lost was to engage in wistful daydreaming like an ale-addled simpleton. He had to keep his mind focused. The company was depending on him.

They had stumbled upon the location of the bear’s cave late in the day after they had said good-bye to Cnan, and Feronantus had kept them busy, exploring the two-pronged valley, until well after moonrise. They had argued for several hours around a meager fire about the best way to entrap the Khagan. In the end, the simplest stratagem won out: let the Khagan’s party enter the valley, but don’t let it leave.

The last part fell squarely upon Yasper’s shoulders, and shortly after sunrise, he had surveyed the rocky terrain on either side of the western entrance of the valley. An avalanche was clearly the best solution, but how to move all those rocks? After an hour of clambering about less sure-footedly than a mountain goat, he thought it was possible to bring down a number of rocks.

However, he would need a few supplies.

Feronantus had been loath to let him go wandering off into the forest, especially when they expected the Khagan’s hunting party late in the day. All the more reason Yasper had to find his alchemical ingredients sooner than later. Without these ingredients, he had argued, I can’t bring the hillside down. You’ll have to come up with a different plan.

Early the following morning, Yasper, Istvan, and Raphael went scouting again with two goals in mind: finding Yasper’s alchemical ingredients and discerning the location of the Khagan’s hunting party. Consensus among the companions was that the Khagan had simply waited a day before leaving, but they needed to be sure.

Shortly after midday they found the hunting party and Yasper found his alchemical supplies, albeit in an unexpected fashion.

They heard a booming noise, and Yasper thought it was too singular and too close to be thunder, especially given the lack of cloud cover in the sky. Keenly aware that they were not alone in the woods, they dismounted and carefully led their horses through the trees. After the second rumbling echo, Yasper was sure the source of the sound was an alchemical explosion.

They nearly interrupted the duel between the two Mongol hunters, and had the pair not been so intent on killing one another they would have surely spotted the trio of Westerners. Istvan had wanted to kill them both, but Raphael had held him back, and after one had dashed off and the other followed, Yasper had been able to creep into the clearing and retrieve the dropped satchel.

He had nearly wept with joy when he opened it and examined its contents.

By nightfall, his joy had withered to consternation. Some of the powders were foreign to him, and he had no time for practical research. He woke often during the night, shivering with a sensation nearing panic, and in the morning when the rest of the company departed for their hidden positions within the valley, he was left alone. Just Yasper and the mystery of the powders and God, who wasn’t offering any insight.

The white crystals, sweet to the taste, were a salt of some kind. The metal shards had no function as part of the alchemical explosive. It was only after catching his finger on a rough burr and drawing blood that he had realized their purpose. They were tiny projectiles, meant to be packed in with the powders. When the incendiary device ignited, the alchemical energies released would hurl the shards in every direction.

He shuddered, imagining the effect they would have on unarmored flesh, and then shuddered even more as he divined how the Chinese used these powders. Feeling befouled, like he had just accepted a deal with some infernal demon to allow these thoughts into his head, he laid the ingredients out in a line, seeing their arrangement in a different light.

The dark powder tasted bitter, not unlike the calcinate that a sand bath would draw out of a cow’s urine, and the red crystals turned to blue flame when he had tossed a pinch into the campfire. He recognized the ash readily enough, though it came from a pleasantly fragrant wood.

As he was wrestling with the ratios, the Khagan and his hunting party passed below his hiding place.

Yasper pressed himself flat against the rocks, and with an oath, he kicked sand over his tiny fire, trying to put it out. He inched to the edge of the rock and peered down, desperately hoping no one noticed the thin line of smoke.

He counted heads, and was taken aback when he passed forty. He figured the one on the black horse, wearing the gaudy plum-colored outfit, was Ogedei, the Khan of Khans. Yasper stifled a grin. R?dwulf will be so jealous, he thought, when he learns how close I was. He was not a very skilled bowman, but he thought he could hit the Khagan with an arrow from his position.

As he watched, one of the honor guard-a tall muscular Mongol-gave orders to the men, splitting the group into two. More than half were to stay at the mouth of the valley. A rearguard, Yasper surmised, to ensure the bear did not accidentally escape. Little chance of that, he thought, recalling the display that Percival and R?dwulf had erected. Shooting the arrow into the bear’s chest after it had been strung up had been a masterful idea on Feronantus’s part. A taunting flourish on top of an already arrogant display of defiance. It was bound to enrage the Khagan.

“Oh, shit!” The words hissed out of Yasper’s mouth before he could stop them. He had recognized one of the riders in the group that was continuing on with the Khagan.

Graymane.

There was nothing he could do but watch as the Khagan and his much smaller hunting party-including the gray-haired rider who had plagued them so incessantly during their journey-rode into valley. The twenty or so left behind milled about for a while, uncertain of the best way to prevent a charging bear from leaving the valley. After a half hour or so, they settled down. As Yasper kept his vigil, his heart continuing to pound in his chest, they fell into the same routine as bored soldiers anywhere. They ate and drank, sharing among themselves, and eventually someone produced a bag containing some manner of marked bones. While three of them remained mounted, keeping a bored watch, the others passed the time by betting on the bones.

Yasper still had to figure out how to make an alchemical incendiary. The guards had positioned themselves on his side of the vale, making it somewhat easier if he managed to figure out how to send a cascade of rocks down upon them. He had marked a few he thought would bring along other rocks when they tumbled down the hill, and his plan had been to dislodge them by packing a mixture into key cracks. However, in order to ignite them in the right order, he would need a long fuse, one that burned at the right speed and with the right amount of flame.

All the vines he had found during his searches had been too full of juices-there wasn’t enough time to dry and temper them properly. He had found fuses in the satchel, but they were all short, not much longer than the distance from the tip of his longest finger to the base of his hand. Even if he tied them all together, they weren’t going to be long enough.

He sighed and rubbed his scalp vigorously. He was running out of time. It wouldn’t take that long for the hunting party to find the dead bear. He had to act soon. Otherwise, the Khagan could still escape.

What were the right ratios?

He heard a distant cry, like the scream of a hawk as it dives upon its prey, but he knew it wasn’t a war cry of a predatory bird. It was a scream of pain.

R?dwulf was shooting his arrows. The trap had been sprung.

Muttering to himself (and to God), Yasper scooped up the various pouches of ingredients and combined them as equally as he could into two of the larger pouches. After packing in a layer of metal shards, he shoved a fuse into each and tied them as tightly as he dared. He struck his flint against the nearby rock face, scattering sparks. The first fuse hissed, and he blew on it briefly to make sure the sparks became fire. The fuse caught, flaring into a sizzling finger of blue and orange flame.

He stared at the flame. “Alalazu,” he muttered. He didn’t know the history of the Shield-Brethren battle cry, but it seemed an appropriate blessing for his impromptu solution.

He stood up and hurled the bag, aiming for the center of the cluster of guards.

The alchemical incendiary exploded with a delightfully noisy boom, and the concussive sound echoed back and forth between the hills. It was an unmistakable signal, in case the others were wondering when the fun was going to begin. Yasper peered out of his hiding place, trying to see anything through the gray haze that floated over

Вы читаете The Mongoliad: Book Three
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