*
Shortly after wandering into the sprawling outskirts of the city that surrounded the Mongolian arena, Andreas spotted a grimy boy watching him. He was a scrawny lad, and he lacked a shirt—though, judging by the sun-darkened color of his skin, he was not concerned overmuch by its loss. Andreas first spotted him perched on a cracked rain barrel near a pair of tents that had once been blue; shortly thereafter, he saw the boy again, crouching behind a block of rubble next to a misshapen oven cobbled together from cracked brick and charred stone.
Andreas bargained with a fruit vendor for a couple of apples, offering muddled Latin phrases and an exaggerated wave of his wooden cross as a blessing in exchange. The fruit was mealy and riddled with worm-sign, and he threw one of the apples at the boy, who snatched it from the air like a bear grabbing a fish from a river. As soon as the boy had devoured the fruit, Andreas held up the other apple and beckoned the youth over.
“I’m looking for a boy,” he said. “His name is Hans.”
The boy scratched his head and shrugged, seemingly unable to understand the Shield-Brother’s Latin. His eyes flicked back and forth, though, betraying him. When he reached for the second apple, Andreas tucked his hand into his sleeve, making the fruit disappear. “I want to find Hans,” he said. “Help me, and then you can have the apple.”
The boy chattered at him in some pidgin tongue that was part German, part Latin, and a scramble of something that Andreas assumed was the Mongolian tongue.
It was possible the boy didn’t know whom Andreas was talking about, but the lad reminded him of the youth who had come out to their chapter house. There was an alert watchfulness in his expression, and even as scrawny and ill fed as he appeared, he wasn’t afraid—a sort of brusque defiance that Andreas read as ownership. They might be orphans, but this was their city. If this boy didn’t know Hans personally, he knew someone who would.
“Hans,” Andreas said one more time, and he flicked the tip of his staff, catching the boy in the shin. “Now.”
The boy hopped back, clutching at his ankle. He howled at Andreas, his face screwing up in an overblown rictus of pain and anger. Andreas shrugged; adjusting his sleeve to reveal the apple, he brought it up to his mouth and made to take a large bite.
“No! No!” The boy changed his mind, and his hands were now entreating Andreas to stop. “Hans,” he said, nodding, when Andreas lowered the apple. He took off, sprinting down the muddy street.
Andreas smiled and looked over his shoulder. Maks was arguing with the same fruit vendor he had gotten the apples from. There was no sign of Eilif or Styg, but he knew they were nearby.
Andreas wandered on, no real destination in mind. There were three matters he sought to accomplish on his jaunt into the city, and making contact with Hans was the most critical. The boy would provide him intelligence about Hünern, and thus educated, he could complete his other tasks. Until he made contact with Hans, he wanted to get his own sense of the city.
The battle of Legnickie Pole had taken place just a few months ago, and Duke Henry’s army had been broken and scattered. The orders had lost men too; more than a hundred Templar and Hospitaller knights had fallen. It had been a slaughter, a brutal decimation that should have left a permanent stain on the landscape. And yet, not more than a few verst away, a gladiatorial arena had been erected, and to it had flocked tens—if not hundreds—of combatants, all eager to prove themselves against each other and the most relentless force Christendom had ever seen.
They came willingly, filled with that same burning zeal he had seen time and again on the ships bound for the Levant. They wanted so badly to take up arms against the foreign devils who had invaded their homelands. They knew there was no hope on the field of battle—the piles of skulls outside the walls of Legnica were a constant reminder of that fact—and yet they came anyway.
Andreas could remember that incendiary desire to fight, to rage against a world that seemed to have been forgotten by God, to raise a sword against an enemy that seemed to be both faceless and everywhere. To slice, to cut, to kick, to bite—to blindly lash at the very existence that inflicted so much pain.
Nothing ever changes, does it? he mused. We fall into this world, and all we do for the duration of our miserable lives is fight. He touched the ragged cross that swung on the cord around his neck. What else do we know how to do?
*
When the scrawny boy returned, he attempted to haggle with Andreas over the terms of their deal. Apple first, he had insisted, then Hans. When Andreas laughed and stood firm, the boy had screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue. But he relented, beckoning for Andreas to follow him.
The boy led him down a narrow alley filled with vats of fermenting ale. Brewers, wearing aprons and gloves stained with their work, glared as Andreas passed. He was both an outsider and a priest as they saw him—doubly unwelcome—and the only reason they didn’t run him off was because of his escort. The boy ducked under an ash-streaked tarp that was stretched over a frame of rough-cut lumber, beckoning with a pale arm for Andreas to follow.