The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) (14 page)

Or so they had thought.

We cannot be blind
, he had argued with Rutger.
We have to know whom we face
.

And Rutger had finally acquiesced.
Take three men
, he had said.
Find out their intent. Do not engage them.

Of course not
, Andreas had replied.

* * *

Shortly after wandering into the sprawling outskirts of the city that surrounded the Mongolian arena, Andreas spotted a grimy boy watching him. He was a scrawny lad, and he lacked a shirt—though, judging by the sun-darkened color of his skin, he was not concerned overmuch by its loss. Andreas first spotted him perched on a cracked rain barrel near a pair of tents that had once been blue; shortly thereafter, he saw the boy again, crouching behind a block of rubble next to a misshapen oven cobbled together from cracked brick and charred stone.

Andreas bargained with a fruit vendor for a couple of apples, offering muddled Latin phrases and an exaggerated wave of his wooden cross as a blessing in exchange. The fruit was mealy and riddled with worm-sign, and he threw one of the apples at the boy, who snatched it from the air like a bear grabbing a fish from a river. As soon as the boy had devoured the fruit, Andreas held up the other apple and beckoned the youth over.

“I’m looking for a boy,” he said. “His name is Hans.”

The boy scratched his head and shrugged, seemingly unable to understand the Shield-Brother’s Latin. His eyes flicked back and forth, though, betraying him. When he reached for the second apple, Andreas tucked his hand into his sleeve, making the fruit disappear. “I want to find Hans,” he said. “Help me, and then you can have the apple.”

The boy chattered at him in some pidgin tongue that was part German, part Latin, and a scramble of something that Andreas assumed was the Mongolian tongue.

It was possible the boy didn’t know whom Andreas was talking about, but the lad reminded him of the youth who had come out to their chapter house. There was an alert watchfulness in his expression, and even as scrawny and ill fed as he appeared, he wasn’t afraid—a sort of brusque defiance that Andreas read as
ownership
. They might be orphans, but this was
their
city. If this boy didn’t know Hans personally, he knew someone who would.

“Hans,” Andreas said one more time, and he flicked the tip of his staff, catching the boy in the shin. “Now.”

The boy hopped back, clutching at his ankle. He howled at Andreas, his face screwing up in an overblown rictus of pain and anger. Andreas shrugged; adjusting his sleeve to reveal the apple, he brought it up to his mouth and made to take a large bite.

“No! No!” The boy changed his mind, and his hands were now entreating Andreas to stop. “Hans,” he said, nodding, when
Andreas lowered the apple. He took off, sprinting down the muddy street.

Andreas smiled and looked over his shoulder. Maks was arguing with the same fruit vendor he had gotten the apples from. There was no sign of Eilif or Styg, but he knew they were nearby.

Andreas wandered on, no real destination in mind. There were three matters he sought to accomplish on his jaunt into the city, and making contact with Hans was the most critical. The boy would provide him intelligence about Hünern, and thus educated, he could complete his other tasks. Until he made contact with Hans, he wanted to get his own sense of the city.

The battle of Legnickie Pole had taken place just a few months ago, and Duke Henry’s army had been broken and scattered. The orders had lost men too; more than a hundred Templar and Hospitaller knights had fallen. It had been a slaughter, a brutal decimation that should have left a permanent stain on the landscape. And yet, not more than a few
verst
away, a gladiatorial arena had been erected, and to it had flocked tens—if not hundreds—of combatants, all eager to prove themselves against each other and the most relentless force Christendom had ever seen.

They came willingly, filled with that same burning zeal he had seen time and again on the ships bound for the Levant. They wanted so badly to take up arms against the foreign devils who had invaded their homelands. They knew there was no hope on the field of battle—the piles of skulls outside the walls of Legnica were a constant reminder of that fact—and yet they came anyway.

Andreas could remember that incendiary desire to fight, to rage against a world that seemed to have been forgotten by God, to raise a sword against an enemy that seemed to be both faceless and everywhere. To slice, to cut, to kick, to bite—to blindly lash at the very existence that inflicted so much pain.

Nothing ever changes, does it?
he mused.
We fall into this world, and all we do for the duration of our miserable lives is fight.
He touched the ragged cross that swung on the cord around his neck.
What else do we know how to do?

* * *

When the scrawny boy returned, he attempted to haggle with Andreas over the terms of their deal.
Apple first
, he had insisted,
then Hans
. When Andreas laughed and stood firm, the boy had screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue. But he relented, beckoning for Andreas to follow him.

The boy led him down a narrow alley filled with vats of fermenting ale. Brewers, wearing aprons and gloves stained with their work, glared as Andreas passed. He was both an outsider and a priest as they saw him—doubly unwelcome—and the only reason they didn’t run him off was because of his escort. The boy ducked under an ash-streaked tarp that was stretched over a frame of rough-cut lumber, beckoning with a pale arm for Andreas to follow.

Warily, Andreas lifted the edge of the tarp with his stick. Beyond was a narrow space—stark in its emptiness and open to the sky at the top. A tree stood in the center, though it was so strangely twisted and warped that Andreas could not tell if it aspired to provide shade with its foliage—should it ever grow any—or if it was a nut-bearing tree that had already shed its leaves in preparation for winter. Scattered around its lumpy roots were scraps of wool and linen—blankets, Andreas realized, as he spotted a boy with a face streaked with mud and ash sleeping with his mouth open under a haphazard bundle.

It was the equivalent of a walled garden, a hidden sanctuary that offered respite from the ravages of the world. They were common enough at monasteries—secluded places where the monks could withdraw and meditate without too many distractions. At
Petraathen, the contemplative garden was a sheltered slab of stone that looked out over the mountains—there were no trees or flowers, just the endless expanse of the majesty of God’s creation to take in.

In Hünern, God’s majesty was expressed in the defiantly interwoven limbs of a single tree.

Beyond the tree, several stools were grouped around a crate, and Andreas’s guide perched on one of the stools, eagerly waiting for his reward. There were a couple of wooden cups and a pitcher on the makeshift table, and as Andreas entered the hidden sanctuary, he caught sight of another boy, whose face lit up at the sight of the Shield-Brethren knight.

Hans.

Hans picked up the pitcher and poured a libation into a cup as Andreas walked past the tree and the sleeping child nestled in its roots. “Welcome, Knight of the Rose,” the boy said in his oddly accented Latin.

Andreas tossed the second apple to the boy who had brought him and accepted the cup from Hans. He inhaled the aroma of the freshly poured ale.
Sage and thyme
, he noted. “Thank you,” he said after he tasted it. “Your hospitality is most gracious.”

“This is our...” Hans tried to think of the correct word. He put his hands together in a ring and held it over his heart. “Our
protection
. Our sanctuary.”

Hans smiled, and his expression was so guileless—filled with such innocence and hopeful naïveté—that Andreas was filled with an intense desire to crush this boy in an embrace as if he were a long-lost son. In a flash, he knew what his father felt every time he came back from the sea and was bowled over by a young Andreas. He knew why his father had hugged him so tightly.

He surprised himself by giving in to this desire. He swept Hans up in a crushing bear hug. The boy fought him for a second, squawking unintelligibly. He relaxed quickly enough and let Andreas hold
him, and somewhat tentatively, his own arms stretched around the big man’s frame.

“This is the best ale I’ve tasted in a long time,” Andreas offered as an excuse when they released each other. “I had thought to never taste such nectar again, and...” With a shrug, he drank the rest of the cup and held it out for more.

“Ernust—my
uncle
—makes it,” Hans said as he filled Andreas’s cup. His hesitation and stress on the word
uncle
made it clear that the relationship was one of convenience and not blood.

“Your uncle Ernust has been blessed with a God-given talent,” Andreas said. “Does he produce such elixir with an eye toward the marketplace in this growing city?”

“He does.”

“And I would assume there are a number of alehouses which seek to acquire his spectacular libations.”

Hans scratched the side of his nose and looked askance at Andreas for a moment and then nodded. He offered Andreas a third cup, which the knight considered refusing, but then relented.

“In addition to inquiring how I might acquire a barrel or two of this fine ale for my brothers, I also seek more immediate assistance from you, my young master.” Andreas smiled. “There is a man I need to find, and I think you know him—either by sight or by reputation.” When Hans nodded, Andreas swallowed half the contents of his cup before continuing. “I would like to see more of this city, and I do not wish to be distracted or befuddled by its confusing array of unmarked streets and chaotic marketplaces. Would you be my guide?”

Hans bowed. “I would, Sir Rose Knight.”

Andreas laughed. “Please,” he said, laying his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Call me Andreas. Brother Andreas, if you must. Let there be no more talk of titles.”

“Very well,” Hans agreed. He hefted the pitcher. “Would you?”

“No, thank you.” Andreas took one last sip from the cup and poured the meager remains out among the roots of the tree, careful to not splash the sleeping boy.
In memoriam
, he prayed. It was an old ritual, one rooted in a time before the Shield-Brethren founded Petraathen. Much of the world had changed—both outside the walls of the ancient citadel and within—but the intent of the gesture still had truth and meaning. The chain of brotherhood remained unbroken. With a lingering glance at the twisted branches of the tree, he followed Hans out of the hidden garden.

* * *

As they walked, Hans described the geography of Hünern. There were two landmarks that pulled at the inhabitants—like lodestones, Andreas pointed out, and Hans only shrugged, unfamiliar with the word.
The arena
, he pointed,
and the church
. The Mongol camps lay closer to the arena, the heavy tents peeking over the mud-brick walls like shy clusters of mushrooms; the tents, shanties, fortified compounds, and half-raised walls of the assembled Christian encampments were a circular labyrinth with the leaning spire of the church in the center. Roads and paths became narrower and more infrequent as one got closer to the church; in their zeal to be close to the beacon of Heaven, desperate pilgrims claimed nearly every inch of open ground.

The arena was not at the center of the new city, Hans explained as they approached an open commons. Wooden scaffolds and a jumbled mass of crates and sloppily connected pieces of wood made for a crude parody of the more refined construction of the arena, visible on their left. Stakes and ropes marked off three areas, and while they were currently empty, their function was clear. A pole stood beside each fighting ground, a pair of rings and posts jutting from either
side. A wooden triskelion separated the arenas from each other, and each leg of the platform was a honeycomb of narrow slots.

“It’s called First Field,” Hans said. “This is where they start.” He pointed at the platform in the center. “They bring their flags and place them there.”

Andreas nodded, understanding how the system worked. Each fighter entered in the competition by putting his flag in one of the open slots. When all the holes in a leg of the triskelion were filled with standards, the fights would begin. A pair of standards would be moved to one of the circles, and their owners would enter the roped-off arena and compete. It was a system not unlike the one used by knights throughout Christendom in their tournaments of arms.

“Win here; go there,” Hans said, pointing at the arena.

“How often are the fights?”

“Every three days.” Hans shrugged. “But no one goes to the arena anymore, and so they don’t fight as much.”

Andreas nodded. The Mongolian champion whom Haakon had fought had gone crazy when the young Shield-Brother had spared his life, and a number of Mongolian guards had died in the ensuing riot. Onghwe Khan had closed the arena, and there hadn’t been any word when—or if—he was going to start the fights again.

The temporary residents of Hünern were waiting, and after a few weeks, they were starting to lose their patience. Andreas assumed the same was true for the Mongolian army. How long would they simply sit and wait for their Khan to regain his interest in the competition? How long before tempers frayed to the breaking point?

The situation was not unlike a siege, and Andreas had seen the way madness crept in men’s minds when they thought they were trapped.

“The Mongol camps are there.” Hans waved his hand. With the arena on his left and the church on his right, Andreas guessed the general direction of Hans’s wave was to the south and east of First
Field. Hans pointed to the west. “Knights there, and Christians.” His hand moved to indicate the church and the area to the north and west of it. “Hünern, before...” Hans trailed off with a shrug. “Some call it that now too.”

“And where we came from?”

“Rat,” Hans said. “That’s where the rats live.” There was a hint of pride in his voice.