Gansukh saw the apprehension in Luo’s eye too, and a low chuckle rumbled out of his throat. One of the other Chinese soldiers smacked Gansukh with the butt of his spear, and the Mongol warrior fell forward, his face driving into the dirt. He rolled over onto his side, and his teeth were bared, a grimace of both pain and joy.
Lian’s heart pounded in her chest. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. The Chinese would free her and keep Gansukh as a hostage. Given time, she was certain she could convince Luo that the young Mongol would be useful. She knew she was being naive and foolish, but despite everything—the years of captivity, the degradation of being Chucai’s slave, of being forced to teach this savage manners—she found herself reluctant to turn her back on Gansukh. He was something different in an otherwise cruel and barbaric world. She hadn’t lied to Luo; ?gedei did respect Gansukh and might even consider ransoming his return.
Luo roughly grabbed her arm, all pretense of civility gone. “Take her,” he said, shoving Lian toward his men. “And if this dog looks like it might bite, kill it.”
32
The Night of Steel and Fire
TWO DAYS LATER, Cnán was sitting in camp when she heard approaching hooves—a party of perhaps half a dozen. “Approaching hooves” was generally not a welcome sound in Mongol-held territory. Nevertheless, she did not even bother to look up from her mending. It would be the war party that Feronantus had sent out before dawn. They would be returning in high spirits. R?dwulf, Finn, Vera, and Istvan, accompanied by Eleázar or Percival, or whichever sentry had first detected their approach and ridden out to greet them. It was always thus. The Shield-Brethren were never surprised, never caught off guard. She was as safe in this camp as an emperor within the walls of the Forbidden City. Perhaps safer.
Which meant that she was useless, bored, and irritable.
The war party’s tale told around the cook fire was, in many respects, a repeat of the fight in the gully in which Cnán had taken part. This time, Istvan had lured the Mongol party into the ambush. Alchiq had increased the size of such parties to a full arban and had changed their tactics.
There was no more leisurely tracking of quarry across the plain: when they had seen Istvan against the skyline, they had sent one of their number galloping straight back toward their main camp, while the other nine had come for him. But only eight had pursued the Hungarian in earnest; one other had trailed along deep in their rear. As soon as R?dwulf’s first arrow had taken the leader of the arban out of his saddle, this other had wheeled his pony and ridden for the main Mongol party.
Beyond that, it sounded not unlike the engagement Cnán had witnessed. R?dwulf ’s bow still had the power to surprise the Mongols with its range, and so he had killed a few. Vera, left without weapons, had been given a crossbow by Feronantus from a pack whose contents Cnán found wondrous indeed.
The other Mongols had tried to circle and penetrate the screen of brush in which R?dwulf had concealed himself, but Vera had killed one with a single, silent boltshot. Two more were killed at close quarters by Finn and R?dwulf while Vera went through the tedious process of redrawing and loading her weapon. A bolt in the back had taken down one horseman who had decided to flee, and Istvan had pursued the last two survivors in a running archery battle across the steppe, eventually killing one with an arrow and the other with his scimitar. Immensely pleased with himself, the Hungarian had returned, trailing a short string of ponies and sporting three Mongol arrows that had embedded themselves in various parts of his armor.
Meanwhile, R?dwulf had recovered all but one of his arrows. One, still lost, had missed and likely lay buried in the grass, and he might have been able to find it had they more leisure to search. But many more Mongols would be coming after them soon, and so they dispersed, flying in all directions as fast as they could ride, driving the spare ponies across the grass to lay false trails and then picking their way down into streambeds to complicate the work of those who would soon be tracking them.
As Cnán knew perfectly well, there would be no rest until the thing was finished. For there was nowhere to hide on the steppe, and childish tactics like running down streambeds could only delay the moment when Alchiq and his remaining threescore and seven Mongols would descend upon them in force.
Without being instructed to, she got ready to ride through the night.
*
What she had not expected—but, in retrospect, should have guessed—was that Feronantus would order them to seek out the main body of the jaghun and hunt it down as if it were nothing more than a wounded antelope leaving a blood trail across the steppe. Of course, it made sense. What Feronantus did always made sense in some or other insane way. The Shield-Brethren were supposed to be fleeing; the only way, then, to obtain the advantage of surprise was to turn around and attack.
It might have miscarried had the jaghun made its camp in the open. Instead, after a day and a half of hunting the Shield-Brethren across the steppe, the remaining arbans converged on a shambling market town that had grown up on the bank of a river.