The squad leader raised his hand, open palm directed at the horsemen, and his men-at-arms slapped their bracers against their leather jerkins. The sound broke the cacophony of the market, as the market-goers instinctively pulled back. A bubble opened up around the soldiers and the foreign horsemen, and a hush fell over the square.
“What is your business in Rome?” the squad leader asked, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two newcomers. He stood in front of the youth’s horse, feet planted apart, looking like a dun-colored boulder.
The young man said something in a foreign tongue, pointing at the priest, who was swaying in his saddle, his focus elsewhere. Ocyrhoe stepped behind a vendor’s cart, out of the priest’s line of sight. She didn’t think he was looking for her, but she was still spooked by that prior moment of clairvoyant connection. She wanted to slip away into the crowd and vanish. But she stayed, dropping to a squat so that she could still see what was going on from beneath the cart.
When the squad leader repeated his question, his men punctuated it by loosening their swords in their scabbards. The rattle of metal made the foreigner talk more rapidly, his strange words tripping over one another like the chorus of a child’s chant. Ocyrhoe picked out the one familiar word before the soldiers, but finally it dawned on them too: “Peter,” he was saying. “St. Peter.”
“St. Peter. The basilica? Do you wish to see a priest?” the squad leader asked. “There are many priests-many churches-in Rome.”
Ocyrhoe crept forward to get a better angle. She couldn’t see the young foreigner’s face-but she could see the reaction of the soldiers as the boy held something up. In unison, their eyes widened and their brows furrowed.
“St. Peter,” he repeated and pointed at the priest on the other horse. Ocyrhoe saw he was holding a ring. He hadn’t understood the squad leader’s words, but the gist of the man’s question had been plain. Likewise, the visual aid of the ring and the swaying priest were enough to make his response clear.
The priest gasped like a fish, finding a moment of lucidity, but his voice was so ragged and strained that Ocyrhoe could barely hear it. “The Pope,” the priest rasped. “I have urgent news for His Eminence.”
“What news?” the squad leader demanded.
The priest shook his head, lapsing into the babbling cant of his scripture. “Quod perierat requiram,” he sighed. “Et…et quod abjectum erat reducam, et quod confractum fuerat alligabo, et quod infirmum fuerat consolidabo, et quod pingue et forte custodiam…”
The squad leader crossed himself, then stepped closer to them, gesturing for the ring. The young stranger leaned back in his saddle, the metal ring clutched desperately in his hand. The squad leader grimaced as he closed his own hand and raised his fist toward his men, who quickly responded with another noisy rattle of their swords. Instantly terrified, the youth tossed the ring to the leader.
The squad leader caught the ring and brought it close to his face so he could squint at it. Without turning his head, he called to his men, and one of the taller ones leaped forward. A hushed conversation followed. Ocyrhoe strained to catch their words, then took a few steps forward, just in time to see the leader drop the ring into the open hand of the tall soldier, who saluted, spun around, and trotted off through the crowd.
The foreigner had spotted the transfer too, and he cried out in protest. The priest was so startled by the sound he fell off his horse and landed with a thump on the stone paving and dirt. As the crowd surged forward, the youth pulled hard on the reins of his own horse and leaned forward, signaling-accidentally? wondered Ocyrhoe-the animal to rear up and paw at the air. One hoof struck the squad leader with a glancing blow to the head. The soldier flinched and ducked, crying out in pain, and behind him, his men drew their swords.
For Ocyrhoe, the world unraveled in that instant. The crowd became an undulating mass of bodies: some resisting being shoved forward, faces contorted with fear at the sight of weapons and flailing hooves; others pulling back, arms raised to protect their heads.
The priest lay sprawled on his back in a cloud of dust-slack-jawed, eyes flicking left and right, hands twitching-caught in the grip of fever-born phantoms. The squad leader gawped, the open cavern of his mouth making him seem like a dull-witted buffoon; his men flanked him, staunch-shouldered, arms flexed for a fight, their expressions a mix of ferocity and fear.
The foreign youth’s horse pulled back its lips and flared its nostrils; the wild boy himself was the only one who appeared calm in the sudden fracas. It was now clear to Ocyrhoe that he had perfect command of his mount and had deliberately set off this chaos. She made her decision in that instant.
With an ease that belied the confusion and tumult of the marketplace around her, she fixed her eye on a spot on the young man’s horse. As she moved, the noise of the crowd faded to a distant growl, like thunder dying across the hills. Her feet hardly touched the stones as she sprang up and dashed forward, and she barely registered the presence of the semiprone merchant whom she used as a vault to achieve a place on the foreigner’s horse-right behind him, so close she pressed against his back.
Her arm, around his shoulder. He tensed.
Her mouth, next to his ear. “Ride,” she whispered, then pointed, her finger tracking the tall soldier with the ring as he neared the edge of the square.
“Peter,” she said, knowing it was the only word he would understand. He did.
She felt his legs clamp around his horse. The animal snorted and charged, diving toward the shining blades of the approaching soldiers. Her heart leaped into her throat, her skin flushed and heated at the thought that she had made a terrible mistake. But the foreigner had given his horse the freedom to run, and run it did, scattering soldiers and commoners alike.
Ocyrhoe held tight as the market became a blur. The soldier with the metal ring had disappeared around a corner; he did not know they were chasing him, and even if he did, he couldn’t outrun this horse. She had never ridden a horse before, and the powerful thump and heave of the animal beneath her was both terrifying and exhilarating.
2
Every day in the cage was another day of freedom. Haakon’s prison was a rough enclosure of wood and bone and metal, too small to allow him to stand upright, and if he lay down and stretched his arms over his head, he could just touch the metal bars with both his fingers and his toes. The roof was made from long planks, mismatched and warped. The cage sat in the back of a weather-beaten cart. A pair of stolid oxen pulled the cart-one brown, one black-at a pace always too slow for the liking of their handler. At first, Haakon was inclined to agree-the scenery passed with agonizing slowness-but in time, he realized every day they traveled was another day he would not have to face whatever fate the Virgin had in store for him. Another day of life. Another day of freedom.
The caravan was heading east. It had left Legnica the morning after his bout in the arena against the “demon” Zug. Haakon had walked into the tunnel of the Red Veil, expecting-naively, he now realized-some manner of reward ceremony, perhaps even an audience with Onghwe Khan himself. Instead, he had been accosted by a dozen Mongol warriors wielding pole-arms with weighted ends. He had instinctively blocked the first guard’s jab and had soon realized that defending himself was only going to increase how much they would hurt him when they finally knocked away his sword (and he did not suffer the illusion that he could best twelve men with pole-arms).
They had driven him into a tent beyond the arena, and once inside the tent, they had forced him to strip out of his armor. As long as he complied with their gestures, they only prodded him with the weighted staves; they did not want to hurt him, and Haakon-biding his time-did not relish the idea of trying to escape with a broken arm or leg. Once he had removed his armor, his arms and legs were bound. A crude leather sack was forced over his head. Only then had he panicked.