The Mongoliad: Book One

 

The reeds were tall enough to hide Cnán, as long as she skittered through them in a crouch. She could not see more than an arm’s length in any direction, and so she paused every so often to check the direction of the sun and make sure she had not strayed from her line: straight along the slowest, shallowest flow of the main channel, close enough to the bank that the reeds remained high, not so close that the ground beneath her feet turned into sucking mud. This path would cut between the Mongols who were surrounding the huts on the opposite side of the swale and the main force on the near side. The only thing the least bit chancy about it was that it might bring her nearer to the patrol Raphael had noticed crossing between the Mongol groups, but all she need do was keep her wits about her and squat low if she heard hoofbeats. Gazing into the sun, they would never see her. Her movements might shake the tops of the reeds. But here fortune was with her again, for the southwest breeze was shaking all of the reeds, and as long as she didn’t do anything stupid, like move in a perfectly straight line or trample the stalks into the mud, she would be hard to detect.

 

Those men were distracted anyway; she could tell as much from their shouts, trying to deliver some urgent news to the main group, but unable to make themselves heard over the wind whispering through a million stalks.

 

This was hardly a way for Cnán to make good time, but before long she would be past them and into a section where she could make her way down disused channels or dart from one stone outcropping to the next, favoring the long shadows of the late evening.

 

The more she could collect from sounds, the less she needed to risk looking. Splashing hooves told her that the patrol had found a ford. Light clashing at first as the horses—she guessed four of them—trotted through ankle-deep water. Then deeper sloshing as they went in up to their knees, followed by near silence as they passed through the gut of the channel, the horses’ bellies, she imagined, carving wakes in the stream like boats’ hulls. Then relieved and satisfied words from the riders as they felt the ground angle upward again, sporadic liquid bursts as knees broke the surface, and then the same series of noises, reversed in order, until hooves were once again thumping on solid ground—this side of the river, perhaps an arrow shot ahead of her.

 

She was about to risk movement again when her ears picked up something else—another creature emerging from the river, following in the wake of the horses. Not a man, for it went on four feet, but too small for a horse.

 

Then a shuddering, flopping noise, enveloped in a hiss of spray.

 

She crouched and froze. It was a dog. It had entered the ford at the same time as the four riders, but had fallen behind as its paws floated free of the river bottom, forcing it to paddle across the main stream, fighting the current the whole way. Finally it had trotted up onto the shore and shaken itself. It let out a suggestion of a whine, seeing how far behind it had fallen, then sprang forward, running to make up for lost time. Then, just before entering the tunnel that the horses had trampled through the reeds, the dog stopped.

 

Stopped and sniffed the air.

 

It happened to be straight downwind of her.

 

Dogs had poor eyesight. She rose just high enough to see it. She did not recognize it at first because she had been imagining something in the way of a hound, small and lithe. But what she saw, casting about for her scent, looked more like a bear. She’d seen them before. She’d even been chased by them. And she had watched others, not as skillful at evading pursuit or climbing trees, being torn apart by them. This was a bankhar—one of the heavy-boned mastiffs that the Mongols kept roped outside their tents as watchdogs.

 

They must have been using it to track Istvan.

 

And it knew she was here. That was obvious from its posture: it stood on its stout, corded legs as still as she was. Other than a slight quiver of its flanks, the only thing it moved was its nostrils. It would hold this stillness for as long as it took to catch a definite scent or hear some movement. Then every muscle in its body would go into action. If it was like the others she had seen, it had twice her weight and could run at double her speed.

 

Again a faint whine. The great head lifted and turned. The massive jaws opened in a slow pant. The bankhar was trying to make sense of the new spoor. Watching it, she found herself wondering what it could guess about her. The scent it had found was human, but not the one it had been tracking for the last couple of days. Her scent would betray her sex, obviously, but could it tell if she was frightened? She wasn’t. Not yet. But she would be soon.

 

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