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haft of the lance and jerked the astounded rider clean out of his saddle. He landed painfully on his
shoulder as the horse, its head suddenly twisted around by the jerking of its reins, stumbled and thudded
to the ground, raising a thick cloud of dust. The lance splintered, leaving me holding about three feet of its
business end.
For a moment or two there was not a sound out of any of us. The dust drifted away and the horse
scrambled to its feet and trotted a few yards away, its reins dragging in the dust. The other riders, I
noticed, looked at the horse first, and only after they were satisfied that it was unhurt, did they return their
attention to their companion, who got to his feet much more slowly than the pony did.
His left arm hung limply from the shoulder, but with a snarl he drew his curved saber and rushed at me
before I could say anything to him. I parried his overhand cut with the shaft of the lance I still held,
although his surprisingly powerful swing almost slashed all the way through the wood. As he raised his
arm for another stroke, I kicked him in the midsection, doubling him over. Dropping the useless shaft of
the lance, I wrested the sword from his hand and let him collapse to the ground, gasping for breath.
The leader of the little band wasted no words. He unslung his bow and notched an arrow to it. Pulling
the string back to his chest, he let the arrow fly at me. I saw it all as if in slow-motion and used the sword
to parry the steel-headed arrow in mid-air.
That stunned them. But not for long. They were hardened warriors, and they were not going to let an
enemy escape them, no matter how well he fought. They simply began to edge their ponies around to
form a circle around me. They knew as well as I did that I would not be able to parry arrows shot at me
from five different directions.
"Wait!" I said. "I am not your enemy. I have come from a far place to see your Khan."
The warrior at my feet had gotten his wind back somewhat by then, and lifted himself to his knees, still
sucking air through his wide-open mouth.
"I have not killed your friend, even though I could have easily," I said to their leader. "I come in peace. I
am not a warrior."
The leader eyed me suspiciously. "Not a warrior? Then god protect us from the warriors of your race!"
"I come in peace," I repeated. But I kept a firm grip on the sword.
"You speak our tongue."
"That is true. I seek your Khan, your leader."
His narrow-eyed face pinched into a thoughtful frown. "The Khan? The High Khan?"
"Yes."
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"This man is a devil," said one of the other warriors. "Let's kill him." He unlimbered his bow.
"No," said the leader. "Wait."
I could see he was struggling furiously within himself to decide what to do. Barbarian warriors are
seldom faced with such choices. I wondered if these six horsemen were the ones who had ravaged and
killed the family I had seen earlier in the day. They seemed to be carrying no loot.
"Where are you from, stranger? What is your name?"
"I am called Orion," I said, "and I come from far to the west of here."
"From beyond the western mountains?" asked one of the warriors.
I nodded. "And beyond the seas that are beyond those mountains."
"You are an emissary, then?" the leader asked.
"Yes. An emissary from a distant land." I hoped that even barbarians treated emissaries with some
vestige of diplomatic immunity.
"And you wish to see the High Khan." It was not a question.
"That is my mission," I said.
The warrior at my feet slowly got up, on legs that were still wobbly. His left arm was useless; probably
the shoulder was broken. The kick I had given him would have felled a man twice his size, I knew. His
midsection must be very sore; it obviously hurt him to breathe. He stared at me for a moment, then held
out his empty right hand. I debated within myself for a moment, then handed him back his sword.
He took it, hefted it, smiled at me, then raised the sword over his head for a vicious slash at my neck. I
stood unflinching, staring into his eyes. I knew that I had plenty of time to block his swing once he started
it. This might be merely a test, or his attempt to show that he was uncowed by me.
His eyes probed mine, searching for the slightest sign of uncertainty or fear. I held my ground. The
warrior's face was lean and hard; the thin white slash of a scar ran along his left cheek, down near the
jaw. His leader, leaning both arms on the pommel of his high-peaked saddle, said nothing.
The warrior slowly brought his sword down until his arm hung at his side. Turning to the others, he
shook his head. "He is a demon, not a true man."
The leader laughed. "He is a strange one, that is true. We will take him to the Orkhon and see what
comes of him."
CHAPTER 10
They made me walk while they rode, but they were generous enough with their water. I drank from the
leader's leather canteen, and then from the canteens of two of the other warriors, as the long, hot day
slowly dragged to its conclusion.
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We were inPersia, I was certain of that. And from the way these tough, scarred warriors spoke, they
were most likely Mongols of the horde of Genghis Khan. This was the twelfth or thirteenth century, then,
and these wild barbarian horsemen were ravaging the civilized world fromCathayto the plains ofPoland.
I tried to ask the leader of this small troop a few questions, but he had gone silent. Apparently he had
made up his mind to deliver me to higher authority, and he wished to be drawn into no further talk. He
was a warrior, not a diplomat. But he had spared my life, and that was a good enough decision for this
day, as far as I was concerned.
The sun touched the flat horizon of the desert and within minutes it was night. And cold. I clamped down
on my body's surface capillaries and did what I could to keep myself warm, but I was not dressed for a
desert night. The warriors took no notice of my shivering; they simply plodded along, with me walking
beside the horse of their leader.
It was a city that had been burning all day long. I never found out its name, but I recalled that the
Mongols had no use for cities; being nomads, they preferred the open grazing lands that fed their horses
and cattle. In war, if a city surrendered to them, they left it in peace, merely installing a Mongol overlord
to collect taxes. If the city resisted, it was besieged until it fell; then it was methodically destroyed and all
its inhabitants either killed or sent into slavery. Twentieth-century people thought that city-destroying
nuclear weapons were something new under the sun; the Mongols razed cities by hand burned them or [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]