EPILOGUE:
NEW GROWTH
The ice had shattered in a long wide arc, a triangular shape with its vertices at the edge of the shore where the Skjalddis shield-wall had held the Livonians, the point where Feronantus had struck the ice, and a final point in the midst of the northern bowl of the lake. The area was filled with floating bergs and frothy water, and there was no way of knowing for certain how many had been lost in the lake. At the very least, the bodies of all the dead had been claimed by the water.
Raphael wept when he learned that Illarion was one of the fallen. His tears dried up when he was told that Kristaps was gone as well.
The surviving Skjalddis helped Raphael and Vera gather wood for the pyre, and they built a long shelf upon which they laid Feronantus. They laid the Spirit Banner next to him, and neither Raphael nor Vera commented on how shriveled and emaciated the stick had become since the ice had shattered.
Alexander spoke first, giving a eulogy to all of those who had fought gallantly, giving their lives for Rus and Novgorod. He said nothing about the miracle that had swallowed the enemy, and judging by the stony expressions on the faces of those assembled at Feronantus’s pyre, there was nothing that needed to be said. They all knew what had happened and who was responsible.
Vera spoke next, and she gave a moving eulogy for those sisters who had fallen in battle. It was the way they all hoped to be remembered, Raphael thought as he listened absently. He was still confused and angry at what had happened, and his mind struggled to find a rational explanation for what he had seen.
But the only explanation that made any sense was not rational.
He realized Vera had finished her speech. Everyone was looking at him, and as he gazed back at their faces, seeing their expressions of hope and fear and wonder, he couldn’t fathom what he would say to them that would make them understand. What words would give them comfort? What words would ease the pain and fear in his heart?
“My name is Raphael,” he started. “I was born in Acre, which is a place far away from here. In the Holy Land. I never knew my father, and my childhood was filled with the endless threat of yet another army deciding it had claim to Jerusalem. I was born in a land soaked in blood, and I grew up hoping that someday the fighting would be over.” He laughed bitterly, his cheeks wet with tears. “Feronantus, who lies here, accused me of being faithless, of being unable to let myself believe in something greater than myself, but that’s not true. I do believe in something. It is hope. A hope that every time we pick up a sword instead of a plow that it will be the last time. That our shields will grow dusty hanging over our hearths, and that our lives can be spent planting and harvesting crops instead of burying our friends and family.”
He turned to Alexander’s brother, who was holding the long-handled torch. He took it from Andrei and stepped up to the pyre where Feronantus lay, his hands laid over his chest.
“Those who fell today gave their lives for us. Let us honor their memories by loving each other. Let us live off this land, breathe this air, fish this lake when the summer comes, because that is the great gift given to us by God, the Virgin, and our dead companions. Let us live, my friends, and in living, keep alive our hope for a world made better by our presence in it.”
He thrust the torch into the oil-soaked branches of the pyre, and flames sprang up with a noisy rush. The wet wood hissed and popped, but the flames would not be deterred. A thick column of white smoke boiled out of the wood, obscuring Feronantus, and the fire crackled loudly as it grew in size.
Vera touched his arm, lightly pulling him away from the burning pyre. “Come,” she said gently. “Before the ice melts.”
“Good bye, old friend,” Raphael said. He tossed the torch onto the pyre, and he and Vera walked back to the shore with Alexander and the others.
From the safety of solid ground, they watched the pyre burn. The flames licked and cavorted about the wood, savoring the meal they had been given, but as they grew in size and heat, the ice melted. One end of the pyre tilted up, the flames hissing in anger as the cold water of the lake quenched them. The rest of the flames seemed to grow brighter and taller, and the column of smoke thickened. Then, with a sudden lurch, the pyre twisted and disappeared, leaving nothing but a wide gash in the ice. For a moment, Raphael thought he could see the orange of the flames through the ice of the lake, as if the fire fought back against the cold embrace of the water. The cloud of white smoke drifted into the darkening sky.
“It will be cold tonight,” the prince said, gazing up at the clear sky. “Come. Let us celebrate. We are still alive, and that means we can huddle together and curse this endless winter.” He smiled at the ragged cheer his words elicited from the assembled company, and as people started to wander off toward the camp, he paused beside Raphael and Vera. “They were extraordinary men, both of them,” he said, referring to Feronantus and Illarion. “They will become more extraordinary in the telling of what happened here today. They left behind no families, and so the stories of who they were and what they did will be how they will be remembered.”
Raphael nodded, and after a moment, the prince offered a knowing smile to Vera and left, leaving the pair alone on the shore of Lake Peipus.
She stood next to him, her hand finding his. He knew he should say something, that he should go after Alexander and join the survivors in their celebration of life. It was what he had exhorted them all to do, after all.
“You held me back,” he said eventually. It wasn’t an accusation nor was it entirely a question. “I could have stopped him.”
“From doing what?” she asked quietly. “Pulling out the arrow or breaking the ice?”
“Both,” Raphael said. “Neither.” He sighed. “I don’t know. But you knew, didn’t you? You knew what he was going to do.”
Vera lifted her shoulders slightly. “One of my sisters, Nika, has been visited—several times—by the witch of old Rus. Baba Yaga. She came to Illarion too.”
“Baba Yaga?” Raphael shook his head. “She’s a story meant to frighten children so that they behave. Listen to your mother, dear child, or Baba Yaga will come in the night and steal you away. Fairy tale nonsense.”
“The stories are wrong,” Vera said. “She doesn’t steal children; she protects them. She protects all of Rus. She’s one of us, but she’s not part of the world we know. Not anymore.”
“And you think that is what happened to Feronantus? He became part of the world beyond our mortal being?”
“Of course he did,” she said gently, nodding toward the bare lake.
“I don’t understand,” Raphael said.
“The world moves in cycles, Raphael. More than the simple turn of the seasons. Far grander cycles that reach past our meager lives. What is new becomes old and is buried or burned or lost, and from that loss comes something new again. Do you remember Yasper’s firebird? Whence did he summon that creature? How did he create such a thing?”
“It was a trick of the light,” Raphael said. “You’ve seen what he can do with colored smoke and flash fires. It was nothing more than an illusion.”
“And today? Was that an illusion?”
“I…I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “Why are you smiling at me?” he asked, noting her expression.
She wiped at her cheeks and offered him a tiny laugh. “Hope is a tiny seed,” she said. “It must be carefully nurtured, but it can grow into something splendid. In time.” She linked his arm in his. “We have time.”
From the wood, Nika watched Raphael and Vera as they left the shore of the lake. She waited until they were out of sight before she left the shadows of the trees and made her way down to the icy shore. She hesitated to go farther; the memory of nearly falling into the shattering ice was still strong in her head.
She walked along the shore, her eyes scanning the trunks of the trees along the verge of the forest for Baba Yaga’s marks. When she spotted the twin gashes, she left the shore and returned to the forest, wending her way along a narrow deer path.
The prince’s army would celebrate through the night and tomorrow they would begin to break camp, the militia disbanding as the peasants returned to their villages. The remaining Skjalddis, of whom there were but a mere handful, would remain with Nevsky, presumably filling out the decimated ranks of his Druzhina. The prince had won a victory that would be celebrated for generations to come, and the people of Rus would flock to him in droves. A dynasty had been created, here at Peipus, raised upon a foundation of the corpses of her sisters and companions. Even so, Nika was not bitter. Battles always claimed lives, and Illarion had gone to this fight with death in his eyes and a readiness to face what came after.
Nika was ready too. Her absence would not be noted. She had not reported back after the battle ended, and would likely be counted among the dead. None of her sisters had seen the same signs that she had, and she had known all along what would be asked of her once the battle was over.
At last, she came to a small clearing. She expected to find a fire, watched over by three skulls, but instead she discovered a small hut that sat crookedly on a pile of thick sticks. Instead of a door, there was merely a heavy curtain, and pushing aside the wool drape, she clambered into the hut.
Inside, there was a table, a chair, a narrow bed, several chests, and a tiny hearth in which a bed of coals offered a lambent glow. There was no one else in the hut, and she put several heavy sticks from the bin beside the hearth onto the fire, leaning over and blowing on the coals until a thin flame started to lick the kindling.
There was an old shawl thrown over the back of the chair, and as the fire slowly started to warm the tiny hut, Nika stripped off her filthy maille. She threw the shirt into the corner of the hut, followed by her sword and scabbard. She sat down in the chair and pulled off her boots. Reaching over her shoulder, she grabbed the shawl and pulled it over her. Stretching out her legs so that her bare feet were close to the fire, she settled down in the chair to wait.
I’ll just take a short nap, she thought as her eyes drooped. She’ll be here when I wake up.
When the hut lurched upward and began rocking back and forth, a smile drifted across her face but she didn’t stir.
Hermann was not terribly surprised to find a guest waiting for him at his estate in Dorpat. The campaign had ended in disaster, and he had struggled home with a fraction of the men he had departed with. Nevsky’s victory at the lake assured that Novgorod and its provinces would be safe for many years from any efforts to dominate them. The whole affair had been a dreadful waste, and he said as much as he entered his great hall. “What was the point of all that?” he sighed as he stripped off his cloak and gloves. “We could have taken Novgorod; we could have expanded Rome’s reach into the north. But we have squandered that opportunity now.”
His guest rose from the heavy chair he had been sitting in by the fire, and he limped toward Hermann. He was a narrow-faced man, and his beard and hair were streaked with gray. He wore simple clothing with no sigils, and there was a weariness in his gaze that Hermann knew all too well.
“Is he dead?” his guest asked. “And all of those who would follow him?”
“Aye,” Hermann sighed. A servant offered him a flagon of wine and he accepted it readily. It was good to be home again, out of the cold and away from the bitter campaign that had been a failure in so many ways. “The Ruthenians will be singing about this victory for years to come, but it is done. Kristaps is gone, and the last of those who remember Volquin’s ambition with him. The Livonian ranks have been purged; those who remain—” He broke off with a bitter laugh and quelled it with a large gulp of his wine.
“What?” his guest prompted him.
“You were not there,” Hermann said. “You did not see what happened.”
His guest stood close. “Tell me,” he said, his eyes glittering. “Tell me everything.”
Hermann did, and as he told the fantastic story of the breaking ice, he felt a resolute calm come over him, as if this news were a final reckoning of the task he had been set to perform. He was merely a tiny piece in a much grander puzzle, and he found an odd contentment in knowing his place. Some philosopher had once said that the wise man learns to win what he wants by appearing to lose what his enemy believes he wants. Hermann had never been more than God’s humble instrument, to be used how God’s agents saw fit, but even he could not help but wonder at the strangeness of it all.
“Excellent,” his guest said when he had finished. “And you are certain your men will tell this same story to anyone that asks?”
Hermann laughed. “I’m sure it will get even stranger before the summer. Nothing of what will be said will be true, but it will be all that anyone remembers.”
“Exactly,” his guest purred. “That is what my master hopes. It will give him all the excuse he needs to launch a purge against these heathen influences. It may seem like you lost a great battle today, but you will be compensated—exceptionally well—for your sacrifice. Rome is pleased.”
“What of the Livonians that survived?”
“Oh, you do not need to concern yourself with them.” The man limped to the long table and picked up a sealed letter he must have put there earlier. “I will be taking charge of those men.”
Hermann accepted the letter and broke the seal. His eyes tracked to the name signed with a heavy flourish at the bottom, and then he read the letter carefully, which revealed to him the name of his guest.
“So, Dietrich von Grüningen, you’re to be Heermeister again,” he said when he finished reading the letter from Cardinal Fieschi.
“Aye,” the man named Dietrich von Grüningen nodded. “I am. There is a final matter that must be settled with the Shield-Brethren.”
She was still getting used to the noise and stench of the market in Samarkand. The stalls were tightly packed in the alleys behind the stone buildings, and it was impossible to navigate the aisles without being jostled and bumped constantly. At first, she had hated the crowds and had refused to visit the chaotic marketplace, but after a few months of doing nothing but sitting inside their ger or watching their pair of goats slowly munch the short grasses nearby, she realized she would go stir-crazy if she didn’t acclimate herself to the cacophony of city life.
Plus she couldn’t stand the idea that, of the pair, she was the one who couldn’t handle civilization.
She was leaning against a booth, examining a bolt of light blue silk when she heard someone call her name. At first, she thought she had imagined it. The voice was familiar, but out of context, and not one she had ever expected to hear again. When he called her name again, she looked up, a sudden jolt of fear running up her spine.
And there he was, dressed in a plain robe like one of a thousand itinerant merchants who traveled through the city while on the Silk Road. His beard had been trimmed and shaped in the Persian style, and there was a weariness in his eyes that his smile did not dispel.
“Raphael,” she said, nervously tucking a stray strand of her long black hair behind her ear.
“God be with you, Lian,” Raphael said, clasping his hands together as he came up to the booth. “It is a marvel to see you again.”
“Yes,” she said. “Quite marvelous, especially in a city this size, and so far from where I saw you last many months ago. But not a coincidence, I suspect.”
Raphael glanced at the merchant standing behind the booth. “No, not a coincidence,” he said with a smile. “But it has taken me some time to find you. I have been searching along the Silk Road for months. In fact, this is the fourth day I’ve been wandering around in this market.”
“Is there a problem?” A new voice asked, speaking in Mongolian behind Lian.
Raphael’s eyes flickered over her shoulder. “There is no problem here,” he said smoothly in the same tongue. He raised his hands to show they were empty.
Lian turned slightly and put her hand on Gansukh’s chest. “It’s okay,” she said, holding him at bay. She could feel the tension in his chest. “Let him speak his piece.”
“Is this him?” Raphael asked, eying Gansukh carefully.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Gansukh made a noise in his throat, and she knew he had realized who Raphael was. “Skjaldbr?eur,” he growled.
“Not here,” Raphael said. “Just a…friend.”
“No friend of mine,” Gansukh snarled.
“Maybe that is not the right word,” Raphael said hastily, “but I am not your enemy. Not anymore.”
“What do you want?” Lian asked, more harshly than she intended, but Gansukh’s apprehension was starting to bleed over to her.
“My master, Feronantus—you remember him, don’t you, Lian?—believed in something…I do not know the outcome of what he sought, or if such a dream could even be realized, but—”
Gansukh shifted behind her, and she knew that his hand was on the hilt of his knife.
Raphael knew it too, and he held up his hands once more. “Please, I mean you no harm. Truly.”
“Continue,” Lian said, suppressing a shiver that wanted to run up her back.
“He took something from you,” Raphael nodded. “Something more precious than…I think he believed it did not belong to your people, and I do not wish to argue the validity of that belief. The theft was his and his alone, but I have come to a vague understanding of his reasons. He took something ancient and tried to create something new with it, but I think he failed. He broke—” Raphael waved his hands as if he didn’t quite know the Mongolian words to express what he wanted to say. “Imagine a vast lake covered with ice. Animals cannot drink from the water because of the ice, nor can we catch fish in the lake. But once the ice breaks, then life can return to the lake. Do you understand?”
“It is the cycle of the seasons,” Gansukh said gruffly. “It happens every winter.”
“Yes, exactly. Now imagine that the entire world has been eclipsed by that winter—a strangely fallow period when nothing truly grows because it is waiting for the ice to be broken.”
“You want the sprig,” Lian said.
Raphael closed his hands, and his expression held both hope and curiosity. “The sprig?”
Gansukh made as if to speak, but Lian touched him lightly on the chest to quell his words. “It came from the Spirit Banner. That was how I knew where Feronantus was. That was why we were drawn to him. And when I stayed behind with Gansukh, I felt more longing and despair than I thought possible for a group of people who were both my friends and enemies of the man I loved.”
“Yes,” Raphael said. “I guess that is what I am seeking.” He seemed relieved.
“You did not know that I had it,” she said.
“I hoped,” he said. “Cnán said you had a treasure you kept with you at all times, and yes, I suspected your awareness of Feronantus was tied to it.”
“Cnán?” Lian’s heart fluttered. “She lives?”
“Aye,” Raphael said. “Much to Yasper’s continued delight. I saw them both shortly before I began my quest along the Silk Road.”
Lian smiled. “I am glad to hear they are together.” She leaned against Gansukh.
Raphael’s smile faltered slightly. “I need the sprig, Lian,” he said. “I need to finish what Feronantus started.”
“I know,” she nodded. “I’ve known since…” She glanced down at her rounded belly, and carefully reached into her robe for the hidden pouch sewn into the lining. The lacquer box was there, where it always had been, except for the brief time when Gansukh had carried it after the battle on the steppe. She drew it out and slowly offered it to Raphael, who took it from her with great reverence.
He wanted to open it, but he swallowed the urge and tucked it away inside his robe. “Thank you,” he said, and when his hand came out again, he held a sheathed knife.
Lian sucked in a quick breath as Gansukh shoved her to the side.
Raphael held up the leather-covered knife to show that he meant no threat with it, and she saw that the knife’s handle was a piece of deer antler. “This isn’t mine,” Raphael said. “It was taken by accident. The boy meant…Well, it’s not true that he meant no harm, but he regrets this act of thievery.” Raphael extended the sheathed knife toward Lian and Gansukh.
“It isn’t mine either,” Gansukh said after a long moment. He draped his arm around Lian, his hand resting on her swollen belly.
Raphael looked at where Gansukh’s hand rested, and he turned toward the hovering merchant who had been wondering what manner of conversation was going on beside his booth. Raphael pointed at the silk that Lian had been admiring and wiggled the knife. The merchant made a face and held up his hands, rattling off a lengthy diatribe about the ridiculous state of affairs when he was expected to trade fine Persian silk for a handmade steppe rider’s knife. But he still took the blade from Raphael and pulled it partway out of the sheath to examine the blade. His patter changed when he saw the blade, and his eyebrows inched upward.
“For the child,” Raphael said. “It is a poor gift.”
Lian reached out and fondled the silk. “It is a fine gift,” she said quietly, her eyes filling with tears. “It reminds me of the open sky of the steppe.”
“Yes,” Raphael said. “Eternal Blue Heaven.”
Gansukh’s hand tightened on her belly.
HERE ENDS KATABASIS
A MEDIEVAL ERA NOVEL OF THE FOREWORLD SAGA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
JOSEPH BRASSEY
To the Subutai team, who made this possible; to my beloved wife and son; to the lovely people at 47North; and to my brothers and sisters of Lonin League, Seven Swords Guild, and The HEMA Alliance—this one’s for you.
COOPER MOO
Thanks to Mark Teppo, who wrestled prose from multiple authors into submission while keeping the fight enjoyable. Thanks to Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Book, without whose leadership we wouldn’t be here. Thank you to Angus Trim and Joseph Brassey—it was an honor and a pleasure to work with you gentlemen again.
MARK TEPPO
My thanks to my fellow co-authors, who bravely went into uncharted territory and put together a great story. I’d also like to acknowledge Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, and Erik Bear, who helped lay the foundations of the story that we’ve taken a step farther.
ANGUS TRIM
Thanks to Neal Stephenson for the encouragement and the opportunity.