“You do not understand!” she insisted. “You have no conception of what you are speaking of!”
“We did not come here with any expectation of surviving,” said Percival. He did not speak scornfully or brashly, but as if explaining a trivial misunderstanding to an elderly relative. “Dying in some righteous quest is far preferable to dying for the entertainment of a dissolute Khan.”
“It is not merely that it is suicide,” Cnán said, “but that it is pointless and immediate suicide. You will not get ten miles.” She saw the flaw in her statement immediately.
So did Illarion. “You traveled a great deal more than that to fetch me,” he reminded her, “and the same again to return. I can guide you deep into Rus.”
“What used to be Rus,” Cnán snarled. “Now it is the domain of the Great Khan. Four-fifths of which lies beyond your horizon. And how will you find your way across that?”
“That,” said Feronantus mildly, “is your job, Vaetha. Or whatever your name is.”
This silenced her long enough for them to get on with the planning of the expedition. Several names were mentioned of knights who, like Andreas, had not arrived yet but would be good to have along.
Feronantus cut off all such discussion with a pass of the hand. “No,” he said, “we leave tonight. The party will be chosen from around this table.”
Hands were lifted to lodge polite objections, but Feronantus was firm. “If we wait three days for Andreas, he’ll not get here for five, and then he’ll mention someone four days behind him who’ll be better yet. We will lose the Vor.”
Cnán had no idea what the Vor was, but the argument seemed decisive to everyone else. Some sort of gibberish from their oplomach, as they called their arts of fighting.
In the few days she had been a guest of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, she had learned everything she could about this Feronantus—save, apparently, for the most important thing, which was that he was not of sound mind.
She had learned he had been of a high rank within the Order, which meant that if he stayed alive and made no mistakes, he was likely to end up presiding over Petraathen itself one day. As a way of preparing him for that honor, they had sent him out to run Tyrshammar, the fortress/temple/monastery they had been maintaining in the North Sea for the last nine hundred years or so—an offshoot of the more ancient Petraathen and, by tradition, a place where future leaders of the Order were groomed.
Whether by accident or design, the Mongols had flanked Petraathen to the north and south. The southern branch, under Batu Khan, had advanced into Hungary and defeated most of Christendom’s armies at a place called Mohi. The northern branch, under Onghwe, had come here and defeated the rest of them. Among those who made a study of Khans, it was believed that Batu was the more important, and that the southern prong of the advance was therefore the real one, and that Onghwe’s efforts were more in the nature of a diversion. Accordingly, most of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae who were actually based at Petraathen had gone south into Hungary, and those who had survived the battle along the Sajó River were there still. When Onghwe had sent out his challenge for the Circus of Swords, the responsibility had consequently fallen to Feronantus, who had come out from Tyrshammar with Taran and R?dwulf and a few others who had been on the island at the time.
“I will go into the East, with no expectation of returning,” Feronantus said. “The road will be long. We shall travel light. This means we shall have to feed ourselves by hunting for game along the way. I hope that Finn will come along to make up for our shortcomings in the chase.”
This was translated to Finn, who beamed and nodded and said something that was translated back into Latin as, “Yes, provided you make up for mine as a warrior.”
“R?dwulf complements Finn in the hunt, and we will need the power of his bow to penetrate Mongol armor from a distance,” Feronantus continued.
Cnán blushed in spite of herself, recalling how the two had tracked her through the woods. Yes, between Finn and R?dwulf, no deer between here and Mongolia would stand much of a chance.
“Illarion Illarionovitch has already done us the honor of volunteering,” Feronantus said, exchanging a nod with the Ruthenian. “Though we have little hope of outriding the Mongol hordes, we shall need the finest horseman at our disposal—the matamoros, Eleázar.”
The Spaniard looked pleased. Istvan, the Hungarian rider, did not.
“As much as I would like to believe that we could accomplish the journey without illness or injury, we shall require the services of a physician, and so I call upon Raphael, who may also be able to help us with the language of the Saracens.
“Percival has already spoken in a way that tells me of where his heart leads him, and so I summon him on this quest. I would not dare separate him from Roger, and so Roger joins the list, if he can bear our company.”