DURING THE NIGHT, Raphael feared that Vera—like Alena—was taking a turn for the worse. Her wounds seemed to be winning; her fever spiked, her skin grew pale and damp, and her eyes fluttered whenever she managed to come up out of a sleep very near to death itself. The change in Vera saddened Raphael greatly. He knew he should not allow himself to be so troubled by her condition. This was not the first bedside vigil he had kept, and he knew the danger of the bond that could be created between two people. Death was seldom just or predictable when it came to loved ones.
Still, he remained, renewing candles as they guttered and died, and fading in and out of his own napping reverie, but with a hand always on her wrist and another at her forehead. To his surprise, as night merged into early dawn, there came a scuffling noise before the door of the drafty old house—then, a mouse-gentle knock. Feronantus answered and led in a group of men and women—Khazars who lived in the neighborhood. They brought in two generous bowls draped with woven cloths and containing rich broth and gruel, which Raphael gratefully accepted. Feronantus thanked them for their help and led the curious group of five back to the door, managing to persuade them through signs that it was best if Vera was not disturbed.
Raphael found their visit remarkable. A much safer course would have been for the Khazars to turn them over to the Mongols, for Graymane’s jaghun would not have stopped at the Volga. They likely had crossed at the nearest convenient ford and even now were hunting them, or else preparing another ambush.
Raphael fed broth in measured spoonfuls to the Shield-Maiden. Her lips opened, and by slow degrees, she consumed a third of the bowl, but when he tried some gruel, she swung her head aside and almost knocked the bowl from his hand—a sign he found encouraging. He put aside both bowls and resumed his vigil, until a thin shaft of sun through a far window struck his eye—and simultaneously, the woman stirred and spoke.
“Graymane’s Mongols must have guessed our plan,” Vera said. With his aid, she sat up, looked around with half-focused eyes, and then motioned with a raised hand not for broth this time, he determined, but gruel. “They scouted the ground and laid their ambush well.” She ate sparingly of the pasty mixture, then turned her full attention to him. “I thought it was you. Always...”
Feronantus, straddling a stool beside the cot, folded his arms and looked at Raphael with a slight smile.
“It is my duty,” Raphael said, and immediately felt awkward. Both Vera and Feronantus knew otherwise; straightforward and direct, she possessed neither the guiles nor the protections of Raphael’s own civil manners.
“We changed course to avoid their first patrol and rode directly into a canyon with no exit,” she continued. “We should have seen it coming, but they had already slain Sister Sofiya, our forward scout...” Her voice trailed off, and she devoted a few moments to staring dully into empty space—something she did whenever she spoke of her sisters who had fallen in battle.
Which now meant all of them, for during the early hours of the night, the red lines creeping up Alena’s arm from her infected wound had reached her armpit and then, Raphael guessed, her heart. She had died in a series of backbreaking convulsions so terrible that Raphael knew he would replay them in nightmares for weeks to come. Lockjaw was not such a bad way to die if it affected only the muscles of the jaw; what horrified Raphael was its effect on the great sinews of the spine.
“The details are unimportant...I cannot recite them anyway without turning this conversation into a funeral mass...and that would last the whole day long,” Vera finally said.
Feronantus and Percival exchanged a look. Raphael knew what they were thinking: Good, the poor woman is coming around; she understands the danger and the need for haste.
Vera took more broth and a little more gruel. Her face recovered some of its color, and her hands took up the wooden spoon so she could feed herself, but Raphael leaned in close so that she did not have to raise her voice to be heard.
“Rather than let ourselves be cut to pieces at the Mongols’ leisure, we mounted a charge into what seemed the weakest part of their force,” she said.
Raphael found himself wishing he could have been there to witness the foolish and beautiful glory of that charge.
“Once we made contact,” she said, oblivious to his gaze, “we were able to cut our way through, killing perhaps a dozen. Escape to the west was impossible. They could retreat at will and shoot arrows at us. Only by confining them against the river could we fight at close quarters. So we continued making that way, losing Shield-Maidens one after another, and defeated all who stood between us and the water. It was an effective way—the only way—to inflict losses upon Mongols.
“But they were too many. In time, it became clear we would not be able to scatter them completely. The river, then, became our only hope. We broke through their line once more and made a leapfrogging retreat to a place where trees and shrubs grew dense along the bank. Toward the end...all became confused. There were six of us, then four...” Her eyes closed. “My Shield-Maidens submitted to the sword of a sister, who then cut her own throat, rather than be harried and tormented by prancing, grimacing Mongols.”