“Come on,” Eilif said. “We’re going to lose them.”
Styg jogged after Eilif and the escaped prisoners. He didn’t know where they were going, but he trusted they were going to end up at the Khan’s tent.
Don’t stop, Rutger had instructed all of the Shield-Brethren shortly before Styg and Eilif had split off on their special mission. Kill every Mongol you meet. That is the only order you must remember. Kill them all.
It really didn’t matter how he got there, did it?
A group of panicked slave girls came running around the corner of a tent, and Styg darted to his right to avoid them. For a moment, he lost sight of the others, and when he was trying to spot them again, he caught of a quartet of Mongols trying to control a towering figure with dark skin and thick black hair.
The man was the largest human Styg had ever seen in his life, and the Mongols were trying to tie him to a post, but the man’s massive arms were like tree trunks and he was not cooperating readily. One of the Mongols was trying to lash his hands together while the others jabbed him with their spears. Each time he resisted the spears would prick him, though none so deeply as to do more than make him hesitate.
Styg glanced around for the others one last time, and then changed course.
The first Mongol never saw Styg coming. Styg’s blade cut his spine, and he collapsed immediately. The second turned in time to catch Styg’s pommel on the side of the head. One of the remaining Mongols swung his spear sideways, and Styg blocked the shaft easily with his sword, but the man yanked the spear back as soon as there was contact and darted the spear point back again, on the inside of Styg’s guard!
Styg slapped his left hand around his blade and yanked his sword toward him as he twisted his body away. He felt the spear point catch on his maille as it trailed across his side. Off balance, his sword half caught between his body and the spear, Styg realized there was no easy way to extricate himself from this situation without giving the man an opening. He simply let go of his sword and grabbed the Mongol’s spear with both hands.
The Mongol warrior stared at him, dumbfounded at Styg’s foolishness, and then he remembered what he and his companions had been doing before Styg’s interruption. His eyes widened as he struggled to yank his spear out of Styg’s grip, and after a second he let go of the spear and tried to pull his sword out of its scabbard, but he was too late.
The Mongol was suddenly-and very violently-smashed to the ground by the body of the fourth Mongol.
In the frenzied moment, everyone had forgotten the muscular giant. He had yanked on the ropes the fourth Mongol clung to, and before the hapless soul could disentangle himself, the giant had swung him like a club into the other still standing Mongol.
With a wordless yell, the giant advanced on the two sprawling men, and Styg got out of the way as he grabbed up a fallen spear and drove it through the chest of one man, through the leg of the other, and finally lodging the point deep in the ground. The Mongols struggled, pinned by the spear, and with a bellow of rage that Styg could swear shook the ground, the behemoth kicked each of the downed men in the head. The second one’s neck snapped at a horrific angle with a cracking nose that made Styg wince in sympathetic agony.
The immense man turned toward them, and Styg stared, open mouthed, up at the towering man. The giant stared at the Styg, chest heaving, eyes shining with murderous fire. He touched his hands to his chest, said one word-Madhukar-and held out his hands, still bound with rope.
“I think you and I share the same enemy,” he said. He grinned as he cut the man’s bonds with his bloody sword.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Ogedei could not remember the last time he had been awake before anyone else. In Karakorum, the servants knew to let him sleep as late as he desired, though invariably Chucai would send a frightened messenger with some poorly veiled excuse of a crisis that demanded his attention. Some days, the desire for drink woke him; he had either drunk too little or too much the night before, and the spirits that lived in the wine would tug him away from sleep. His mouth would be dry, and they would whisper incessantly in his ear about how easy it would be to rinse out the dust with a mouthful of wine. During the long journey to Burqan-qaldun, he would wake to the sound of the camp preparing for another day: wood being chopped, meals being prepared, ger being disassembled, pack animals being loaded again.
It had been many years since he had slept away from the constant commotion of civilization, and many years before that since he had slept outside with only a sleeping roll between him and the ground. It was not surprising, in that case, that he had slept poorly.
It had been the constant mention of his father that had put him in a foul mood as he had laid down to sleep the previous night. He had stared up at the stars for a long time, lost in thought, as more and more of the men around him surrendered to their dreams.
All spoke of Genghis Khan as if they knew him, as if they were anything more than lap dogs and lackeys to him, but none of them knew the Great Khan as well as he did. And he would never confess to them that the man had been an enigma to him.
He never understood why Genghis had chosen him over his brothers to lead the empire. Jochi had been stronger and Chagatai was smarter; even Tolui-dear sweet Tolui-had been better suited to lead than he. And yet, Genghis had ignored all of the evidence and chosen him-the middle son who no one believed was capable.
Late the night before, he had recalled a dream from months earlier, during the late summer at Karakorum. He had dreamed of abandoning the empire-just he and Toregene. They shared one horse and rode west until they reached the endless sea where the sun doused itself every night. There, on the beach, they had built a shelter out of driftwood and palm fronds. He had learned to fish from the shore, and she haunted the rock ledges where the noisy birds nested, harvesting eggs. It had been a simple life, unlike any he had ever known, and it had been satisfying. When they had gotten hungry, he fished; when they had been tired, they slept. The sun fell down from the sky, boiled the sea, and went out; the next day, it was there in the sky again. Nothing ever changed. The dream hadn’t been a vision; it was nothing more than the idle spark of a desire that he fueled enough to become a tiny flame, lurking in his heart.
The previous night, sleeping on the ground, beneath a sky filled with bright stars, was a small taste of what that life would be like. Now, with the sky obscured by the predawn fog, the ground wet with dew, he discovered that the burning desire for a simple life had been extinguished. That dream was nothing more than cold ash in his mind, a fantasy that belonged to someone else.
Ogedei rolled his dry tongue around the inside of his mouth, and his attention drifted to the nearby bundle of his gear. Nestled deep inside one of the bags were two flasks of wine. He’d only need one to quench the worst of his thirst. He could save the other one for after he slew the Great Bear.
He rolled over, turning his back on the bag and its secret contents. His knees and back complained as he got to his feet, and he used this soreness as an excuse to walk away from his sleeping roll. A little exercise would get his blood flowing. They had camped near a stream; he could get a drink from there just as easily, and the clear, cold mountain water would wash away the cobwebs of the night.