side, and so they had proceeded at a measured and cautious pace, scanning the country ahead for ambushes and other perils.
Cnan would be in a terrible spot just now, were it not for the fact that, two hundred paces away and down the slope to her right, at the bottom of a dry gully, R?dwulf was patiently waiting in a scatter of stunted trees.
Unaware of her scrutiny, the Briton stretched and let his eyes wander. The sun was warm; the late morning was comfortable. She hoped he wasn’t planning to take a nap.
Cnan had spent most of her life in parts of the world that were not known for producing persons of large stature. She had long been vaguely aware that if one traveled north and west long enough, one would reach a part of the world inhabited by persons with pale skin and strangely colored hair, often taller than other peoples of the world.
The men of the steppes were like their ponies: low to the ground, stocky, agile, hard to kill. Like any other human population, they would from time to time yield a man of unusual height. But this conferred no advantage in the Mongol way of war, which was all about mobility, quickness, and maneuvering. When hand-to-hand combat occurred, it was probably because something had gone awry. The Mongols did have formations of armored cavalry, employed in special circumstances. A big man might find a place in such a unit. But wrestling was the martial art that they held in the highest esteem, and since size, weight, and strength so often determined the outcome of wrestling matches, this was what big, strong Mongols tended to do for a living. The Khans used them as executioners.
The Northmen did not know or practice the steppe way of war; instead, being ignorant of the art of maneuvering, they preferred to fight in big, lumbering formations that clashed head-on in open fields. It was to be expected that the largest men of such societies would cover themselves in armor and ride out on oversized horses to engage their foes in personal combat with heavy weapons. In this respect, Percival had met her expectations precisely.
Percival, however, was not the biggest and strongest man in their party. That distinction fell to R?dwulf. He was two inches taller than Percival, with a rugged, homely face, and-as she’d come to notice-covered all over with muscles. Among the Mongols, he’d have been their greatest wrestler. Among the Franks, he’d have become a cataphract-a mounted soldier in full armor. But R?dwulf came from an island off the northwestern extremity of the world where the warriors were skilled at a peculiar form of archery.
Compared to the bows of the Mongols, R?dwulf’s weapon was huge and primitive, far too unwieldy to be used on horseback. No other man in the party could draw it except for Percival, who could pull the taut, hempen, three-stranded bowstring only partway.
R?dwulf drew his weapon in a peculiar style, not so much pulling the string back as shoving the bow forward. And when he practiced during warm weather, shirtless on the steppe, it was spectacularly obvious to Cnan that every muscle in his huge body was straining to the limit. This apparently was the highest and best use for a Briton of exceptional size and strength: not wrestling, not sword fighting, but drawing a crude bow of unbelievable stiffness, then holding it at full draw long enough to loose a massive arrow, tipped with an iron warhead, into the body of a foe.
His warheads came in various shapes, some made for piercing armor, others with broad heads for slashing through vessels and organs as they passed through the victim’s body. All of them were heavy, which, as Cnan understood, gave them greater range than the lighter and more numerous shafts of the Mongols. But in order to take advantage of that range, it was necessary to shoot them from a bow that could only be handled by the likes of R?dwulf.
The seven Mongols had drawn close enough to make Cnan worried about her choice of cover. Soon, she would have to move, lest some sharp-eyed rider spy her lying at the base of the wormwood shrubs. If she tarried, she might die here.
Writhing on her belly like a snake, keeping her head low to the ground, she crawled down the slope until the top of the rise came between her and the Mongols. Then she pushed herself up and brought her knees below her chin, rising to a squat. R?dwulf, pacing slowly back and forth along a row of ten arrows that he had shoved into the ground, didn’t notice her dark head pop above the ripe seed heads of the grass. But he did hear the whistle of a marmot, or something like it, from farther back in the gully. Finn had been amusing himself by learning to mimic the sounds of the (to him) exotic creatures that lived in these parts. Cnan watched in amusement as the huge Briton’s head swiveled toward Finn, then turned back a moment later, finally seeing Cnan on the slope above him. Moving quickly, for she did not know how long they had before the Mongols came in view, she held up a hand with all five fingers splayed, then made a fist of it, then extended only the thumb and index finger.
R?dwulf nodded and unslung his bow from his shoulder. Then he glanced up past Cnan. Something drew his eyes to the ridgeline behind her.
She rotated on her haunches and followed his line of sight to the Mongols, lance tips and helmets bobbing slowly as they came, their ponies at a walk. Cnan rolled and pressed herself flat against the earth, nestling in the grass. She could hear the soft tread of hooves on turf, Mongol voices calling out to one another.
The trackers were spreading apart, some following her visible trail, others moving to the sides to block any escape and drive her into the center.
She risked pushing up on her elbows and raised her head to look down the slope and watch R?dwulf. She was certain she had brought the Mongols within his range; they had paced it out yesterday when reconnoitering. But this would not save her if his aim was bad.
The archer was breathing deeply, expanding his great chest, flexing his arms. He glanced down at the ten arrows lined up before him, points embedded in the soft soil, ready to grab.
He reached for one, and Cnan tensed, but rather than pulling it up and nocking it, he merely brushed the fletches, smoothing out some irregularity in the alignment of the goose feathers. His eyes flashed white, rolling up in their sockets to peer at the approaching Mongols. The closest was perhaps thirty paces from Cnan.
She sank back down into the cover of the grass and peered at his face through the golden stalks.
The Mongol leader’s eyes wandered over the landscape that had just come into their view, following Cnan’s trail down toward the little copse of trees in the gully. And there his attention locked.
In the open space of the steppes, the Mongols could ride circles around maille-clad Westerners, to either escape or pepper them with arrows. A gully choked with gnarled trees was precisely where he would expect his quarry to hide.
Satisfied, the Mongol muttered to his pony and began to ride ahead at a walking gait along the broken and trampled grass of Cnan’s trail. His men took his cue and followed in a loose gaggle, with the exception of two outriders dividing into parallel courses that would eventually bracket the gully.
Their faces were alert, but it was the alertness of hunters pursuing birds or other innocuous prey. Even had they suspected an ambush waiting in the trees, all their training and experience would tell them they were safe at such a distance.
The waiting made her twitch, then sweat, and finally, knot up all over. Cnan had never imagined that R?dwulf would allow them to come so close to her. She remembered, as a child, sneaking up on a marmot she had spied gathering seeds among a jumble of stones. By the time the marmot had realized that Cnan was stalking her, Cnan had drawn so close that the animal’s instinctive reaction was to freeze rather than run away, and yet freezing only made it possible for Cnan to draw closer.
At some point, the only thing for it was to turn and run. But she didn’t dare stretch her cramping leg.
The riders were within twenty paces, then ten. The only thing that kept them from spotting her was the intent fix of their gazes on the trees below, and the only thing that prevented Cnan from jumping to her feet and bolting like a terrified marmot was the knowledge that it would only earn her a Mongol arrow, or several, in her back.
One of the riders trotted forward to draw abreast of their leader, and the breeze brought her his casual remark, words that at first made no sense to Cnan-a reference, perhaps, to some place they had visited that reminded him of this one, years past.
Without taking his eyes off the trees, the leader smiled and nodded, and in that moment, he looked almost identical to the one who was speaking. They were brothers, she realized-brothers or cousins, reminiscing about past hunts back in their home territories, still far to the east.
Cnan felt a sudden electric quiver, as if all the years and distances were suddenly collapsing around them- destinies joining, death stalking all at once, the last and most perfect of hunters preparing to string all of their skulls
