The Mongoliad: Book Three

understand what the women were planning should the walls fall. He was old enough to know that he should hide, someplace where no one could find him. Not even his own family. Their children would not become slaves, the mothers of Legnica vowed, and when the Mongols came, the women took their children to the wall.

He was not the only boy to survive the hammer and hilt, blade and knife, that took every boy and girl child of Legnica, the frantic solution laid upon each child by their parents to keep them safe from the ravenous pillaging of the Mongol Horde. They were all marked for having been cowards-a darkness each could easily read in the eyes of the others; bound by this shadow, they swore oaths to one another beneath the cracked branches of the old tree in Hunern. Never get caught. Never betray one another. Never give succor to the enemy. Think of the living.

He had survived the fall of Legnica. Days after the Mongols had finished plundering the city, he had crept out of his hole, shivering and weak from hunger. The city stank of death, and the stone walls of those few buildings still standing were smeared and stained with blood. There were corpses everywhere, bloated and stinking with maggots and flies. The sky had been dark with crows and vultures.

He forced himself away from the stone wall and crawled toward the hole in the arena’s foundation. It can’t be as bad. Hunern was silent, daring him to find out.

The arena was empty, but some sense-that same animal cunning that had kept him sane and safe while hiding in Legnica-warned him to stay hidden. He crept slowly along the edge of the stands, eyes and ears alert.

Wood creaked overhead, and he froze, pressing himself against the wood. Barely daring to breathe, he listened intently for the sound to be repeated, and after a few moments, he heard the weak groan of the timber as it was forced to support a heavy weight once more. Voices followed, guttural snatches of conversation, and Hans listened intently, trying to discern what the pair of Mongols was discussing.

They hadn’t seen him: that much was clear. The men were both bored and on edge-guard duty, Hans guessed, watching the arena. But why was the unanswered question. Satisfied that he wasn’t in danger of being spotted, Hans crept toward the back of the arena, a dangerous curiosity tugging at him.

Each of the arena’s numerous exits was typically sealed by a heavy wooden gate, but they were all an after- thought, and their timbers were the leftover scraps from the initial construction. There were gaps in the gate, and most of them didn’t quite marry with the well-worn path. There was a gap large enough to squeeze through beneath the gate nearest Hans’s hiding place, and he-gingerly, carefully-eased through the hole.

Once through the gate, he lay flat on the ground, trusting that dirty dinginess of his clothing and hair would make him blend in with the rough and knotted wood of the gate. Raising his head not much more than the width of two fingers from the ground, he let his gaze roam around the open field outside the arena for any movement.

There were a few huddled shapes. Corpses, he assumed, judging by the interest being shown by numerous crows. A few sported the familiar fletching of Mongol arrows, and after examining the position of these bodies in comparison with the others, Hans was able to discern a history of what had played out in the field.

Most of the dead had probably died in the riot, cut down by Mongol swords or trampled in the madness that had followed Andreas’s valiant attempt on the Khan’s life. The remainder-the ones sporting arrows-were closer to the wall, grouped in a cluster, almost as if they died trying to reach a specific spot on the arena wall.

Curiosity dared him to look, and he crawled belly down along the gate until he reached the wall. The gate was inset slightly, and with a final, nervous glance around, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. Leaning forward, he peered around the corner, directing his attention up.

At first he couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing. A leg. An arm. The ragged edge of a maille shirt. And then a horrible realization hit him: a body had been nailed to the wall. It was in pieces, the limbs hacked from the torso, and little effort had been applied in putting the pieces back in their proper position. Hans leaned out farther, trying to spot some identifying mark, and he finally spied the head.

“No,” he sobbed, sinking back against the wall, and as soon as the word had slipped free of his lips, he wanted to take it back. He wanted to grab the sound with his hands and shove it back into his mouth, as if by swallowing the word, he could reverse time and erase the image burned into his brain.

Andreas.

Overhead, the timbers creaked as the guards reacted to his tiny cry. They began jabbering at one another, and before they could investigate, Hans was on his feet. He sprinted away from the arena, his feet flying across the dusty ground. Behind him, the guards shouted, and he heard the whistling hiss of an arrow as it flew past him. Dodging the dead, he kept his head down and his eyes forward. His whole body-lungs aching, heart pounding-was solely focused on reaching the welcoming embrace of the nearest alley and the shadows that would hide him from the arcing arrows of the Mongols guards atop the arena walls.

He didn’t look back. He had seen enough.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Gift of the Spirits

In other circumstances, Chucai might have marveled at the scenery of the valley at the foot of Burqan-qaldun. He might have stood quietly in a reflective qi pose, and let his breathing become one with the gentle sighing sound of the northern wind. If he didn’t have the responsibility of managing the entirety of the Khagan’s vast empire, he might have lain down on the ample grasses and watched the white clouds chase one another across the vault of Blue Heaven. It was a hard man who was not moved by the beautiful simplicity of the site where Genghis Khan lay entombed, and the austerity of the Great Khan’s grave only furthered the myth that Genghis truly understood his place within the endless expanse of the known world.

However, Genghis was dead, his empire was nearly double the size it had been during his life, and his third son-while perhaps the most capable of his children-was a drunk. Chucai did not have the luxury of admiring the unspoiled beauty of this sacred place. The empire, if it was to survive, needed leadership. It needed a strong Khagan.

Chucai ran his hand through his long beard and let his gaze bore into Ogedei’s back. The Khagan had been kneeling at his father’s gravesite for an interminable time now. At first, the Khagan had been speaking in a low voice, offering a solemn prayer to his father’s spirit and the spirits of this valley; now, the Khagan was still-so still, in fact, that Chucai wondered if Ogedei had fallen asleep.

Gansukh’s impetuous actions had touched a long-slumbering part of Ogedei’s spirit, and for all the administrative headache the trip to Burqan-qaldun had caused, Chucai had been pleased at the initial elevation of the Khagan’s attention to all matters concerning the empire. But the delays and the constant presence of the court-even as diminished as it was on this journey-had mired the Khagan again. The siren lure of the drink was too strong, and Ogedei loved it too much.

Was the hunt for the bear going to be enough to drive that thirst from Ogedei, once and for all?

Voices from the direction of the Torguud escort roused Chucai from his ruminations. Piqued by the movement among the bodyguards’ horses, he turned his attention from the kneeling Khagan.

Namkhai and the other Torguud had surrounded an interloper. The horseman was not Darkhat, though he was clearly Mongolian, and his attire was both well cared for and weather-beaten. His sun-darkened face was familiar to Chucai, though he could not quite place the man, and his unrestrained hair had been bleached of all its color by years of sunlight.

“Who is this man?” he demanded as he rode over to the cluster of Torguud riders.