Eric Flint: Much Fall Of Blood

And he was not going away.

She led the cart forward. Sometimes boldness was the only approach.

The guard rode over. "Where are you going, woman?"

She bowed. "Greetings."

"I asked you a question." He leaned over and grabbed her by the hair.

She grabbed his wrist and jumped, and then hung. "Hellcat!" he swore, struggling to keep his balance. But he was a Mongol horseman, not easily dislodged from the saddle. She kicked off two footed from the pony he was riding. It whinnied in protest, and he lost his grip on her hair-well, mostly; some stayed in his hand-as she fell free. She rolled under the cart.

Then the fool committed the cardinal sin of any cavalryman in combat. He dismounted. And fortune, or the tengeri, favored her. He dived under the cart too, to try and catch her, startling the ill-trained young bullock. She rolled out of under the far side of the cart while the heavy wheel rode over his arm. He screamed, but she already had her foot in the stirrup, and swung up onto the pony. She had the advantage now, as he staggered to his feet, clutching his arm.

Mongols train their horses to be weapons too. And the guard had much that she and her brother would need to survive. She rode him down. Then she used his own lance, which had been strapped to the saddle, to make sure that he was dead. Only when she was certain did she dismount, tie a rope to him and drag him to the cart. That took nearly all of her strength to get him onto it, to lie next to her stentorianly breathing little brother.

She tied the pony to the tail of the cart, and then led the bullock off into the darkness, following the heavily worn and rutted track to the southwest, away from the lands of the White Horde and the Hawk clan. In short, away from the direction of safety-but that was also where Gatu's men would search first. By mingling her tracks with those of the other clans who had come from the southwest she would make it harder for them to track her.

A bullock cart could not move very fast or very far. And they only had one pony. A family needed at least ten, and a hundred sheep, just to survive. They would have to eat plants. The thought was enough to make her blench, despite all she had been through that night. The shame and disgust would simply have to be borne.

It was a long night. When she stopped to rest and water the bullock and the pony at a copse next to a small stream, she had time to check on her brother, and to examine the dead man.

He carried the typical gear of an ordinary horseman. Knife, sword, a small hatchet and a leather surcoat, varnished and sewed with iron bosses. His captargac had some boiled horsemeat, a small bag of millet, a small clay pignate and grut-four or five days food for them before she would have to resort to roots, berries and leaves, and whatever game she could kill.

She left the body in the copse, covered with leaf litter. She would have given him a better burial, but time pressed. A bullock-cart does not move very fast and distance was her only friend, tonight. In the morning-or sooner-the body of the shaman Parki would be discovered. Then there would be a hue and cry. Gatu's men too would be out looking for both her and Kildai.

Thinking about it now, she was sure it had been Gatu's intention to present the murdered bodies of both her and Kildai and a couple of dead scapegoat killers, to the clan. With no leadership the Hawks and their adherents, would have fallen in behind Gatu. Now… his plans too were awry. The death of shaman Parki added to that. Many had fallen from the old religion, but shamans were still revered and respected.

It was possible that the great kurultai might break up, with no decision on the khanship reached, and with clan fighting clan. She could only hope the Hawk clan survived. The clan was in a very poor position-without leadership, the subclans might desert to join others. There were some cousins with a claim to the clan-head, but, thought Bortai, none whom would do more than to enable the Hawk clan to survive, at best.

In the pale light of dawn, Bortai found a small fold in the landscape and hid the cart in among the scrub oak. She tethered the ox and pony where they could graze and reach the stream. Then, too exhausted to do more, she lay down next to her younger brother. His face was pale, but he was still breathing. She put an arm around him, and she slept.

She woke briefly as a party of horsemen rode past on the lip of the hill. She could hear their voices carried on the breeze. They were angry voices, but the words were indistinct. She held the hatchet, and waited. One whicker from the pony and they were lost.

But the riders rode on, and lady sun shone down from father blue sky.

David was saddle-sore, tired and a long way from Jerusalem. Too far for him to run in one night. And that dark-haired son of Baal that had hired him still wanted work from him!

"You want me to do what?"

Kari cuffed him. "Every night. It gets done, see. If I have to chase you to it again, I'll beat you. Do you know anything about the care of horses? You ride like a bag of corn. You barely know which end bites and which end makes manure."

David decided right then that running off, with or without something for his trouble, could barely wait until everyone was asleep. Only they didn't seem tired.

It was a cold and grey dawn when Kari shook him awake. "Get up, lazy boy. There is work to do." Kari seemed cheerful to be up before the sun. David was not. He must have fallen asleep, and he was so stiff he could hardly move.

Kari looked at him trying to stand up and began to laugh. "You're not really a horseboy, are you?"

David stared poisonously at him. "No, Lord."

"Then why did that big fool of a stable-master tell me you were?"

David did not point out that his father was no stable-master, although right now he would agree that he had been a fool to have done this to his youngest son. "Can I go? I will even give you the money back." He never thought he'd say that. But it would be worth it.

Kari laughed. "No."

"What…?" David gaped.

"Ha!" Kari shook his head. "And make me have to tell Erik that I messed up? Are you crazier than me? No, you are going to become a great horseboy. Now get moving. The more you move, the less stiff you will be."

The only direction David wanted to move in was straight down back into sleep. But with Kari standing there he could hardly do anything except to stagger towards his chores.

A few minutes later the Frank, Erik, came in to the stable, still in a quilted jacket and carrying a thin-bladed sword. "No training this morning, Kari?" he asked, setting aside the blade and taking off the jacket.

Kari poured oats into a nosebag. "No. New horseboy to train instead."

Erik laughed. "I hope he makes your life a bloody misery."

"Then he'll be a short-lived horseboy."

Other Frankish knights began arriving. They had all plainly been hard at some form of exercise, and were sweating freely despite the cool of the morning. David soon realized that he was there merely to care for the spare remounts. The knights had each come to see to their own horses. What kind of Frankish lords were these?

Later he asked Kari. He got a cuff around the ear for his question-but also some answers. "Firstly, I am not a Frank. I am from Vinland. And secondly, these are the knights of the Holy Trinity. The knights are a militant order, brat. They may be Frankish lords, but right now they are monks in armor. They also believe a knight must have a close bond with his horse. It is his first and greatest weapon in battle."

David had heard of the knights. Who had not? It just hadn't occurred to him that these men with the three crosses on their surcoats were part of that order. They fought up in wild northern parts, which in his limited knowledge of the world, must be at least three days ride from Jerusalem.