Pius began to translate, but his voice was so soft that Dietrich could barely hear him and he shouted at the priest to speak more loudly. Pius flinched, nearly fell off his horse, and started again.
“Your mighty force outnumbers them,” Dietrich continued when Pius’s translation elicited no arrows. “They would be fools to simply wait for you here. How defensible is that chapel?” He pointed at the broken building behind Tegusgal. “How long could they keep your men from breaching its walls? The history of their order goes back many, many years, and it has never been their way to lie down and die when confronted by hardship. They are at their most dangerous when you think you have them cornered.”
Dietrich glared at Pius as the priest faltered in his translation. Under Dietrich’s insistent gaze, the priest shuddered and then continued translating.
While the priest spoke, Dietrich let his reins go slack in his hands, and he tightened his right leg against his charger’s barrel. The horse flicked its ears and shook its head as it started to perambulate.
Tegusgal frowned, turning in the saddle as the men he’d sent to search the old building reemerged. The look on their faces was all Dietrich needed to see. They tried to make a report, but Tegusgal cut them off with an angry wave.
“He’s going to kill us,” Pius hissed, and Dietrich waved him quiet.
As his horse ambled in a wide arc, Dietrich used the animal’s motion to indicate the ring of trees surrounding the ruined monastery. “Where would you hide if you had fewer men?” he asked.
Tegusgal’s eyes flickered toward the tree line as Pius translated the question. In that instant, when the Mongol commander’s attention—as well as the attention of most of his archers—wasn’t on him, Dietrich snatched up his reins and drummed his heels against his horse’s barrel. He was pointing in almost the right direction—the narrow breach in the woods that was the path they had followed to the Shield-Brethren camp.
If he could make it that far, he might have a chance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Night of the Fish Gutter
Night came quickly in the mountains, and as the sky bled to black, the warmth of the day vanished. A half dozen bonfires were built, crackling piles of orange and yellow flame, and their light and heat summoned everyone to the center of the camp. A wooden platform was raised for the Khagan so that he could watch the festivities and all of his subjects could watch him eat and drink. Beside the platform, a gladiator ring had been erected, and already there were clusters of moneylenders haggling over bets.
The festival would last a good part of the night.
Master Chucai prowled along the periphery of the long fire pits where the Khagan’s numerous cooks worked furiously. They didn’t have the luxury of the permanent kitchens of the palace at Karakorum, but they were managing to craft an endless variety of baked and stewed and sweetly charred victuals. Occasionally, Chucai would stop a servant, loaded down with a steaming tray of food, and sample something off the top of the plate as he reiterated his desire to speak with the leader of the Darkhat.
The servant would nod, scurry off to deliver his tray of hot food, and upon his return, he would tell Chucai the same thing as all the others before him: the Khagan was in a most jovial mood and was enjoying Ghaltai’s company; the Darkhat commander felt it was unseemly to excuse himself at this time.
Chucai chafed at being denied, and what irritated him even further was the fact that he could not simply interrupt the Khagan’s meal and demand to speak—privately—with the Darkhat commander. ?gedei was annoyed with him, and it was likely the Khagan would simply berate him for interrupting the dinner party with what ?gedei—in his addled state—would think was nothing more than Chucai’s constant meddling in the affairs of the empire.
All of which would make Chucai’s job more difficult.
His conversation with Alchiq buzzed around the corners of his mind too. The idea that the Khagan might be in danger. If the Chinese raiders had been trying to kill the Khagan, that night would have gone very differently. The Chinese—outnumbered several times over by the Khagan’s Torguud escort—had managed to get far enough into the camp to steal the banner. How safe was the Khagan?
And the constant confusing complication of the banner. Where had it come from? Why was it important to the Chinese?
Chucai noticed a pair of men returning from the feast, and realized one of the two was more heavily attired than the other. As they approached the ruddy glow of the cooking pits, he noted the blued shadows of the second man’s cloak. Ghaltai.
“They are bringing out the fighters,” the Darkhat commander said as he came up to Chucai. “I told the Khagan I needed to take a piss.”
Chucai nodded sagely at the other man’s duplicity. “I appreciate you coming to see me,” he said. “I have a matter which I would discuss privately with you.”