CHAPTER 22:
THE EMPTY HORIZON
Cnán hadn’t imagined there was anything drearier than riding across the steppe in the fall, but there was: that same trip during the desolate heart of winter. They were rested and provisioned, their horses were in excellent shape (and they had spares), and the weather was relatively mild for winter on the high plains. Their situation was much improved over the mountain crossing at the beginning of winter, but this comparison didn’t alleviate the boredom of the endless days of riding.
And it had been only three days since they had left the rock.
They had come across the sign of a recent Mongol encampment on the afternoon of the second day, and Raphael had immediately turned the company north, forcing them to ride well past moonrise before he allowed to make camp. There had been no fire that night, and everyone had loudly complained about being stiff and sore from a night on the cold ground. But the sun had come out mid-morning and followed them all afternoon, and by the time it came down from its high arc and slipped behind the western horizon, Cnán was sorry to see it go. It was almost like one of their company were leaving them.
They set up a camp in a tight formation, and Yasper put her and Lian in charge of collecting rocks for the fire pit. He had a collection of dried patties made from a combination of horse shit and grass and twigs that stood in for firewood and he started the fire with a pinch of powders from his alchemical stash and a piece from one of his phoenix eggs. The fire started with a whoosh of blue and green flame, and on the first night both Bruno and Haakon had drawn their swords when the colored flames leapt up from the temporary fire pits. The others teased them for several hours, but Cnán could tell that the idle ribbing masked their own apprehension at Yasper’s strange powders.
The alchemist hadn’t been as talkative since they had left the rock, and she didn’t go out of her way to seek his company. Instead, she fell back on old habits and spent most of her time trying to get behind Percival’s stoic shield.
He had given his gray Arabian a name. Morgana. Was it the name of an old lover? she had asked. A family member? A fairy princess from some story of his childhood?
No, Percival had replied to all of her questions.
“He spends a lot of time with that horse,” she noted to Lian as the two of them huddled by the fire pit. Yasper’s alchemical logs burned with more heat than flame, which was good after the initial burst of wild fire, but the alchemist did not have a large supply. They burned one each night, and Cnán found herself and Lian sitting by the fire as long as possible each night before dashing for their tent in a valiant attempt to bring some of the last warmth inside the canvas shelter with them.
“He does,” Lian noted, watching Percival’s shadowy shape move among the nearby horses. “Have you seen how he rides her in battle? It is almost as if he and she were one.”
Cnán remembered Tonnerre, the trained warhorse that Percival had started their journey with. Morgana was a dutiful steed, but she had none of the training that Percival’s destrier had had. Comparing the two was like watching a baby chick try to walk and a grown hawk soaring in the sky.
Lian had one hand tucked inside her robe, and Cnán knew what the Chinese woman was clutching. She had seen the tiny lacquer box a few times when Lian thought she had been sleeping. She had no idea what was inside the box but knew it was the single most important thing in the world to Lian.
“What’s his name?” she asked suddenly.
“What?” Lian asked, her attention coming away from Percival and the horses. Her hand withdrew and she idly smoothed the front of her robe.
“The man you are thinking about,” Cnán said, knowing that she had guessed right.
“There is no man,” Lian said defensively.
“Is it him?” Cnán nodded toward the horses.
“No,” Lian scoffed.
“Gawain? Haakon?”
“It is no one in this company,” Lian said, cutting Cnán off before she could list every member of their group.
“But there is someone,” Cnán pressed.
“There was,” Lian admitted.
“What happened?”
“I stole his heart,” Lian said, a sad smile tugging at her lips. “And I put his tent and all of his worldly possessions to the torch.”
“You did no such thing,” Cnán snorted.
Lian giggled and her fingers flew up to her lips in a vain effort to suppress the sound. “I did,” she said. “You saw the smoke.”
“Where?” Cnán thought back to the day when she had infiltrated the Khagan’s camp at Burqan-qaldun, intent on rescuing Haakon. To her surprise, the young man had already been out of his cage, along with a red-haired giant of a man named Krasniy. And Lian, who had been in the process of escaping from the Khagan.
“That fire?” she asked. “In the Khagan’s camp. That was your doing?”
“It was,” Lian admitted.
“Your…your lover’s tent?”
“What happened to whose tent?” a new voice asked, and both women looked up as Bruno joined them at the fire. He had his skin of spirits and several small cups.
“Ask her,” Cnán said, jerking her head at Lian.
“It’s a long story,” Lian said before Bruno could do such a thing.
“Does it have a happy ending?” Bruno asked as he unstoppered the skin and poured a measure into each cup.
“Not really,” Lian admitted, and Cnán choked back a snort of laughter.
“Ah, well, it’s probably not worth dragging out of you then,” Bruno said with a smile. He offered each of them a cup.
Lian accepted hers reluctantly and made no move to actually drink the contents. Cnán sniffed her cup carefully and her eyes watered at the strength of the spirits within. “What is this?” she sputtered, holding the cup as far away from her as possible.
“Don’t drop it in the fire,” Lian cautioned her, a knowing smile on her lips, and Cnán snatched her hand back.
“Yasper’s recipe,” Bruno said. “I just drink it.” He raised his cup and threw the contents into his mouth. He grimaced as the liquid went down his throat, but sighed noisily after it settled. “You know you’re alive after a sip of that,” he added, touching a thumb to the corner of one eye to mop up the tear starting there.
Cnán took a tentative sip, anticipating the worst—and it was worse than anything she had braced herself for. Her mouth burst into flame, and even though she tried to stop the liquid from going down her throat, it wiggled down anyway, lighting everything on fire as it fell. It hit her stomach and the resulting explosion was not unlike the burst of blue and green flame when Yasper ignited his shit patties. She gasped, choked, wept, and felt sweat start across her forehead and neck. “That’s foul,” she croaked.
“Aye,” Bruno said. “But it will keep you warm tonight.”
Another figure emerged from the darkness beyond the weak flames, and Cnán hastily shoved her half-empty cup at him. Haakon took the offered cup as he sat down. “What is it?” he asked.
“It’ll put hair on your chest,” Bruno said, saluting with his cup.
“I have hair on my chest,” Haakon said. He sniffed at the cup.
“Why does everyone smell their cups?” Bruno asked. “It is pure spirits. Do Yasper and I look like we’re connoisseurs of flavor?”
Lian threw back the contents of her cup in one quick motion. Her lips tightened and a shudder ran through her frame, but she swallowed the spirits with no visible discomfort. Bruno stared at her, his mouth hanging open.
“I spent time at the Khagan’s court in Karakorum,” she explained. “Drinking wine and stronger spirits was one of the Khagan’s favorite activities. The rest of the court tried to keep up.”
Bruno poured another measure into Lian’s cup. “Ah, I have heard tales about how much wine flowed into Karakorum. It was the death of him, wasn’t it? I heard he died in a hunting accident—fell off his horse while intoxicated.”
Cnán stared at the slumbering fire. “Well, it certainly happened while he was hunting,” she said.
“And if an event isn’t planned, it could certainly be called an accident,” Lian said.
Haakon finished off Cnán’s cup and handed it back to her without saying a word, though he did make eye contact and raise his eyebrows. Cnán held out the cup to Lian, who poured half of hers into it. “Yes,” Cnán said, raising her cup. “To ?gedei Khan and his hunting accident.”
Lian echoed her words and they both emptied their cups. Cnán flicked her cup at the fire, shedding the last drops, and a finger of blue flame leaped up from the coals as the spirit ignited. “Good riddance,” she said.
Bruno was peering intently at her and Lian, trying to read something in their toast. Lian collected Cnán’s cup and handed them both back to the Lombard, who took them absently. “The other day, Vera said that you were being hunted by the Mongols,” he started.
Cnán giggled. “All of them,” she said, quoting Vera.
“Aye,” Bruno growled. “What did she mean by that?”
“I think she meant all of them,” Haakon said. He leaned forward stiffly, his range of motion not quite normal due to the arrow wound in his back. He indicated that Bruno should pour him a measure of the spirits.
“Why?” Bruno asked, pouring for Haakon and handing the cup to Lian who passed it along.
“Because I killed him,” Haakon said.
“Who?” Bruno asked.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Haakon said quietly as he accepted the cup from Cnán. “He asked me to tell him about the sea before he died. So I did”—he shrugged and drank—“and then he was gone.”
Bruno hiccupped and then let out a loud bray of laughter. “You three are having a go at me,” he said. “Just because I’m drunk doesn’t mean my wits have left me entirely. I know a bullshit story when I hear one.”
Haakon tugged the sheathed knife from his belt and tossed it toward Bruno. It landed between the Lombard and Lian. Cnán had seen the knife before, but she hadn’t paid much attention to it, and now that it was on display, she realized the leatherwork wasn’t done in the style of the West. The handle of the knife was smooth bone, a polished piece of antler from one of the steppe deer. “Oh, Goddess,” she breathed.
“What is that?” Bruno said, staring at the sheathed blade.
“I know that knife,” Lian said thickly. She clutched her robe and visibly shrank away from the knife. “It was a gift to ?gedei Khan from his father, Temujin—the man who became Genghis Khan.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Haakon repeated.
Cnán barely managed to get into the tent before she passed out, and Lian arranged the other woman’s limbs and body as comfortably as possible. Cnán didn’t stay that way for long, and by the time Lian prepared herself for sleep, Cnán had already sprawled over half the tent. Making room for herself, Lian flopped on her back and stared at the ceiling.
The concoction made by Yasper and Bruno was stronger than anything she had had at court, her posturing notwithstanding, and even though she was lying as still as she could, the world still spun. Under her blankets, she clutched the box containing the sprig and hung on.
Was she hanging on to more than just the sprig? She was far from home, and traveling farther away every day. Was she clinging to some hope that she could return to China some day? And if she did, where would she go? Her family was gone and she wasn’t even sure if the city where she had been born and raised still existed.
Or did she think that Gansukh was going to come and find her? He had given her the sprig for safekeeping, but was it important enough to chase her? He had nothing else; deciding to fire his tent had been a spontaneous decision. She had needed a distraction while she fled the Khagan’s camp, and Gansukh’s tent was the only one she had known would be empty.
But if that was the sole criteria, why hadn’t she burned Munokhoi’s tent?
Because the insane ex–Torguud captain would have come after her, and if she had to choose who was chasing her, she would much rather it be Gansukh.
Would he, though?
The tent kept spinning, and she tried to steady herself against the ground, but it didn’t help. With a groan, she threw off her blankets and crawled out of the tent. She made it only a few paces, still on her hands and knees, before her gorge overwhelmed her. She gagged and then threw up, her throat burning as the acidic contents of her stomach came out.
Once her belly was empty and the quaking heaves had passed, she spat several times to clear the foul taste left in her mouth, and then crawled away from the stinking mess that had come out of her. She had almost made it back to her tent when she sensed the presence of another person nearby. “Who’s there?” she whispered.
A portion of the night became more solid, revealing Yasper. The Dutchman swayed slightly as he approached Lian and sat down with a thump next to her. He was carrying a skin and he offered it to her. “It’s just water,” he said when she shook her head savagely at the idea of drinking more of the vile spirits. “You look like you could use some.”
She accepted the skin and drank heavily. The water tasted dusty, but it was cold and clean. “Thank you,” she said when the pain in her throat had faded.
“You were drinking some of the spirits that Bruno had, weren’t you?” he asked. “That is foul stuff,” he continued when she nodded. “I think it’d be effective at getting a blood stain out of almost anything. I wouldn’t drink it.”
“But…but Bruno was drinking it,” she said.
“Bruno likes retsina,” Yasper pointed out. “It’s a drink of the Greeks,” he explained. “It’s particularly bad because they didn’t want the invaders thinking that they knew how to make wine. The trouble was the invaders stayed a long time, and the Greeks got used to drinking it.”
Lian laughed lightly, and Yasper seemed pleased that he had said something funny. She let him savor the moment and drank again from the skin.
“How’s Cnán?” Yasper asked. “Did she…?”
“She’s sleeping,” Lian said. “If you listen carefully, you can hear her snoring.”
Yasper ducked his head and looked away. “I…I don’t need to hear her snoring,” he said. “I just wanted to be sure she…you two…I wanted to be sure you two were faring well after a night of debauchery.”
“Dee-botch-air-ee?” Lian shook her head. “I do not know that word.”
“Heavy drinking,” Yasper explained. “Or merely: what Bruno does every night.”
Lian laughed again. “We frightened him,” she said when the laughter left her. “That is why he drank heavily. Haakon told him what he had done.”
“Ah,” Yasper said quietly. “Well, I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.” He sighed and stared off into the night.
“Do you think the empire is chasing us?” Lian asked. “Do you think everyone knows?”
“Why would they?” Yasper asked. “Do you think criers have been running from village to village proclaiming the news? Huzzah! Our immortal ruler is dead. Stabbed in the woods by a Northerner boy. But it’s okay. We didn’t like him all that much anyway, did we? Rejoice!”
“Another Khan will replace him,” Lian said. “They’ll fight amongst themselves for the honor of being named Khagan by the kuraltai. Who knows if the next one will be better or worse.”
“No one ever does,” Yasper said. “We’re like swallows. We just flit about”—he waved his hand like he was imitating the flight of a bird—“and hope to find a safe place to roost every night.”
Lian leaned her head against Yasper’s shoulder. “I do not want to be a swallow,” she said.
In the days following their departure from the rock, they saw signs of riders. Some were the same size as their company; others were larger. All were to be avoided. All of the Mongol ordu were heading for Karakorum; the steppe, which had been empty months earlier, was going to be less so as the weather improved. Clans would be moving east, and all of them were to be considered unfriendly.
Haakon continued to scout with the Seljuks, which meant he had hours to himself in which he could wallow in his own thoughts. His confession to Bruno the other night weighed on him. He knew he shouldn’t have said anything, but the weight of that secret was difficult to bear. It had become heavier after his injury, too, as if the Mongol arrow were a reminder that he had taken something very important from the empire. At the time, he hadn’t given much thought to what he was doing—?gedei had been trying to kill him, after all—but as they traveled west, the import of his actions had started to sink in.
It had been his hand that had killed the Great Khan. He had taken ?gedei’s—no, it was Genghis’s—knife as a trophy. What had he been thinking? Did he think he could wear it proudly like it was some sort of badge of honor? Lian had recoiled from the knife as if it had been a serpent. It was evidence of what he had done.
The irony was that he, Haakon, was the one who had killed ?gedei. The others had ridden thousands of miles to kill the Khagan, and several of their company had died along the way, but they had arrived too late. By no direct action of his own, he had gotten there first. Kill him quickly, Feronantus had told him. We have very little time. As if he were slaughtering a pig for a Kinyen.
As he scouted the steppe, Haakon realized he hated Feronantus. The master of Tyrshammar had not come for him; he had not even cared that Haakon had survived the Mongols’ arena games and escaped the Khagan’s camp. Kill him quickly was all he had said, and then he had left him to bear the burden of his actions alone.
He had fought in the arena in Hünern—and he had won!—so that Onghwe Khan would not know that the best warriors of the Shield-Brethren had not been present at the Circus of Swords. He had bled for the order—he had killed for his master—and his forearms were bare. He had not yet made the pilgrimage to Petraathen and taken the final test. He was not a knight initiate, and yet he had sacrificed so much for the order.
His horse trotted up a slight incline and at the top of the rise, he pulled back on the reins. Off to his left, he could see the company, a long string of horses moving slowly across the steppe. Ahead of him were the tiny specks of Evren and Ahmet. He turned slowly in his saddle, looking for any other movement on the steppe.
His hand fell upon the bone handle of ?gedei’s knife. Drop it here, he thought. No one will ever find it. No one will ever know.
The frozen image of Bruno’s expression swam in his mind—equal parts horror and awe that mirrored what Haakon felt when he allowed himself to reflect on what he had done.
You have seen more of the world than I.
Those had been ?gedei’s final words. Occasionally, Haakon would dream of the sea, even though it had been almost a year since he had seen it. The white spray as the waves battered themselves against the stark stones of the cliff below Tyrshammar. Rainbows caught in the spray of sea water. The smell of the water and wind—like no other smell he knew and the smell that he would always associate with home. He had stood on the rocks and felt the thunder of the pounding waves. He had heard the endless song of the ocean—the grinding roar and the fleeting hiss of the waves.
Haakon’s heart ached for the sea. He yearned to go home again. He didn’t want to die here, on the steppes, so far from the sea.
He didn’t want the blood that was on his hands.
They stopped along a narrow stream to water the horses. While Percival and Gawain worked to switch saddles among the spare horses, Yasper, Raphael, and Vera wandered along the stream bed. There were heavy clouds to the north and west of them—the sort of clouds that carried heavy weights of snow—and none of them were terribly eager to plunge into icy weather again.
“The boy told Bruno about the death of ?gedei,” Yasper said when they were well out of earshot of the company.
“Aye, so I have heard,” Raphael said. He glanced at Vera, who was walking a few paces ahead of them. “We couldn’t keep them in the dark forever,” he said.
“We could have,” Yasper said. “We’re far from Christendom. There are many who don’t like us in these lands. We don’t have to give them an explicit reason to hunt us.”
“You think Bruno and Gawain will sell this information to interested Mongol parties?”
“They might, if it meant saving their lives. They’re mercenaries. Their only master is the coin.”
“Then we don’t give them that opportunity,” Vera said, tossing the words casually over her shoulder.
Yasper raised his eyebrows and indicated with his hands what he thought of that idea.
“We’re not going to kill them,” Raphael said, responding to both Vera’s statement and Yasper’s frantic hand gestures. “They have done nothing to injure us.”
Vera glanced over her shoulder at Raphael. He held her gaze and she grunted wordlessly—saying much without saying anything at all.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running,” Yasper said. “You can disappear into the ranks of your Shield-Brethren, but where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?”
“A haircut and shave will make you unrecognizable,” Raphael said.
“That’s—” Yasper stopped and sighed. “What am I trying to say?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Raphael said. “You’re the one who brought this up.”
“What are we doing?” Yasper blurted out. “Where are we going? We crossed most of the world to do an unthinkable thing, and now we’re going home as if nothing has happened. But something has—something both terrifying and magnificent. We saved Christendom, but we’re not going to be welcomed home as heroes.”
“That wasn’t why we set out on this mission,” Raphael reminded him.
“I know. I know,” Yasper sighed. “It just feels like…we’re running. We’re running and hiding as if we are little children who don’t want to be caught for having stolen a loaf of bread or a shiny gold bauble.”
“What would you have us do?” Raphael asked. “Raise a banner proclaiming that we have assassinated the Great Khan and demand tribute from all the peoples we have saved? Bearing in mind that I don’t know that we’ve saved anyone, much less ourselves. When we get back to Christendom, I suspect we’ll discover that all those who died at Mohi and Legnica will still be dead, and all those cities like Kiev will still be razed to the ground. And before you ask why we bothered doing what we did, let me remind you that we did it to save those who were imperiled by the Mongol horde. Our mission was to prevent any further decimation of Christendom.”
“I know,” Yasper sighed. He kicked at a large rock, and it flew into a nearby bush that shook with rage at being so targeted. “I hate this place,” he said. “It’s endless and empty and it sucks away my will to live like—”
“It’s not that empty,” Vera interrupted, directing their eyes to the north.
In the distance, the clouds had parted, revealing a tiny curlicue of smoke that twisted into the sky. Yasper and Raphael squinted, trying to estimate how far away the source of the smoke was.
“A camp fire?” Raphael wondered.
“No,” Yasper said. “It would have to be an enormous fire to generate that much smoke. That has to be at least a half day’s ride from here.” He scratched his beard. “What could it be? There aren’t enough trees out here to make a fire that big.”
“It’s Feronantus,” said a voice behind them, and they turned to find Lian standing not three paces away, her eyes locked on the tiny strand of smoke. She was holding her right hand against her breasts, clutching something tightly in her fist.