“Well within a bowshot.”
“A Mongol’s bowshot, or-”
“Mine.” R?dwulf could shoot an arrow a long way.
“Did you consider taking the shot?” Feronantus asked, with the faintest trace of a smile.
“Of course,” R?dwulf said, “but he knew where I was.”
“Still, you could have shot him!” Istvan blurted.
R?dwulf’s eyes swiveled to study the Hungarian. “It was odd, to my mind, that the man allowed himself to come within my range.”
“Have you an explanation for this oddity?” Percival asked.
“I do,” R?dwulf said. “I think that he is unfamiliar with the characteristics of the Welsh longbow and the arrows that we use.”
“He thought he was safe,” Feronantus said.
R?dwulf nodded. “I could have disabused him,” he said, “but the wind was swirling, and-”
“If you had missed,” Percival said, completing his sentence, “you would never have been given another chance.”
A silence ensued, broken only by the snap and hiss of the fire and the swift, slick movements of Finn’s knife through the antelope’s carcass.
“What are we to make of this Graymane and his dogged pursuit of us?” Raphael asked finally.
Feronantus looked mildly annoyed and did not answer immediately. Of course, this was precisely the question on his mind.
“He is a man of some authority,” Feronantus said, “or else he would have gone immediately to his superior and handed the matter off to him. Instead, he devotes weeks to following us, studying us. Why?”
“He wants to know what we are about,” Raphael said. “We have aroused his curiosity.”
“And perhaps he has his own reasons for traveling to the East,” Eleazar suggested.
“Further evidence, if true, that he is a man of some consequence in the councils of the Mongols,” Feronantus said.
“It is a fine riddle,” Vera said, “and pray enjoy it at your leisure. I must know whether you wish to cross the Volga tomorrow or not.”
“If we cross over,” R?dwulf pointed out, “then Graymane will suspect that our errand must lie far to the east.”
“Oh, I think Graymane knows that already,” Feronantus said. “No. The journey already drags on far longer than I had hoped. We cross over with no further delay. And if Graymane follows us, then we set a trap for him-and this time R?dwulf lets his arrow fly.”
It did not happen as quickly as Feronantus had hoped. The larger settlements along the river, where ferries were easy to come by, were garrisoned by the Mongols, and so two days were lost in scouting up and down the Volga’s bank to find a way across. Vera’s second-in-command, Alena, located a fishing village whose inhabitants were willing to ferry the party and their horses across the river in exchange for a tariff that Feronantus claimed to find shocking. But the Shield-Brethren had made it obvious that they were trying to hide their movements from the Mongol authorities, and so it was inevitable that they would end up paying dearly. Rather than paying double to ferry the Shield-Maidens over as well, and then paying yet again to bring them back a few days later, they made the decision that Alena would remain with the other women on the river’s west bank and await the return of Vera.
In truth, Vera was of little use to them once they had reached the eastern bank. Her fluency in Slavic languages had, of course, been indispensable near Kiev, and her expertise in the geography of the steppes had seen them to the great river more quickly and safely than they’d have been able to manage on their own. But she and Alena had been able to communicate with the fishermen only with great difficulty, and they had finally resorted to drawing figures in the dirt. The few locals on the eastern bank who were willing to come anywhere near them were of another race altogether and did not speak a single word of Russian, Greek, Latin, or indeed any of the languages of Christendom.
Cnan identified them as a sort of Turk and found a way to talk with them. Her skills had been of little use to the group during the journey from Kiev, and she had become little more than a shadow following in the wake of the company. Now, once again, they were unable to continue forward without her assistance. Raphael found himself to be inordinately pleased by this turn of events, realizing he had come to enjoy Cnan’s presence when she was an active part of the company.
“You know what I am looking for,” Raphael told her as they approached a small settlement of such Turkic-looking people, “so feel free to ask whenever you sense that the time is right.”
A long conversation followed, in the hut where the headman of the village lived. Cnan served as translator for Feronantus and Raphael. Or that was the plan going in. But after a few initial pleasantries, she stopped translating altogether and would sometimes speak to the headman for as long as a quarter of an hour without bothering to turn round and say a word to the knights. It was obvious, however, from tone of voice and facial expressions, that she was busy satisfying the chief’s curiosity and assuaging his concerns about this armed band of Frankish interlopers who had just presented themselves on his doorstep. So Feronantus did not bristle but merely sat still, looked formidable, and behaved himself.
Raphael, with nothing better to do, doodled on a blank page of the book that he carried with him as a sort of diary and sketchpad.
Finally, Cnan turned and addressed them. “I think it is safe now to ask him.”
She spoke in Latin, and her words-as Raphael saw, when he looked up from his sketching-were directed at him. Surprised, he gave a little shrug and glanced at Feronantus, who nodded.
Cnan turned back to the headman and spoke to him for a little while, and in that speech, Raphael thought he heard words very like Khazar and Jew, Ibrahim and Musa-words that he had been hoping would be known to the natives of this land.
The chief responded immediately. Cnan turned to Raphael. She almost never smiled. But she was smiling now. “He says that they are not all dead yet,” she announced, “and that he can show us the way to where they live. In exchange for a small consideration, of course.”
“Of course,” Feronantus said.
At a certain point, perhaps three centuries ago, the Khazars had converted to Judaism. Lacking rabbis, they had sent some of their young men down into Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cairo to study at the great yeshivas. The intention, of course, was that they would return home once they had completed their studies. And, indeed, that was how it happened during the first century or two, when the Khazars’ empire had stood at its zenith. But the decline of their power had led to gradually increasing emigration and reduction of the populace.
Jewish Khazars, dispossessed of land by the empire’s shrinkage and decline, or simply feeling insecure about the stability of the place, had traveled south with what possessions they could carry. The tiny colonies of Khazari rabbinical students in the great cities of the west and south had swelled into neighborhoods, clearly defined at first, but growing more diffuse with time as the descendants of the first waves of emigrants had intermarried with the indigenous Jews. Still, they could be identified, if you knew what to look for, as a small but distinct minority.
During his travels through the Islamic world, Raphael had seen traces of them as far west as al-Andalus. In Toledo, he had befriended a young man of Khazari descent named Obadiah. Raphael’s curiosity about the Khazars’ past had earned him an invitation to Obadiah’s home for a Passover seder at which he had plied Obadiah’s incredibly ancient great-uncle with endless questions. From this and other researches, he had learned that the Khazars’ wealth and power had derived largely from their position astride the Silk Road and that, during their heyday, it had been considered no great thing for a Khazari trader to range over a territory bounded on the east only by the ocean that washed the shores of China and on the west by the capitals and trading cities of Christendom. They had been so pleased to meet a young Christian who actually cared about their history that they had, in truth, burdened his mind with far more information than he really desired. For Raphael, in those days, had been curious about everything, not just the Khazars, and Obadiah had been only one of a number of friends he had pestered with innumerable and sometimes impertinent questions.