The gold had been worked into the snarling visage of a wolf.
One of the caravan guards, in awe of the giant and his retinue, nervously gibbered as the group paused near Haakon’s cage. Haakon listened to the guard’s stammering speech, catching a few words. The large stranger stared at Haakon all the while, grunting occasionally in response to the guard’s story, and Haakon realized the guard was telling the giant about the fight in the arena. With a wild cry, the guard launched into a clumsy impression of Haakon’s final assault on Zug with the demon’s pole-arm. The giant-who, Haakon guessed, was one of the Mongol generals, perhaps even one of the other Khans, a relative of the dissolute Khan who lorded over Hunern-glanced briefly at the guard as the nervous man finished his exhibition, before returning his piercing gaze to Haakon.
Haakon shrugged. “I fight,” he said, hoping that he had learned the word correctly from the caravan drivers and that he was not claiming to be a farm animal.
The giant laughed, and Haakon reasoned it made no difference if he had gotten the Mongol word right or not. His life was entirely in this Mongolian’s hands, and as long as the man appeared amused by his words, then whatever he had said was the best response. Haakon realized the general’s visit was probably the reason he had been given the gruel-if the prizes were to be inspected, it followed they should be somewhat healthy. He picked up the bowl of uneaten gruel and raised it in a gesture of thanks.
The general grunted in response and took several ponderous steps closer to the cart. His round face was oddly childlike, but his eyes were too quick and focused to be mistaken for a youngling’s innocent gaze. His retinue darted around behind him, like a pack of scavengers waiting for the larger predator to finish with its kill.
Not knowing what else to do, Haakon sat down and started to eat the gruel. The general watched, studying Haakon not as a curiosity but as a warrior would carefully watch the simple movements of his enemy in order to learn something of how he might carry himself in combat.
When the bowl was empty, the general pointed at himself with the forefinger of his right hand. “Soo-boo-tie,” he said. He said it again and then pointed to Haakon.
“Hawe-koon,” Haakon replied, touching his chest.
The Mongolian general nodded and tried Haakon’s name several times, sounding as if he were trying to speak around a stone in his mouth. Haakon decided to not undertake the same effort, fearing the general’s humor might dissolve should Haakon display a commensurate clumsiness with the Mongolian name. Instead, he saluted with the bowl again, and as it was empty, he offered it to the general.
He had wanted to show some deference to his captor, the sort of noble gesture that Feronantus would have expected of him. Even though he was a prisoner, he was still a member of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. The bowl was the only thing he had to offer. His fealty was not available.
Soo-boo-tie stared at the crude bowl for a moment and then plucked it from Haakon’s grasp. He spoke a few words to his retinue, and they scattered, rushing to continue their inspection of the caravan’s prizes. Soo-boo-tie lingered for a moment and then laughed once more as he turned to depart, waving the bowl at Haakon.
The caravan guard stared at Haakon, open mouthed, and when Haakon met his gaze and shrugged, the guard spooked-jerked back, dropped his jaw, and raised his hands in deference. Then he recovered, straightened, snapped his mouth shut, and ran bandy-legged after the general and the others, leaving Haakon to wonder what had just transpired.
The next morning, the caravan moved on, and no more gruel was offered. The caravan masters returned to throwing a single strip of dried meat into his cage, once a day. But the pieces were bigger and not quite as hard.
Haakon dreamed about the bowl. In the dream, he had not given it back, and the general had let him keep it. During the day, he hid it beneath his ragged shirt, tucking it against his side and holding it in place with his arm. On the nights when it rained, he pushed it out of his cage to catch the rainwater.
The shallow bowl of his dream was turned from a piece of knotty wood, and he could feel the tiny divots in its center where the woodworker had finished his work with a chisel. Was its maker still alive, or had he been killed when the Mongols had conquered whatever city he lived in? Haakon and the bowl had that much in common: they were spoils of war.
During the endless caravan ride, he had seen, firsthand, the aftermath of Mongol victories. From the older Shield-Brethren who had gone to the Levant to take part in the Crusades, he had heard stories about the atrocities perpetrated by the conquering armies (with the exception of the legendary Salah-ad-Deen, whose name Haakon could barely pronounce, though Raphael had spoken it several times). The reality, however, was much starker than his imagination.
Everything and everyone in these dying lands seemed to have become a prize to be split up, argued over, and ultimately taken away, killed, or enslaved. A Mongol commander’s worth became measured in how much treasure he controlled, and Haakon could imagine how the constant lure of fresh conquests would be irresistible to those hungry to prove themselves to their generals. One bowl was not much in and of itself, but when wagons laden with such prizes returned to the Khagan, the wealth became substantial. One man made little difference, but cart after cart of prisoners made the victory all the greater.
In Haakon’s dream, he imagined using the long-lost bowl to escape, beating a guard who came too close to his cage, smashing it over the Mongol’s head until bone broke. The bowl itself was too knotty to break, a twisted piece of an ancient tree that was older than any living Mongol today.
Haakon dreamed even while awake. Once free of the cage, he would find a blade. How many could he kill with blade and bowl before the Mongol archers filled him with arrows? Could he steal a horse and ride away?
How far from Legnica was he?
Free of his cage, surrounded by dead Mongols, he found himself in possession of a map, a yellowed piece of parchment like the old map of the known world the Shield-Brethren kept in the great hall at Tyrshammar. The eastern edge of the map was the great winding length of a Ruthenian river. The Volga? That name sounded right, but he wasn’t sure. He had only seen the map once after word of Onghwe’s challenge had come to Tyrshammar’s cold rock. Feronantus had used it to show the Shield-Brethren where they were going, but had only gestured at the eastern edge of the map to show where the invaders were coming from. None of them had imagined they would ever actually go there.
Still free of his cage, the bloody bowl clutched in one hand, he found himself riding one of the squat Mongol ponies, his body rocking back and forth as the pony galloped free. Did it know where it was going? In Haakon’s other hand the parchment map streamed out like a banner; he tried to look at it as the pony fled through the sea of grass. The moon was a pale sliver in the dark sky, and the markings on the map were faint lines in the ghost light. Here was a river, there a mountain range, and then-the rest of the parchment rippled out like an endless ribbon of moon-white blankness.
Still, Haakon kept riding, hoping the pony was going in the right direction, toward the river and the mountains.
Otherwise, he was going to tumble over the edge of the map, into the endless, frozen depths of Hel’s terrible domain…
A voice.
Haakon opened his eyes and stared at the cage’s slatted ceiling for a few moments, then shivered to toss off the fleeting, terrible fragments of his dream. Hel herself had gripped him with hideous claws of icicles and bone. Her tangled gray-white hair had been crusted with the frozen brine of mourners’ tears…