The rolling lands above, while hardly high and dry, were at least suitable for cultivation, striped with fields where people still lived, otherwise open grassland that was perfect for conveyance of Mongols.
Cnán favored none of these fens and banks as routes for the party’s expedition. But she soon discovered that, through these wetlands, there was often a buffer—sometimes miles across, sometimes only a few paces wide—between the impassable woods of the damp ravines and the open farm country where trees grew thick enough to provide cover but not so dense as to impede progress.
She had schooled these knights in the way of traveling along the edges of the less brambly forests, slicing briskly over open land when she provided a favorable report but rarely straying more than a few moments’ gallop from the cover of the trees.
The country along Istvan’s likeliest course of travel alternated between stands of oaks and meadows, broken by the odd low rolling hill and a mottle of bogs and small, clean lakes. Rarely, mounds and crowds of rounded boulders poked up through forest and field, as if dropped from the pouches of giants. Cnán knew some of these as hideaways for robbers; on her long trek west, venturing up from the great marsh to filch apples or raid farmers’ root cellars, she had found their leavings on several occasions at the entrances to the tumbled boulders.
The hideaways were empty now. That was not a good sign. Robbers knew when the pickings were too dangerous.
Raphael kept mostly silent as they rode, moving steadily beside her. Eleázar, with his heavily inflected Latin, was more voluble and quick with plaints—to her irritation at first. But as the day wore on she came to understand that it was simply his way, and the way of his people, to say what was on his mind.
Eleázar had been the last of the group to arrive at the chapter house outside of Legnica, and she knew the least about him. During the first day or two of the journey, she had rarely been able to suppress her amusement over the preposterous size of his weapon—a two-handed sword that was slightly taller than he was. It took him forever simply to draw the thing, hand over hand, out of the long sheath slung along his back, and the other knights had much fun at his expense, discussing how, in the event of an attack, they would set up a defensive perimeter around Eleázar so that he would have time to draw and poise his sword, hopefully before the rest of them were dead.
Percival also kept his thoughts to himself, and dark thoughts they might have been; he rarely smiled.
The first run of tracks they encountered was perhaps two days old. Cnán dismounted from her mare—the only mare in the group, as the knights preferred stallions—and knelt in the sun-dappled mud and grass of a narrow meadow. Raphael and Percival joined her, kneeling on the other side of the run, two steps back. Mongols at this late stage of their campaign often rode horses other than steppe ponies; war, as Feronantus had observed, was hard on horses, and armies continually replenished their stock. When Mongols rode larger and more complaisant Western horses, the combination made for unique tracks. Unhappy mounts tended to sidle when given unfamiliar prods or spoken to in strange tongues.
Cnán pointed out the disarray of tracks to Raphael, who nodded. Percival bent to observe splattered remnants of the stale, less than a day old. He lifted mud to his nose and curled his lip. “Could be a farm beast or sumpter. Lowly black bones are left with the least spirited mounts.”
Cnán knew that gelded animals could serve well in battle, but these knights, by long tradition, preferred stallions and were tough to convince. Mongols, on the other hand, rode mares into battle—sometimes mares in heat, perfectly capable of distracting stallions.
Two of the riders in this group, however, had been mounted on destriers that met the knights’ full approval, likely stallions from the stock of a local voivode. Their stale cut deep into the mud and smelled pungent. The tracks showed that the horses were frisky but contented enough and their riders adept.
She thought that a fair sign that a pair of dukes or their minions were being protected by the Mongols, much as the fur trader had his cohort. Betrayers of their people—opportunists. Survivors.
No wonder Istvan was on a rampage.
Percival walked away twenty paces and followed the verge. Their horses watched with ears cocked, then shook their heads and bent to pick at the weeds and grass. Eleázar, quite rightly, pushed them away from a growth of white-flowering creepers. No need for sick or drunken mounts.
Cnán summed up the facts to Raphael as they watched Percival. “Twelve riders,” she concluded. “Mongols or Tartars. Of middling discipline, bored by their duties. But they are accompanied by two voivode—or at least local officials riding noble horses. Possibly tax collectors or surveyors. Not prisoners.”
“Good,” Raphael said. He smiled at her skill.
“Surveyors?” Eleázar asked sharply. But the look on his face was baffled rather than skeptical.