The Mongoliad: Book Two

But then Somercotes was behind him and, now alert, wasted no time in leaping on Fieschi’s back. Reaching forward with his left arm, Somercotes began to choke him.

The weight of the other man on his back made Fieschi lurch to one side, but his hands found the wall again and he pushed back, then reached up to grab the arm around his neck, before finishing the fall. The motion pulled Somercotes forward, off balance, and tumbled him over Fieschi and onto his back on the chamber’s cold stone floor.

Not a trained brawler, Somercotes hadn’t braced himself against the throw, and even before his head hit the ground, he was confused about what was happening. He had lost his chokehold on Fieschi, and his arms hung limp. Fieschi cast about and, spotting Somercotes’s book, grabbed it up and struck the English cardinal in the head. The spine of the book gave under the impact, and Fieschi shifted his grip, using the stiff and stone-encrusted cover instead. He struck Somercotes several more times, until the boards shattered.

“Frederick’s help will mean nothing to you now,” Fieschi said as he threw aside the ruined book. He was calm, for the first time since they’d entered the room, for the first time since he had been accosted by that churlish guard outside Orsini’s palazzo. He had no more doubt about what he had to do, about what must be done. There must be a vote; a Pope must be elected. The Church must prevail.

Somercotes, his face bloodied from Fieschi’s blows, was still conscious. His eyes fluttered, and a sluggish moan slipped from his slack lips.

Fieschi scrabbled at Somercotes’s robe, reaching for the braided rope the other man wore around his waist. A symbol of his austerity and piety, it was the sort of rope a sheepherder would use. Stout and strong. Fieschi gathered up the long strand that hung unencumbered and wrapped it once about Somercotes’s neck. Bracing his knee against the struggling cardinal’s shoulder, he leaned back, pulling the rope taut. The heavy weave burned in his hands as Somercotes thrashed.

Somercotes got his hands on Fieschi’s robes and tried to pull himself closer, but Fieschi’s knee kept him at bay. The Englishman’s hands became more frantic-at first like talons and then like the wings of a frightened bird. He gurgled and spat, each breath shorter and more desperate than the last.

Fieschi held on. He breathed evenly-in, out, again and again-and kept the rope tight.

The Church must prevail. I must prevail.

26

R?dwulf’s Bow

“It is a jaghun,” Cnan said, “which is to say a unit of one hundred, made up of ten arbans of ten men each. The man you call Graymane is named Alchiq. He is new to them. About a week ago, he rode in out of nowhere to a Mongol garrison west of the Volga, where this jaghun and two others were encamped, and simply commandeered it.”

“So he is a man of high rank,” Feronantus said.

Cnan shrugged. “They know little about him, other than what I have just told you.”

As soon as Vera had been able to ride, they had moved beyond the eastern limit of the Khazars’ territory. A few hours before, Cnan had arrived at their camp-proving once again her extraordinary tracking skills.

She had been absent for four days.

Following a wash, a nap, and a bowl of antelope stew, she had gathered the others to convey all she had learned.

She went on now to say a few words about where Alchiq’s jaghun had crossed the Volga and where they had subsequently gone, though as everyone understood, this information was no longer of much use; she had broken contact two days ago, and the Mongols could have covered much distance since then. “Alchiq dispatched an arban up into those hills where the Khazars live,” she said, nodding toward the dark crests rising from the steppe to the west.

“Too small to perpetrate a massacre,” Raphael remarked. “This Alchiq has a light touch, when it suits his purposes.”

Some around the council looked as if they were about to raise objections, but they were silenced by a look from Cnan. She has her own commanding presence, doesn’t she? Raphael thought.

“The arban in question is made up of Turkoman recruits from Kiwa, not all that far from here as distances on the steppe go, and they speak a similar language. They were sent to parley, not to kill. They took no casualties during the action against the Shield-Maidens and do not hunger for revenge, as some of the others do.”

“You have information about casualties?” Vera said. Unlike the others, she had not grown accustomed to Cnan’s ability to move about Mongol-held countryside and gather intelligence.

If Cnan was offended by the skepticism in Vera’s voice, she hid it well. “The brunt of your charge was taken by an arban of men from Barchkenda, which was all but destroyed. Six were killed outright, two died later of wounds, one is permanently disabled, the last has been absorbed into another arban that also took casualties during the fight on the riverbank. The total strength of the jaghun has been reduced to a little more than eighty, now organized in eight arbans. Some of these are unchanged; others are thrown together from survivors.”

“How does that work, in an army where arbans are recruited from specific clans and villages?” Percival asked. Perhaps not so much out of practical curiosity as because he enjoyed watching Cnan’s mind work.

“It depends on everything-language, clan rivalries, customs. Sometimes it goes smoothly; in other cases, the arban is thrown into disarray or even outright conflict.”

“Then, since we are outnumbered, let us make conflict our ally,” Feronantus said.

This was one of these gnomic utterances that threw the group into silence as all waited for Feronantus to make himself clear. Raphael studied their leader during that silence, looking for clues as to the old warrior’s state of mind.

Feronantus’s outburst of rage when Percival had revealed their plan to the Khazars had been replaced by a kind of sullen embarrassment when Percival’s gambit had worked. After that, for a day or two, he had been pensive and withdrawn, but the need to prepare for battle seemed to have focused his mind and pushed into the shadows of whatever was troubling him.

“You said earlier,” Feronantus went on, “that Barchkenda lost nine men to the Shield-Maidens. Now, I know nothing of Barchkenda, but I shall hazard a guess that it is not a large place.”

To this, Cnan responded with a smirk.

“I see from your face that it is even smaller than I imagined,” Feronantus said. “The loss of nine of its young men must be a disaster for them. The men in the surviving arbans, having seen the devastation wreaked upon these soldiers in a brief melee, will be thinking of their own homes and families. Let us so arrange our tactics as to give them even more to brood upon.”

Cnan was flat on her belly, making the most of a scraggly tuft of wormwood scarcely big enough to provide cover for a dog. She had learned that if she lay perfectly still and avoided raising her head from the ground, distant observers would read the silhouette of her rumpled, ragged clothes as a pile of leaves or a scattering of rocks. She might have found better concealment in the tall grass growing out of the lee slope below and to her right, but to go down that way would take her out of view of the small party of Mongols patiently following her trail across the grass to her left.

As usual, she had gone to the Mongol camp before dawn to spy on them. But then she had gone against all her instincts-and not at all to her liking-by leaving an obvious trail for them to follow.

Alchiq, or perhaps one of his commanders, had dispatched a group of seven warriors to investigate. For the last hour, they had been gaining on her. They could have caught her quickly, of course, had they chosen to ride hard. But they knew that they were following a mere pedestrian in wide-open country and that time was on their