“It doesn’t look fine,” she argued.
“It’ll keep,” Raphael said, rolling up his medical kit. “I have to take my maille off to get to the rest of it, and there isn’t time.” He stood, trying to hide how stiff he was, and his gaze wandered down the narrow valley. “Where is Feronantus?” he asked.
Haakon, Cnán, and the Chinese woman all looked as well. All they could see was a single horse, cropping the tiny tufts of hardy grass, and a pair of bodies, still tangled together, but unmoving. Of the leader of the Shield-Brethren company there was no sign.
“God damn him,” Raphael swore. “He left us.”
“What?” Cnán said.
“He had a plan, remember?” Raphael said savagely. “It just didn’t include the rest of us.” He stalked back to his horse. “Haakon,” he called. “That horse over there. It’s yours.”
Haakon looked down at the still body of the Khagan. “What about him?” he said. “We can’t just leave him.”
“We can and will,” Raphael said as he swung painfully up into his saddle. He nodded toward the dead body of the Khagan’s horse. “It is a hunting accident. Nothing more. As long as we are not here when the Mongols come.” He snapped his reins and his horse trotted away.
Cnán and the other woman got back on their horse as well, and the Binder motioned for Haakon to follow them. He hesitated, looking back and forth between the dead body of the Khagan and his friends.
Haakon limped over to the body and pulled the Khagan’s knife free. No one was going to think hunting accident with the knife sticking out of his neck, he rationalized. He wiped the blade clean on his own ragged trousers and retrieved the sheath from ?gedei’s belt. He felt like he should cover the body or something, but there was no cloth available and so he settled for making sure the Khagan’s right eye was closed. The left had swollen shut.
He picked up his sword, even though the Khagan’s looked to be a finer blade. He was already keeping the knife. Taking the sword too was tantamount to robbing from the dead.
The knife, he told himself, was a spoil of war. A testament to what had been done.
Painfully, he jogged down the valley until he reached the bodies of Krasniy and the Torguud captain. There was a lot of blood on both men, and it was hard to tell who had died first, but neither had given up. He stopped a moment to offer a prayer to the Virgin for the red-haired giant who had been his only friend in this strange land.
He turned, whistling lightly at the Torguud captain’s pony. It pricked up its ears and regarded him warily. He limped toward it slowly, talking calmly to it. Assuring it he was friendly.
And then he stopped, casting around for something that should have been lying on the ground nearby. He raised his arm and called out to Raphael and Cnán, who circled back.
“It’s missing,” he said when they rode up.
“What is?” Raphael asked.
“The lance that the Torguud captain was carrying,” He said.
Cnán looked around too and nodded. “Haakon’s right. The Khagan’s bodyguard was carrying a banner. There were streamers attached to it, made from hair. Horsehair, I think.”
Lian spoke up from behind Cnán. “Spirit Banner,” she said in the Mongol tongue.
“What did she say?” Raphael demanded.
“She said it was a Spirit Banner,” Haakon translated.
“The symbol of the Mongol Empire,” Cnán supplied. “It belonged to Genghis Khan, ?gedei’s father.”
“Is he the one who first built the empire?” Raphael asked.
“Aye, he was. He united the clans.”
“Of course he did,” Raphael said with a heavy sigh. He shook his head. “Feronantus has it.”
“Why?” Cnán asked.
“You were there,” Raphael said. “At the Kinyen when Istvan spouted his nonsense about the All-Father.”
“All-Father?” Haakon asked. “The Norse All-Father? What are you talking about?”
“Yggdrasil,” Raphael said. “Ragnarok.” His eyes were bright, filled with tears. “Surely you know the stories, Haakon.”
They did not want to talk to him, but Kristaps was persistent. His mood and the alacrity with which his hand fell to the hilt of his sword helped, and finally he found a young Hospitaller who was willing to tell him what had happened at the bridge. He did not believe the story at first, but in the absence of any other evidence, it became the story he would tell.