The Mongoliad: Book Three

again, he drove his startled horse toward the open gate.

The first Mongol sentry died with a surprised look still on his face as one of the two new arrivals-Shield- Brethren, wearing the clothing and armor of Mongol warriors-drew his sword and hacked the man’s head from his shoulder in a single, fluid strike. The second sentry had lifted his spear into a ready position, but the weapon was useless against the second knight’s thrown hatchet. The hand ax struck him in the face, knocking his conical helmet askew and splitting his skull.

In the sentry towers, the four Mongol archers were hurriedly readying their bows, and Rutger spared only a quick glance at them as his horse and cart closed in on the confusion at the gate. Two of the guards jerked back and disappeared from view as arrows launched from hidden Shield-Brethren positions near the Black Wall struck them, and the remaining pair ducked out of sight behind the mud wall.

And then Rutger was at the gate. His horse tried to avoid the two dead horses, but it was hampered by the heavy cart and its cargo. The horse stumbled and the cart lurched as its wheels struck the unmoving mass of a dead horse. The horse screamed and reared, flailing with its front hooves, and the Mongol sentry, standing in front of the panicked horse, jabbed it with his spear.

The sentry realized almost immediately that he was focusing on the wrong target, and he tried to pull his spear back, but the point was lodged in the chest of the horse. When a Shield-Brethren sword caught him under the chin and slit his throat, he died with a disappointed frown on his face.

The two Shield-Brethren in the cart threw off the oiled tarp cover that had been covering them and leaped from the wagon, swords drawn. They joined the pair disguised as Mongol riders, and the remaining Mongol guards found themselves outnumbered.

Rutger reached behind him and snatched up the longsword lying in the bed of the cart. It was Andreas’s blade, and the worn impressions of the younger man’s hand in the leather grip only made him grip the weapon more firmly. With two large swings he cut the tethers and straps holding horse and cart together. The dray horse, bleeding copiously from the spear wound in its chest, staggered a few steps away from the gate and collapsed.

“Alalazu!” Rutger shouted, raising his sword and signaling to the men who were hidden in the rubble of Hunern. They came, pouring out of the alleys and shattered doorways, a ragged host of armored knights, swords and axes and spears held ready.

He scrambled down from the wagon, crossed the threshold of the open gate, and raised his eyes to the guard towers. The surviving sentries were hiding from his archers, and as he looked up, another flight of arrows skipped and bounced off the wall and wooden braces of the sentry towers. Of the two surviving guards, only one was still unhurt. Shooting back at the Shield-Brethren archers meant standing long enough to become a target, and since the fracas at the gate had begun, retreating to the ground meant closing with the invading Shield-Brethren. They had panicked, and the sole survivor hadn’t realized he could shoot down at the men inside the gate yet.

He cast about for how to climb up to the tower and spotted the narrow stairs on the right side of the gate. As his four men clashed with the remaining Mongol gate sentries, he ran for the steps, taking them two at a time. The Mongol guard saw him coming, and stood up, reaching for his spear.

Rutger paused, a half dozen steps from the top, and stared up at the snarling Mongol. The man coughed suddenly, the anger draining from his face, and the spear slipped out of his hands. He coughed a second time, blood flecking his lips, and he stepped forward, his foot coming down on empty space. He fell off the wall, and Rutger counted three arrows jutting from his back as he plummeted to the ground.

Rutger continued up the stairs, pulling a strip of red cloth from within his dirty shirt. He waved it over his head as he crested the tower, and when the fluttering banner was not immediately pierced with arrows, he stood tall and proud, waving the banner wildly. “Alalazu!” he shouted.

The second wave came, sprinting across the pomerium. His archers, coming forward to provide support for the knight initiates who were already inside the walls. They scrambled over the wagon and the dead horses, pouring into the Mongol camp.

They had taken the gate. Now they had to hold it.

As soon as they heard Rutger’s battle cry, Styg and Eilif rose from their supine positions next to the wall and darted up the imbedded stakes. Styg pulled himself up to the narrow top of the wall, lay flat, and then swung his legs up and over, letting his momentum carry the rest of his body along. He bent his knees to absorb the shock of landing on the hard ground. As Eilif thumped to the ground beside him, he eased his sword out of the scabbard strapped to his back.

The attack on the gate would draw most of the Mongols’ attention, leaving them free to find and free the Khan’s captive fighters. Rutger’s plan called for the warriors of Christendom to break the Mongols’ spirit, and there were two prongs to their assault. The first attack was a bold initiative against the front gate of the Mongol compound, a noisy assault intended to slay as many Mongols as possible before the knights were overwhelmed by the Mongols’ superior numbers. The second strike was more precise: free the prisoners and point them at the Khan’s private tent. Of all the fighting men present, the captives had the most incentive to risk what would probably be a suicide mission.

It was the sort of mission Andreas would have loved, and Styg hoped they could execute it well enough to honor Andreas’s sacrifice. Virgin steady my hand, he prayed, that I might do even half as well as he.

Eilif freed his blade as well, and with a nod they crept into the maze of tents, paddocks, and cages that made up the Mongol encampment. This area had been uncultivated land before the Mongols arrived-open meadows and fields of wild grasses-and the native grasses had been trampled so thoroughly that only tenacious clumps of parched weeds still grew around the bases of some of the tents.

Here and there, men would pop out of these tents-Hans had referred to them as ger. With helmets askew and weapons bared, the Mongols would race for the sounds of violence at a mad, disorganized dash. Styg and Eilif moved slowly and stealthily, freezing whenever panicked warriors dashed for the gate, hoping to remain unobserved. The Virgin was watching over them, shielding them from the eyes of the alarmed Mongols, but such favor would not last indefinitely.

According to Hans, the ger most likely holding the prisoners was rectangular with orange walls, and it was located within the second rank of tents along the southern wall. They had tried to pick a spot to climb the walls as close as possible, but they still had to hunt through the maze to find the one ger.

It was a race. Could they find the prisoners before being discovered?

Eilif hissed, and Styg caught sight of movement behind the half-opened flaps of the ger beside him. A tall Mongol with a long mustache ducked out of the tent and stopped in his tracks, staring at Styg for a long, unblinking moment, and then his face broke into an ugly smile.

Styg darted forward, and the Mongol ducked back, disappearing into the darkness of the tent as he dodged Styg’s thrust. When he returned he had a blade of his own. And a friend.

The first Mongol lunged at him, and Styg responded by sidestepping the man’s attack, bashing the blade even farther to the side, and then snapping his own sword straight at the Mongol’s face. He buried a good three inches in the man’s forehead, and when he jerked his hands back and down, teeth and bits of skull ripped free along with his blade.

The second Mongol had to step around his dead friend, and he used that wide step to drive a powerful two- handed backswing. Styg’s hands and blade were low-he couldn’t get them up quickly enough to block the Mongol’s attack-and he swept a leg back as he raised his sword nearly parallel with the Mongol’s stroke. The curved sword slammed against the quillons of his longsword, and Styg kept moving, pushing off against the Mongol’s blade. His hands rotated, right over left, and his blade whirled around into a diagonal slice that connected with the back of the Mongol’s neck.

As the Mongol collapsed, blood spurting from a cut that nearly separated head from trunk, Styg blinked and remembered to breathe. His heart pounded in his chest like a thunderous drum. The attack had happened so quickly. If he had stood and thought about what he should have done, either of his Mongol attackers would have succeeded in cutting him instead. He had simply reacted, letting his training guide his arms and sword. You must stop thinking about holding your sword, Andreas had told them during one of