The Mongoliad: Book Three

clean. In the wake of the battle, there would be a period of lawlessness as the people of Hunern came to pillage the Mongol camp. There was no reason to stand in the way of this restitution. The survivors had lost everything, and what wealth they could scavenge from the camp was poor compensation.

He still felt nothing. In the brief instances when he blinked, he saw Tegusgal’s panicked face. The Mongol’s eyes large and round before Hans had driven the dagger into the left one. The sound the man had made as the steel point went through the eye and into his brain. The way his body had bucked and quivered as the life left him.

Hans never wanted to close his eyes again.

The knights of the various orders were collecting the bodies of their fallen comrades, and Hans saw a group of Shield-Brethren gathered around a row of supine figures. He didn’t know where else to go. The Rats, who had come to his aid, pelting the Mongol commander with rocks, had kept their distance after Tegusgal died, their dirty faces pinched and stretched with horrific expressions. Throwing rocks at a hated enemy was a childish act, the defiance of the innocent. Killing a man was something else entirely. Hans was no longer one of them, and they had fled when he had tried to reach out to them.

He was covered in blood, very little of it his, and as he wandered toward the group of Shield-Brethren, he saw how he looked more like the battle-weary knights than like the dirty urchins of Hunern.

The Shield-Brethren dead were laid side by side, arranged as naturally as they could be, their longswords laid across the bodies. Hans counted them slowly-fifteen in all-marking each face in his mind, and when he looked upon the peaceful features of the body at the end of the row, his body shook and he started to cry.

Several of the knights hovered awkwardly nearby, and one finally touched Hans lightly on the shoulder. “He was the best of us,” the man said gruffly. His own face was streaked with dried tears.

The words made little sense to Hans. Had they not said the same of Andreas? Why did the best keep dying? Why were they-the worst, the unworthy, the frightened ones-why were they allowed to live? He drew in a long, shuddering breath and took a few tentative steps closer to Rutger’s body. The quartermaster’s hands, the right wrapped with a filthy cloth, were clasped over the hilt of a longsword, and his brow was slightly creased as if there were unspoken words still trapped inside his skull. Unlike the ones next to him, his body did not have an apparent fatal wound.

“Why are you gone?” Hans whispered as he collapsed next to Rutger’s body.

“It happens,” the gruff one said. “Sometimes she claims them even though they have not suffered grievous wounds.”

Hans looked over his shoulder at the knight. “That isn’t fair,” he said.

“Little is, boy,” the man said. “That is why we grieve. Later, we will celebrate that it wasn’t our turn.” He shrugged as if that was all the explanation anyone would ever require.

Beyond the knight, Hans spotted a group of men approaching. One of the other knights saw the approaching men as well, and his hand fell to his sword for a moment. Of the approaching group, two were wearing the colors of the Shield-Brethren, and Hans recognized them: Styg and Eilif. With them were Kim, Zug, and another freed prisoner.

“There you are,” Styg said as he reached the row of bodies. “When we heard Maks had fallen in battle, we did not know what happened to you. Where have you been?”

Hans shook his head. He did not want to say the Mongol commander’s name out loud.

Kim pushed past the others and rushed to Hans’s side. He knelt and put his hands on the young boy’s shoulders. Kim’s face was dirty and bloody, and Hans flinched as he looked in the Flower Knight’s eyes and saw a flickering reminder of what he had done.

“It’s okay,” Kim said, nodding slowly. “Did you have any choice?”

Hans shook his head.

“Then you did the right thing,” Kim said.

“Te… Tegusgal,” Hans stammered. He started to cry again.

Kim wrapped his arms around the boy and squeezed him tight. “You most certainly did the right thing,” he said. There was a note of pride in his voice, and Hans clung to that sentiment as firmly as he held on to the Flower Knight.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Ogedei’s Legacy

They reached a rocky spur that sliced through the forest like a ragged cut left by a dull sword. Over the years, a stream had dug a track along the base of the rocky shelf, and it held water now, though it was little more than a trickle. On their right, the forest was dense, filled with grassy hillocks and tightly bunched clumps of alder trees. It wasn’t the easiest terrain for their single horse (weighed down with both Cnan and the Chinese woman, Lian), though the lack of trees made it easier to see and avoid the crevasses and gaps in the rock.

They moved quickly across the open terrain, and Cnan kept her horse close to the tree line where the ground was safer.

Sound carried well along the shelf, caught between the trees and the rocks, and they heard the horses coming a while before they spotted them. Haakon and Krasniy made no move to hide themselves. Cnan’s heart beat faster, and she tried to not let her apprehension pass to her horse. The echoes tripped over each other, confounding the number of animals approaching, and Cnan doubted the riders approaching were friendly.

Haakon and Krasniy each had a sword, and Krasniy had managed to pick up a spear as well on their way out of the camp, but neither wore any armor. They weren’t very well equipped to stand against a host of any size.

The riders came into view, and both parties paused, catching sight of one another. Cnan peered at the pair facing them, noting they were Mongolian and that one-the broader one-appeared to be injured. The other she recognized after a moment as the Khagan himself.

“Ogedei,” Haakon called out, having recognized the man in plum too. He raised his hand and beckoned, waving the Khagan toward him.

The broad Mongol kneed his horse forward, lowering the tall pole he carried until it was pointed at the pair of Westerners like a lance. The horsehair braids danced as his horse charged.

Krasniy laughed, a rolling sound that came deep from his belly. He motioned Haakon to stand aside as he stepped forward, raising his spear.

At the mouth of the valley, Ogedei and Namkhai had stopped for fresher mounts, taking them from the scattered Torguud who appeared to have been ambushed. Namkhai urged Ogedei to keep riding, and while a part of him was angered by the idea of fleeing, prudence won out and he followed Namkhai. The Torguud’s responsibility was to protect him, and leaving them behind to fight the assassins who had sprung out of the woods was the right thing to do.

Ogedei followed Namkhai through the woods, retracing the route they had taken the day before. The clearing near the river where they had camped flashed past, and then Namkhai turned north, heading up a slow incline toward rockier terrain. For a while, he simply focused on Namkhai’s broad back and the fluttering horsehair braids of the Spirit Banner, letting his horse run at its own pace.

And then Namkhai slowed his horse, cutting to the side, and Ogedei looked ahead. He saw a horse carrying two riders and a pair of men, standing in the open. He squinted at them, knowing he knew who the men were, but unable to comprehend why he was meeting them on this trackless rock. “Who-?” he began, and then one of the pair called out his name.

With a shout, Namkhai urged his horse forward, couching the Spirit Banner like a long spear, leaving Ogedei to puzzle out the presence of men whom he thought were caged back at the camp. How had they gotten out? he wondered. Why were they here?

The giant, the red-haired one who had fought like a crazed bear in the gladiatorial matches, carried a spear, and as Namkhai charged, the giant trotted forward, his arm moving back for a long throw. Namkhai suddenly