She found a shallow depression, deep enough to provide some shelter from the wind. From its center, she could almost pretend the horizon was hidden beyond a gentle ridge. It must have held water once, as there was more wormwood clustered within the bowl than the surrounding area. The brush would burn after a fashion, sticky and smoldering until it dried out, and then it would flash with heat and light. Eleázar set to cutting down a supply of fuel for the fire.
Two hunting parties ranged north and south from the depression, engaged in an unspoken contest to see who could provide the best meat for the evening meal. Cnán privately thought neither team would find much, and her stomach grumbled noisily when Vera and Percival returned a few hours later with a pair of scrawny rabbits. However, when she spotted R?dwulf and Yasper a while later, her excited shouts brought the rest of the company running.
R?dwulf was walking beside his horse, who had been conscripted into pulling a makeshift travois that had been assembled from cloaks, rope, and one of Finn’s hunting spears. Sprawled on the makeshift frame was a deer with a spread of velvet-covered antlers. Cnán’s mouth watered at the sight.
“There are more out there,” Yasper announced with a grin, “but figuring out how to carry one back to camp was hard enough.”
“One is more than sufficient to best our paltry rabbits,” Percival said.
“I like rabbit,” Istvan pointed out.
Everyone ignored the Hungarian. Very little of what he had said since he returned had made much sense, and they could all see that he was lost in the throes of a freebutton mushroom madness. Though, how he had found them on the plain was a mystery no one had been able to explain.
“There’s a herd about an hour north of here,” Yasper explained, “And water too, I think. We could smell it, but didn’t have a chance to find it. These deer spooked at the sight of us, but didn’t run far.”
Feronantus grunted slightly at the unspoken details of Yasper’s report. A wild herd that knew enough of mounted riders to be wary, but not so much that they would abandon the sanctuary offered by running water.
Yasper slapped the side of the dead animal. “Tarandos,” he pronounced, winking at Raphael. “Aristotle’s stag. We must be at the edge of the world when we start finding the beasts of legend.”
Cnán guffawed at the lunacy of this statement, but the alchemist’s mood was too infectious to be deterred.
Fresh vegetables were in short supply. Most of what the company carried was dried or salted—the meager rations a soldier ate without noticing taste or texture—but Yasper, once he had convinced Feronantus that he wasn’t going to make the deer burn with witchfire, managed to blend together a paste that he threw on the fire at regular intervals as the deer cooked. It should have been slow-roasted, cut steaks buried in a bed of white coals, but their stomachs all growled so loudly—and so constantly—as R?dwulf was skinning the deer, that they decided to erect a makeshift spit and cook the meat as quickly as possible.
The fire was going to be visible for many miles, and the smell of cooking meat would spread for a similar distance. They couldn’t hide on the steppes, and given everyone’s exhaustion, Raphael didn’t think such obscurity was high on anyone’s mind. Better to fight with a full belly than to be denied one final, solid meal.
They gathered around the fire as Feronantus cut heavy chunks of steaming meat from the cooked deer. Squatting, lying, standing, kneeling—none of them went far—they fell upon the meat with the appetites of doomed men. Even Cnán, who typically ate very sparingly, like a tiny bird pecking at seeds, attacked a piece of meat with both hands, eagerly licking at the juices as they ran down her arms.
We needed this, Raphael thought, his belly groaning as it stretched around the weight of deer meat. Yasper had produced a pair of skins filled with the Mongolian liquor—arkhi—and Raphael intercepted one as it came past him. He had not gotten any more used to the pale liquid, but he drank it readily enough. He coughed, his nose and eyes watering, and he passed the skin on to a laughing R?dwulf.
“Breathe in more slowly,” the big Welshman chuckled as he tipped back a portion nearly double the size Raphael had taken. R?dwulf grimaced and belched, eliciting a cheer from Eleázar on the other side of the fire. The Spaniard raised the other skin of arkhi in salute.
“I have drunk many strange things in my travels,” Raphael admitted, “but this drink of the Mongols is difficult to acquire a taste for.”
“I’ve had worse.” R?dwulf offered the skin, but Raphael begged off. “That tree sap in Greece, for instance.”
“Retsina,” Yasper moaned. “Oh, the Greeks know many things, but it is a pity that they could not apply the same rigor to the crafting of wines as they do to the natural sciences and philosophy.”
“Philosophy cannot solve every riddle, my friend,” R?dwulf said.
“Making a decent spirit is not that hard of a riddle,” Yasper countered. He received the second skin from Eleázar. “Do you know how the Mongols make this? They prepare the ingredients and attach it to their saddles. As they ride, the heat of the sun and the movement of their horse create a perfect environment for the spirits to arise.”