The Mongoliad: Book One

Streaked and dripping all over now with fresh blood, Roger wrenched away the dying Mongol’s sword and stalked back into the cloud, his face contorted with battle rage, crying, “Alalazu! ”

 

 

Raphael turned toward the hedge to look directly at Cnán—no, just above her—and loosed an arrow. There were loud rustling noises and a Mongol fell from the top of the hedge, striking a heavy blow on her shoulder. He and she—and a great deal of torn vegetation—all fell in a heap. Cnán scrabbled out from under and tried to leap back, a groan of fear and disgust rumbling from deep in her gut. The Mongol had an arrow in his right lung. Still he lashed out and grabbed Cnán’s ankle. With his other hand, he pawed at his belt, trying to reach the hilt of a dagger that had been knocked askew in the fall.

 

Cnán dropped to her knee, making sure that knee came down hard on the Mongol’s nose. She then grabbed the wayward dagger and buried it in his stomach. Leaves rattled from above and she jumped off the loudly dying man just in time to avoid being bowled over by another Mongol, this one sporting two deep-shot arrows.

 

She’d had the bad luck to hide at a banked spot on the hedge wall, easily scaled from the other side. Probably it was a good thing to be disabused of the foolish notion that there was any safe place in this melee, and so she ran to the middle of the field.

 

The smoke cloud slowly drifted her way, or perhaps it was just growing—and the battle came with it.

 

She glimpsed Illarion whirling a ten-foot spear, stopping only to jab one end or the other into a foe. Feronantus cruised with grim ease round the fight’s perimeter, wielding short sword and shield, striking down those who tried to escape.

 

Smoke peeled back to show Taran engaged in single combat with an impressive Mongol wearing good, thick armor, clearly a commander of an arban, if not the whole group. The two matched each other stroke for stroke, but the Mongol looked exhausted and unsure, while Taran was calm, implacable, and—for lack of a better word—curious. Taran used the opportunity of a raised sword to step off line and drive his own blade up the commander’s unprotected armpit.

 

Yasper seemed to have used up all of his alchemical supplies and was now walking about alertly, sword in hand, but showing no interest in going into the battle cloud. This struck Cnán as exceedingly prudent—an eye on the periphery of the battlefield meant they would not be surprised—and in fact, as she watched, Yasper pointed his sword up at the other end of the field. He shouted to the others, sharp words that Cnán did not quite catch but were clearly an alarm.

 

Raphael and R?dwulf and Istvan, preoccupied with picking off stray Mongols trying to climb the hedge, had been paying no attention to the end of the field by the forest salient and the old farm hovels. Another squadron of Mongols had found their way through by that route. They were slicing furiously at the neck-high ropes that had been strung from tree to tree. Four riders had passed through and gathered at the head of the field, waiting for several more comrades to join them.

 

But when they heard Yasper’s shout and saw the archers turn and aim their way, they mounted a direct charge rather than wait to be picked off.

 

Istvan loosed a single shaft and then spurred his stallion right at them, slinging his bow over his shoulder and drawing his curved sword; he and the foremost of the charging Mongols clashed in the center of the field, blade on blade. The Mongol rode away, upright, but with a dismayed, fading look, missing half of his sword arm.

 

Two others went down with arrows in neck and chest, but the fourth somehow managed to thread his way through Istvan, the archers, Yasper, and Cnán. He galloped straight for Taran, who had his back turned. In the Mongol’s wake followed half a dozen more who had found their way over the same path as the first four.

 

The fighters in the smoke cloud had heard the commotion and become aware of the danger. Illarion and Feronantus came running, leaving Percival and Roger to guard what had now become the battle’s rear.

 

Cnán was captivated for some moments by the sight of Feronantus, on foot, entering into single combat with a charging Mongol knight on a horse. Feronantus tossed his sword into the air as if playing with it, letting it spin lazily end over end, and caught it by the flat of its blade, which he pinched between the balls of his fingers and the heel of his hand. Stepping aside so that the Mongol’s blow whistled past his chin, close enough to sever whiskers, he brought his sword’s hilt up, swinging it like a pickax so that the sharp end of the crossguard jammed upward into the rider’s armpit and caught there, jerking him backward off his horse.

 

Pinning the downed man with a foot on his neck, Feronantus reversed the sword again and drove it up beneath his helmet.

 

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