“We tried for two weeks to take the citadel,” Alchiq continued, “and would have continued to throw ourselves against its walls until every last one of us were dead if Batu had had his way. It was General Subutai who pulled him away from the siege. There were only a handful of warriors in the keep, the general argued, and there were other lands to conquer. Beating down those walls was not worth the effort, not when there were richer prizes to be won more easily. Batu relented, but he left some of us behind. To wait for the day when those gates opened and we could finish them off.”
Alchiq stared at the cage that held the red-haired giant. “I waited a long time,” he continued, his voice more thoughtful. “I commanded more than a jaghun, Master Chucai, but, over time, more and more of them wandered off, chasing after Batu’s army. My men and I ranged far from Kiev, policing these lands as subject to the Khagan’s rule, exacting tribute as we saw fit. But we always came back to Kiev. We always came back to see if those gates had opened. But they never did. Not for us.”
“Why come back here?” Chucai asked again. “Shouldn’t you have reported your failure to Batu?”
Alchiq smiled at him, a fierce feral grin. “I didn’t fail. They came out eventually, and I was waiting for them. My jaghun caught them near the Ijil M?r?n, the big river also known as San-su.”
Chucai sucked on a tooth and shrugged, indicating the geographical subtlety of Alchiq’s story was lost on him.
“The Ijil M?r?n lies east of Kiev,” Alchiq explained. “And while my men slew all of the women who came from the white citadel in Kiev, the others decimated my men not a week later.”
“Wait—” Chucai’s attention snapped to the older man’s words. “Women? Others?”
Alchiq nodded. “The warriors in the white citadel were all women—they were called skjalddis by the people who survived Batu Khan’s conquest. They left their citadel to travel east, escorting a group of men whom I have fought twice now and barely survived both times. Each time I met this band, they were farther east, closer to the center of the empire.”
Chucai laughed, unable to help himself. “You think they are coming here? To threaten the Khagan?” he asked.
“I do not know what their goal is, but I fear it is to strike at the heart of the empire.”
“How many were there? Fifty?”
“Less than a dozen.”
“Against three hundred of the Imperial Guard? Against the minghan who can be summoned from Karakorum?” Chucai scoffed. “I think you overestimate their chances.”
“Maybe,” Alchiq said. “But how long has it been since the empire has fought a worthy foe? Has anyone since Genghis Khan been in a battle he could not win? Does the Khagan know what it takes to defeat an enemy that will not submit?”
Alchiq had been watching the white-haired prisoner while he spoke, and Chucai’s gaze was drawn to the young prisoner. The youth was slouched against the bars of his cage, his head turned partially away from them—his gaze fixed and unfocused on the slope of a nearby ger. One of his hands flopped out of the cage. He gave all the impression of being dazed and indifferent to anything going around him, and Chucai was struck by the stark difference between this lassitude and the way the youth had stared at everything when he had first seen him outside Karakorum.
Alchiq gave a curt nod, and angling his body away from the cage, signaled Chucai with a finger to his lip and then to his ear. The boy is listening.
“It took me many years to realize you were right, Master Chucai,” Alchiq said. “I was the poison that would have destroyed the empire. But not anymore. I’m the one who is going to help you save it.”
Chucai stared at the white-haired boy with a mixture of wonderment and curiosity. A spy? Was Alchiq suggesting that the boy was an advance scout—of all things—for a party of warriors from the West?
The idea was ludicrous and incredibly daring or... it was a paranoid fantasy concocted by the arkhi-damaged brain of a bitter old soldier.
Either way, Chucai realized, this man is an annoying complication. It was far better for him to stay here, watching the prisoners, than to be whispering these sorts of ideas in the Khagan’s ear. He had enough trouble with ?gedei as it was. He didn’t need the additional headache of the Khagan being spooked by outlandish theories from old drunks.
Haakon was still mulling over the conversation he had overheard between the black-bearded man and the quiet gray-haired Mongol when a pair of guards approached his cage. One of the two whacked on the bars with a spear shaft, getting his attention, and he slowly scooted back to the center of the cage. The other man busied himself with the lock on the door, and Haakon filed away his thoughts for later reflection.
Provided there was a chance to reflect later.
The Mongols had fed the prisoners earlier, a tradition the caged fighters all understood: a decent meal meant they were going to fight soon.
Once his cage was unlocked, Haakon crab-walked out. He stood upright, stretching for a few moments, and then allowed himself to be prodded in the direction of the feast—an orange glow over the peaks of the line of ger. Voices, flush with wine and airag, buzzed like angry bees lurking in the folds of the ger. He shook his arms out as he walked, trying to loosen his muscles and work out some of the knots he couldn’t quite rid himself of in the confines of the cage.