Until the Sun Falls (12 page)

Russian voices howled, growing nearer. Tshant had been in the last rank of his column. He scrambled up the bank; his men were racing away, and the Russians, spread out, their armor flashing in the sun, saw him and whooped and threw lances.

“Father!”

Djela was galloping toward him, beating his horse with his bow. A lance rattled across the crusted snow between him and Tshant. Djela crouched over his horse’s withers. Far down the river, the Mongols were swinging to charge back. Djela’s horse sat down right before Tshant, and he caught mane in one hand and his son’s belt with the other and swung up behind him.

“They’re too close,” Djela cried. His hair whipped Tshant across the face.

Tshant swung around. The Russians were streaking up toward them, their lances raised. One man raced well before the others. Djela’s little chestnut horse ran madly across the plain but the knights were swooping down on them. Tshant pried Djela’s bow out of his hand, grabbed an arrow, and shot back over the horse’s rump. The leading Russian fell off his horse.

“Here come our men,” Djela called. He raised his voice. “Come on! Come on!”

The air overhead hummed with arrows. Tshant reached in front of Djela to take the rein out of his hand. Wrapping one arm around Djela’s waist, he spun the chestnut around and charged the Russians.

The Russians wavered. Their cries rose less triumphantly; on the flank away from the river many circled off to go home. Tshant thought they outnumbered the Mongols easily two to one. He filled his lungs and howled.

“Eeeeeeeyyyaaaaah!”

Arrows like narrow birds hurtled into the Russian line. Tshant nocked another of Djela’s child’s arrows to the child’s bow and shot. The chestnut swerved to avoid a corpse and thundered on. Dead men and horses sprawled across the snow. A wounded horse galloped straight for them, and Tshant slowed the chestnut; the riderless horse charged past, bugling, two arrows thrusting from its side and the blood like a banner across the snow in its track. Tshant looked over his shoulder. His men were strung out behind him in a great arc, and the arrows poured like a moving wall into the Russians. Djela squealed happily.

The Russians were forming up again. The first storm of arrows had riddled them but they were swinging shields up, spurring their great horses forward. They bunched together like a club and drove straight for Tshant.

With Djela before him hopping madly up and down, Tshant could not shoot. He dragged the chestnut down to a trot and his own line swept up alongside him. The stream opened up before him again. The chestnut almost fell down the bank. Djela screamed. Tshant dropped the rein, ready to jump free, but the chestnut recovered and plunged out over the ice.

Six Russians in a wild charge bore down on them. A horse shrilled. The ground seemed to heave up under them. Tshant let go of Djela. Russian horses surrounded him. An axe flew past his ear and a salt spray wet his face. The chestnut ran into a Russian horse and staggered. Its mouth gaping, a black-bearded face swam up before Tshant, the eyes filmed over with fighting rage. Tshant drew his dagger and jumped. He caught the Russian around the neck and plunged the dagger in through one armpit. His impact carried the Russian and himself off the horse, and somehow they twisted and the Russian landed hard on top of him on the ice.

The ice cracked. Cold water spilled over him. He thrust and kicked at the dead man, and his head went under water. The cold wrapped itself around his chest and throat. At last the Russian slid away from him. He thrust his hands over his head, toward the air, and his fingers scratched against ice.

In his terror he almost opened his mouth and breathed water. He scrabbled at the ice over him, clawing at it. He saw nothing but blinding light and a flash of brilliant colors. His legs, milling frantically, struck the bed of the stream and he thrust himself up. His head struck the ice hard enough to daze him but one arm, outstretched, shot through the water and into the air. Ice water trickled into his lungs. He scrambled up after the arm and dragged himself over the split and bouncing ice.

There was nobody there but Mongols, and few of them. Far away he heard shouts and a roar like a huge fire. The air against his face felt hot. He began to shiver. Suddenly he was shuddering down to his bones. His teeth rang together so hard they hurt.

Somebody flung a cloak around him and he clutched at it with hands that would not work. The men around him were shouting about a fire and dry clothes and hot food.

He said, “Where is my son?”

The man before him stared a moment and shrugged helplessly.

Tshant snatched at him. “My son. Where is my son? Damn you—”

They caught his arms and held him still and dragged him downstream toward a fire. Their voices flowed over him like the icy river. He struggled, snarling, but they only clutched him tighter. Finally, exhausted, he let them bring him to the fire.

They stripped off his soaked clothes and rubbed him with snow and dried him off. He submitted. He could see the stream, the ice smashed into blocks, the gaping dark holes that gurgled and sucked at the ice. Horses and dead men strewed the ice and either bank. A head bobbed face down in one of the gaps, dark water lapping at its hair. His mind was frozen. Somebody put a bowl of warm kumiss in his hands and he drank, gulping. Somebody else pulled a woolen tunic over his head, made him stand up, and dressed him.

“You’re lucky you aren’t dead,” Gregor said. “People who fall into Russian rivers in the winter usually die.”

Tshant locked both hands in Gregor’s shirt front and shook him. “Where is Djela?”

“I’m right here,” Djela said. “Ada, are you all right?”

Tshant shut his eyes. He turned around very slowly and looked down. Djela was standing there, his red coat covered with dirt and dirty snow, chewing on a piece of dried meat. He beamed at Tshant.

“He went after the army,” Gregor said. “The chestnut horse ran away with him, I suspect.” 

“It was fun,” Djela said.

“Fun?” Tshant was having trouble speaking. The words forced themselves up through something thick in his throat. “When we fight, boy, you stay by me. Do you hear me?”

“I couldn’t—”

Tshant slapped him twice, as hard as he could. Djela fell on his back. Gregor reached out and put his hand on Tshant’s arm, and Tshant whirled. “Keep your hands off me, Russian.”

Djela got up and stood, very stiffly, his hands at his sides. “I couldn’t stop the horse,” he said. He was trying not to cry. The mark of Tshant’s hand like a ritual scar stood out on either cheek. “I would have stayed. But you’d thrown the reins over his head and I couldn’t reach them.”

He turned and walked away. Tshant called, “Djela.”

Djela ignored him. He went to a fire and sat down with a group of men, and one of them handed him a bowl full of kumiss.

Tshant’s thousand-commander came up toward him. He said, “Collect all the horses you can and we can leave. Did we wipe out the Russians?”

“No. Half of them got back to the city.”

Tshant thought of Kaidu, riding with half the men the other way of the river, and how angry Kaidu would be at missing a good fight. It had to be a great city to hold so many men. He looked at Gregor.

“What’s the name of that town, Gregor?”

Gregor hesitated a moment, but the look on Tshant’s face apparently warned him. “Kiev.”

“Someday I’ll burn it. Come on.”

When they started off again, Djela would not ride near Tshant. He sent Gregor after the boy to keep watch on him. They camped in a bend of the river, early so that the men could rest; Djela did not come to Tshant’s fire. At nightfall, Tshant went hunting him. Some of the men Djela had ridden with in the end of the fighting had wrapped him in a cloak and put him to sleep beside their fire. He didn’t wake when Tshant picked him up and carried him back.

In the morning, Djela refused to say anything. Tshant ate between giving orders to his thousand-commander and packing up his gear. When they were ready to leave, he rode over to Djela’s horse and said, “I’m sorry. I thought you’d been killed.”

“When I tell Ama—”

“I don’t think you’ll see her for a few years.”

“I’ll tell Grandfather.”

“Go right ahead. If I’d hit you as often as he hit me when I—”

He stopped abruptly, remembering, and laughed. Djela turned with a frown.

“What’s funny?”

“I ran off from Psin once in the middle of a battle and he beat me. I suppose your sons will ride away in the middle of battles. If they do and you beat them for it, just remember that I only hit you twice.”

Quyuk said, “I still hate you.”

“I don’t like you either.” Psin kicked at the roots and frozen black earth at his feet. “This damned forest is half swamp.”

“What you did makes no difference.”

“What made you think it would?”

Quyuk scowled. Psin threw his reins back over his horse’s head and mounted. He sneered at Quyuk. “If I lost you, child, your father would string me up by the toes over a slow fire. If I lose any of my men without good reason, my reputation suffers. When do you suppose it thaws in these woods?”

“How should I know?”

Quyuk kicked his horse on past Psin. Psin followed him down a trail that led between two rounded hills. They had seen tracks of hunters in the forest. He wanted a prisoner from Novgorod and from the way Dmitri acted he knew they were close. He trotted his horse past Quyuk’s and to the man leading Dmitri’s horse.

“How is your cold?”

Dmitri snuffled, grinning. “Please, Khan, I won’t try to run away. These ropes hurt.”

“They aren’t tight enough.” Psin looked across the ridges to their west. His men were scattered throughout this part of the forest; he saw one ride silently through a patch of cedars. Beyond him, the lake glittered. Psin tried to remember whether cedars grew only where there had been a fire or never where there had been a fire. Someone had told him…. He shrugged and rode on.

Ahead, somebody yelled. Quyuk, directly behind him, called, “That wasn’t Mongol.” 

“No.”

The men near Psin galloped down the slope before him toward the shouting. Horses crashed through the brush just beyond the next ridge. The yelling broke out all across their path. A horse whinnied—the high, inquisitive call of a horse near strangers. Hoofs beat on the ground, and four Mongols sailed up the slope before them, ducking the swinging pine boughs.

“Woodcutters,” one shouted. “Lots of them—hurry, we need help.”

“Come on.” Psin whipped up his horse.

Once they left the top of the ridge the forest closed in around them. He heard an axe ring on a tree. Mongol voices rose, yipping; they were trying to keep in contact with each other. The forest must be thick. Psin’s horse leapt a windfall and staggered through drifted snow. A Russian voice howled angrily. Now, between trees, Psin could see them, the Russians on the ground striking with their axes and the Mongols still on horseback trying to capture them without getting killed. The interlaced branches of the trees trapped the axes and blinded the Mongols. One Russian fell heavily.

“Quyuk, over there.”

Quyuk plunged past him; his face was scratched from the pine branches. Psin grabbed the reins of Dmitri’s horse and held it next to his.

In Russian, Dmitri shouted, “Run—go tell Novgorod—”

Psin glanced at him. All the woodcutters were overpowered. Two were sprawled unconscious in the snow, and the Mongols were trussing up the others. Dmitri sighed.

“Shall I gag you?” Psin said.

Dmitri did not look at him. “No, Khan. Please.”

“Then don’t shout.” Mixed in with the false humility in Dmitri’s voice was exasperation. Psin turned toward the woodcutters. “Tie them and let’s go. Quyuk, take charge of the prisoners.”

Quyuk waved in answer and rode over to watch two Mongols hoist a huge Russian up into the saddle. Psin called over a man doing nothing and gave him Dmitri’s reins. “Don’t let him out of your sight.”

“Yes, Khan.”

There were six woodcutters, and they were already packed up neatly on the column’s spare horses. Psin rode over to Quyuk. “Take them back to our camp. Move fast.”

“Where are you going?”

“To see this city.”

“Let me go with you.”

“No. We’re too close. I should have known—” His horse jerked up its head. “Anyway, I’ll go alone. You know how to—” His horse plunged around suddenly and pricked its ears, looking north. “Go!”

On the heel of the word a Russian voice roared in the woods to the north. Quyuk flung up his head and called to the Mongols. He held a saddleless horse on a leadline, and he threw the rope to Psin. More Russian voices were calling out, all around them. The Mongols yipped and clattered south along the slopes.

Psin whirled his horse and plunged into the depths of the forest, away from the lake, where the cover grew thickest. He heard Russians shouting and a clash of heavy metal, and hoofs pounded by. He wondered if the woodcutters had been bait in a trap, doubted it, and reeled in his led horse to wrap a rag over its nose.

“Yip yip yip—”

That was far away, and the sound of horses dimmed. Ahead of Psin the slope fell away steeply into a ravine. He forced his horse down it. Here the snow lay like a light frost; the branches above and the looming cliff walls kept the ground clear. Pale green moss covered the trunks of the few trees near the top of the ravine. The darkness grew deeper and thicker. Psin’s horse ducked its head and crept on down the trail into the ravine. Holding the leadrope up high, Psin maneuvered the horse behind his. The trail was so narrow the two horses couldn’t walk side by side.

He heard a distant cry and the sound of something heavy charging through brush. He heard a call that ended in a question. His horse moved one hoof at a time and slid a little with each step. When Psin looked back the way they had come he saw the edge of the bank above them stark against a patch of clear sky. The trail down grew steeper, and he held onto his saddle with one hand.

The horse stepped cautiously out on flat ground. Psin reined him down until the led horse could gain the level bottom of the ravine and started at a walk north. Under the overhanging cliff, a thin stream lay, frozen to its bed. Psin’s horse stretched out into a fast walk, and he let his reins slack.