The Mongoliad: Book Three

trusted me, as a Binder, if I failed to deliver that message?”

Frederick grunted in reply, staring at the board. He fingered a knight, debating whether he should take the rook that Lena had just exposed. It was a trap, he suspected, and he tried to extrapolate the possible responses.

“You should have more faith,” Lena said with a smile.

Frederick snorted. “That is easy for you to say.” He decided against moving his knight and shoved a pawn forward instead. It wasn’t threatening her rook directly, but in another move, it could.

“You sent the girl after the priest,” Lena pointed out.

“I did, though it ran counter to every fiber of my being.”

“Such is the nature of faith,” Lena countered.

“It isn’t something I wish to make a habit of,” he said.

“I shall try not to ask Your Majesty to make such sacrifices too often,” she demurred, moving a pawn to protect her rook.

“She’ll be hunted,” Frederick said, sounding regretful. He moved one of his bishops. “By everyone, from champions to madmen, saints to villains. And once your kin-sisters find out she went rogue, they won’t shelter her. She’s going to be entirely on her own.”

Lena sobered. “I am aware of that, and I regret it. There was no other way.”

“Your kin-sisters won’t be pleased if they learn of your hand in this, either.”

Lena stiffened very slightly, but recovered quickly enough. She reached for the pawn in front of her queen, advancing it toward Frederick’s side of the board. “He freed me,” she said. “When I gave him the ring.”

“What do you mean?” Frederick asked.

“In return for the ring, I asked him to set me free. Unencumbered by all.”

Frederick shook his head. “You are out of your fucking mind, woman,” he said.

She got up from her stool and came around to his side of the table, kneeling beside him so that her head was slightly lower than his. “I had to if I am going to help you.” She dipped her head slightly. “You won’t tell my sisters, will you?”

Frederick looked at her and grinned. “Not I. My lips are sealed.”

Lena smiled. “I know,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him.

At night, when the sky was filled with stars, she would be tempted to unwrap the bundle in her satchel. But, more often than not, she resisted the urge.

Instead, she would wrap her thin blankets more tightly around her narrow shoulders and try to make herself more comfortable on the hard ground. It had taken some time for her to get used to sleeping out in the open, but she was making the adjustment. It was a matter of practice.

Like so many things she had been forced to learn since she had fled Rome.

Ocyrhoe didn’t know where she was going. That much had been true when she had said good-bye to Ferenc. She had never been outside the walls of the city that had raised her. The world was a vast blankness to her, an empty map that had only one landmark, and she was moving farther and farther away from that spot on the map.

When the nights were especially cold and when the sky was too vast and bright with stars, she would relent and retrieve the cup from her satchel. She would hug it against her chest, the gold slowly warming against her body. The idea of selling it or throwing it into a crevice or a river never crossed her mind.

If she spit in it, it would catch the light of the stars. She would wrap her blankets over her head, blocking out all the light except for the glow coming from the cup.

She tried very hard not to rely on the cup’s light or warmth to feel safe, but the nights when she feel asleep hugging the Grail were the nights she was without fear or anxiety. Those were the nights when she knew what she had to do.

From a vantage point near the top of a narrow ridge, Gansukh watched the Skjaldbr?? ur ride west. There were seven of them, including the young Northerner. There were three women in the group, one of whom was Lian.

He didn’t know why she was with them, though a number of ugly reasons had flitted through his head more than once since they had picked up the Skjaldbr??ur trail.

The black-haired man who had been one of the two archers on the day the Khagan died was not among the seven, and Gansukh continued to puzzle over that man’s absence-as well as the absence of the other one, the grizzled veteran who led them. His body had not been accounted for either.

They had left two behind: the tall archer whom he and Alchiq had brought down, and another one-the wielder of the immense sword. Gansukh couldn’t believe such a blade could actually be swung, but the presence of several legless ponies near the man’s body had suggested otherwise.

The Skjaldbr??ur made little effort to hide themselves as they rode, and Gansukh wondered if it was arrogance that allowed them to think themselves invisible and invincible to any roving group of Mongol tribesmen or simply that they did not know where they were going. West was easy enough; they followed the track of the sun across the sky, reorienting themselves in the afternoon.

They were going home. They had accomplished what they came to do.

Having satisfied his curiosity as to the location and condition of the Skjaldbr??ur party, he climbed over the ridge and returned to his horse. He had shot several rabbits, and his stomach grumbled noisily at the thought of fresh meat for dinner. He rode north, losing himself in the endless grasslands of the steppe, until he reached the narrow stream. He followed it awhile, fording it at a place where it bent back on itself.

The camp was on the lee of a small rise, sheltered from the wind. His horse nickered as he approached, and he heard an answering call from the other horse.

Alchiq looked up from where he sat beside the fire, his leather jerkin in his lap, needle and thread in his hand.

Gansukh tossed the rabbits on the ground. “Still heading west,” he reported as he slid off his horse and went about taking off the saddle.

Alchiq nodded as he tied his thread, biting it off, and packed up his sewing kit. “Is she still with them?”

Gansukh began brushing his horse down. “She is.”

“Still think she didn’t betray us?”

And when Gansukh didn’t reply, Alchiq chuckled and began dressing the rabbits. “They’ll lead us to it,” he said. “And when we find the Spirit Banner, you can do whatever you like.”