She knew Jachin was taking a bath, which meant the ger used by her handmaidens would probably be empty. After slinking in and stealing a few articles of clothing and a bag to carry them in, she wandered toward the makeshift pasture on the northern side of the caravan, intending to investigate the possibility of stealing a horse—a dangerous proposition, especially given the punishment for horse thievery among Mongols—but as she caught sight of Gansukh’s lonely ger one last time, an idea occurred to her.
She didn’t bother unlacing the flaps this time; she simply used her knife to cut through the ties. Inside the smell assaulted her, but she breathed through her mouth, ignoring the worst of the acrid reek. Munokhoi had broken everything that could be broken and taken his sword to the rest. She rummaged through the wreckage until she found Gansukh’s store of extra supplies: needle, thread, candle, cloth, sharpening stone, flint.
Working quickly, she arranged everything that would burn readily along one wall of the ger, piling the furs and the straw from Gansukh’s sleeping mat on top. Her hands shook slightly as she used the flint, and it took her three tries to coax a steady flame from the slightly damp straw.
The flames were tiny and threatened to go out as she watched. She blew on them a few times until they grew steadier. As she stepped back to the flaps of the ger, she watched the flames. They weren’t going to go out, but it would take a little while before the pile really caught. Long enough for her to be nowhere near the ger when it started to burn.
As she turned to leave, she heard voices outside the ger, and she carefully peeked out. Two Torguud were wandering nearby, arguing about the evening meal. They noticed nothing amiss about Gansukh’s ger, though more likely they hadn’t even looked. They were very intent in their conversation.
Waiting, Lian glanced back nervously over her shoulder. The flames were a little taller than before. She didn’t have as much time as she thought.
As soon as the men were out of earshot, she ducked out of the ger, laid the flaps carefully over one another, and strode off quickly for the horse pasture.
On her way there, she passed the row of cages that housed the prisoners from the West. She stumbled to a halt when she realized one of the cages was empty. The blond-haired Westerner was housed in the adjacent cage, and he was staring at her eagerly, almost as if she had caught him doing something illicit.
Her breath caught in her throat. The prisoners were trying to escape.
Krasniy sawed savagely at the thick rope that looped around the door of his cage while Haakon kept watch. After the excitement of the Khagan’s departure, the camp became very quiet, and after a heated discussion, they decided this was the best opportunity they were going to have for escape.
Krasniy went to work on the rope, and when the arrowhead didn’t cut through the thick rope quickly, Haakon’s apprehension started to mount.
If they were discovered...
It was best to not worry about such possibilities. They were committed to their course of action now, and as fraught as the spontaneous plan was, they were actively attempting to escape. They were fighting for their freedom, and as the first rope parted and Krasniy began work on the second, Haakon’s fear was replaced with a growing elation.
Freedom.
The last rope parted, and with a hoarse shout, Krasniy shoved the door of his cage open. Moving stiffly, he lumbered over to Haakon’s cage and shoved the arrowhead through the bars to him. As Haakon picked up the tiny saw and went to work on his ropes, Krasniy indicated he was going to look for weapons. Haakon nodded absently, his attention focused on keeping the slippery arrowhead moving back and forth along the same axis of the hempen rope.
He had just finished sawing through the first rope when the dark-haired woman appeared not far from his cage. He hadn’t heard her coming, and he could only stand there stupidly, the arrowhead hidden in his fist, staring at her. Beside him, Krasniy’s empty cage with its open door was all the evidence anyone needed to understand what was going on.
Haakon stared at the woman, quickly trying to figure out what he could do—if anything—to keep her from raising an alarm. And when voices did go up in the camp beyond the first row of ger, he flinched. They had been discovered already! He wanted to bang his head against the cage door in frustration.
Much to his surprise, the dark-haired woman quickly strode toward his cage, pulling a knife out of her robes. He stood back from the bars and watched—both mystified and elated—as she hacked at the rope holding his cage closed. Her knife cut through the rope very quickly in comparison to the laborious effort it had been taking with the arrowhead. “Escape?” the woman said in the Mongol tongue as she pulled open the door of his cage. She motioned to him, pointing off to his left. “Now,” she said.
Behind her, he spotted Krasniy returning, a bloody sword in his hand. The woman sensed his attention shifting to behind her and she turned around, quickly backing a few steps away from the cage, trying to both he and Krasniy in her field of view.
“We have to go,” the woman said. “Now. There is very little time.”