“Kiiii-” Was that his voice? He didn’t recognize it, but the noise brought a smile to the other man’s face. A blood-stained smile.
“Still here,” Kim whispered. He coughed, or maybe he laughed. It was hard to tell. “They should have killed us.”
Zug swallowed, his throat raw and parched. “They made a mistake,” he managed.
In his head, the old ghost laughed.
May God have mercy on me for my lies, Dietrich prayed as he rode in the midst of the Mongol raiding party. All he had wanted was to save his men from the same ignoble defeat that had slain so many at Schaulen, and all he had accomplished so far was the ugly deaths of his bodyguards-two of the most loyal and trusty knights in his command. It was as if God was punishing him already for his hubris. How dare he think his order more worthy of salvation than any other knights of Christendom. Did they not worship the same God? Yet, he had offered to sacrifice them in order to save his own. Was such an act worthy of a Christian soldier?
These are the decisions a Grandmaster must make, he reminded himself, recalling his last visit to Rome and his audience with the Pope. Gregory IX had offered his ring for Dietrich to kiss, and the Heermeister had gotten down on one knee and kissed the old man’s hand. Sacrifices must be made, the Pope had said, offering Dietrich his other hand, and Dietrich had kissed the smaller gold ring as well. The one with the broken sigil. He had sworn fealty not only to the Church and the Pope, but to something older than both.
Beside Dietrich, Father Pius clung to his horse like a wet rag. The priest had not stopped whimpering since the Mongols had swept both of them into their column, and the way the priest was quivering in his saddle, Dietrich was surprised the coward hadn’t pissed himself.
“They will release us,” Pius squeaked, his voice thin and shrill. Dietrich wasn’t sure if the priest was asking him what was-in his mind-an entirely rhetorical and pointless question, or if the priest thought that endless repetition would make the words true. Twice now the priest had tried to engage the Mongols in some sort of discourse, but the warriors closest to them had only laughed at the priest’s timorous words. The second time, one of the warriors had whacked Pius about the head and shoulders with his bow, finding even more amusement in the noises the priest made with each blow. Eventually Pius realized the only way to make the man stop his abuse was to stop shrieking.
“They will kill us, as soon as they remember we’re not useful to them,” Dietrich growled. He didn’t say it to frighten the priest even more, but to focus the man’s attention. “More specifically, they will kill you as soon as they no longer need my words translated. Your survival depends on mine. Do you understand?”
The priest stared at Dietrich, eyes frozen with fear. Pius’s horse snorted and danced a few jerky steps as the priest lost control of his bladder.
The Shield-Brethren were housed in an old monastery north of the ruins of Koischwitz, and while Dietrich surmised it was possible to approach the chapter house through the woods between the destroyed hamlet and the old ruins, that approach would be noisy and difficult for a host of riders. By fielding a sizable war party, the Mongols had sacrificed stealth and speed for numbers. Dietrich did not know how many Shield-Brethren were at the chapter house-this was one of the many details they had kept hidden by virtue of their distance from Hunern-but he suspected Tegusgal had more than double the numbers of warriors. In which case, a direct approach made sense. Dietrich had made no suggestions as Tegusgal had led the party across the narrow bridge spanning the sluggish river that lay to the west of Hunern.
The bridge had been a narrow span occasioned by local herdsmen and the isolated merchant prior to the Mongols’ arrival, and as the influx began around the arena, some effort had been applied to shoring up the old pillars and replacing the more rotten planks. Once improved, the bridge became more used, which led to more wear and tear on the timbers, necessitating yet another pass at repairing it. The second time, Mongol engineers got involved; nearly overnight, the bridge doubled in width, and a small shack was erected on the Hunern side.
Onghwe Khan knew the value in controlling the roads. While the man had a reputation for being dissolute, he was also cannily aware of the fundamental ebb and flow of humanity. Dietrich suspected his rumored boredom was nothing more than an affectation, though he never wanted to find out one way or another.
Surrounded by mounted Mongol warriors, Dietrich and Pius galloped across the wide bridge, and the group swung north, putting the river on their right. Dietrich-with some annoyance-marveled at the speed and fluidity with which the host moved, each mount keeping pace with the others with neither thought nor order required. They slowed as they got out into the countryside, allowing themselves to be seen by any who still moved out in the open. Tegusgal was intentionally projecting power by way of visible force, Dietrich realized, to garner fear. It was not enough to destroy his enemies; it needed to be seen and left undisputed.
Dietrich’s charger, larger than the tallest of the Mongol horses by several hands, chewed on its bit at being trapped in the center of a mass that moved slower than it liked, but Dietrich held it steady. For the time being, he was a prisoner. There was nowhere to go, and no reason to push the Mongols to ride faster.
His and Pius’s usefulness would come to an end soon enough.
The Mongols began to shift around him, and Dietrich found his horse being nudged toward the front of the formation. The Mongol party slipped past him like beads of water sliding off a broad leaf, and in short order, he was in front of the host. He felt like a game beast hunted for the sport of some bored nobleman in his own lands, and some of his apprehension about what was to come next drained away, leaving only the burning shame and humiliation of his position.
He was riding to his death. His plan had been flawed from the outset, the feeble machinations of a tiny mind that could only react in fear. What did he really know of the Shield-Brethren’s location? Of their defenses and their armament? He was going to ride right into the camp of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. God would decide what happened next. He had no other option. The longer he tarried, the more obvious it would be the Mongols that he had no idea how to deliver on what he had offered them.
When that happened, Tegusgal’s archers would fill him with arrows. The image of Burchard and Sigeberht dead in the street flashed unbidden across his thoughts, and an involuntary shudder shook his frame. He was almost as bad as Pius.
He bent his thoughts toward the Shield-Brethren instead of dwelling on the dead. They were using an abandoned monastery, and he tried to imagine how they would apportion themselves throughout the ruins. They would need some open ground where they could pasture and exercise their horses. Would they set up an archery range? They would have to forage for food, and they had enough mouths to feed that they would have to use some of the horses as pack animals. Horses would balk at continually moving through dense undergrowth. There would be paths in the forest, tracks made by the constant coming and going of the hunting teams. Dietrich started to pay closer attention to the gaps between the trees as the woods grew thicker around him and his Mongolian entourage.
He tried not to think about the bow that each man carried, about how quickly he had seen them nock and shoot an arrow. The small of his back itched. Even in armor, he felt naked.
His eye was drawn to a gap between a trio of mature oak trees. On one of the trees, he spotted a series of too-regular markings. At a distance, it would have been easy to miss the cuts, dismissing them as happenstance, but up close, he could see they were made by a knife blade. They were at the right height too for a man riding on a horse. The branches of the tree on the left side of the gap didn’t reach across the opening as they should either. There was one, curling low in the front, but behind it, there was a suspicious dearth.