The Mongoliad: Book Two

to die.

Ferenc hunched his shoulders, ignoring the twinge below his clavicle, trying instinctively to protect his head, to shelter his ears from possible screams and wails-sounds he was more likely to hear in his mind.

This morning, on the open road to Rome, he had heard only the sounds of travelers: children laughing or singing tunelessly, oxen lowing as they pulled carts toward the city, men calling hesitant greetings to one another. While these travelers were aware of the presence of a nearby army, they did not have the same fear. No one fretted whether or not they were going to be the first to die. Of all the people on the roads to Rome, only Ferenc- and Father Rodrigo too, judging by the tension in his jaw and the faraway look in his eye-were haunted by the distant disaster that had befallen Christendom on the banks of the Sajo River.

The harbingers of the Apocalypse-horse riders from the East-had come to Christendom. Those who survived the horrifying battle at Mohi-who were to bear witness to the rest of the West-were forever marked.

Ferenc’s resolve failed when they reached the market. He had girded himself for the sensory onslaught, but the noise still buffeted him like the winter wind screaming through the rough passes in the Carpathians. He was surrounded by the clucking cries of distraught poultry, the bleating of terrified pigs, the cacophony of vendors shouting and arguing with customers over the prices of their wares, the whistling din of pipes as musicians tried to play loud enough for street performers to dance. And always the smell of unwashed bodies, rotten fruit, pig shit, cow shit. The turgid atmosphere of too many people living in too small a space.

It was all Ferenc could do to keep his terror in check. He wanted to jerk at his horse’s reins until the animal reared back, then plow through the crowds and flee Rome entirely. The dumb beast already sensed his fear and didn’t know what to do except be frightened as well. Run, Ferenc thought, we’re close enough. He eyed the priest. Someone would find him and take him across the river. Someone else. It didn’t have to be him.

Whatever lucidity Father Rodrigo had up on the hill was gone now. The priest slumped forward again on the neck of his horse. His eyes were unfocused, and while his lips were moving, what came out of his mouth was nothing but nonsensical syllables. Ferenc had heard enough Latin over the last months-both feverish and liturgical- to learn the shape of the words; what was spilling from Father Rodrigo’s mouth were only fragments, gutturals, fluttering sibilants-as if his tongue were a dragonfly’s wing and couldn’t slow itself enough to alight on a full word.

The hunter nudged his horse even closer to the priest’s and leaned over to tug at the knotted rope around Father Rodrigo’s waist. Two sharp tugs, enough to get his attention. Father Rodrigo slowly and laboriously hauled his head around as if it were a stone block. He stared at his shorter companion. His eyes were again filled with fever light.

He’s blind, Ferenc realized. All he can see is the past. “Holy man,” he said, and when Father Rodrigo didn’t react, he said it again, louder. “Can you help me, holy man?”

After the Mongol army had swept across the plains at Mohi, those who hadn’t been killed outright lay broken on the battlefield, waiting for the scavengers to come and finish them off. It was the rain that had brought Ferenc back, the cold and bitter taste of the water dripping down his face and into his mouth. He lay curled in a heap of dead men, directly under the brute who had tried to crush his skull with a club. The flies were undeterred by the rain, crawling across the Mongol’s bloodstained face and over his one remaining eyeball. Ferenc’s knife stuck out of the man’s other socket. Ferenc couldn’t reach it, nor could he pull himself free from the pile of dead men. He could only lie there, watching the rain sluice off the corpses in streams of pink and red, watching flies crawl in and out of his assailant’s gaping mouth.

And then the priest had stumbled past, dirty and bloody. Ferenc had filled his chest as best he could under the crush of bodies and called out. Holy man, he had cried. Can you help me, holy man? In that moment their fates became bound.

His mother had taught him about the endless cycle of the seasons. Every year we start again, she had told him. Before he was old enough to hunt, she would lead him by his small pink hand into the garden as the frost fled and the ground became soft. There, she taught him how to dig up what was dead. This is what was, she had said, shoving the twisted roots into his hand; this is what will be, as she planted the new crop and had him pat down the soft soil. When he was older, he had asked her why she repeated the same phrase every year. Because that is how we remember, she had told him. That is how we bind ourselves to the world.

Ferenc repeated his question one last time. He needed Father Rodrigo to remember that moment on the field of Mohi. It was how they were bound together.

Father Rodrigo blinked, and his mouth slowed, articulating more clearly the words in his throat. “In…intende in adjutorium meaum,” he whispered. “Deus salutis meae… ” He lifted his head and appeared to realize where they were. His fingers moving awkwardly, he fumbled with the drawstrings of the satchel tied to his waist. When he got it open, he shoved his hand inside and rooted around for a long time until he found what he sought. He thrust his hand toward Ferenc, nearly falling off his horse in the process; clutched between two fingers was the dull metal shape of a flat-topped ring. “Educe me…” He shook his head and tried again, this time in Ferenc’s native tongue. “Take me to the palace,” he said.

Ferenc leaned toward him, reaching for the ring. His fingers brushed the cool metal.

“Caput orbis terrarum-” A fresh bout of shivering overtook the priest, and he let go of the seal so that he could grab the pommel of his saddle. “Go to where St. Peter rests,” Father Rodrigo urged when he could speak again. “Show them. They will know what to do…”

Ferenc examined the ring in his hands. He had seen it before. The priest had taken it out of his satchel occasionally and peered at it, but he had never explained its significance. The top was flat, inlaid with a cross, and raised letters ran along the outer edge. They meant nothing to Ferenc-other than the now familiar shape of the cross-but Father Rodrigo thought someone at the cathedral would know. Ferenc glanced around the bustling marketplace. Soldiers. The city’s militia. Perhaps the soldiers would know.

Clutching both the ring and the reins of Father Rodrigo’s horse, Ferenc began to ride slowly through the square. He owed the priest his life, and his debt would only be repaid when they reached their destination. The chaos of the market frightened him, and he’d faltered. He had turned to the priest for aid, and even in his fevered state, the priest had responded with a message, a sign. This was how his God worked, after all. When you lose your way, you prayed to Him for guidance and He would send you aid. He would tell you what to do and where to go.

Ferenc made the magic sign-forehead, sternum, left shoulder, right shoulder-and behind him, swaying drunkenly on his horse, Father Rodrigo did the same.

They were clearly foreigners, and not just because they were stones in the natural flow of the market. It was closing in on midday. The blockade surrounding the city had reduced most of the itinerant vendors to barely a trickle, and those farmers who were able to set up their stalls had already come and gone, their wagons picked clean by the early morning residents. The pair stood out, not by virtue of their ragged appearances or because they were on horseback but because they didn’t have a clear destination in mind. They wandered aimlessly, moving at odds with the rest of the people in the square. One of them, the elder, appeared to be drunk. The other was not a local youth. Nor was he a simple farmer, though he had that wide-eyed, skittish, wondering look Ocyrhoe had seen on many a lad the first time they came to Rome. She sensed he was only a few years into manhood, but his beard and hair were thick and long, his face dark and lined from exposure.

She had been watching them since they came in through the Porta Tiburtina. The Via Tiburtina wasn’t a major thoroughfare like Via Appia, but it was the only open road into Rome for those coming from the east.

Each morning, she climbed one of the churches on one of the seven hills of Rome and took stock of the city. There was too much of it for one person to cover; she couldn’t hope to watch over it all, and so each morning she had to make a choice. Which gate? Which district? Which road? Where would she go? This morning, what little wind there was at dawn had been from the east, and so she had come to the market square next to the Porta Tiburtina to watch and to wait.