The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) (19 page)

“He’s sick,” Fieschi said. “Weak from infection and delirious. There are wounds on him that have not healed well. Combat wounds. Not recent ones.” That got Orsini’s attention, and Ocyrhoe’s as well. “Yes, he has seen battle in the last six months.” Fieschi leaned forward. “Now where would a man such as this see battle?”

The Bear picked up the knife again and pulled it out of its sheath. “There are many places,” he said carefully. “The roads aren’t safe.”

Sinibaldo laughed, and the sound made Ocyrhoe flinch. Realizing how exposed she was, she drew back. “Very few places are safe anymore,” the cardinal said. “Which is why few travel alone. The only ones who do are those who have the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor.” He emphasized this last phrase impatiently, clearly wanting some kind of reaction from Orsini.

Orsini resheathed the knife and put it down, refusing to give Fieschi the satisfaction of an emotional response.

Sinibaldo slammed his hand against the table. “Orsini! Your men threw him in the Septizodium without bothering to learn who he is, where his loyalties lie. They picked him off the street and tossed him inside like he was a common criminal. And now we’re stuck with him. Now he has a voice in the election—
the decisive voice
, given our stalemate.” His voice was hard, and the words flew out of his mouth in a rush, as if they had been held in him too long. “For all we know, those halfwits of yours have just effectively offered up St. Peter’s throne to Frederick. We don’t know who this man is, and
if he is Frederick’s man, then he will guard himself well. We won’t know anything about his allegiances until we take another vote—”

“You are a guest in my house, Sinibaldo,” Orsini snapped, cutting the other man off. “I would suggest some care with your tone. I agree the circumstances are unfortunate, but based on your inflated sense of your own powers, I advise you to use his confused state to your advantage. If he is indeed delirious, find a way to make him yours.” It was a challenge.

They stared at each other for a moment, and then Fieschi looked away. He picked up his knife and returned to eating. “Very well, let us allow the possibility that he might be something other than Frederick’s tool,” he said around a mouthful of food.

Orsini picked up the piece of parchment and held it up to the light. “What’s this?”

The Bear was too intent on squinting at the page to notice the other man’s reaction, but Ocyrhoe watched Fieschi. She saw his hands stop moving; she saw him slowly put the utensils down. “That? It’s nothing,” the priest said. “A scrap from an illustrated manuscript. A book not unlike—”

“And this?” The Bear pointed to something on the page. “Here, in the margin.”

Fieschi picked up his cup and drank slowly. “The scribbling of a madman,” he said. “Translate it if you wish, but I can tell you what it says. It is heretical nonsense, a prophecy filled with astrological prattle—references to the influences offered by Saturn and Jupiter. Naturally, it talks of the downfall of the Church, and it intimates that everything will come to an end in less than twelve years. This is the very sort of apocalyptic rabble-rousing that will inflame the citizens should it find its way into the hands of the wrong sort of miscreant.”

The Bear put the page down. “Who is he?” Orsini asked.

Fieschi waited for a long moment, and when the larger man started to fidget with the items on the table, he smiled. Orsini
noticed the cardinal’s expression and his face tightened. He picked up the wine flagon in an effort to draw attention away from his grimace, but he poured the wine sloppily, splashing some on his hand and the table.

The cardinal let out a low laugh. “As you suggested, as long as he’s delirious and confined with me, I can control him, so why should you fear anything?” He leaned forward. “But the girl and his friend. And the ring. Those are out of my control. Are you certain you shut down the witch network?”

Orsini’s face colored. “They’re gone,” he insisted. He gulped his wine. “I’ll find the ring,” he said. “You do your work.”

“Of course,” Fieschi said smoothly. “As you said, he is another vote, and perhaps he could be convinced to help us. Even if he did set out on his journey as the Emperor’s man, if he is deranged enough now, he might not understand what he is to do. Perhaps the fact that he isn’t in his right mind might be useful.”

An owl hooted close behind Ocyrhoe and she started forward, her hand accidentally tapping against the frame of the window. She threw herself flat on the balcony floor, and a second later was hustling over the railing and back down the stone lion. She had been too noisy this time. They must have heard her. She dropped down to the lion’s feet and hung on, her legs dangling over open space. She couldn’t see the window, but she could see the play of shadow and light change as Orsini came to the window again.

She held on, her fingers cramping, but the light didn’t change.
He was still there.
Her arms started to scream with exertion.
How long was he going to stand there?

Her left hand slipped, and she bit down on her tongue to keep the fear in. The stone was warm and slippery. She wasn’t going to be able to hang on much longer. The fall wasn’t that far; she would be able to land easily. But she couldn’t do it quietly. He was bound to hear the sound of a body hitting the tiles of the roof below. He’d
raise the alarm, and the palazzo grounds would fill with soldiers and torches. She’d be caught, killed on the spot most likely.
They’re gone
, he had said. She was the only one left. No one was going to save her.

The owl hooted again from the nearby tree. Orsini grunted, and something flew over Ocyrhoe’s head. His cup, trailing a rain of red wine, struck the trunk of the tree and clattered through the branches, startling the owl.

As it clattered, Ocyrhoe let go.

T
HE FIRST WEEK,
they had covered ground quickly on European horses taken from the Livonians. They had carried some fodder with them. When this ran out, they slackened their pace and gave the horses leisure to forage in abandoned farm fields where wild grain was richly interspersed with the native feather grass. A fortnight into the journey, Vera had guided them to a market town on a great river where they had traded for steppe ponies, which were smaller but capable of traveling indefinitely on nothing but fresh grass—and in fact rejected provender as unpalatable. That was the last place they had seen that could answer to the name of city or town. Vera knew where it was that Raphael wanted to go, but rather than guiding them along a straight course to that destination—a range of low hills east of the Volga—she allowed the horses to trace the invisible boundary between the tall feather grass of the north, where they could enjoy level footing and richer forage, and the spiky bunchgrass that prevailed farther south.

A subtle shift in the ground, the patterns of birds in the distance, a fragrance on the breeze told them that they were descending into the watershed of the great river—the last river of any consequence that, Vera assured them, they would be seeing for a very long time. There were no bridges and no fords; they would have to
be ferried across, a fact that obliged them to gather round the fire one night and hold a council of war. The fire was a feeble glimmer, reflecting the lack of trees hereabouts, and Raphael hoped that this was not an omen of what might emerge from the discussion.

It had been surprisingly long since they had all gathered in a circle and faced each other in this way. Proper campfires had been few and far between. The openness of the steppe invited the group to spread apart; at times, their caravan might be stretched out over a mile, while their camp might occupy an acre. Since they could all see each other at great distances, this did not occasion the same concerns about getting lost as would have applied in the forests of the north. A spread-out camp made it easier for the horses to forage. A strung-out caravan would make it more difficult for a Mongol raiding party to surprise and surround the entire group. The Shield-Brethren had had quite enough of one another’s company during the journey from Legnica and felt no need to bunch up. The twelve mounted
skjalddis
under Vera’s command provided a welcome change in company, and many long marches and evenings in camp could be whiled away in conversation—frequently somewhat halting, given the language barrier—between these two long-sundered branches of the lineage of Petraathen.

At first, Raphael had been dismayed by the number of
skjalddis
whom Vera had brought, worrying that their numbers would have diminished the ranks of those who remained behind in Kiev, but she had scoffed at his concern, pointing out that thrice this number of Shield-Maidens remained in Kiev. And there was only ever room enough for a dozen on the walls at any given time.

For the purposes of this evening’s council, the twelve Shield-Maidens were posted as sentries, forming a large and loose ring around the fire, about a bowshot in diameter. Only Vera joined the Brethren to discuss the next day’s maneuvers. She sat to the left of Cnán. The Binder had, at first, found the Shield-Maidens impossibly
strange and had pointedly avoided their company, but as the weeks had gone by, she had adjusted to their ways and been drawn into their society.

On Vera’s left side was Feronantus. Even more so than usual, the old man had kept to himself during the weeks after Kiev, and Raphael had often noted him riding far out in front of the others. Not, he suspected, out of an intention to scout the way, but because he enjoyed the illusion that he was alone on the steppe. He carried Taran’s sword always, as Percival now carried Roger’s. Cnán had remarked on this during the journey, and Raphael had explained to her that each man was honor bound to bring his fallen comrade’s weapon back to the hall of arms at Petraathen to be mounted alongside those of other Brethren who had fallen in battle over the ages. “Then we had best stop losing people,” she had remarked, “or the survivors will have to carry an insupportable burden across half the world.”

Percival sat left of Feronantus. Small sideways movements of the latter’s eyes reminded Raphael of the strange tension that had existed between these two men since the vision, hallucination, or angelic visitation that Percival had experienced on the day of Taran’s death. Percival himself was oblivious to this. For a fortnight after Roger’s fall, he had spoken barely a word to anyone, ranging far off to the caravan’s flanks, staring into the distance, mourning and thinking.

Thinking, as Raphael could easily guess, about his quest, and the folly into which it had led him, and the consequence of that folly.

Of the surviving Brethren, only Raphael knew about Percival’s quest. Percival had first mentioned it in the presence of Vera, Raphael, Roger, and Illarion. Roger was now dead. Illarion had decided to stay behind in Kiev. His health had not fully recovered. His country was calling to him; he felt that he could strike a harder blow against the Mongols by remaining there, regaining his full strength, and
confronting them directly rather than taking a chance on surviving the trek to the Great Khan’s capital. So the only witnesses to Percival’s odd behavior concerning the quest were now Raphael and Vera, and since Vera had not known Percival before, it meant little or nothing to her.

Continuing around the circle leftward, then, the next was Eleázar, who was relaxed and happy, as he had been enjoying the company of the Shield-Maidens almost too heartily for a celibate monk. Then Yasper, bored and morose. In the aftermath of the cave fight, they learned that the Livonian leader—the one named Kristaps—had escaped from the tunnels by returning to the monastery near the river, emerging from the well house, and stealing Yasper’s horse, which had been laden with all of the scraps of metal that the alchemist had been patiently assembling for his still-making project, as well as a jug of
aqua ardens
. Since then, of course, they had seen nothing except open countryside, and Yasper had been reduced to the status of a mere herbalist. Next to Yasper was Istvan, somewhat pointedly placed directly across the fire from Feronantus so that the two men could look each other in the eye over the flames. Then Raphael, then Finn, then Rædwulf.

Finn and Rædwulf had only just arrived back in camp with the gutted corpse of a small antelope slung over the back of a spare pony. They had been absent for two days. Finn, never one to sit still during a solemn discussion, busied himself butchering the animal. Raphael tried to prevent his mouth from watering as he thought about the roasted meat they would be enjoying later. The steppe was replete with small burrowing animals that were hardly worth the effort expended in catching them. It was becoming increasingly obvious why the Mongols derived so much of their diet from mare’s milk. Antelope meat, stringy and gamy though it might be, was a delicacy.

“We are pleased to help you eat your bycatch,” Feronantus said, “but this is not the game you were hunting for, is it?”

Finn, perhaps not trusting himself to interpret the dry humor, pretended not to hear, and so eyes moved to the face of Rædwulf.

“I saw him clearly,” the Englishman announced. “As you all know, I scoffed louder than any of us when Finn told us, a fortnight ago, that he had seen a man tracking us and recognized him as the grizzled Mongol who eluded us after the fight that killed Taran.” For they had made a habit, all during the journey, of letting Finn range across the countryside in their wake, secreting himself in covert places to look for any who might be pursuing them. “But I have seen him now, and there is no mistaking his gray hair. It is the same man. I have apologized to Finn for doubting him.”

“How close did you get to him?” Feronantus asked. The others were all letting out exclamations of surprise, but he still needed convincing. Or perhaps, Raphael realized, that was what a leader must do: play the role of skeptic even when—
especially
when—all others had swung round to a shared opinion.

“Well within a bowshot.”

“A Mongol’s bowshot, or—”