Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 89: The Reed Camp

Suuqai returned to the island with the group.

The two steppe riders looked up when the group came in. Suuqai stepped up onto the dry center and looked over the island in one sweep. The prisoners were seated back to back at the center, wrists bound to the saddle rings beside them.

Suuqai crouched in front of them both.

He kept his voice at the volume of the water running around the island. "The leader’s camp. The main one. Which side, facing from outside."

The one who had looked up answered. "Left. He sleeps at the far end."

"His name."

"Faruk."

Suuqai looked at the second prisoner. The man’s attention came off the reed wall slowly. "Does that match."

A pause. Then the man said, "Yes."

"How many men inside with Faruk."

"Four," said the first.

"Five," said the second, at the same moment.

They looked at each other. The first prisoner looked away first.

"Five," Suuqai said. Once. He moved to the next question. "The south sentry. His route."

This time the second prisoner answered without waiting. "He goes east to the supply stacks, turns and comes back west to the far lean-to. Four minutes for the full pass, maybe five."

"Is he consistent."

"He’s consistent."

"And the stationary one."

"He faces south. He doesn’t leave his spot."

Suuqai watched both men for a moment. The second prisoner had given accurate information both times he’d been directly asked. The first had understated the body count in the camp and had said nothing when the second man corrected him.

Suuqai did not know what sat behind the difference. It changed nothing about what came next.

He stood.

He looked at the two guards, then turned to face the eastern channel.

The sounds that came from behind him were brief. Neither prisoner made more noise than the work required. Suuqai stood at the island’s edge with his eyes on the dark water ahead and waited until the dying gasps were finished.

The guards were ready. He pointed to the horses and to the ground at their feet. They understood. They were staying.

The crossing group assembled at the island’s eastern bank. Nine people including Suuqai. The guide made ten. He looked them over in the dark, reading posture and readiness. Leif was at the front edge of the norse group, watching Suuqai’s hands.

Suuqai raised both palms above his head. The steppe riders already knew the instruction. Among the norse the gesture passed with two nods and a word from Leif to the man on his left.

The guide waded in from the bank before being told.

He moved until the water reached his waist and stopped. He turned back and held one hand flat at chest height, then lifted his chin once toward the south. Depth ahead. He held the palm flat again. Firm on the far side. He turned to face the camp and held position. He had given what was needed.

Suuqai went in.

The cold hit at the knee and moved up his thighs and above his waist as the channel deepened. He held his bow and blade clear of the surface and kept his feet in contact with the bottom.

Firm for the first ten steps. Then soft, the mud gripping each boot, and he worked through it slowly, one foot set before the next lifted. The current pressed from the south against his left side.

At the deepest point the water reached his chest.

He fixed his eyes on the guide’s back at the far side and went straight until the bottom began to rise.

He was on the far bank in under two minutes, reeds at his back. He turned and held one hand out above the water at the crossing line.

The steppe riders came one at a time. Each entered at the same point, found the same line through the deep section at the same careful pace, and cleared the far bank. The shortest hit the deepest section chin-high and came across with his face up and his arms above the surface. He made the bank without going under.

The norse three came last. The first and tallest reached the deepest section and the water rose to his chest. The man behind him was shorter by a full head, and he came through with the water at his jaw and his arms held high, and he made the far bank and exhaled once through his nose.

Leif came last. He stepped up onto the bank and read the reed stand in front of him in one pass of his eyes. Then he was ready.

The guide planted his staff in the mud at the bank’s edge and stepped aside. His work was done.

Suuqai went into the reeds.

He pressed forward with his hands at chest height, pushing stems to each side, working through them a step at a time. The stems made a particular sound this way, a dry separation at each point of contact, felt in the palms before it reached the ears.

He went three steps and stopped. He listened.

The camp’s noise came through the stand. A fire’s low crackle. Horses moving somewhere to the east. The deep irregular breathing of men sleeping in close quarters.

He went three more steps and stopped again.

The steppe riders came through one at a time. The norse followed, their passage opening the stand wider, the stems parting at the shoulder.

The guide did not follow.

The stand ended.

Suuqai held inside the last row of stems and watched the ground in front of him.

Three banked fires, their coals throwing orange lines through the gaps in the nearest reed-bundle walls. Most of the camp’s structures were lean-tos, reed bundles propped against low frames, sleeping men visible as shadows underneath.

At the center, two larger buildings stood side by side, walls built upright, felt panels hung across their south-facing entrances.

The camp’s full smell reached him now that the stand’s smell was behind him. Smoke and dried fish and the dense animal smell from the eastern edge where the horses were picketed.

He found his steppe rider with the fire materials and pointed him east along the inner edge of the stand toward the supply position, under reed covers near the eastern channel bank. The rider went wide and crouched at the nearest stack. He held the materials packet closed and held position.

Then Suuqai read the south perimeter.

The first sentry was west of center, stationary, facing outward. His back was to the camp’s interior.

The second was east of center. He was walking.

He went east to the supply stacks, paused, turned, came back west to the far lean-to, paused again. Thirty paces in each direction, four or five seconds at each end.

Suuqai watched two full passes. The timing was the same each time.

He reached back and found another of his steppe rider’s hand in the dark. He drew a slow arc in the palm with one finger. The rider’s fingers curled once around his. Understood. Suuqai pointed to the eastern end of the south perimeter, then held up two fingers. On the second pass, heading west. The rider’s hand released.

They waited out the first pass.

The walking man went east, paused at the stacks, came west.

On the next pass east, with his back fully to the west, the rider stepped out of the reed stand.

He covered twenty feet of open ground in the dark at a pace that was not running. The sentry reached the eastern end of his arc and began to turn.

He was met with a knife to his throat, and soon was silenced.

The rider lowered the body to the ground with both hands before stepping back. He kept position at the perimeter’s edge.

The stationary man on the west side had not moved. A second rider had gone wide from Suuqai’s position along the south perimeter’s inner line, working east to west, staying in the shadows of the nearest lean-tos.

He reached the stationary man from behind.

The knife went in, blood spattered and the man was put down in the same silence.

Suuqai waited for a count of thirty. No one in the camp stirred. A sleeping man beneath the nearest lean-to rolled onto his back and continued sleeping.

He brought the group forward.

They went along the camp’s eastern edge, placing their feet on the packed earth where years of use had compressed the ground. The horses at the far eastern line registered the movement with ears and eyes. One leaned from one foreleg to the other and lowered its head. The line settled again.

The north face.

The third sentry was facing outward, scanning the approaches. A third rider went on a wide eastern arc, advancing in stages, stopping in the shadow of each structure before crossing to the next.

He took nearly four minutes.

Suuqai stood in the camp’s interior and let the time pass. A man slept with one arm extended, palm up. Two men shared a hide against the cold, backs together. The breathing of the camp ran at the depth it took hours to reach.

The rider arrived at the guard’s right side and stopped. The sentry’s head swept east. It began coming back to center.

The rider stepped in. Yet again, blood was harvested in the darkness.

The north perimeter was clear.

Suuqai walked to the center of the camp.

The two buildings stood side by side, felt panels across their south-facing entrances, close enough together that a man with both arms extended could have touched them both.

He stopped outside the left one and listened.

Breathing. Four men, possibly five. Deep and unguarded, the breath of men who had come off rotation hours ago and gone fully under. He stood outside the entrance for a full minute without moving. The rhythm did not change.

He went to the right one and listened at its panel.

Nothing.

A complete absence of sound that read as either an empty space or a man who had gone very still. The two possibilities sounded the same from outside a felt panel in the dark.

He treated them as the same problem.

He found two steppe riders and Leif and pointed them at the right building. One rider to each side of the entrance. Leif to the left flank. One finger drawn forward toward the felt. On the signal.

They moved to their positions without sound. Leif stopped at the entrance’s left side and waited.

Suuqai came back to the left building.

He put himself at the panel’s right edge. Two steppe riders to his left, knives drawn, one close and one covering the exterior approach.

He looked east across the camp at the rider crouched at the supply stacks. The man was watching him across the low firelight.

Suuqai raised one hand, palm open.

Not yet.

He checked the team at the right building. They were in position.

He looked at the felt in front of him.

He reached for it.