Until the Sun Falls (18 page)

“Tshant and Buri will bring the baggage train,” Batu said. “We have to ride like Mongols now.” He walked hunched over to the end of the cart and jumped out. Psin followed on hands and knees.

“Psin, come catch this brute of a horse.”

Psin dragged his saddle out from under the cart. “Why, can’t a bunch of Mongols handle a Merkit horse?”

The horse whistled and kicked out. Its hindhoofs cracked on the side of the cart, which swayed violently. Psin plunged through the men trying to hold the horse; the dun saw him coming and spun around, legs braced.

“Calm down, lambkin. Easy, sweeting.” Psin took the rope and went quietly to the horse’s head. “You cock-eyed spittle of a perverted dragon.”

The dun licked his hand. Sabotai was mounted and giving yet more orders. Two couriers flashed through the torchlight. Beyond the light lay only a vast and noisy darkness, full of horses.

A drover’s whip cracked. They were linking up the baggage train again. Psin forced the bit between the dun’s teeth and jerked his girth tight. The dun would not stand still to be mounted. Psin swung up, and the dun tried to bolt.

“Ride on the north wing,” Sabotai said. “Carry a green lantern and watch for my signals.”

Psin nodded. He wheeled the horse over to the nearest cart and took down one of the lanterns hanging from the side. The army was moving. The center of the column was already out of the camp. His remounts jogged up, and he hooked the leadline to his saddle. The last of the column cantered past his cart. He swung out to ride around them and come up on the north side.

The beech trees on the next ridge crawled with horsemen. Out of the racket and confusion of breaking camp had come the single motion of an army riding. The rumble of the horses’ hoofs drowned out the wind. Lanterns glowed, red, green, blue, white and yellow, and the tossing manes of the horses were like pine branches in the wind. For a while, cantering around to take up his post, he was separate from the great mass of the army. In the middle of the dark night the swarm did not seem like many riders, but one great creature that bounded over the ground and spilled through the stiff and naked trees.

The dun horse bucked. Psin whipped him and maneuvered him around a clump of rocks that lumped up the snow. The horse lengthened its stride to pass the mob alongside them. Psin gave him his head.

In the darkness the riding was treacherous. The column spread out far more than in the daylight, because if a horse stumbled or a rider fell the men behind would ride right over him before they saw. Sabotai’s lanterns flashed busily, directing the sides of the column this way and that. Psin acknowledged the orders under his sign by swinging his own lantern. The stars were out, shivering cold, and the wind rose steadily. North of Psin a wolf howled.

Ahead the green lantern flashed three times. Psin waved his red lantern and bellowed, “Swing out, north wing.” He dropped back a little, yelling, and the north wing spread out toward him. He looked up toward Sabotai and saw the green lantern flashing more complexly.

“Move up—come up level with the front of the column.” He rode around to the end of the extended wing and galloped forward, and as if he were linked to the line they all burst into a gallop and hurtled along through the total darkness beside him. They swept up a slope and charged down the other side, gaining ground swiftly on the head of the column. Sabotai was turning toward them a little, and Psin corrected his course.

Light glowed up ahead—watchfires, leaping against the trees. Russians. He pulled his bow out of the case, leaving his rein draped over the dun’s withers, but before he could nock an arrow lanterns winked on and off in the midst of the fires. Mongke’s scouts must have lit them to guide Sabotai in toward the river.

They plunged down toward the fires. Psin’s remounts loped freely beside the dun; whenever the wind changed a little he could hear them pounding over the snow, the breath whumping out of their nostrils. The lanterns ahead flashed an order and Psin shouted to his wing to slow down.

They swept in between fires. Men dodged wildly out of their way. Psin, expecting the riverbank, checked the dun hard just before they slid down it. The ice rang like stone beneath the horse’s hoofs. The leadline strained, and a horse ran into the dun from behind. The dun kicked back. Psin’s remounts got tangled up, bit and clawed at each other, and straightened themselves out before they had to scramble up the far bank.

The column was veering south, and Sabotai’s green lantern flashed again: Psin and his wing held back hard to take up the rear of the swerving column. Faint light streaked across the snow, and the watchfires seemed paler. The eastern sky bristled with the dawn. Psin relaxed a little. He leaned out to whip his remounts into line again. The snow was blue, the air itself was blue, and the watchfires they passed on the far bank shrank down to puddles of weak light. The wind shrieked around his ears.

Some of the men around him were changing horses already—leaping onto the bare backs of their nearest remounts and leaving the saddled horse to gallop along beside them. They hadn’t been riding long enough to change horses, and Psin started to yell at them. But the green lantern started to wink and he had to charge out of the midst of the rearguard to see.

The lantern winked four times quickly and twice slowly. Psin swore. He shuttered his lantern to show that he didn’t understand. The green lantern flashed off entirely. Sabotai was definitely getting old if he couldn’t even send signals anymore. Now the yellow lantern was winking, and the center of the column slackened speed.

They were coming up to a thick stretch of trees. The column thinned down to pass between it and the river, along the bare space there. Psin swore again and swung the dun horse into the thick of his men; he flung his leadrope to one and dashed off again. He galloped the dun straight through the thick trees. The horse leapt like a deer over a windfall, smashed Psin’s knee against a tree, and plowed through a clump of birches. Psin held his hat on with one hand. The dun thrashed out of the wood and Psin lashed him once to keep him settled. The horse flattened out, racing at top speed toward Sabotai.

The snow, still glittering blue in the dawn light, flew past under the horse’s reaching hoofs. The main column fell behind as if they weren’t moving at all. Sabotai was playing with the green lantern again. Psin could see him clearly, his features unnaturally distinct in the fresh light. He charged the dun up to him and slowed the horse to Sabotai’s pace.

“What in God’s name do you want me to do?”

Sabotai shouted, “I was warning you about the trees ahead.”

“Four short and two long? Did you just make it up?”

“Three long to slow down.”

“I read four short and two long, Sabotai. It may be fun to invent new signals but—”

The dun collected himself and jumped a small stream. Psin rocked back in his saddle.

“I told him three long.”

Sabotai sounded angry. Psin shouted, “I definitely saw six flashes.” A tree branch might have gotten in the way, so that a long flash seemed two short ones. He spun the horse around and galloped back along the line of the column. The green lantern flashed two long.

“Sabotai. This is no time for lantern drill.”

He fell back to his own wing and collected his remounts; they picked up speed, obeying the order. But Sabotai had forgotten to tell the center of the column to move out, and Psin’s wing began to run up on the center’s heels.

“Batu,” Psin roared. “Move up.”

Batu was galloping along beside the center, a little apart from the main group. He waved. “Sabotai gave me no signal.”

“Damn Sabotai. He’s a—”

The white lantern flashed, and Batu answered it with his own. The center plunged on, finally drawing ahead of the rearguard. It was full day, and the lanterns were getting hard to see. Psin thought perhaps Sabotai had signaled and Batu hadn’t caught it.

He rode in close to the nearest of his remounts, kicked his feet out of the stirrups, and jumped. The horse shied away from him and he landed off center, his arms around the horse’s neck. The horse staggered. Psin hauled himself up onto the heaving back and steered over closer to the dun. The dun reached out to nip Psin’s new mount, and he grabbed his rein, whipped his horse up ahead of the dun so that he could kick the dun in the nose, and settled down. Ahead, Sabotai was raising the banners, and in the east the first long rays of the sun shot across the horizon.

They rode down on Moskva well before noon. Kadan was already camped around the city, on the frozen swamp at the foot of its low hill. The main army washed in like a flood, split exactly down the middle, and swung around to embrace everything, Kadan, hill, city and all. They crashed through the heavy woods opposite one gate and spilled out over the narrow strip of fields, and the two wings came together precisely before the tall stone main gate into the city. Psin’s wing, charging around the east side, packed the river from bank to bank with racing horses.

The Mongols already there cheered, and the Mongols coming in cheered, and the people on the city wall screamed insults; the horses neighed, the wind howled, and the pine around the hill moaned. In the uproar Psin halted his column and posted them into camps, two on the city’s side of the river, one in the middle on the far bank. The ice between the city and the far camp was trampled free of snow and blazed under the high sun. Psin jogged across it to find Sabotai.

From the peaks of the city’s towers pennants flew. People crowded the walls and the roofs of the buildings near the gate. The snow at the foot of the hill was flecked with arrows. Just below a gate lay half a dozen dead and frozen knights and two horses with their guts strung over the ground. Psin’s horse shied, and he realized that he was still riding bareback, with only a halter and leadrope for bridle.

“Psin.”

Kadan jogged up. His face glowed, and he smiled.

“Have you lost that strange horse of yours? I could have taken this pile six times by now. Did you see the bodies? They tried to run off. Sabotai’s over there.”

Psin looked up at the city. “It doesn’t look like any problem, does it?”

“No. They shoot stones at us with catapults, now and then, and all night they were popping fire arrows over the wall. Odd people. They d-don’t seem to know that snow won’t burn.”

“They’re frightened,” Psin said.

“They should be. I have some Kipchaks, you know. And they’re going to take Moskva or die, so they’re quite definitely going t-to take it.”

“We had a ride getting here. Oh. Sabotai’s invented a whole new signal. Four short and two long mean ‘trees ahead, bear south.’ Remember that, it might prove useful.”

Kadan frowned. “I didn’t know—”

“I’m joking. I have to go find him.”

“Where is my brother?”

“Sabotai sent him off hunting for the Russian field army.”

“Good. I’d hate to have to share a siege with him.”

“We won’t siege it.”

He turned his horse and jogged over to Sabotai’s camp. Three men were busy rigging up a sort of tent, using lances and a bearskin. Sabotai sat before a fire warming his feet. His boots stood beside him, the laces dangling.

“I’m sorry about the signal,” he called, when Psin rode in. “Esugai heard me to say four long. Something must have cut up the first two long flashes.”

“Trees.” Psin dismounted and a man took his horse. “This looks like a village.”

“It’s not an important city.” Sabotai curled his toes. “Except to me.”

“Which way did you send Quyuk?”

Sabotai grinned. “I thought you’d figure out about that. I sent him over toward Tver. If the Grand Duke is there he could be troublesome. If he’s not he won’t bother us.”

“Tver is… west of here?”

“West and north. Here. Drink.”

“God. You’ve put honey on it. How can you ruin kumiss like that?”

“Because I’m an old man.”

“Tell me when you get arthritis.”

“We can storm it this afternoon, I think. Look at them up there. They’re gawking at us.”

Psin finished the bowl of kumiss. “It’s not going to be so easy. That’s a steep ride to the main gate.”

“I have men cutting battering rams, and when the baggage train gets here we’ll have catapults. We can scale the wall with ropes.”

“Kipchaks first, of course.”

Sabotai nodded happily. “Batu’s brothers are out looking for the best places on the wall.”

“I’m sure you’re going to create a diversion. What?”

“You.”

“You’re very funny, Sabotai. Do I dance?”

“If you’d like to. You should take half a tuman and set fire to the wall at some point opposite the one we’re trying to storm.”

“Better than climbing up a rope. Can I choose my men?”

“Yes, if you want.”

“I’ll take Mongke’s honor guard and Arcut Boko, the thousand-commander who went with me to Novgorod. That’s three hundred men. I don’t need half a tuman.”

“If the wall collapses—”

“I doubt it will, but if it does three hundred men can hold a breach.”

A courier was picking his way through the camp toward them.

Psin stood up. The man trotted his horse over and saluted.

“I come from Quyuk Noyon. He has good information that the Russian army is gathering on the Volga due north of Vladimir.”

Sabotai jerked his head toward Psin. “Find Mongke.” To the courier, he said, “How reliable is this?”

“Very. We met some of the tuman that’s scattered over this country and they say they had to run from the army only six days ago.”

Psin had sent a slave to Mongke’s camp. He swung around. “They won’t stay on the Volga, they’ll go north, toward Novgorod. If they stay on the Volga they run the risk of being encircled.”

“Do they know that?” Sabotai said.

“I should think so.”

“Well, then.” Mongke was coming; Sabotai nodded to the courier. “Go back to Quyuk and tell him to maintain contact with the army and harass them if possible. Mongke, assign one of your scouts to take Baidar and his tuman to Kolomna.”

Mongke nodded. His coat was thrown loosely over his shoulders, and he thrust one arm through the sleeve. “I’ll go.”