The Shield-Brethren were scattered all about, but their closest branch was in Petraathen, an ancient crag-fort in the mountains south of Kraków, just a few days’ journey from here. Their instinct—the reverse of the Mongols—was to camp in the woods, and their scouts had spied this old monastery, long since abandoned. To her, it had the look of a pagan temple, reminding her of the subterranean mithraeum, the hidden temple wherein her people had once held their arcane rites. This ruin, whatever its original purpose, had been converted into an impromptu chapter house, a sanctuary where these knights could wait and train while they reconnoitered the territory around the blood-soaked battlefield of Legnica and the great, stinking tent city that Onghwe had built there.

A horseman emerged from behind the graveyard wall riding a big blue roan stallion. Cnán flinched at the sight of a Mongol-style bow, striped and jointed like the leg of an insect, held out in the man’s hands. But this was no Mongol: his hair was brown, long and full, and below his sharp nose drooped a luxuriant mustache. He pivoted his mount and galloped along the curve of outbuildings, then pivoted again and rode back and forth through the grass. His apparently aimless movements made no sense until she understood that he was practicing archery. When his eye fell on something that looked like it might serve as a target, he loosed an arrow from the bow, sometimes galloping past, sometimes away, or jerking his horse up short and shooting from a standstill.

She did not know these knights other than by reputation, but she saw the rider as one who had suffered under the power of the Mongols and had learned from them, adopting and adapting their weapons.

Farther back in the clearing, visible through dispersing curtains of fog and over the tumbled walls of a refectory, a young man was striking at an upright log with a sword, repeating the same attack over and over again.