The Mongoliad: Book Three

Hans wanted to scream, but his throat had seized. Wedged as he was between two watchers in the common stands, the cacophony of the crowd would have drowned him out anyway, yet he struggled to make his voice work. As if the sound of his voice might somehow change the gruesome scene before him. He struggled to make a noise as the Livonian’s hand brought the heavy sword down on the Rose Knight’s shoulder. The blade did not bounce off the maille, but sheared through the mesh, cutting deeply into the body underneath. I told him there would be a friend.

The deafening roar of the crowd overwhelmed him, hurting his ears and making the wood floor tremble and shake. The world is falling apart, he thought, and we will all fall through the cracks.

Andreas fell, a violent spray of blood all around him-in the air, in the sand. Hans wanted to look away, but his eyes-like his mouth-refused to obey. He could no more look away than he could stop what was happening with his tiny voice. Get up! he silently begged, though he knew Andreas would not. He had seen blood like this, when the Mongols had sacked Legnica, and he knew the wound was fatal. He knew there was nothing God could do to save the Rose Knight. Nothing anyone could do.

They knew, he realized, staring at the red cross on the other man’s chest. Somehow, the Livonians had known of Andreas and Kim’s plan. And if they had known…

The others. I have to warn the others. Now it was his legs that wouldn’t move. He had to do something-anything-but he was frozen in place, held captive by the horrible spectacle.

He did not want to watch, but he couldn’t tear himself away as the Livonian raised his sword again.

The crowd was shrieking now, no longer cheering the wild battle down below. The Livonian had struck Andreas at the shoulder, and the greatsword had sliced through his maille, splitting Andreas from shoulder to hip. The sand was a filthy pit of red mud, and Andreas-somehow, by the Virgin! — was still alive.

Rutger forced his way to the rail, trying to ignore what was happening as he looked elsewhere. The gates were open below, and Mongol guards were streaming into the arena. In the stands, panic was already tearing through the crowds as some of the onlookers tried to flee the riot they knew was coming while others surged toward the rail. He spotted several of the Shield-Brethren, confusion and frustration writ over their features. Nearby, Styg was openly weeping, his mouth screwed up into an expression of inescapable horror. As he watched, something died inside the young man and his mouth snapped shut. He surged forward, shoving his way toward the rail.

“No!” Rutger intercepted him, hauling him back from the wooden barrier. The pain in his hands made him gasp, but he held on, holding the young man back.

Styg fought him, great sobbing gasps quaking his body. “We can’t let him do this!” Styg shouted at him, and Rutger stole a glance over his shoulder at the killing floor below. “That’s our brother!”

The Livonian was still cutting, his sword rising and falling like a butcher’s cleaver, even though the body beneath his blade was clearly dead.

“Aye,” Rutger snarled, hauling the young man around so that he would no longer look upon the bloody spectacle of the field. “And if you go down there, you will join him. Others will follow you, and it will all be for naught. We are done here. Get to the horses!”

He barked at the other Shield-Brethren within earshot. “Go, now. Get back to the chapter house.”

He wasn’t sure if they heard him, but they could read his command in the anguish of his face, in the bared ferocity of his teeth, in the wild fury of his gaze. They understood him, and obeyed, fleeing the retribution that was to come.

To the chapter house, he thought. They would regroup, grieve briefly, and then they would ready themselves. His mind raced, leaping across a dozen different courses of action as his men melted into the teeming chaos of the fleeing crowds. He gave Styg one last shove, ensuring that the young man was moving in the right direction, and then he spared one last glance back at the arena and the Khan’s box.

A Mongol dignitary, wrapped in bloody silk, the spear jutting out of his body, sprawled against the railing of the Khan’s pavilion. The curtains had been pulled close around the box, and the roof of the pavilion was swarming with the Khan’s archers.

Andreas, he thought as he let himself fall back in the crowd. It should have been me.

Roosting crows cawed irritably from the rafters of the barn. Hunern had become a ghostly ruin. The Mongols had withdrawn into their camp, barring their gates and shielding their Khan. The streets were empty but for a few stragglers, too drunk or senseless to seek shelter. Even the birds had gone into hiding.

Dietrich knew the silence wouldn’t last. The Mongol retreat was a strategic withdrawal so that they could order their ranks. Once they got over the initial shock of the assault, they were going to ride out in full force. While their main focus was going to be on the Shield-Brethren, there was little doubt in his mind that every living soul between them and the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae was going to be counted as an enemy.

If they survived, there was still the issue of Kristaps’s actions to be dealt with. War had been declared between the two orders.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Dietrich snarled at Kristaps when he found the man. “I didn’t tell you to kill him while his back was turned.”

Kristaps stood before a water trough in the barn that was serving as a basin, washing Andreas’s blood from his sword. From tip to hilt, the weapon had been coated with the blood of the Shield-Brethren, and no one had dared try to take the blade from Volquin’s Dragon.

“I’ve likely saved our order, Heermeister,” Kristaps replied with an unnerving calm. The knight looked at Dietrich, and the Heermeister was struck by the utter lack of feeling in the man’s unflinching gaze.

“By starting a war?” Dietrich snapped. He was in no mood for double-talk, and Kristaps’s implacable stare was unnerving.

“By making our intent clear to those who truly hold the power here,” Kristaps replied bluntly. “When the knight made his dash to throw his spear, how would it have looked if I’d let him live? Especially given that you bribed my way into the fight. They would have seen two Western orders putting aside their differences to defy the Khan. What vengeance comes next would as likely fall on our heads as theirs. To save us, I had to defend the Khan’s honor.”

Silence hung between them, filled by the chatter of crows in the rafters. In the distance, a bell started to toll. Dusk was upon the city, and the dolorous tone of the bell made Dietrich shiver involuntarily. Night was coming, and only God knew if any of them would see another sunrise.

He had ordered his men to start striking their camp. They had to be ready to ride at a moment’s notice. The compound had served as suitable shelter for his order, but it would not protect them at all when the Mongolian wrath was unleashed. Even if Kristaps was correct in his assessment, it would only buy them a little time. The Mongols would turn their attention to the other orders once they finished destroying the Shield-Brethren. He couldn’t overlook what had happened at Mohi. The Mongols did not discriminate.

There was something else, though. A thought nagged at Dietrich and he stared at the First Sword of Fellin, trying to elucidate his concern. “You made your point when you killed him,” he said, now holding his knight’s gaze. I will not be cowed. I am your Heermeister. “You did not need to mutilate his body.”

Kristaps said nothing, though whether his silence was due to genuine regret, which Dietrich doubted, or because there was no proper way to excuse his behavior, was not apparent.

The big knight had already doffed his maille, and he slowly slid the sleeves of his gambeson up to his elbows. He raised his forearms to Dietrich, revealing circular scars on both arms. Old burns, seared deep into the meat of his forearms. In the fading light of the day, they looked like heraldic devices, though smeared and stretched across the skin.

Kristaps’s blue eyes flashed. “They mutilated me first.”