Haakon wedged his shoulder against the bars of his cage, and stretched his arm as far as he could manage. The arrow was just out of reach, and the flames licked at the tips of his fingers. Another inch or so. That was all he needed. He pressed his feet against the floor of the cage, trying to gain a little more leverage, trying to squeeze a little more of his arm through the bars. The flames danced merrily, capering in delight at his efforts. He opened his hand wider, ignoring the searing pain that followed, and wrapped several fingers around the arrow. With a gasp, he shoved himself away from the bars, closing his hand into a fist.
He rolled over, twisting his wrist so that the arrow fit through the bars. He threw it to the floor of his cage and beat at it rapidly with both hands. Slapping hard to put out the flame, to not feel the pain as the fire fought back.
The orange flames flickered and vanished, leaving only a thin strand of white smoke and a stinging pain in his palms. Gingerly, he picked up the arrow. The fire had devoured the cloth that had been wrapped around the shaft, and the shaft itself was charred enough that he thought it would break if he flexed it at all. But that wasn’t what he was interested in.
It was a heavy war arrow, and the metal arrowhead was hot to the touch. Its edge was still sharp.
He snapped the head and a few inches of wood off the charred shaft, and shifted around in his cage until he was closer to Krasniy’s cage. The giant was watching him, and when Haakon tossed the arrowhead over to his cage, he grinned at the young Northerner.
Just as Krasniy was twisting himself in his cage to get at the ropes, a group of Mongol warriors sprinted out of the line of ger. Krasniy froze, but the men were not interested in what the prisoners were doing. As quickly as they appeared, they were gone, and both of the prisoners relaxed. Krasniy stared at the piece of arrow in his hands—it appeared almost like a child’s toy in his thick fingers—and then he shook his head.
Haakon nodded. When the attack had first started, the confusion had seemed like a perfect opportunity for them to try to escape, but the chaos also meant guards could wander by at any time. It would take time to saw through the ropes, and without knowing they would be undisturbed, it would be a risk. As frustrating as it was, it was better to wait.
Cradling his hand in his lap, Haakon arranged himself as comfortably as he could in his cage. In the weeks he had had to watch his captors, there had been almost no opportunities to see them in combat. He had learned a great deal by watching how they rode their horses, how they organized their patrols, and the type of armor and weapons they carried, but he hadn’t actually seen them fight.
The flights of flaming arrows had stopped, and Haakon suspected this meant the attackers were launching their ground offensive. The rain of fire was meant to disorient and confuse the Khagan’s men, a tactic that would reduce their effectiveness. Perhaps this meant the attackers did not have so many numbers that they were going to overwhelm the camp. While it was likely that most of the fighting would happen near the perimeter of the camp, Haakon sat near the bars of his cage and watched. He saw men and women running about in a chaotic effort to put out fires, and occasionally he would spot the glint of firelight off steel as armed warriors moved through the ger, intent on finding invaders.
Stories of Feronantus’s insight into battlefield tactics were told and retold among the initiates at Tyrshammar, and here was an opportunity for Haakon to observe—to learn something of his enemy that might be useful knowledge. Yet he could see so very little.
As he strained to get a better glimpse of the fighting, he wondered if there was any leader in the West that could command such willing sacrifice—not just from his soldiers, but from all of his subjects. Soldiers would fight to protect their lord—that was their commission, after all—but civilians, for the most part, suffered whatever rule was impressed upon them. Some kings did manage to instill some devotion in their subjects, and the landed nobility might be inclined to take up arms for their ruler out of a similar devotion, but the wholesale fixation of a people on their leader on the scale that was the Mongol Empire dwarfed any kingdom Haakon had ever heard of in the West. Not even the Pope enjoyed this kind of fervor from his flock.
The Mongolian devotion to their Khagan was... daunting.
But he does have enemies, Haakon thought. He could hear men fighting. He flexed his singed fingers, wishing he had a real weapon.
Munokhoi paid little attention to the wild faces that rushed at him from the gloom. The night was filled with twisting strands of smoke, which disgorged screaming Chinese men at random intervals. Some of them had weapons—swords and spears he brushed aside like seed pods floating on a breeze—and others were wide-mouthed phantoms that he silenced with a quick thrust of his blood-drenched sword. They came and went, and their deaths were but tiny sparks that vanished instantly in the raging fire of his bloodlust.
He wanted the Chinese fire thrower.
He had seen its fiery exhalation a moment ago, a spurt of purple flame that had appeared like a tear in the night. The men fighting near him had been knocked down, and when he raised his right arm, he felt jagged jolts of pain run down his side. Tiny bits of metal hissed and steamed in his armor, and his elbow gleamed with fresh blood. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. Not now.