“Once we made contact,” she said, oblivious to his gaze, “we were able to cut our way through, killing perhaps a dozen. Escape to the west was impossible. They could retreat at will and shoot arrows at us. Only by confining them against the river could we fight at close quarters. So we continued making that way, losing Shield-Maidens one after another, and defeated all who stood between us and the water. It was an effective way-the only way-to inflict losses upon Mongols.
“But they were too many. In time, it became clear we would not be able to scatter them completely. The river, then, became our only hope. We broke through their line once more and made a leapfrogging retreat to a place where trees and shrubs grew dense along the bank. Toward the end…all became confused. There were six of us, then four…” Her eyes closed. “My Shield-Maidens submitted to the sword of a sister, who then cut her own throat, rather than be harried and tormented by prancing, grimacing Mongols.”
She lay back and stared up at the ceiling. Bowl and spoon clattered to the floor before Raphael could catch them. “At the end, it was just Alena and me, concealed in the bushes. We stripped off our armor. Darkness came, a mercy. We slipped quietly into the Volga and swam. The current carried us miles downstream before we could cross and fetched us up near a village. The adventure that brought us from there to here would make for another interesting story, but-”
“But the only part of it that matters,” Feronantus said, “is whether you were able to cover your traces. Graymane would have crossed the river at first light yesterday.” He glanced toward a rude hole in the wall where a window had once stood. The pink light of dawn was warming to gold. The Mongols had been on this bank of the Volga for twenty-four hours. “His blood is up, and having gained the Vor, he is not the sort of man to release it until he has put us all in the ground.”
“I would say we took reasonable precautions to cover our tracks,” Vera said, “but we had to get bandages. Those we obtained from village women going down to the river in the morning to draw water and wash clothes. And so all depends on whether Graymane is interrogating those people.”
“We must move as soon as you are able,” Feronantus concluded.
“I will only delay you,” Vera returned. “You must go without me.”
“That is noble of you,” Feronantus said, “but you are assuming that the Khazars will allow you to stay.”
Here Feronantus was alluding to developments that Vera could not have known about.
Since the startling arrival of Vera and Alena yesterday afternoon, the behavior of the Khazars had been complicated enough to arouse Raphael’s curiosity. No people could have been more hospitable in bringing all sorts of aid and succor to the wounded Shield-Maidens. But it would be a mistake to draw too many conclusions from this alone, for these were mountain tribesmen, and such people always extended hospitality toward guests. More telling had been the behavior of the rabbi, Aaron, and the merchant, Benjamin, with whom they had been talking when Vera and Alena had arrived. Aaron seemed greatly troubled by the news that the two wounded Shield-Maidens might have led a Mongol unit directly here. Which only proved that Aaron was an intelligent man.
No visible crack had yet appeared in his facade of hospitality, but his anxiety was obvious. To judge from the lights in the windows of his home, he had spent much of the night awake, talking to Benjamin, who, at first light, had begun making preparations to leave.
Finding himself somewhat useless for the time being-since Vera seemed on the mend and there was nothing to do in her case but wait-Raphael excused himself from the tumbledown house and strolled through the half-abandoned village to the more modest but better-maintained structure, less than a bowshot away, where Rabbi Aaron dwelled.
Benjamin was pacing about restlessly in the stable yard, keeping an eye on a pair of servants loading goods and luggage onto a short train of packhorses. Benjamin saw Raphael approaching, and guessed his intentions. But he was polite enough to begin the conversation by expressing condolences over the death of Alena and inquiring after the state of Vera’s health.
They were speaking in the lingua franca, which Benjamin knew well. In his younger days, he had lived in Byzantium, and there had transacted a considerable amount of business with merchants from the great trading cities of Italy. Speaking it seemed to remind Benjamin of more pleasant and prosperous times, and so he and Raphael tended to use it instead of Hebrew.
At their introduction, Raphael had assessed Benjamin as too old and fat to accompany them on such adventures. At each subsequent encounter, however, he had lowered his estimate of the Khazar’s age and finally saw that what he had at first taken for fat was just an uncommonly stocky build padded by heavy clothing. Benjamin had probably not yet reached the age of fifty. He carried himself well and was as capable as any man of undertaking the journey they now contemplated.
Raphael badly wanted not to lose him.
“You could be thinking,” Raphael ventured, with a nod toward the packhorses, “that the obvious attractions of doing business with us might not make up for being hunted across the steppe by a force of joyless Mongols.”
Benjamin did not laugh-he was far too reserved and formal for that-but he did reveal a bare trace of dry amusement. “Perhaps if we knew each other better,” he said, “I would be willing to partner under such ominous circumstances. Or perhaps, if I could make any kind of sense out of your errand…I would find some way to align our interests. But neither condition pertains.”
Before Raphael could respond, they were interrupted by the voice of Percival, rising over the wooden fence that surrounded the stable yard. He was but a few yards away.
“Allow me to help settle both matters with a few words,” he said. A moment later, he appeared in the gate and entered the yard.
Reacting to the annoyance on Raphael’s face, Percival continued. “I was following Cnan-not eavesdropping. But I’m afraid I’ve lost her.”
“What is she up to?” Raphael asked, with a glance at Benjamin.
“At the end of Vera’s narration, she slipped away.
” “I was unaware of that.”
“As no doubt she intended. But I was not so distracted and happened to catch sight of her borrowing one of our ponies.”
“Or stealing it.”
“No, she will return,” Percival said, with that placid confidence which alternately fascinated and infuriated Raphael.
During the side conversation about Cnan, the Shield-Brethren had veered into Latin, and Benjamin might have understood a few words. But Benjamin was not interested in Cnan. He was far more intrigued by Percival’s first remark.
“What did you mean,” Benjamin said, returning to the lingua franca, “when you spoke of settling both matters with a few words?”
“In order that you should better know us and see how our interests align, it is simplest for me to tell you what we are doing,” Percival said.
Raphael naturally assumed that Percival had come up, on the spur of the moment, with some clever stratagem. The Frank was going to tell Benjamin some plausible-sounding cock-and-bull story about their errand, innocuous enough to assuage all the Khazars’ fears.
And so it was with a light heart and giddy expectation of quick success that Raphael now rounded up Feronantus and Rabbi Aaron and got them all together in the latter’s little house, with Percival standing before them, ready to spring his clever tale.
As soon as Percival opened his mouth, however, Raphael saw it had been a terrible mistake. He knew this even before Percival uttered a word. He knew it because of the look on Percival’s face: the utterly open, childlike guilelessness-and that weird effulgence that surrounded him whenever he was seized by whatever angel or demon took delight in toying with him.