But Feronantus—damn him—had asked politely and in a way that made it clear he well knew what he was asking: for her to humiliate herself in front of foes and friends alike.
She pushed past Feronantus with an attempt at a swagger, made more ridiculous by her exhaustion. “Then get ready to greet my pursuers,” she said and mounted, with less grace than before. She wheeled her pony and rode in the direction whence she had just come.
Her brief pass through the camp enabled her to view the Shield-Brethren’s preparations, some of which (stringing ropes between trees at the level of a rider’s neck, planting sharpened poles in the ground) were obvious, others (Yasper lighting torches in broad daylight) baffling.
All through the hours of darkness, Cnán had been riding across open territory, substituting speed for wit and relying on the four behind her—Percival, Raphael, Eleázar, and Istvan—to draw the attention of the pursuing Mongols. The route she had taken into the camp only a few moments ago was still marked out by a gash of trampled grass crossing over a pasture that was perhaps a verst in breadth and notching the skyline of a grassy rise.
The pasture was bordered on its lower slope by a tumbledown stone wall. Purple-flowering thistles and pea vines had thrust their roots between the rocks and turned the old wall into a wild hedge that was far too high to be jumped. A gap in the wall—an old gate or stile—had been narrowed by the lush greenery to a sort of mouse hole through which only one rider could pass at a time. Beyond the wall spread an abandoned field of rye, now feral and losing a war against more potent weeds. Like most arable fields, it was much longer than it was wide so that the farmer would not need to turn his team around frequently while plowing. The hedge wall ran along one of its long sides. The opposite side, perhaps a hundred paces away, was not fenced, unless one counted a stubble of old stumps where the farmer had cut away some trees. Dense black alder and ash came up to that side of the field and extended down a gentle slope for perhaps half a verst before falling decisively into the endless marsh.
So much for the field’s long sides. The short ends were defined, at one end, by more forest. Pines lunged out into the grassland, forming a salient where the land’s former occupants had erected their hovels—deserted for a year or more—and, at the other, by a line of rubble trailing across the ground, scarcely knee-high. Perhaps the remnants of another stone wall that had been pulled apart by scavengers in need of building materials.
The knights had pitched their shelters a few days ago back in the pines behind the hovels. The place was not quite a clearing, for a few ash trees of some size were salted through it, but the undergrowth was sparse—a consequence, obviously to Cnán, of a fire that had hurried through earlier and destroyed the young trees, while not burning long or hot enough to kill the big ones. Farmers often set such fires, but this one had probably started from a lightning strike in dry weather.
As she passed from the rye field through the mouse hole and out into the big pasture beyond, her eye picked out a blasted snag, lonely and stark along the skyline over which the Mongols would soon be coming. Echoes of many unwelcome sights witnessed during her long trek across the Mongols’ empire.
She nudged her pony to a canter and rode up the trail she had trampled in the grass earlier, retracing her path until she drew near the crest. But before exposing her head, she dismounted and led the pony across the slope until she reached the snag—a moribund ash.
She threw the pony’s reins over a low side branch, which she then used to get a leg up and ascend to a higher bough. The ash was not as big as it looked from a distance, and its branches were dry, burnt, and brittle. They would not have supported any of the men in the party; they barely supported Cnán. With some care, however, she was able to climb about twice a man’s height to where the trunk forked into two roughly equal parts, a secure cradle from which she could look out over the other side of the rise and see what was coming.
Her fear, strangely, had been that she would see nothing at all, since this would mean that Percival and the others were dead. Further evidence that being around Percival had destroyed her wits, since their deaths would have been the best possible result if her only purpose were to save herself.
But a rooster tail of dust, catching the low light of the morning sun, was growing visible in the west—much more dust than could have been made by four men. A sizable host was on its way, pursuing one or more fugitives.
Since the ground’s gentle swell was blocking the near view, she climbed higher and, after some anxious waiting, noticed four glinting Vs, like the formations of wild geese, cutting across a wide stretch of river she had forded at dawn.
She was looking at the wakes made by four horses as they waded across the shallows.
Turning her head around, grabbing the trunk as a branch crunched under her, then rebalancing her weight, she picked out Rædwulf, perched behind the hedge with his bow slung across his shoulder, gazing at her. She tucked her thumb into her palm and held up four fingers. Rædwulf nodded and dropped out of view. She felt that she should inform them too about the size of the pursuing host, but then reflected that Finn would soon know this by listening to the ground.
The points of the Vs plunged into the near bank of the ford. Cnán began softly singing a little song, a tune of the Binders that moved to the steady and compulsive beat of a dance. It sounded best with a shawm playing the melody and a daf pounding out the beat, but she could conjure the memory of hearing it played with such instruments around a fire in happier times and better places. Reaching the end of the chorus, she stuck out her thumb and began the song again.
Finishing for a second time, she stuck out her index finger.
Her ring finger was up when the first Vs appeared at the far side of the ford. Their vertices struck the bank at about the time she raised her pinky; when she had progressed to her other thumb, the host had become so congested that it was no longer possible to make out individual wakes. And yet she did not think it was any larger than the group she had seen at yesterday’s twilight.
They had not, in other words, been joined by more arban during the chase. But just to make sure, she tore her gaze away from the group thronging the riverbank and stared across the greater distance for other plumes of dust. She saw none.
It was all as she had described to Feronantus. No need to fly back to camp with a correction.
The wait that followed was long and gave her time to consider how she might best carry out her duty. It was an ugly word, duty, from which part of her recoiled as she might have jumped back from a snake. But she had grown accustomed to ignoring that voice, and she ignored it now.
She was still up in the tree, still repeating her song, when Percival led his group of four up the hill, their mounts foaming and sweating, half dead. She made sure that the men saw her, which was not difficult since they were using the snag as a landmark. Once she had their attention, she waved them vigorously toward the mouse hole through the hedge wall. Istvan, riding a couple of lengths out ahead of the others, took her meaning immediately and veered toward the opening. Raphael and Eleázar, who came along next, hesitated.
“Clog it up, why don’t you!” Cnán shouted down to them. “Like drunks rolling out of a burning tavern.”
They responded by showing her their teeth and followed Istvan. As they went, Raphael and Eleázar jostled each other playfully, acting the role of the panicky drunks, just to amuse her. In their relief at still being alive, they acted like little boys. She was pleased that they appreciated her wit.