All the vines he had found during his searches had been too full of juices—there wasn’t enough time to dry and temper them properly. He had found fuses in the satchel, but they were all short, not much longer than the distance from the tip of his longest finger to the base of his hand. Even if he tied them all together, they weren’t going to be long enough.
He sighed and rubbed his scalp vigorously. He was running out of time. It wouldn’t take that long for the hunting party to find the dead bear. He had to act soon. Otherwise, the Khagan could still escape.
What were the right ratios?
He heard a distant cry, like the scream of a hawk as it dives upon its prey, but he knew it wasn’t a war cry of a predatory bird. It was a scream of pain.
R?dwulf was shooting his arrows. The trap had been sprung.
Muttering to himself (and to God), Yasper scooped up the various pouches of ingredients and combined them as equally as he could into two of the larger pouches. After packing in a layer of metal shards, he shoved a fuse into each and tied them as tightly as he dared. He struck his flint against the nearby rock face, scattering sparks. The first fuse hissed, and he blew on it briefly to make sure the sparks became fire. The fuse caught, flaring into a sizzling finger of blue and orange flame.
He stared at the flame. “Alalazu,” he muttered. He didn’t know the history of the Shield-Brethren battle cry, but it seemed an appropriate blessing for his impromptu solution.
He stood up and hurled the bag, aiming for the center of the cluster of guards.
The alchemical incendiary exploded with a delightfully noisy boom, and the concussive sound echoed back and forth between the hills. It was an unmistakable signal, in case the others were wondering when the fun was going to begin. Yasper peered out of his hiding place, trying to see anything through the gray haze that floated over the valley floor. He saw shapes that were, most likely, mounted riders, the men trying to calm their terrified horses. Other shapes materialized—men crawling and staggering. As the haze thinned, Yasper got a better glimpse of the carnage wrought by his device. His gorge rose, and he clamped his hands over his mouth and sat down heavily on his rump, breathing rapidly through his nose.
Several Mongols had been shredded by the explosion. He had seen what bears could do to a human body, and the lacerations and dismemberment wreaked by beast paled in comparison to the bodily destruction scattered about the field below. The only means by which he could tally the dead was to count those still living; the dead were in too many pieces.
His gaze fell upon the other alchemical incendiary, and he kicked it away, horrified to be near such a hellish construct. It slid across the ground, and his horror mounted as he watched it tumble across the remnants of the tiny fire he had built earlier. It rolled to a stop, the prickly tongue of its fuse resting against the ground. Yasper held his breath, praying that the capricious imps who did the Devil’s mischief would not be watching.
They were. The fuse sparked and sputtered, and a thin blue finger of flame began to dance at the end of the fuse, flinging sparks with reckless abandon.
Yasper scrambled forward, burning his hand as he put it down in the not-yet-cold coals of his fire, and he grabbed up the lit incendiary, throwing it down the hill.
He threw himself to the ground and put his hands over his ears, in a futile effort to block out the horrific sound he knew was coming.
They burst out of the forest in a line, riding abreast, their maille glittering in the sun. Feronantus: the Shield-Brethren battle cry on his lips, leaning forward in his saddle as if he were a young man again. Percival: his armor gleaming brighter than the rest, sword in one hand, mace in the other, his horse responding to the lightest touch of his knees—the results of months of continuous training. Vera: sword and shield ready, her face hidden behind the blank mask of her helm; the woman he had kissed in the forest was gone, and all that remained was the indomitable spirit of the skjalddis.
And he, Raphael: veteran of the Fifth Crusade, survivor of the siege of Cordobá, oath breaker, man of God though cast out from the Church. A knight initiate of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, at first for expediency and then because the order was the only family that would accept him. He carried sword and shield, for now was not the time to hang back with spear and arrow.
Now was the time to look your enemy in the eye when you slew him.
They came at a hard gallop, their horses’ hooves pounding at the dusty ground. The Shield-Brethren rode to war, expecting to face insurmountable odds—one hundred, two hundred of the finest fighting men the Mongol Empire could field. They rode, anticipating a bristling barricade of spears and lances, and found...
... an empty plain.
Raphael sat up in his saddle, scanning for some sign of the Khagan’s host. When he and Yasper and Istvan had stumbled across its passage in the forest, they had been somewhat mystified by the size the track suggested, and they had assumed it was the advance party, the scouts who were ranging ahead of the main host.