As usual, she had gone to the Mongol camp before dawn to spy on them. But then she had gone against all her instincts—and not at all to her liking—by leaving an obvious trail for them to follow.
Alchiq, or perhaps one of his commanders, had dispatched a group of seven warriors to investigate. For the last hour, they had been gaining on her. They could have caught her quickly, of course, had they chosen to ride hard. But they knew that they were following a mere pedestrian in wide-open country and that time was on their side, and so they had proceeded at a measured and cautious pace, scanning the country ahead for ambushes and other perils.
Cnán would be in a terrible spot just now, were it not for the fact that, two hundred paces away and down the slope to her right, at the bottom of a dry gully, R?dwulf was patiently waiting in a scatter of stunted trees.
Unaware of her scrutiny, the Briton stretched and let his eyes wander. The sun was warm; the late morning was comfortable. She hoped he wasn’t planning to take a nap.
Cnán had spent most of her life in parts of the world that were not known for producing persons of large stature. She had long been vaguely aware that if one traveled north and west long enough, one would reach a part of the world inhabited by persons with pale skin and strangely colored hair, often taller than other peoples of the world.
The men of the steppes were like their ponies: low to the ground, stocky, agile, hard to kill. Like any other human population, they would from time to time yield a man of unusual height. But this conferred no advantage in the Mongol way of war, which was all about mobility, quickness, and maneuvering. When hand-to-hand combat occurred, it was probably because something had gone awry. The Mongols did have formations of armored cavalry, employed in special circumstances. A big man might find a place in such a unit. But wrestling was the martial art that they held in the highest esteem, and since size, weight, and strength so often determined the outcome of wrestling matches, this was what big, strong Mongols tended to do for a living. The Khans used them as executioners.
The Northmen did not know or practice the steppe way of war; instead, being ignorant of the art of maneuvering, they preferred to fight in big, lumbering formations that clashed head-on in open fields. It was to be expected that the largest men of such societies would cover themselves in armor and ride out on oversized horses to engage their foes in personal combat with heavy weapons. In this respect, Percival had met her expectations precisely.
Percival, however, was not the biggest and strongest man in their party. That distinction fell to R?dwulf. He was two inches taller than Percival, with a rugged, homely face, and—as she’d come to notice—covered all over with muscles. Among the Mongols, he’d have been their greatest wrestler. Among the Franks, he’d have become a cataphract—a mounted soldier in full armor. But R?dwulf came from an island off the northwestern extremity of the world where the warriors were skilled at a peculiar form of archery.
Compared to the bows of the Mongols, R?dwulf’s weapon was huge and primitive, far too unwieldy to be used on horseback. No other man in the party could draw it except for Percival, who could pull the taut, hempen, three-stranded bowstring only partway.
R?dwulf drew his weapon in a peculiar style, not so much pulling the string back as shoving the bow forward. And when he practiced during warm weather, shirtless on the steppe, it was spectacularly obvious to Cnán that every muscle in his huge body was straining to the limit. This apparently was the highest and best use for a Briton of exceptional size and strength: not wrestling, not sword fighting, but drawing a crude bow of unbelievable stiffness, then holding it at full draw long enough to loose a massive arrow, tipped with an iron warhead, into the body of a foe.
His warheads came in various shapes, some made for piercing armor, others with broad heads for slashing through vessels and organs as they passed through the victim’s body. All of them were heavy, which, as Cnán understood, gave them greater range than the lighter and more numerous shafts of the Mongols. But in order to take advantage of that range, it was necessary to shoot them from a bow that could only be handled by the likes of R?dwulf.
The seven Mongols had drawn close enough to make Cnán worried about her choice of cover. Soon, she would have to move, lest some sharp-eyed rider spy her lying at the base of the wormwood shrubs. If she tarried, she might die here.
Writhing on her belly like a snake, keeping her head low to the ground, she crawled down the slope until the top of the rise came between her and the Mongols. Then she pushed herself up and brought her knees below her chin, rising to a squat. R?dwulf, pacing slowly back and forth along a row of ten arrows that he had shoved into the ground, didn’t notice her dark head pop above the ripe seed heads of the grass. But he did hear the whistle of a marmot, or something like it, from farther back in the gully. Finn had been amusing himself by learning to mimic the sounds of the (to him) exotic creatures that lived in these parts. Cnán watched in amusement as the huge Briton’s head swiveled toward Finn, then turned back a moment later, finally seeing Cnán on the slope above him. Moving quickly, for she did not know how long they had before the Mongols came in view, she held up a hand with all five fingers splayed, then made a fist of it, then extended only the thumb and index finger.
R?dwulf nodded and unslung his bow from his shoulder. Then he glanced up past Cnán. Something drew his eyes to the ridgeline behind her.
She rotated on her haunches and followed his line of sight to the Mongols, lance tips and helmets bobbing slowly as they came, their ponies at a walk. Cnán rolled and pressed herself flat against the earth, nestling in the grass. She could hear the soft tread of hooves on turf, Mongol voices calling out to one another.