He was dancing. He could see it quite plainly—his movements had neither rhythm nor tempo, almost comic and yet almost horrifying. The fiddler kept playing—yes, like he should; play for your Khagan—and the birdman who thought he was a dancer flew away. ?gedei threw out his arms and flailed them wildly, chasing his opponent away with his wild display of avian aggression. He threw back his head and brayed a great laugh. They are all watching me.
“This’s how da-da-dancing is.” It was difficult to speak and move at the same time, and he pitched back alarmingly. Whirling his arms—I am not a bird!—he arrested his fall and remained upright. Chest heaving, he stared at the crowd and realized they were silent. They were not shouting and cheering. They stood and stared, as if what they saw horrified them.
“What’s it?” he cried. “Not enough f’r you?” He tottered as he whirled, not to dance but to glare at all of them. If he spun fast enough, he could see them all at the same time. “I’m the...greatest. Youuu’re worms. In dirt.”
The crowd began to shrink, folding back on itself with each of his rotations. Fewer and fewer faces stared at him. They wouldn’t even look at him. Cowards, he raged. I am Khagan of an empire of cowards.
A hand grasped his arm, and he turned to strike the man foolish enough to lay a hand on him, but he was still spinning and his legs crossed themselves. He would have fallen on his face, a discarded child’s toy, but the hand holding him was strong and it kept him upright. He grasped the hand that held him and traced his eyes up. Forearm to elbow to shoulder to head. To a face.
A young face, with eyes that did not look away. Nor were they filled with fear or disgust. There was a bruise on the cheek and a thin line—red and scabbed. I know this face.
?gedei smiled and fell into the embrace of the man who had caught him. Friend, he thought, you did not run away. After that, he remembered nothing.
5
Custodi Animam Meam, Quonian Sanctus Sum
IT IS ALWAYS the sound of the tree falling that wakes him—a cracking and tearing as if the sky is being torn apart by God—and it snaps him upright, gasping like a fish thrown out of the sea. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that his whole body quakes. He can’t see anything. God has hidden the world from his eyes. All he hears is the sound of wood splintering and shattering. When the bulk of the tree hits the ground, he feels the impact in his bones, and his heart skips.
What comes next, in the wake of the thunderous collapse of the tree, is always different, although he knows he is trapped in the same nightmare: sometimes it is rain, sticky and heavy like blood; sometimes it is a howling wind; sometimes thunderous echoes that roll back and forth like an approaching storm, one that never arrives.
The echoes are too rhythmic for thunder this time, too much like drums or hooves.
He sees them coming. At first, they are tiny dots of light, like fireflies in the distance. But they grow too large to be fireflies, the pinpricks of light blossoming into balls of dancing flame. He sees the faces next: mouths, leering and screaming; eyes, filled with distorted gleams of Hell. The ghosts ride short-legged horses, almost ponies, and the sight would be comical if it weren’t for their number and the death they bring.
Behind the riders looms the rest of the nightmare, a landscape that swells and opens like a malevolent flower blooming. It makes his stomach twist, seeing the world come back from nothing. It is like watching a parchment thrown into a fire come back to life, blackened ash transforming into a fire-gnawed page. The riders pass over him, the horses leap deftly over his supine form, and the world slams into him, not as ephemeral as the ghosts of the Mongol army.
He knows this place: the battlefield at Mohi, near the Sajó River, where the Mongol armies met King Béla’s forces. The Mongols sprang a trap on the Hungarian forces, crushing them between two lines, like a blacksmith crushing a fly between calloused palms. Around him, scattered in clumps and piles, are the bodies of the fallen. They aren’t dead; the field is twitching and writhing with the mortally wounded. He realizes that every one of those who fell at Mohi is trapped with him in this nightmarish limbo, caught between death and reality. All they crave is release from the pain.
Nearby, a man tries to hold his stomach closed, but he is missing the lower half of his left arm, and he doesn’t understand why he can get no grip on his skin with his left hand. On his left, two men who are both skewered on the same lance struggle to pull themselves free of the pole, but they keep moving in opposite directions. They bump each other or strain at the lance, and the motion only pulls at the other man. They haven’t come to blows, but they will soon. They don’t know any other way to free themselves. A man wanders by, the naked stump of his neck weeping a steady stream of blood down his back. He carries a head under his arm. It isn’t his, and it directs the body across the field, looking for its lost body.
What is he supposed to do? Is he supposed to save them all? The one with the missing hand—is he supposed to find it and return it, and would God’s grace reattach the hand to the arm? What about the mortal slash across the belly? How is he supposed to close that wound? He has no needle, nor any thread. His hands are empty, and his satchel is gone. All that he has is his robe and his rosary.