The Mongoliad: Book Three

bloody blade when Tegusgal grabbed his leg with much more conviction this time and held him tight.

“You-” Tegusgal snarled, but his words were cut off when Hans kicked him in the face. He fought back, managing to get a grip on Hans’s pant leg and, from there, gain control of the boy’s flailing leg. He grinned, blood running from his nose.

Hans grinned back. All of this struggling had allowed him to grab Maks’s dagger. He sat up and thrust the dagger with all his strength at Tegusgal’s face.

The Mongol tried to cover his head with his arms, twisting out of the way, and Hans missed Tegusgal’s head. The dagger slid into the gap at the top of Tegusgal’s armor, hitting the soft flesh beneath. Tegusgal shrieked and let go of Hans’s legs. This time, Hans scooted back on his rump as quickly as he could, putting some distance between him and the wounded Mongol captain.

Shivering with pain, Tegusgal yanked the dagger out of his neck, and a squirt of blood spattered across the dirt. Gritting his teeth, the Mongol captain started to push himself upright. “I am going to kill you slowly,” he coughed. On his knees, he fumbled for his sword, his fingers slipping off the hilt. He tried again, getting it half drawn, when a rock bounced off his chest.

He stared at it stupidly, wondering where it had come from. Hans glanced over his shoulder and saw a flash of movement in the rubble behind him. The Rats, he realized giddily.

Tegusgal shook off his confusion and finished drawing his sword. A second rock struck him in the face, and he shouted in pain, his attention finally going to the wreckage behind Hans. More missiles followed, most of them not much bigger than a bird’s egg, but many of them were thrown with precision, battering Tegusgal.

Hans’s Rats-the cadre of boys who had carried messages time and again into the Mongol compound-were shouting now as they threw rocks at the Mongol captain. Jeering and taunting. Fighting back.

Tegusgal raised his sword, trying to protect his face with the blade, and several stones rang off the blade. He was still trying to get to his feet, though Hans could sense that his intent was now to flee.

Hans scrambled for the dagger.

A particularly well-thrown rock caught Tegusgal in the center of the forehead, and the Mongol captain swayed, momentarily stunned.

The fusillade of rocks subsided as the Rats paused to check their handiwork. Tegusgal shook his head, spattering blood, and then he grinned at the urchins watching him from the wreckage. His face was dark with cuts and bruises, and his teeth were stained red. He wasn’t beaten. Not yet.

Hans found himself thinking about Andreas, and he didn’t hesitate. He jumped at the Mongol commander, stabbing with the dagger.

Tegusgal’s mouth changed shape, and his eyes got big.

Styg and Eilif had not been able to follow the conversation between the three escaped prisoners, but after a moment of firm hand gestures, the stern-looking one simply shrugged and started walking. Away from the fluttering flags they could see over the tops of the tents.

“He’s not going toward the Khan’s tent,” Styg said.

“Does it matter?” Eilif asked, clapping him on the arm.

The camp was in an uproar, not because the prisoners had been freed but because Rutger and the other Shield-Brethren had commenced their assault on the gate. As Styg hesitated, listening to the sound of battle, he heard horses as well. The reinforcements had arrived.

“Come on,” Eilif said. “We’re going to lose them.”

Styg jogged after Eilif and the escaped prisoners. He didn’t know where they were going, but he trusted they were going to end up at the Khan’s tent.

Don’t stop, Rutger had instructed all of the Shield-Brethren shortly before Styg and Eilif had split off on their special mission. Kill every Mongol you meet. That is the only order you must remember. Kill them all.

It really didn’t matter how he got there, did it?

A group of panicked slave girls came running around the corner of a tent, and Styg darted to his right to avoid them. For a moment, he lost sight of the others, and when he was trying to spot them again, he caught of a quartet of Mongols trying to control a towering figure with dark skin and thick black hair.

The man was the largest human Styg had ever seen in his life, and the Mongols were trying to tie him to a post, but the man’s massive arms were like tree trunks and he was not cooperating readily. One of the Mongols was trying to lash his hands together while the others jabbed him with their spears. Each time he resisted the spears would prick him, though none so deeply as to do more than make him hesitate.

Styg glanced around for the others one last time, and then changed course.

The first Mongol never saw Styg coming. Styg’s blade cut his spine, and he collapsed immediately. The second turned in time to catch Styg’s pommel on the side of the head. One of the remaining Mongols swung his spear sideways, and Styg blocked the shaft easily with his sword, but the man yanked the spear back as soon as there was contact and darted the spear point back again, on the inside of Styg’s guard!

Styg slapped his left hand around his blade and yanked his sword toward him as he twisted his body away. He felt the spear point catch on his maille as it trailed across his side. Off balance, his sword half caught between his body and the spear, Styg realized there was no easy way to extricate himself from this situation without giving the man an opening. He simply let go of his sword and grabbed the Mongol’s spear with both hands.

The Mongol warrior stared at him, dumbfounded at Styg’s foolishness, and then he remembered what he and his companions had been doing before Styg’s interruption. His eyes widened as he struggled to yank his spear out of Styg’s grip, and after a second he let go of the spear and tried to pull his sword out of its scabbard, but he was too late.

The Mongol was suddenly-and very violently-smashed to the ground by the body of the fourth Mongol.

In the frenzied moment, everyone had forgotten the muscular giant. He had yanked on the ropes the fourth Mongol clung to, and before the hapless soul could disentangle himself, the giant had swung him like a club into the other still standing Mongol.

With a wordless yell, the giant advanced on the two sprawling men, and Styg got out of the way as he grabbed up a fallen spear and drove it through the chest of one man, through the leg of the other, and finally lodging the point deep in the ground. The Mongols struggled, pinned by the spear, and with a bellow of rage that Styg could swear shook the ground, the behemoth kicked each of the downed men in the head. The second one’s neck snapped at a horrific angle with a cracking nose that made Styg wince in sympathetic agony.

The immense man turned toward them, and Styg stared, open mouthed, up at the towering man. The giant stared at the Styg, chest heaving, eyes shining with murderous fire. He touched his hands to his chest, said one word-Madhukar-and held out his hands, still bound with rope.

“I think you and I share the same enemy,” he said. He grinned as he cut the man’s bonds with his bloody sword.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The Cave of the Great Bear

Ogedei could not remember the last time he had been awake before anyone else. In Karakorum, the servants knew to let him sleep as late as he desired, though invariably Chucai would send a frightened messenger with some poorly veiled excuse of a crisis that demanded his attention. Some days, the desire for drink woke him; he had either drunk too little or too much the night before, and the spirits that lived in the wine would tug him away from sleep. His mouth would be dry, and they would whisper incessantly in his ear about how easy it would be to rinse out the dust with a mouthful of wine. During the long journey to Burqan-qaldun, he would wake to the sound of the camp preparing for another day: wood being chopped, meals being prepared, ger being disassembled, pack animals being loaded again.