“You know something,” Chucai hissed, unwilling to let the Darkhat’s reticence get in the way of learning something about the history of the banner. “Tell me.”
“There is a legend,” Ghaltai began after a moment of reflection. “Before Borte Chino mated with Qo’ai Maral, when Tengri walked this land—”
Chucai snorted derisively before he could stop himself, and seeing Ghaltai’s expression, he offered an apologetic nod.
“The people who lived here taught the birds to fly in formation and the bees to gather in swarms. When the Wolf and the Doe mated, these wise men gave this knowledge as a wedding gift. Teach your children, they said, so that they may grow to become the strongest clans under the Eternal Blue Heaven.”
“But the clans did not unite until Genghis brought them together,” Chucai pointed out. Ghaltai’s story sounded like yet another fable that had become truth, another fanciful explanation for Genghis’s rise to power. He had heard so many of these stories over the years; in fact, he and Genghis had laughed together about a number of them. They were the idle stories that belonged to the uneducated—the superstitious who would flock to a passionate visionary and follow him anyway.
“The clans were waiting,” Ghaltai said with an unsettling fervor. “They were waiting for someone to claim the legacy of Borte Chino and Qo’ai Maral. My father’s father led the Darkhat when Genghis returned to Burqan-qaldun. He told his father, who, in turn, told me when I was old enough to take his place, that Genghis was visited by Tengri in a vision. Tengri told him where to find the sacred grove, the place where Wolf and Doe first laid together. Beyond the mountain. Genghis went there alone, and—”
“And when he returned, he had the banner,” Chucai said, filling in the last detail of Ghaltai’s story. “But you don’t know where or how he found it.”
Ghaltai nodded. “We guard the way to the grove, but we do not venture onto the path.”
Squinting, Chucai raised his face toward the mountain. “?gedei Khan has had a vision as well,” he said. “He has come to hunt a bear in the sacred grove.” When Ghaltai did not respond, he lowered his gaze and looked over at the Darkhat rider.
Ghaltai sat rigidly in his saddle, and he would not meet Chucai’s gaze. “It is a place of powerful spirits,” was all that he would say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In the Aftermath
After the death of the Rose Knight, Hans remembered very little. He had managed to avoid the tumultuous press of bodies throwing themselves out of the arena, mainly by virtue of his size, but the streets had been so chaotic, filled with so many Mongol warriors with bared weapons, that he had gone to ground. Like a frightened rabbit. He knew a half dozen routes back to his uncle’s brewery and the safe haven of the tree, and most of those paths could only be traversed by a boy his size or smaller, but he hadn’t felt safe.
Nowhere was safe.
And so he hid. Beneath the southern stands of the arena, he found a corner of the foundation where the Mongol engineers, in their haste to assemble the edifice, hadn’t quite closed off the foundation. The hole was narrow and dark, and he managed to rip his shirt and scrape his shoulder, but he got in. Crawling around in the dark until he felt stone and wood behind him on two sides, he curled up in a ball. Only then did he let himself cry, and he bawled until he had no tears left.
He must have fallen into an exhausted stupor—not quite sleep, but not quite consciousness either. When he came to his senses, wiping the crust of dirt and dried tears from his stiff eyelashes, he heard nothing. No pounding feet. No screams. No shouting, nor clashes of steel. Stiffly, he pried himself out of his corner sanctuary and gingerly crawled back toward the dim light of his entry hole. Distantly, he heard the raucous screams of angry crows, the sort of cries the black birds made when they were trying to intimidate each other. When they were trying to drive other birds away from a prize of putrescent carrion.
Hans cringed at the thought of what lay outside, scooting back on his hands and rear until he was pressed into his safe corner again. It wasn’t Hünern outside any more, it was Legnica—the day after the Mongolian engineers had breached the city gates and the mounted warriors had streamed into the city.