Free The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) by Mark Teppo Page A

in pain, and behind him, his men drew their swords.
    For Ocyrhoe, the world unraveled in that instant. The crowd became an undulating mass of bodies: some resisting being shoved forward, faces contorted with fear at the sight of weapons and flailing hooves; others pulling back, arms raised to protect their heads.
    The priest lay sprawled on his back in a cloud of dust—slack-jawed, eyes flicking left and right, hands twitching—caught in the grip of fever-born phantoms. The squad leader gawped, the open cavern of his mouth making him seem like a dull-witted buffoon; his men flanked him, staunch-shouldered, arms flexed for a fight, their expressions a mix of ferocity and fear.
    The foreign youth’s horse pulled back its lips and flared its nostrils; the wild boy himself was the only one who appeared calm in the sudden fracas. It was now clear to Ocyrhoe that he had perfect command of his mount and had deliberately set off this chaos. She made her decision in that instant.
    With an ease that belied the confusion and tumult of the marketplace around her, she fixed her eye on a spot on the young man’s horse. As she moved, the noise of the crowd faded to a distant growl, like thunder dying across the hills. Her feet hardly touched the stones as she sprang up and dashed forward, and she barely registered the presence of the semiprone merchant whom she used as a vault to achieve a place on the foreigner’s horse—right behind him, so close she pressed against his back.
    Her arm, around his shoulder. He tensed.
    Her mouth, next to his ear. “Ride,” she whispered, then pointed, her finger tracking the tall soldier with the ring as he neared the edge of the square.
    “Peter,” she said, knowing it was the only word he would understand. He did.
    She felt his legs clamp around his horse. The animal snorted and charged, diving toward the shining blades of the approaching soldiers. Her heart leaped into her throat, her skin flushed and heated at the thought that she had made a terrible mistake. But the foreigner had given his horse the freedom to run, and run it did, scattering soldiers and commoners alike.
    Ocyrhoe held tight as the market became a blur. The soldier with the metal ring had disappeared around a corner; he did not know they were chasing him, and even if he did, he couldn’t outrun this horse. She had never ridden a horse before, and the powerful thump and heave of the animal beneath her was both terrifying and exhilarating.

2
Boy Meets Gruel
    E VERY DAY IN the cage was another day of freedom. Haakon’s prison was a rough enclosure of wood and bone and metal, too small to allow him to stand upright, and if he lay down and stretched his arms over his head, he could just touch the metal bars with both his fingers and his toes. The roof was made from long planks, mismatched and warped. The cage sat in the back of a weather-beaten cart. A pair of stolid oxen pulled the cart—one brown, one black—at a pace always too slow for the liking of their handler. At first, Haakon was inclined to agree—the scenery passed with agonizing slowness—but in time, he realized every day they traveled was another day he would not have to face whatever fate the Virgin had in store for him. Another day of life. Another day of freedom.
    The caravan was heading east. It had left Legnica the morning after his bout in the arena against the “demon” Zug. Haakon had walked into the tunnel of the Red Veil, expecting—naively, he now realized—some manner of reward ceremony, perhaps even an audience with Onghwe Khan himself. Instead, he had been accosted by a dozen Mongol warriors wielding pole-arms with weighted ends. He had instinctively blocked the first guard’s jab and had soon realized that defending himself was only going to increase how much theywould hurt him when they finally knocked away his sword (and he did not suffer the illusion that he could best twelve men with pole-arms).
    They had driven him into a tent beyond