless you can supply some meager hint as to what the object of your quest might be.”

“Hints, perhaps. I have seen little and been illuminated as to its meaning less,” Percival said, getting to his feet. “There is a relic guarded ardently in a secret place. A chalice—searched for by many, protected by the worthy—I had hoped that perhaps it might be found here.”

At this, there was silence. Raphael recalled a conversation he’d overheard between Percival and Taran, wherein the late oplo had been questioned at length by Percival about cauldron myths from his native Ireland. They’d talked late into the night as Raphael had tossed and turned, wishing they’d shut up. Raphael had thought naught of their conversation until now.

Percival sought the Grail, and he had hoped to find it in Kiev.

“We have protected many things over the march of years,” Vera replied. “But the Holy Grail is not amongst them.”

Percival gave a respectful nod, though he could not hide the look of disappointment that flashed briefly across his face. “But you do protect something.”

Vera said nothing.

“We will help you regardless of whether you divulge your secrets,” Percival said quietly. “Know that.”

A look of consternation—or was it well-hidden exasperation?—flashed over Vera’s face. She had said moments ago that this was a good place to speak of secrets. Clearly—to Raphael, at least—she had been urging Percival to divulge his secret. But he had taken it the other way and leapt to the assumption that Vera had something to reveal.

She considered his words in silence, the only sound the faint hissing of the melting tallow in the rushlight that illuminated her face. She looked next at each of them and finally relented. “I will tell you the closest thing we have to a holy secret in this place. According to legend, the grave of Saint Ilya guards the Egg of Koschei the Deathless.”

Percival did not try to hide his interest. “Tell us more of this sacred egg.”

Roger, unable to contain himself, turned his back on them, stalked to the nearest wall, and pressed his forehead against the cool stone.

“It is not sacred,” Vera said. “Rather the opposite—it contains the soul of the evil spirit Koschei, and whoever has it in his possession has Koschei in his power.”

“Is it perhaps contained in a sacred relic—something shaped like a goblet or chalice?”

Vera was now looking at Percival very oddly indeed and seemed unwilling to speak plainly for once.

Roger turned to face the center of the chamber and stepped slowly toward Percival. “My brother!” he exclaimed. “How can you not understand her words? It is not here. We have come all this way to hear a fairy story about a hobgoblin who keeps his soul in a fucking egg! Whatever purpose led you to steer our path toward Kiev had some other end in mind—some end that is going ignored and untended to while we stand in this sewer prating about Koschei the Deathless.”

Another man might have been offended. But no anger was on Percival’s face as he locked eyes with Roger. Long was the silence that followed.

It stretched out even longer as first Vera, then Roger, then Percival, and finally Raphael began to glance toward the chamber’s exit, distracted by approaching sounds that could not possibly have been made by rats. At first these were human voices, echoing distantly along the intestine twists and bends of the cavern’s walls. But as they listened, they began to hear too the metallic clank and jingle of steel—steel worn on the body as armor and