East Read online

“I want to know when your people will attack the city.”

  “How long have they been at your walls?”

  “Three days.”

  “Tell me what you see outside your walls.”

  I hesitated and turned to Mahmood, catching him up. He frowned and nodded for me to continue.

  “To the east there are tens of thousands of campfires,” I said slowly.

  “And the other directions?”

  I asked Mahmood, who shook his head. “The river lies to the north, and there is nothing to the south. The west is protected by a moat.”

  Relaying the message to the prisoner, I waited for him to speak.

  He nodded. “They have already begun. They will not come from the east but from two directions, likely the west and south. There will be nothing standing by dawn.”

  My heart jolted. “You’re telling the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why reveal their plan?”

  He shrugged. “It does not matter anyway. The sword of the horde will cut the city at its roots. Whether or not you know we come, you will be dead before you can stop us.” The factual, confident response surprised me.

  It took me a moment to recover. In an era where warfare occurred between men with swords, I wasn’t able to fathom the idea of an army that couldn’t be stopped. Didn’t it just take another army of the same size to stand in the way? It wasn’t like they had missiles or air support or heck, even guns.

  “Why have you not told him?” the warrior asked.

  “Because I don’t understand,” I replied honestly.

  “You understand the words. You speak too well not to. Does battle strategy confuse you?”

  “You made it simple enough,” I said. “This is not … my way. I guess.”

  He shifted forward and twisted in my direction in sudden interest I took to be a bad sign. His frame was tense, the muscles of his forearms roped and bulging as he tested his bonds. “You are not from here, ugly one,” he observed. His ease and amusement was gone, replaced by a note of threat. “It is simple: they submit or they die. They chose to die.”

  Mahmood and I stepped back, closer to the nearest guard. I rapidly explained to Mahmood what had been said. His alarm rendered him speechless for a split second before he crossed to the door and spoke too quietly for me to hear. The guard darted out. Approaching me, Mahmood’s grim concern was clear in his tight features.

  “I must address the master myself,” he said to me. “You are certain this is what he said? South and west?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Have you told him who you are?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do so if you feel it wise. I will return as soon as I warn my master and prepare the princess.”

  Without waiting for my response, Mahmood started away.

  I faced the warrior without moving, not at all agreeing with the idea to remain. He suspected something already, and I didn’t know enough about this time or his people to know why he was tense.

  It scared me. The stories of Mongol tenacity and savagery on the battlefield were known in my time. I sensed if he wanted to be free and decided to kill everyone in the room, he probably could. Maybe it was fear or Hollywood hype or not knowing for certain, but no part of me wanted to be here if he succeeded in freeing himself from his bonds.

  “Will you sing again?” I asked quietly.

  “Why do you fear me, ugly one?” he asked, amused. “Am I not tied and surrounded by … eleven guards?”

  Ugh. How he knew how many remained, I didn’t know or like it. Hesitating to tell him who I was, in case he wasn’t at all moved or interested as Mahmood thought he would be, I hugged myself.

  “I will sing if you remain here,” the warrior offered, relaxing in place once more.

  “I suppose,” I murmured.

  “A song of the water? Sky? Grass?”

  “Um, sky.”

  One of the guards brought me a stool and set it a little too close to the warrior for comfort. But I sat. Sensing me with instincts sharp enough to scare me, the warrior began his strange throat song once more.

  Puzzling over how a person could make such animalist sounds, I listened. The low drone like that which knocked me out on an airplane, combined with the higher pitched notes and rhythm, was hypnotic. I found myself relaxing despite the strangeness of his song, enough so that my eyes drifted closed.

  I was more tired than I had thought. Adrenaline spurts were shorter than usual, and the sense of displacement, of detaching from the world, drifted over me once more. For a moment, I was back at the well in the eighteen forties, standing beside the place where Taylor had been …

  … Right before he ceased to exist. Not dead, not gone. Uncreated. I still wasn’t able to comprehend such a thing or believe Carter and I were the only people in all of space and time who remembered him, because we didn’t exist fully as part of the time where we were.

  You made a difference.

  They were Taylor’s final words to me. He knew what was happening to him. I didn’t, until he was gone, and nothing but death lay around me. The memory was so sharp, it hurt, and I clutched my chest and bent over with a soft groan.

  The song stopped, and I blinked back into my new reality, shaken and not fully present. Tears were on my cheeks, and my chest was so tense, I was breathing shallowly.

  “Where did the song take you?” the warrior asked.

  I glanced up. He was completely relaxed again, his hooded head facing my direction, as if we were having tea and he wasn’t a prisoner in someone else’s dungeon.

  “I don’t know. Too far,” I whispered.

  “The Eternal Blue Sky has no bounds. Its song might take you farther away than you wish.” He was matter-of-fact. “Are you fully returned?”

  “No.” I was struggling. How he knew that, I had no idea.

  “It is easy. When your spirit tries to flee, you force it back.”

  “How?”

  “See. Hear. Smell. Touch.”

  I blinked, confused. “What?”

  “On the steppe, our senses keep us alive. You must learn to ground them, so they can be used as weapons or to protect you.”

  “You want me to focus my senses back in this moment.”

  “It is how you survive on the steppe. See. Hear. Smell. Touch.”

  The simple wisdom of his words settled into me. I studied him and did as he suggested, listening to his baritone voice.

  I repeated his words silently. The spell faded faster this time as I took in the details of my surroundings. I sighed.

  “You are back,” he stated.

  “Thank you, I think.” I righted myself. “Where did the song take you?”

  “To the steppe where I grew up. I will return one day soon.”

  “You’ll probably have to escape here first.”

  “Escape?” he echoed. “I am where I want to be, ugly one.”

  The light-hearted response sent a chill through me. “You … meant to be caught?”

  “Yes.”

  “You killed twenty of their men!”

  “I had to convince them they captured me. I could not let their victory be easy. We do not surrender.”

  I wasn’t feeling like me yet, but the memories were at the back of my mind and my chest slowly unfreezing.

  “Who are you, ugly one, that you speak my tongue and that of the West as well?” Though far more controlled than his initial attempt to identify me, there was still an unmistakable edge in his voice.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Maybe I came here to find you.”

  “Not likely,” I replied, mind going to the princess the Mongols were after.

  “Unless you fell from the sky.”

  I froze. It wasn’t possible he knew anything about me just by my knack with languages. He was messing with me; he had to be. Deception was obviously a tactic of theirs. He was looking for something, and I had no idea what. In the meantime, he was toying with me.
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  Sensing my reaction, the warrior gave a grunt or growl of satisfaction. He shifted forward once more, far enough I was able to see him fiddling with the hands tied by rope behind his back. I had a feeling I was better off facing the attacking hordes than remaining with him.

  I stood and moved towards the door.

  “Do not go, ugly one. I am not yet free,” he called. “It will be easier for me to take your head if you are close.”

  “Don’t rush on my account,” I replied and then faced the guard nearest me. “He’s about to escape.”

  It seemed to jolt all of them into moving. I pushed the door to the hallway open while the guards closed in around him.

  “Moonbeam?” Mahmood hurried down the hallway from the direction of the stairs. “What is it?”

  “I think he’s about to get free,” I said with some concern. “Was he right about the attack?”

  Mahmood nodded and waved for me to follow. “Quickly. We must hide you and the princess.”

  “I thought you wanted me to talk to the Mongols,” I replied without one small shred of interest in such a task.

  “There is a … division within the house of my master. Those who want to negotiate, and those who feel surrendering, and thereby, turning over the last of our royal line to the barbarians, is a fate far worse than her death,” he explained. Reaching the stairs, he took them two at a time. I struggled to stay behind him at the pace, not completely recovered from either of my travels back or forward in time. “Those who prefer the bloodline’s demise are organizing a coup may try to hurt the princess. We will hide you from them. The barbarians will dispose of them and find you, and you can negotiate with them.”

  This is sounding like one of Carter’s ill-planned ideas. I heard Mahmood’s desperation and understood he and his mysterious master were operating out of fear and partially, out of knowledge their own fates were likely already sealed.

  No matter what, though, I wasn’t able to stomach the idea of some poor little girl being chopped down, royal or not. I owed it to them to help. What choice did I have? I had to assume whoever sent me here was less likely to help me if I failed.

  My only option was to go with the flow, however bizarre the path. Patting the phone in my pocket, I took some comfort in knowing I had an outlet to someone from my time who might one day help me.

  He led me up the stairs and to a wide hallway. Armed soldiers lined the hallways, along with several servant women stationed outside a door. Mahmood moved past them all into the bedchamber of the little princess, who sat beside the fire, dressed in servant’s clothing and appearing scared already.

  The sounds of fighting came from the streets. I crossed to the window. The princess’s room overlooked the inner city. Fires had sprung up around the edges of the city moving in our direction. People jammed the streets and fled towards the east. I wasn’t able to see the attackers from this angle, but I assessed the prisoner hadn’t been lying about the siege coming from two directions. The surreal scene struck me once more as almost too unfamiliar for me to process.

  It’s like when the Cybermen invade earth on Doctor Who, I told myself finally.

  “Moonbeam!” Mahmood called. “Come with me.” He took the girl’s hand and led us both into the hallway. The soldiers had grouped around the two stairwells leading from the floors below, one on either end of the long hallway.

  Mahmood took us down another hallway and into a parlor style room. Five other women accompanied us in nervous silence.

  “You must stay here, no matter what,” he warned me. He held out the hand of the girl he held. “Hide there.” He pointed to a tapestry stretching from floor to ceiling.

  I took her hand and nodded. This was starting to feel real – and I was scared.

  The princess and I went to the heavy tapestry. I pushed it around until we were able to move behind and was pleased to find a cutout in the wall where we could hide without the weight of the tapestry. It was heavy and stuffy, but we made it to the cutout and huddled together. The girl’s arms went around my waist.

  This is crazier than the Old West. Though in fairness, I at least knew who the enemy was here.

  We waited and listened. The sounds from the room were muffled by the heavy tapestry. Women were talking and soon fell quiet. I didn’t imagine the raiders had reached the home of the princess so soon, but it wasn’t long until the sounds of banging on the door reached us.

  The girl hugged me more tightly, and I rested a hand on her back, pulling us both deeper into the crevice in the wall. Screams burst from the women in the room followed by the clash of metal on metal. I couldn’t imagine what was going on and wondered if these were Mahmood’s people fighting over the princess or Mongols fighting Mahmood’s people.

  I closed my eyes, willing this to be some sort of nightmare or at least for us to evade discovery forever. If we survived the raid, I could ask my new puppet master what to do next.

  Silence fell, and I held my breath.

  “Ugly one.”

  Oh, shit. This voice I recognized. I didn’t think the prisoner was here for me, but how did he know the princess was with me? Better yet, how did he know I was even here?

  The warrior prisoner smashed something on the other side of the room, a wardrobe or wooden screen being knocked to the stone floor.

  Something else crashed to the ground. He was moving closer, tossing the room in an attempt to find us.

  He thwacked the tapestry, and the princess gave a startled cry.

  “Hello, ugly one,” the prisoner said, satisfied.

  “Stop!” Someone shouted from the direction of the door.

  “Stay here,” I whispered to the girl. Prying free from her, I waited a moment until I heard the sounds of two swords clashing before inching to the nearest edge of the tapestry to peer out.

  My eyes went instantly to the bodies on the floor and pools of blood. My trip to the Old West was an eye opener, the first time I’d ever seen anyone die or be killed. This was something else, though. The bodies of at least six women lay where they’d fallen, along with the forms of several more knights dressed like those guarding the prisoner.

  My stomach churned. Death and killing … they weren’t anything I’d ever thought I’d witness let alone be a part of like this.

  I didn’t feel able to process it with my twenty first century morals and understanding of post-Geneva Conventions warfare. My heart hurt for these people. I had seen all I wanted to of death in the eighteen forties; I didn’t think I could live in a world where this was common.

  The princess was crying behind me. I blinked away my fear and stepped back behind the safety of the tapestry.

  Movies. Halloween blood. If I didn’t find a way to … accept, at least temporarily, what I saw, I’d break down and bawl until someone chopped off my head. It’s just like watching a movie or video game. Fake blood from the haunted house you went to when you were seventeen, Josie.

  I repeated the words until the sense of panic subsided enough for me to remember why I had to get a hold of myself: the little girl crying in the cutout two feet away.

  Swallowing hard, I peered out at the surreal scene once more. The bald prisoner’s back was to me as he fought off four of the knights with a familiar curved blade. He appeared comfortable without shoes and fought with ferocity and brutality I didn’t ever, ever want to face head on.

  He threatened to chop off my head. The thought held me in terrified suspension for another long second or two.

  “Moonbeam!” The hiss came from across the room.

  Mahmood was peering out of what looked like another hiding spot. He waved to me. Anxious to be anywhere else, I ducked behind the tapestry and took the girl’s hand. She stayed on my heels as we crept between tapestry and wall and peeked around it again.

  There were more soldiers in the room to occupy the prisoner. Not that it seemed to matter; he was chopping them down quickly.

  Easing out from the tapestry, we started towards Mahmood.

/>   “Do not leave, ugly one!”

  If anything, the warning spurred me on. A flash of steel soared in front of my face and planted itself into the wardrobe on the wall nearest me. I froze, horrified by how close it came to nipping my nose.

  “Stay, ugly one,” the prisoner ordered once more.

  I faced him, uncertain how he was able to keep an eye on me and the men he fought simultaneously. He managed to angle himself to do so and glanced at me with large, almond-shaped eyes of dark brown set in a heart-shaped face. There was a savage beauty to him, a combination of flawless features and ferocity that was absolutely terrifying to behold.

  The princess was crying. She hugged me once more. Mahmood crept from his hiding place towards us, but I signaled him to stay out of sight. The prisoner had wicked aim; I didn’t want my nose or Mahmood’s head gone.

  I watched the fight for a distraction to give us space to run. The prisoner turned his back on us, and I darted forward, all but dragging the girl with me.

  Mahmood ran out to help us.

  Suddenly, he snapped to the side, a sword piercing his chest and pinning him to the pole of the large bed at the center of the chamber.

  Unable to register what happened, I stared dumbly at his form as it sagged. The light in his eyes vanished, and he went completely limp.

  The sounds of fighting behind us stopped. I wasn’t able to look away from Mahmood’s lifeless body or really understand how he was here one moment, pinned to the bed the next. It happened so fast, I hadn’t even seen the blade that claimed his life. I was splattered with warm droplets of his blood.

  Halloween haunted house. The best ever special effects on a horror movie …

  A sword swiped the air in front of my face, breaking the spell. I backpedaled automatically, the girl clinging to me.

  “You must learn to listen,” the warrior from the basement chided me. The cool tip of his sword lifted my chin.

  I stared at him, my senses slowly catching up. He was even bigger than he appeared seated on the stool with bulging biceps and hands that looked strong enough to crush someone’s skull. He watched me closely, breathing hard from the battle yet fully in control.

  I stepped back until I hit the tapestry and pushed the princess between the wall and me. He moved with me, the tip of the sword pricking the skin of my neck. I was trembling out of fear and horror and had the urge to breakdown and fling off my blood speckled clothing.