Mark Teppo - The Mongoliad - Book Two

“What are you doing up there?” the guard demanded, fumbling for his sword.

Ferenc hung halfway to the top of the old Roman wall, frozen with indecision, fingers of one hand clinging to the gap between two blocks of tufa, and the other scrabbling for purchase on a brick-and-mortar facing.

Left behind on the path below the wall, Ocyrhoe backed away from the guard, who was focusing his attention on the one most likely to escape-the youth clinging to the wall.

“Get down!” The guard raised his sword-with little effect, since Ferenc’s feet were at least two yards over his head.

Bits of grout and decaying brick sifted down from Ferenc’s fingers and broke away from his questing toes. Should he keep going? Was Ocyrhoe going to run?

Comically, the guard now began to jump, waving his blade in an attempt to close the distance. Ferenc arched his back and raised his feet. More grout broke free. Some of it sifted into the guard’s face, and he swore, backing off to rub his eyes.

Ferenc and Ocyrhoe hadn’t planned well, that was obvious-run ragged by their mission and the environment of fear that was sweeping Rome. If they were split up, where would they find one another again? Ferenc found it strange that he and this tiny girl had become so inseparable, as if they had been running together, struggling to survive, since they were children.

His mother’s secret language had helped, of course. She had never openly taught it to him, as he was not one of them , the szepasszony who wove the kin-knots, but he had learned it regardless, absorbing the signs and gestures and codes by being attentive in her presence, and by remembering how she had touched and tickled him when he was a baby. The tunder magic all children know when they are born and then forget as they learn to be human.

The guard, frustrated by Ferenc’s inaccessibility, now turned his attention to Ocyrhoe. He extended his blade and lumbered toward her.

With a small yelp, she leaped onto the wall and scrabbled up along the brickwork, grabbing frantically at higher handholds in an effort to climb out of the guard’s reach.

Looking up and to her left, she shouted at Ferenc, “ Ascende! ”

The guard grunted and stretched up, reaching for her dangling foot. She yelled, jerking and kicking her leg.

The guard got a grip on her ankle and yanked, pulling her off balance. Her legs swung free, and as Ferenc watched, her right hand slipped.

“ Ascende! ” she cried, oblivious to her precarious hold on the wall.

And leave her behind? Where was he supposed to go? What was the message they were supposed to deliver? The old man in the Septizodium-the one with the kind face and the presence -had sent them out of the city on a secret mission, but he had described that mission only in the language Ocyrhoe knew. If Ferenc kept climbing, he would be leaving Ocyrhoe behind, and that meant abandoning the mission.

Ocyrhoe swung her free hand up and managed to grab a loose brick. The brick slid sideways but held. The guard, just a few feet below her, let loose a stream of frustrated curses.

The boy gauged the distance between Ocyrhoe and her pursuer, who had given up trying to grab her from the ground and had started climbing the wall himself.

She flattened against the wall, sucking in a breath, then planted her feet and resumed her climb, as quickly as the crumbling wall allowed. She was a good climber, but she didn’t have Ferenc’s experience or the guard’s strength.

The guard’s searching hand was now just inches below her heel. She wasn’t going to make it.

Ferenc shuffled laterally to his right. Just a little farther. He glanced down, checking his position, and then took a deep breath. Ocyrhoe looked up and to the left, her face screwed up in panic and confusion as she tried to figure out what he was doing.

He met her gaze and nodded once. Without you, there is no mission .

Ferenc let go of the wall.

Cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he whispered the seventh Psalm. “… Iudica me, Domine, secundum iustitiam meam et secundum innocentiam meam, quae est in me… ” The rope burned across his palm and his knuckles ached, but he could not let his grip loosen. Not yet. “ …Consumatur nequitia peccatorum; et iustem confirma; scrutans corda et renes Deus iustus… ”

The body trapped in the rope-already he was no longer thinking about it as a living person-had stopped thrashing and clawing. As Fieschi continued to pray, he felt the man’s hands loosen and the deadweight increase. God strengthens my armor , he thought, for I am virtuous and upright in my heart. He heard a rattling noise, like sand being scattered across a stone floor, and the muscles in his hands cramped from exertion.

His prayer was cut short by a sound that escaped from his chest-part sob, part exclamation-and his hands opened without his willing the action. It was as if one of God’s angels had touched his wrists, and the ethereal touch of the divine messenger had broken his grip. He fell back and sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath. A weight lay against his legs. A heavy, still weight.

When he finally noticed the stink of death-the expelled shit and piss from the dead man’s bowels, mixed with the faint tang of blood-he opened his eyes. He shuddered slightly at the sight of Somercotes’s face-the bulging eyes decorated with a lacework of blood; the tongue protruding from the agonized mouth, a copious smear of blood across his lips and beard from his broken nose; dark shadows around the cardinal’s neck, a rope burn under his jaw.

“ Convertetur dolor eius in caput eius ,” Fieschi whispered, making the sign of the cross, “ et in verticem ipsius iniquitas eius descendet. ” He brought it upon himself.

He pushed Somercotes’s body away and, legs trembling, got to his feet. His hands ached, and his right palm was raw from the rope, but he was standing, he was alive. Somercotes was not. The distinction was very clear in Fieschi’s mind, uncluttered by remorse or guilt.

This was not his victory, his personal triumph. By garroting this heretic , he had saved the Holy Roman Church.

The ring . He remembered what they had been arguing about before the Will of God- Deus iudex iustus -had flowed into him and guided his hand. The ring that supposedly belonged to that charlatan-a cardinal’s ring. It was a symbol that would allow him to participate in the election of the next Bishop of Rome-a potentially key vote. He had to find that ring.

He crouched over Somercotes’s body and, trying to ignore the stench, pulled and poked through the simple robes, feeling for the ring. There were few places to hide anything in the cardinal’s garment, but he checked the seams for unusual bulges or gathers that would suggest a hidden pocket; after a few minutes of fruitless searching, he turned his attention to the dead man’s shoes. Without Somercotes’s feet in them, they were just old leather scraps-worn thin in the heels, the stitching unraveling along the outer edges.

Would he have hidden the ring in his chamber? Fieschi crawled toward one corner to begin, on his knees, feeling the stones in the wall for fit, trying to shift or pry each one out to reveal a hiding place. No success. He then stood and ripped the heavy mattress cloth, flinging away handfuls of the straw stuffing. From the pegs on the wall, he ripped down Somercotes’s cloak and extra robe, pawing through the cloth for the hard shape of a ring. He even tore apart the cardinal’s damaged Bible, though part of his brain knew there was no way to hide a ring within the pages of the book.