The only sign a city had once occupied the plain was the ragged outline inscribed by the remnants of the city’s defenses. Amidst the rubble and devastation, there were paths—avenues between houses that had not been entirely filled in with heaps of rubble and the charred timbers from houses—but there was little sense in the chaos that a great many people had once lived here. Some buildings still stood, edifices of stone and brick that had refused to succumb to fire and the Mongol pillage, but all that remained of their former glory was a sad struggle to remain upright, like old soldiers who, on their deathbeds, try to wear their armor and lift their swords one last time.
Illarion pulled up his horse. “There is the south gate,” he murmured as the group paused beside him. “We called it the ‘Golden Gate,’ and in the morning light, it would be so bright. But now…” The bitterness in his voice, and the ache, was unmistakable.
Cnán turned her eyes to where he and the Brethren stared and there caught sight of the ruined majesty of Kiev’s fabled Golden Gate. They were tall, wrought of reddish stone that caught the light of the summer sun like dull fire. The wrath of the Mongols had badly damaged the keep about the gate-house, and much of the carved stone had been savaged by the siege, but even from this distance, and through those scars, she could appreciate the beauty the craftsmen had wrought.
They lingered for a long moment, Feronantus watching Illarion closely, but not intruding on his reverie. Cnán took the opportunity to study the city more closely as the others began to talk.
“My wife had family here,” Illarion said. “I had thought… if they had survived, somehow, they might have been of assistance, but…” He didn’t finish.
“On the hill,” Percival said, idly patting and stroking the neck of his mount, as if from long habit. “A church still stands, does it not?”
Illarion pulled himself out of his reverie. “Yes, Sobor Svyatoi Sofii,” he said, and then translated the name for them. “The Cathedral of St. Sophia.”
Roger grunted at the name, but he did not push the matter further, instead looking to Feronantus, waiting to see what he would say.
The old leader of the Shield-Brethren sat on his horse like a judge, scrutinizing the walls, towers, and gates with the eye of a man attempting to discern the safest route across a territory he did not wish to enter to begin with.
Caution, and concern, narrowed his eyes. After a long while, he spoke. “Illarion, what lies beneath the church?”
The Ruthenian glanced at him and then at Percival before answering. “A monastery. Pechersk Lavra.”
“This is your land,” Feronantus said, ignoring both Roger and Cnán’s gazes. “And though the city is a ruin, that church still stands, and its stones must have some power.” He smiled grimly. “The sort of power that would draw pilgrims, penitents who seek solace in the wake of the armies of the Great Khan. It is the sort of place a man such as yourself might go, having survived the ordeal you have been through.”
Illarion nodded. “Yes, that is a role I can play.”
“Take Raphael, Percival, and Roger. They are your escort,” Feronantus said, the plan decided. “We will follow at pace, after we ascertain the intelligence of our pursuer.”
CHAPTER 24:
THE BRAWL AT THE BRIDGE
Hans’s deputy told them the priest was not going to visit the Shield-Brethren alone, but in the company of two Livonian Knights. Their destination lay across the river and past the battlefields where the armies of Christendom had been defeated by the Mongols—a route that, even after a few months, was not safe for a solitary priest. As they were making the trip on horseback, they would have to travel to the west—to reach the bridge that had been built over the river—before they could swing north.
If they wanted to intercept the priest, they would do well to do so before he reached the bridge. Hans, with a smile, informed Kim that he knew a shortcut.
Hans led Kim on an utterly confusing footrace through the seediest of the seedy places that filled the bulk of the makeshift slum: past impromptu drink houses (so denoted by patchwork roofs of canvas strung haphazardly between the remnants of ruined walls), slipping and dodging the pools of filth and waste strewn in the back; through fields of ragged tents, laid nearly atop one another; across blackened fields that were still nothing more than mud and ash, filled with piles of detritus and scrap that were the refuse of the refuse diggers.