By almost any fair accounting, Zug had won the duel. Haakon had been standing over him wielding an immensely superior weapon. But this man had taken him down and delivered a perfectly aimed strike that ought to have left him helpless and bleeding to death on the ground.
Sometimes, when he was intensely focused on a fight, he stopped hearing things. Later, when it was over, hearing returned. He thought he was in one of those instances now, but he could hear Zug breathing, the faint jingle of his mail as he shifted his position.
It wasn’t that he had gone deaf. It was that the arena had gone absolutely silent.
He pushed away from Zug, heaving himself up to his feet. He heel-kicked the naginata backward, out of reach, and backed clear of his sprawling opponent.
Zug’s mask was askew, and it no longer seemed to be the face of a ferocious demon. The white whiskers were matted and dirty, and the mouth was stretched sideways, more of a drunken leer than a howling maw.
In a rush, the audience started screaming. A flood of noise that staggered Haakon with its force. Zug flinched as well, and his mask tilted upward as he looked at something over Haakon’s shoulder.
Haakon turned, taking in the blur of a rapturously ecstatic crowd—the entire arena was on its feet, shouting and cheering—until his gaze settled on the Khan’s pavilion. Onghwe Khan, his large frame covered in robes of crimson and gold, stood at the edge of the pavilion, his hands upraised. He brought them together, sunlight sparkling off the multitude of rings on his fingers, and he saluted Haakon.
Haakon had the presence of mind to do the same. He touched the hilt of Zug’s dagger to the forehead of his helmet, and for a second he heard Taran’s voice in his head. Do it! his oplo shouted. You can make this throw. His hand tightened around the hilt of the dagger.
Onghwe Khan brought his hands apart, palms out, as if he were parting a curtain, and Haakon realized with a start that he was doing exactly that. Below him, the Red Veil moved. It was drawn back by invisible hands, and Haakon got his first glimpse at what lay beyond.
The audience, already making enough noise to be heard for leagues, became louder still. Haakon’s chest seized. He couldn’t draw a breath, and all thought of trying to assassinate the Khan fled from his brain. The world seemed to slow down. The shrieking noise of the crowds became a muted roar that buffeted his ears like the slow pound of military drums, and above the thunder of the audience there rose a single chattering voice.
Zug had risen to his feet. His face had changed, and Haakon dimly realized he had removed his mask. His face, while mostly smooth, was not that of a boy. Apoplectic, his eyes bulging, his cheeks red, his mouth spitting out words Haakon did not understand—this was the face of a grown man. Haakon stared at him for a frozen moment, marking all the rage and despair he could read plainly on Zug’s visage; it was a face he would not soon forget.
He bowed to Zug and then turned his back on his defeated opponent and walked toward the opening beneath the Khan’s pavilion.
He had won. The Red Veil had parted.
Dietrich watched as the Shield-Brethren knight disappeared from view. From his position on the western side of the arena, the veil and a section of the tunnel beyond it were visible, though as soon as the knight stepped past the veil, it dropped once again, obscuring everyone’s vision of what was happening on the other side.
The audience was still celebrating, and the stadium was starting to shiver with the rhythmic vibration of stomping feet. The exultation of voices was dying out, enough that Dietrich could make himself heard to one of his companions without having to shout; he had turned to Burchard to speak when a piercing scream rose above the ambient chatter.
Down on the arena floor, the losing competitor was howling. His mask was off, and his outrage was directed at the Khan’s pavilion. Instead of tapering off, his scream ended abruptly as he spun on his heel and lunged for the pole-arm lying in the sand.
The eastern gate was opening, disgorging a quartet of Mongolian soldiers with long poles of their own—tipped with sand-filled bags that would bruise and coerce. The dispersal team, deployed to separate combatants and to shuffle the survivor off to his proper destination, was a well-known sight in the arena, and Dietrich had seen their heavy poles in action on more than one occasion, though usually they were facing a fighter armed with just a sword.
Zug’s weapon was as long as theirs, and sharp.
The first Mongol discovered how sharp the pole-arm’s blade was when it took his head cleanly from his shoulders.
The second Mongol tried to get his pole-arm up to block Zug’s spinning blade, but all he managed to do was deflect the blade up so that it sheared through his skull instead of his neck.
The remaining pair stumbled back, trying to keep out of Zug’s reach.