The ravens came again, and he spent some time wandering in their wake, looking for something. What was it?
His father’s knife.
He shouldn’t lose it. It was important. Genghis had given it to him during his first hunt, when he had shot the deer. He had used it to dress the animal.
There had been so much blood.
One of his father’s men had helped him carry the meat back to camp. What had that man’s name been? Tolui?
No, Tolui was someone else. Someone he needed to remember. Someone important to him. Tolui? he called out, but Tolui didn’t answer.
Tolui hadn’t answered for many years.
He was gone. So was his father.
He could never be like his father. He had always known he would fail to be as great a man as Genghis Khan. No one could. Genghis stopped being a man the instant his spirit left his body. He was a ghost that grew more powerful every year as those who thought they knew him told stories that were little more than their own wishful thinking. They made him a ghost, yet they expected his son to be stronger and braver. They expected more because they could not face the darkness; they were afraid to admit they did understand Genghis’s vision.
They did not know what to do with his legacy. They dreamed-or thought they dreamed-of the endless sea of horses, and they did not know the meaning of such a vision. They thrust the Spirit Banner into the hands of the sons of Genghis Khan and begged them to be more than their father. They begged him to keep the promise they imagined Genghis had made.
But they couldn’t face the idea that Genghis had made no promise to them. The only love Genghis had ever had was for his family-his wives and his sons. They were all that mattered. They were his true legacy.
Ogedei opened his eyes once more. The Northerner was still there.
“The sea,” Ogedei croaked, and the boy leaned closer. Ogedei remembered the dream he had had, of riding a horse away from the heart of the empire, away from the legacy of his father. Riding until he crossed the entire world and reached the western sea. “All I ever wanted was to see the sea,” he sighed.
The boy nodded. “Aye,” he said. “I have seen it.”
“Tell me,” Ogedei said.
The boy did, using words that Ogedei did not understand. But it didn’t matter. He could read the boy’s face well enough. It was all he could see anyway. The ravens had blotted out the rest of the sky. It was getting colder. Like the sea the boy was talking about. Ogedei closed his eyes, and in the fading twilight of his life, saw the horses again. Running endlessly across the grass of the steppes, running all the way to the end of the world where the sea met the sky.
“You have seen more of the world than I,” Ogedei said just before he died.
EPILOGUE
With Cnan’s help, Raphael dressed the knife wound on Haakon’s hip. Raphael moved stiffly, and Haakon eventually saw why. A tiny stub of a broken arrow protruded from Raphael’s back. When Raphael finished with Haakon, Cnan said something about the arrow.
“It’s fine,” Raphael said.
“It doesn’t look fine,” she argued.
“It’ll keep,” Raphael said, rolling up his medical kit. “I have to take my maille off to get to the rest of it, and there isn’t time.” He stood, trying to hide how stiff he was, and his gaze wandered down the narrow valley. “Where is Feronantus?” he asked.
Haakon, Cnan, and the Chinese woman all looked as well. All they could see was a single horse, cropping the tiny tufts of hardy grass, and a pair of bodies, still tangled together, but unmoving. Of the leader of the Shield-Brethren company there was no sign.
“God damn him,” Raphael swore. “He left us.”
“What?” Cnan said.
“He had a plan, remember?” Raphael said savagely. “It just didn’t include the rest of us.” He stalked back to his horse. “Haakon,” he called. “That horse over there. It’s yours.”
Haakon looked down at the still body of the Khagan. “What about him?” he said. “We can’t just leave him.”
“We can and will,” Raphael said as he swung painfully up into his saddle. He nodded toward the dead body of the Khagan’s horse. “It is a hunting accident. Nothing more. As long as we are not here when the Mongols come.” He snapped his reins and his horse trotted away.
Cnan and the other woman got back on their horse as well, and the Binder motioned for Haakon to follow them. He hesitated, looking back and forth between the dead body of the Khagan and his friends.
Haakon limped over to the body and pulled the Khagan’s knife free. No one was going to think hunting accident with the knife sticking out of his neck, he rationalized. He wiped the blade clean on his own ragged trousers and retrieved the sheath from Ogedei’s belt. He felt like he should cover the body or something, but there was no cloth available and so he settled for making sure the Khagan’s right eye was closed. The left had swollen shut.
He picked up his sword, even though the Khagan’s looked to be a finer blade. He was already keeping the knife. Taking the sword too was tantamount to robbing from the dead.
The knife, he told himself, was a spoil of war. A testament to what had been done.
Painfully, he jogged down the valley until he reached the bodies of Krasniy and the Torguud captain. There was a lot of blood on both men, and it was hard to tell who had died first, but neither had given up. He stopped a moment to offer a prayer to the Virgin for the red-haired giant who had been his only friend in this strange land.
He turned, whistling lightly at the Torguud captain’s pony. It pricked up its ears and regarded him warily. He limped toward it slowly, talking calmly to it. Assuring it he was friendly.
And then he stopped, casting around for something that should have been lying on the ground nearby. He raised his arm and called out to Raphael and Cnan, who circled back.
“It’s missing,” he said when they rode up.
“What is?” Raphael asked.
“The lance that the Torguud captain was carrying,” He said.
Cnan looked around too and nodded. “Haakon’s right. The Khagan’s bodyguard was carrying a banner. There were streamers attached to it, made from hair. Horsehair, I think.”
Lian spoke up from behind Cnan. “Spirit Banner,” she said in the Mongol tongue.
“What did she say?” Raphael demanded.
“She said it was a Spirit Banner,” Haakon translated.
“The symbol of the Mongol Empire,” Cnan supplied. “It belonged to Genghis Khan, Ogedei’s father.”
“Is he the one who first built the empire?” Raphael asked.
“Aye, he was. He united the clans.”
“Of course he did,” Raphael said with a heavy sigh. He shook his head. “Feronantus has it.”
“Why?” Cnan asked.
“You were there,” Raphael said. “At the Kinyen when Istvan spouted his nonsense about the All-Father.”
“All-Father?” Haakon asked. “The Norse All-Father? What are you talking about?”
“Yggdrasil,” Raphael said. “Ragnarok.” His eyes were bright, filled with tears. “Surely you know the stories, Haakon.”
They did not want to talk to him, but Kristaps was persistent. His mood and the alacrity with which his hand fell to the hilt of his sword helped, and finally he found a young Hospitaller who was willing to tell him what had happened at the bridge. He did not believe the story at first, but in the absence of any other evidence, it became the story he would tell.