His scowl eased, his mustache drooped almost to his chest, and he seemed remarkably at peace.
Freebuttons and wavy-faces carried old demons with tricky ways. Swallowing them was not for the uninitiated and never for those suffering the way Istvan suffered. Sometimes the demons in the mushrooms would befriend internal devils and soothe them, but that, she guessed, was not his main reason for gathering them.
In the Far East, freebuttons were sometimes chewed by warriors intent on going into battle in a highly focused, emotionless, killing rage. Some called it putting on the Bear Skin. Feronantus would have called them Berserkers.
On the thirtieth day, on the night of a full moon, under a starry sky, Cnán stumbled over some of Istvan’s handiwork.
She had moved north nine verst, planning to head back to the main group that night. The woods and the undergrowth were thick enough that she was obliged to use established trails. Deep down one of these, she had been cut off by a band of Tartars escorting a man dressed in a coat thick with swaying sables. He wore a shining black helmet without a visor, and his features were darker, almost blue-black. He was long-nosed and sharp-chinned, handsome in his way, and she thought he might be from the southeast, the transmontane lands beyond Tufan, warm and humid places that Alexander had long ago thrust into, even now being stormed by the Mongols.
The presence of this sable-hung merchant alarmed her. Cnán had striven to guide the knights away from main-traveled roads, to avoid confrontations, speed them along, and let them keep their strength for their main purpose—crazy as that purpose might be. But now that might be impossible.
She tracked this orderly and quiet band and soon understood their purpose: collecting furs from itinerant trappers. Furs were coin of the realm in these parts, and Mongols had traded them for many centuries. Peoples on the fur routes often used cut-up pieces of sable and mink as earnest of additional reserves—like bills of exchange, only more representative and tangible. The whole, uncured furs were strung on cords like drying fish and hung off the backs of the sumpter horses or piled on top, or, as with this merchant, safely stitched to the owner’s coat.
Along the edge of a small lake, where the old oak forests had given way to meadows and young birch, the merchant and his guards approached a thin column of smoke, and there, beside a small, open campfire, they bargained with the eldest of a small band of trappers—a wizened brown man who spoke Georgic and Slav, but no Mongol. He was closely attended by three swart, thick-bodied boys, possibly his sons.
After taking his pick of their finest furs, the sable-coated Southerner ordered that some of his own goods be removed from the pack animals and disbursed to the trappers—dried venison and several ceramic jugs.
There followed a round of toasts, and then the merchant and his guards departed. Soon the trappers were happily drunk, and as dusk settled, they curled up on the lakeshore, letting their fire go out.
Cnán hoped to follow the merchant until the last of the daylight, at which point she would build a lean-to and sleep until dawn. But before that time arrived, from her grassy cover, she heard a single, awful scream. Then shouts, rising to cries, each snuffed out in its turn.
The fur trader and his company heard the commotion as well. As she watched from her cover, they bunched together on the periphery of a grassy meadow, murmuring among themselves. Soon they decided it was best to move along—no doubt making note that bandits were about.
But Cnán suspected this was no bandit. She doubled back to the trappers’ camp and found the entire group pieced out along the lakeshore. Two of the younger men sprawled on the ground, a hundred paces or more from the cinders of the campfire, each at the end of a long trail of blood. Both had been shot with arrows that had since been collected, presumably by the assassin who had shot them. Closer to the camp, the third young man had taken an arrow up through his neck, passing into his skull, where it had lodged so deeply that its owner had snapped it in half in a furious effort to worry it loose. Its bloody empennage lay discarded on the ground nearby, and Cnán recognized the fletches of gray goose feathers that Istvan liked to use.
The elder’s death had been quick—a single slice across his throat had nearly severed his head—but he had then been hacked and kicked about, limbs and chunks of flesh mixed with the reeking shards of the jugs. The entire camp smelled of old man’s blood and thick, sweet Georgian wine.
Abomination, she thought.
She knew the hoof marks of the horse that had wandered down to the lakeshore to drink while her master did his filthy work. It was Istvan’s blue roan stallion.
That horse and his rider were now moving northwest, hunting the fur traders.
CHAPTER 8:
THIS IS HOW MY FATHER HUNTED
The buck was mad with fear, its hooves tearing up clumps of earth and grass as it tried to escape. The central pathways had been blocked with makeshift fencing, and most of the narrow channels between the groupings of trees and brushes were protected by a soldier with a spear. Its sandy brown hide was dappled with red; it had tried to crash through the brush a few times already, only to be turned back by the metal point of a spear. None of the cuts were fatal; the privilege of the kill was saved for others.
It clattered to a stop in the center of the path, its hooves sliding on the river rock. Its ears flickered, reacting to the unnatural sound of the hunting party.
They were not quiet.
A spray of crossbow bolts ripped the air around the animal, and one jabbed deep into its right foreleg. It brayed with pain and tried to leap away, but the leg didn’t work quite right and the deer stumbled. It shied away from the laughter and shouts that came on quickly in the wake of the crossbow bolts.
Gansukh trailed the main hunting party, bow held at his side. He had an arrow nocked, but he was in no hurry to fire it. The garden had been turned into a fenced arena, and the nobles were hunting captive animals released into the enclosed space. When he had spotted the men setting up the barriers, he had realized how the hunt was going to be held, and at the time, his only concern had been making sure that he would be involved. Now that he was, he found he had no stomach for it. This wasn’t hunting. This was slaughter.
He was uncomfortably aware his attitude mirrored his presence at court these past few weeks: he was on the verge of Ögedei’s inner circle and, at the same time, a step outside it. Lian’s warning kept echoing in his head: it wasn’t just his actions that would be judged, but also what the others said about them. He had to hide his disapproval well, before someone noticed and said something to the Khagan.
“Missed!” Ögedei shouted at his companion as they jogged toward the quarry. Behind the pair, a retinue of red-faced, panting courtiers struggled to keep pace, lifting the hems of their robes as they ran. The Khagan was smiling widely, oblivious to the grass and mud stains on his saffron-gold robes. Clearly he was enjoying the hunt.
“I’ve got him next shot,” Munokhoi said as he slowed to finish loading his weapon. The multi-tiered crossbow—a complicated contraption of springs and levers—seemed to Gansukh to be more trouble than it was worth, but there was no arguing that, once it was loaded, it was a deadly instrument. Munokhoi grunted as he finished cocking the slide and raised it to fire.
Munokhoi kept his hair short to the point of baldness, and combined with the gauntness of his face, this gave Munokhoi a skeletal appearance, despite the youthful length of his facial hair. Thick and muscled, his arms were anything but the thin sticks of a corpse. A pale scar ran from behind his left ear and disappeared into his tunic. There was no shortage of rumors as to how Munokhoi had earned the scar, but Gansukh hadn’t cared enough to figure out which one was true. Every warrior had stories about their scars, and most of them were lies.