She did not know these knights other than by reputation, but she saw the rider as one who had suffered under the power of the Mongols and had learned from them, adopting and adapting their weapons.
Farther back in the clearing, visible through dispersing curtains of fog and over the tumbled walls of a refectory, a young man was striking at an upright log with a sword, repeating the same attack over and over again. Near him, two others sparred with carved wooden sticks while another paced around them, sidestepping as necessary. To her left, in the green shade of a sapling oak, two men sat at a table assembled from half-rotted lumber, sharing refreshment from battered brass cups. Both wore trim dark hair. One sported a dark beard and had black eyes to match—a kind of Saracen, she thought—his Syrian heritage apparent also in the cut of his clothes.
The other, rounder of face and lively, flashed pale eyes as his nervous fingers fidgeted, and he whispered in short bursts as if laying out plans he knew the dark-eyed one would not approve.
Nine that she could see, then. A strong crew, but mostly young—and not the sorts of men usually found in close company. This was either good and expected or very bad indeed—for in the Land of Skulls, this region that had been devastated by the passage of the Mongol hordes, desperation and evil intent often united the most diverse stragglers.
Still, they seemed to be the ones she had been sent to find.
Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae now claimed to be Christian, so hiding near a monastery would come naturally to them. There were stories, however, of how, in older days, the knights of Petraathen had practiced a cult of death, harboring strange ideas about the benefits accruing in the afterlife to warriors who went down bloody and swinging. These brethren then might also take comfort from sharing quarters with the heroic and blessed warrior dead. From where she squatted, she counted seven big granite Crusader crosses in the monastery’s overgrown graveyard, erected perhaps a century and a half before.
Cnán picked at her teeth with a twig, then shifted on her knees, practicing quiet breath, quiet heart—confident in her stealth, contented to watch unobserved.
Or so she told herself until she heard a flicking noise behind her head. A twang, a hiss, and something jerked her off her feet, slamming her head against a tree with a thunk that rang her skull like a bell.
She reached around desperately and felt a smooth, long shaft. A broad-headed arrow had snagged the hood of her cloak and pinned it to the bole of an aged birch. She struggled to yank herself free. Two years of running from Mongols had taught her that another arrow, better aimed, would soon fly, and she had best leave the garment behind and make a run for it.
But a voice—like the voice of her mother, only far away and sad—spoke as if in her ear: “First arrow perfectly timed, perfectly aimed.”
Cnán understood immediately. She lowered her hand. The archer had accomplished precisely what he had intended. Likely he had left camp even before she arrived, to circle around, guard, and observe.
Running was useless. She was dealing not with Mongols or their jackals, nor with ill-trained bandits, but with men born and raised in the woods. At any false move, that second arrow could strip through the green branches and split her spine.
Cnán quieted herself. Her eyes twitched at more rustling, faint, very close. She had been tracked through the trees by at least two men: the archer, still unseen, off to her right, and the stalker, now approaching from behind. Both were almost certainly from the camp, posted in the woods as sentries.
The hunter behind her began to move freely, making plenty of noise, but she could not yet see his face, nor he hers, because of the pinned-up hood and the dense cowl of mud-crusted black hair falling from the part in the middle of her head. He circled her warily, and when he finally came into full view, they spent a few moments gauging each other.
Cnán had seen some wild-looking men during her long trek across the lands of the Ruthenians, but this fellow—clothed entirely in things he’d killed, sporting a matted beard thick as a bear’s pelt—looked half animal. Nothing woven—no womanly arts for him. Green eyes, sun-wrinkled at the corners, lent him a glimmer of youthful amusement.
No need to guess what he saw in her, since he announced it. His language was unfamiliar, but some of the words came from familiar roots. She recognized “woman” and “Mongol” and “spy”—the last a word very like her real name, in Tocharian.
She could have framed a denial in words he might vaguely recognize, but there were more effective languages that did not involve words.
Cnán shrugged out of her cloak, drew herself up, made a derisive snort, and fixed him with a glare.