“Cowardice suits you. As always.” Kristaps’s gaze roved across the company, his smile widening slightly as he looked at Cnán. She suppressed a shudder; it had been some time since a man had looked at her in that way.
It was strange, then, when Istvan drew his curved sword and urged his horse forward. She couldn’t believe he was reacting to the way Kristaps had looked at her—that was a reaction she would have expected from Percival, after all—but the sudden movement on the Hungarian’s part startled and confused her.
Istvan kept a tight grip on his horse’s reins and didn’t allow the animal to traverse the open ground between the two groups, but his stance was aggressively clear. In contrast to the prancing motion of his mount, the Hungarian was a carved statue—eyes locked on his enemy, knuckles white about his sword hilt.
Kristaps stood easily, his stance that of a man who thought the horseman an amusing diversion more than a credible threat.
“Istvan,” Feronantus said, “this is not the time.”
Istvan bared his teeth, a feral growl rising from his throat.
“You heard your master, dog,” Kristaps hissed. “He calls upon you to heel.”
Istvan’s eyes bulged in their sockets, and Cnán feared the tall knight had gone too far. The Hungarian was too quick to anger, overly fond of the comfort afforded by his rage. Her head filled with images of the unrestrained glee that had cloaked him when they had fought the Mongols at the farm.
She held her breath, fearing for the worst.
They were outnumbered, more than three to one. An engagement now would surely be their ruin…
CHAPTER 29:
A BROTHER’S SACRIFICE
Gansukh sat on the edge of his sleeping platform, running his fingers over the tiny lacquered box. After a week of toying with the rectangular puzzle, he had been able to discern tiny seams, but the secret of how to manipulate them continued to elude him.
The right side of his face ached. Ögedei had split his cheek with the cup, and Gansukh knew that the wound looked and felt worse than it was; in a few days, it would heal to a scratch and most of the bruising would vanish. Until then, it was a mark to bear proudly, a persistent throbbing ache to be borne without complaint.
But that didn’t mean he wanted to dwell on it.
The box was slender, and it fit easily in his palm. The thief, when she had run to him that night out on the steppes, had concealed it inside his deel, a desperate sleight of hand. He didn’t understand why she had entrusted the box to him; though, given her choice was between him and Munokhoi, he could not fault her. But what was he supposed to do with it? He shook the box, listening to the rattle of the object inside. Was it the box itself or what was inside that was important?
When he hunted, the moment of purest feeling came in the instant before he released an arrow. Even though the gut string dug into his fingers and his arm quivered with the exertion of holding the pull, his whole body felt light, like a single fine strand of silk stretched between the arrowhead and the target. He seemed to float, vibrating in the air, and when the target twitched, he felt the motion run through him like a bolt of lightning. And then he let go—breath and fingers acting as one—and he knew, even before the arrow had left his bow, where it would strike.
The arrow flew true only when he knew himself, when he knew what must be done and was prepared to act upon that knowledge. Giving the cup to Ögedei and daring him to accept it—as both a gift and as acknowledgement of his madness for drink—had been a moment like that. If he had thought too much about it beforehand, he never would have done it, and now that it was done, there was no reason to not accept it as his fate. The destiny afforded him by the Blue Wolf.
I can discover the secrets of this box.
He held the box gently, his eyes half closed, breath slowing, fingers moving so carefully across its smooth surface. In his mind’s eye, he saw the long seam that ran along its length, and as he traced it slowly with his long finger, he imagined drawing his bow, sighting on his target. As he felt the end of the box, he paused, his finger resting lightly on the lacquered surface, his thumb gently caressing the underside. He listened for that moment, that minute quiver wherein his target would begin to suspect its death was approaching, and when he felt something shift inside him, he let go.
When he opened his eyes, his hands were empty. The box—rather, the three intricate pieces that it was comprised off—lay on the floor. He pushed aside the pieces to reveal the secret contents of the puzzle box. It took him a moment to make sense of it, in its startling simplicity.
It was a green twig—a sprig cut from a tree. Despite its time in the box, away from soil and light, it was still supple, with tight, youthful bark—and one soft, tiny yellow-green leaf.
He raised the sprig to his nose; it smelled like…the mud along a riverbank in the spring, when the ground was redo-lent with young sprouts. When he put his fingertip on the leaf, he could almost feel it pulse like a miniature heart.
Sleep eluded him.
Opening the box had not solved its mystery, and after an hour of lying on his bed, staring at the sprig, rolling it gently in his fingers, he had wrapped it in a piece of silk and tucked it inside his robe. Hiding it once again, much as the thief had done.
But his mind could not rest; his thoughts buzzed like angry bees swarming from a disturbed nest. The more he tried to get comfortable on his bed, the more aware he became of how small and cramped his room was. The walls were too close; if he threw out his arms, he felt as if he could touch opposite walls. He was like the sprig, rattling around in a tiny box.
How could anything survive in such a box? he thought, throwing a wool-trimmed jacket over his robe. Maybe the sprig only seemed alive once he opened the box. Maybe it was rejuvenated by fresh air…
He strode out of the guest quarters, inhaling great draughts of air as he left the confines of the building. I am not a man of this place, he reflected, peering up at the night sky. Torches still sputtered and danced along the paths, the fading remnants of the revelry that had filled the palace earlier, and their light made it difficult to see the stars.
A strange cry filled the air, raising the hair on Gansukh’s arms. He heard other voices too—men shouting—and he staggered, unable to comprehend how he had been thrown into the past, back to the night when the thief had fled Ögedei’s palace and changed everything.
But it wasn’t that night. The noise came again, a trumpeting bleat of an angry animal, and when Gansukh reached the corner of the palace, he spied the source of the tumult.
In the square, a majestic beast struggled. Gray and titanic, nearly twice as tall as a man, with ears like tent cloth, great tusks like a boar, and a long snout that curled and uncurled like a snake—a monstrous beast was rearing on tree-trunk hind legs, straining against ropes wrapped around pegs and held by men who were trying to contain it. As if rope alone could restrain such a creature, Gansukh thought. Proof of Heaven’s humor. Its handlers—brown-skinned men with tall wrapped hats—prodded at the beast with long, hooked spears, shouting frantically at each other.
The beast bellowed and trumpeted, stomping the ground with its huge feet, each one as thick as a tent-pole log. As Gansukh watched, both awed and amused that men would try to tame a creature such as this, it reared again. The ropes groaned like men in pain and then tore free of their moorings. The ground shook as the beast came down, and it flung its trunk to the side, smacking a puny handler. The man flew across the square like a child’s doll as the other handlers tried—valiantly but hopelessly—to control the beast.