The Mongoliad: Book Three

Ogedei on the side of the head.

Ogedei grabbed his shoulder and tried to keep him from getting away. The knife disappeared and Haakon knew it was coming back. As long as the Khagan had a hand on him, it was going to be very hard to use his sword effectively. He grabbed the blade with his left hand, pinching it tightly between his fingers, and using only a tiny span at the base of the weapon, he tried to draw the weapon across the side of Ogedei’s head.

He felt the blade cut through fur and leather, heard Ogedei roar in pain, and then cried out himself as the Khagan’s knife went deep into his hip. He slashed with his sword again, snapping his right hand out to finish the cut with a pommel strike, and this time he felt something break beneath the metal of his hilt.

They separated, both stumbling and falling to their knees. The Khagan was bleeding profusely from two places on his head, and Haakon’s vision went white as he accidentally bumped his elbow against the hilt of the Khagan’s dagger protruding from his hip. The Khagan shook his head, and when he looked at Haakon, his face was ugly with blood, his left eye already swelling closed.

Sparing a thought to the Virgin, Haakon let go of his sword and grabbed at the dagger stuck in his hip. He howled as he pulled it free, the pain roaring up through his gut and chest. The Khagan raised his hands at Haakon lunged, beating ineffectively at Haakon with a half-closed fist.

Haakon reached over the outstretched arm, and plunged the Khagan’s own dagger into Ogedei’s neck.

Ogedei went away for a moment. He had been fighting the Northerner with his father’s knife, trying to take advantage of the boy’s lack of focus, but something had gone wrong. While his eyes were closed, he tried to remember what had happened, but all that he remembered was a wave of darkness, like a flock of ravens, blotting out everything.

The left side of his face alternated between hot and cold, and whenever it switched, his skin felt slick and damp. He thought he heard a stream running nearby, but when he swallowed, the sound vanished, as if the water were suddenly drawn into a sucking hole in the ground.

Had he been dreaming of flying? That made little sense, for he wasn’t a bird. He was a horse, a four-legged beast of the steppe. All he wanted to do was run and run and run. Run all the way to the sea, with his brothers and sisters at his side. All of their manes streaming behind them in the wind. All he wanted was to run…

He coughed, and the pain was so fierce, he let the ravens take him away for a little while. When he came back, there was someone else there with him. A pale-haired spirit. He tried to tell the spirit what was wrong with him, but the words he spoke were all wrong. Tolui… Tolui… Who was this Tolui? Was that the spirit’s name?

The spirit raised a hand, and when he saw the blood, he screamed. He howled and screeched, and when there was nothing left but a hoarse whimper, Ogedei remembered where he was. He hadn’t been flying at all.

He turned his head-slowly, for the pain stabbing down along his left side-and blinked his right eye heavily at the blurry figure squatting over him. His hands twitched, fumbling for his knife, but he couldn’t find it. Where had it gone? He had just had it…

The boy was talking to him. “Lie still,” he said.

Why should he lie still? He was Khan of Khans. He was… cold.

He tried to tell the boy this, but when he opened his mouth, he felt like nothing came out but water. Thick, foul-tasting water. It ran down his chin, and he coughed as it threatened to fill his mouth.

The ravens came again, and he spent some time wandering in their wake, looking for something. What was it?

His father’s knife.

He shouldn’t lose it. It was important. Genghis had given it to him during his first hunt, when he had shot the deer. He had used it to dress the animal.

There had been so much blood.

One of his father’s men had helped him carry the meat back to camp. What had that man’s name been? Tolui?

No, Tolui was someone else. Someone he needed to remember. Someone important to him. Tolui? he called out, but Tolui didn’t answer.

Tolui hadn’t answered for many years.

He was gone. So was his father.

He could never be like his father. He had always known he would fail to be as great a man as Genghis Khan. No one could. Genghis stopped being a man the instant his spirit left his body. He was a ghost that grew more powerful every year as those who thought they knew him told stories that were little more than their own wishful thinking. They made him a ghost, yet they expected his son to be stronger and braver. They expected more because they could not face the darkness; they were afraid to admit they did understand Genghis’s vision.

They did not know what to do with his legacy. They dreamed-or thought they dreamed-of the endless sea of horses, and they did not know the meaning of such a vision. They thrust the Spirit Banner into the hands of the sons of Genghis Khan and begged them to be more than their father. They begged him to keep the promise they imagined Genghis had made.

But they couldn’t face the idea that Genghis had made no promise to them. The only love Genghis had ever had was for his family-his wives and his sons. They were all that mattered. They were his true legacy.

Ogedei opened his eyes once more. The Northerner was still there.

“The sea,” Ogedei croaked, and the boy leaned closer. Ogedei remembered the dream he had had, of riding a horse away from the heart of the empire, away from the legacy of his father. Riding until he crossed the entire world and reached the western sea. “All I ever wanted was to see the sea,” he sighed.

The boy nodded. “Aye,” he said. “I have seen it.”

“Tell me,” Ogedei said.

The boy did, using words that Ogedei did not understand. But it didn’t matter. He could read the boy’s face well enough. It was all he could see anyway. The ravens had blotted out the rest of the sky. It was getting colder. Like the sea the boy was talking about. Ogedei closed his eyes, and in the fading twilight of his life, saw the horses again. Running endlessly across the grass of the steppes, running all the way to the end of the world where the sea met the sky.

“You have seen more of the world than I,” Ogedei said just before he died.

EPILOGUE

A Tree Has Many Branches

With Cnan’s help, Raphael dressed the knife wound on Haakon’s hip. Raphael moved stiffly, and Haakon eventually saw why. A tiny stub of a broken arrow protruded from Raphael’s back. When Raphael finished with Haakon, Cnan said something about the arrow.

“It’s fine,” Raphael said.

“It doesn’t look fine,” she argued.

“It’ll keep,” Raphael said, rolling up his medical kit. “I have to take my maille off to get to the rest of it, and there isn’t time.” He stood, trying to hide how stiff he was, and his gaze wandered down the narrow valley. “Where is Feronantus?” he asked.

Haakon, Cnan, and the Chinese woman all looked as well. All they could see was a single horse, cropping the tiny tufts of hardy grass, and a pair of bodies, still tangled together, but unmoving. Of the leader of the Shield- Brethren company there was no sign.