Vera was their guide. She had traveled in these parts before. Her order maintained old maps and manuscripts, compiled by travelers of yore, which she had studied since the nuns had first taught her to read. Many of them told tales of a great empire, the Khazars, who had once controlled this territory, holding at bay the Mahometans and Persians in the south, the Turks in the east, and the Slavs in the west, until the great Sviatoslav, at the head of an army bolstered in part by Vera’s predecessors, had broken their power. Now surprisingly little trace of them remained. Or perhaps the landscape was actually dotted with ruined cities, which Vera was taking care to avoid. Some days the only signs that humans had ever inhabited these places were the occasional kurgans, the burial mounds left by the steppe people as monuments to kings, heroes, and—to judge from the size of some of them—fallen armies. It was these, more than anything, that troubled Raphael’s mind. For the last thing they had done before riding out of the gates of Kiev had been to bury Roger in the churchyard at the top of the hill, and like all fresh graves, this one had looked like a long, low mound—a small kurgan that would, in time, sink into the earth like all the others.
When he thought of this, his hand would sometimes stray to the dagger in his belt. Not to its hilt, but to the blade, which he could feel through the leather scabbard. His fingers would trace its outlines and he would wonder whether this steel had been responsible for Roger’s death. For there had been a moment, during the fight in the dark, when Raphael had collided with someone—someone armed and moving with a purpose—and his arm had lashed out unthinkingly and driven this blade home in a body. He was sure of that. He had not struck a limb, but a torso. He could remember how the grip had twisted slightly in his hand as the blade found its way between ribs. Raphael’s fist had thumped against the torso as the blade had gone in to its hilt. And that torso, he was quite certain, had not been protected by maille.
During this endless ride across the ruins of the Khazars’ empire, it happened a hundred times that, while ostensibly thinking of something else, he would glance down to find his fingers tracing the outline of that blade and realize that some part of his mind was reliving the fight in the tunnels yet again. When this happened, he would always tell himself the same thing: it meant nothing. Not all of the Livonians had worn maille. They had been accompanied by local monks, who, of course, didn’t even own maille.
Had they not been so worried that the Shield-Maidens above were being attacked, they might have stayed down there and sorted through the bodies, and Raphael would have found one, unarmored, with a small but fatal dagger wound in the ribs. But it had not happened that way. They had rushed up through the cellars of the priory to find nothing amiss and Feronantus and the other members of the party awaiting their return. Others had gone down later to retrieve the bodies. The thought that he might have slain Roger in the dark had not fully entered Raphael’s mind until late that night, when he’d seen it in a nightmare, and by that point, all of the corpses had been put under the ground except for that of Roger, who was allowed to lie in state in the church while they prepared a proper burial. Raphael had succumbed to what he freely admitted was a species of moral cowardice: he had not inspected the body, not looked for the wound that had done his friend in, because he was afraid of what he would find. The image of that hypothetical dagger wound was now burnt into his mind like a stigma.
8
Naked Upon the Steppe
NOTHING BUT Avast emptiness, as if he lay naked on the steppes and the stars had all gone out...
?gedei sat up with a gasp and then immediately fell onto his side, retching and puking. His head was caught in the grip of a horrid demon, squeezing his brain like it was wringing juice from a piece of fruit. His skin was hard and brittle over bones that seemed to smolder. Breathing was both painful and thrilling, as if he were stealing each inhalation, past the number he had been allotted for his life. He gasped and spat, trying to rid himself of the sour-tasting bile on the back of his tongue. His cheeks ached, and his vision was filled with dancing motes.
“You’re awake.” A voice from Heaven, proclaiming a great truth that he now had to live up to. ?gedei managed a guttural groan and rolled onto his back, fighting a wave of nausea that threatened to send him to the edge of the bed again.
“I have died,” ?gedei whispered.
“Not quite,” the voice replied. “Though, for a while, I was not certain you would ever wake.”
?gedei turned his head slightly and peered around for the source of the voice. The speaker had admitted uncertainty, a lack of all-seeing knowledge. The voice could not be divine in origin; it came from a man’s throat.
He lay in a ger, the air around him heavy with smoke. A censer hung from the ceiling, seeping a hazy fog from a smoldering patch of herbs. The fog made the air fragrant and pleasing, but harder to breathe. Other braziers glowed, dull red splotches that cast dull shadows on the rough hide of the ger walls.
Sitting on a low stool near his bed was the young whelp of Chagatai’s.
?gedei’s eyes drooped, suddenly heavy, and with a great effort, he forced them open again, forced himself to focus on the face of Gansukh.
“Where am I?” he demanded.
Gansukh roused himself at ?gedei’s question, sitting more upright. “My Khan,” he said, “you were not yourself last night. I had to escort you away...to someplace safe. Where you would not be disturbed. While you recovered from the—”
?gedei squeezed his eyes shut and winced as sharp jabs of pain lanced back through his head. He dimly recalled a dancer—no, he had been the one dancing—and let out a long sigh as he realized there could be any number of indignities that Gansukh was not telling him.
“My Khan...” Gansukh tentatively broke the silence. “The path you have chosen for yourself. It goes nowhere. It—”
?gedei smacked his hand against the bed. “You dare to lecture me?” His mouth moved uncontrollably, trying to swallow away the acrid taste of his saliva.
Gansukh said nothing, but in the ruddy light of the ger, the dark bruise on his face said enough.
?gedei fumbled for another stinging accusation, but all he could think of was I’m grateful. Someone had come to his aid; someone had given him shelter and succor. Boroghul, he thought. He was seventeen again, back at Khalakhaljid Sands, lost and dying. “I made a spectacle of myself in front of the entire palace, didn’t I?”
Gansukh shrugged.
“You are right, young pony,” he sighed. “What path is this that I am on? This is not the road my father saw for me. This is not the path of the Empire.” He held his hands over his face and tried very hard to hold back the tears. “I’ve been so weak, haven’t I? I’ve been lost for so long.”
“The hardest thing,” Gansukh said, “is to admit you’re lost.”
“No,” said ?gedei, lowering his hands. “It is harder to find your way back.”