Until the Sun Falls (28 page)

“So it’s your ox of a father. No, don’t. Your great glorious most excellent—to fight. Where?”

“Here. Tver. We attack the rings tomorrow.”

“Whose…” He gulped again. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Don’t.”

“Whose order?”

“Mine.”

“To attack the city?”

“No. Sabotai’s.”

“He’s mad.”

“Possibly.”

“We can’t take it.”

“Psin and Mongke say we can.”

“Mongke is a coward. He—” 

He lurched to his feet, stumbled across the yurt to the door, and sprawled over the threshold. Tshant followed him. He stood in the door, watching Quyuk on his elbows crawl across the ground to the deep snow and be sick. The bright sunlight shone fiercely over the camp. In the street before the yurt people turned and watched, and Buri cantered up, his face flushed.

“Get him inside,” he called to Tshant. “Will you let everyone see?”

“Yes,” Tshant said.

Buri’s eyes blazed. Tshant shifted his weight, so that he stood on widespread feet, and lifted his fists. Buri looked at Quyuk again.

“He’s done. Take him inside. He’s weeping.”

Tshant went to Quyuk and dragged him back into the yurt. Buri galloped away. His whip rose and fell across his horse’s lathered shoulders.

Quyuk said, “Give me something to drink.”

“No.”

“Tshant. I shall die.”

“Don’t.”

“Were they laughing at me?”

“No.”

“Buri was there. Where is he?”

“He went off.”

Quyuk crept to the couch and knelt beside it, his head buried in the rucked covers, his breathing ragged. Tshant sat down by the fire. Quyuk seemed to sleep; his shoulders trembled a little, not constantly, but often. In a while he would start to talk again. The meat in the bowl by his knee was cold, and Tshant got it and poured it back into the pot and sat back down again, aware of his own patience, to wait for Quyuk’s waking.

Psin paced back and forth in front of the tower, watching the gap into the rings. The clang and shrill yelling of the battle had died long before, but no messenger had come, and the rings kept him from seeing what went on inside.

“Sabotai,” he shouted.

“I can see nothing. Control yourself.” Sabotai was pacing back and forth on the platform on top of the tower. “They should hold the outermost ring by now.”

Psin cursed him. The snow, trampled black, slurped under his feet, and the shadow of the banner on the staff above the tower rippled over the ground before him. A cluster of women muttered and watched from the space between the yurts nearby. He glanced over and saw Ana, her lips moving.

“Damned woman.” He paced three strides.

The women shrieked, and he wheeled around. A horseman was galloping up from the crowd around the gap into the rings. It was Buri, his face filthy with blood and sweat, his coat half ripped off. Sabotai shouted something, but Psin refused to hear. He ran to meet the galloping horse.

Buri reined in hard. “We hold the outer ring. They are shooting at us from the walls. It’s slow, building the roof.”

Psin caught the horse’s rein before Buri could wheel and said, “Losses?”

“Few. It’s just—” Buri grimaced. “So slow.”

“Go back.” Psin stepped aside and turned to relay the news to Sabotai.

“Good. Good.” Sabotai grinned. He was sitting cross-legged on the platform, very near the edge. “Listen.”

A great roar had gone up from the rings. The women howled and called the names of their men into the bitter air. Sabotai’s voice lifted over the shouting, over the rising clang of swords and shields: “The Russians are on the steps. They are trying to beat us down—”

Psin swore, ran two steps to the tower, and leapt. His hands caught the second crossbar on the tower’s side and he climbed awkwardly up. The tower swayed and tipped under his weight. Sabotai roared at him, and he scrambled up onto the platform just before the tower would have fallen. Sabotai and the aide with the banners stood on the far side, balancing.

“Grandfather,” Djela called, from the ground. “Can I—”

“No.” Psin shaded his eyes and looked in the direction of the city.

The great rings throbbed with running men. Mongols filled the outermost, a river of warriors, their shields raised over their heads against arrows. He could see arrows pelting down onto the shields, but he saw no Russians on the wall and he guessed that they were shooting from the floor of the inner ring into the air, pitching their arrows to drop across the intervening wall.

On the steps the Russians were massed. They held great long wooden shields against their shoulders, and they were all armed with swords. The Mongols inside the ring were shooting at them. Psin could see almost to the bottom step, and there the Mongols were fighting the Russians hand to hand.

“Slow,” Sabotai murmured.

“We’re gaining ground.”

The Mongol shields like a ceiling filled the outermost ring, and more Mongols poured in through the gap under the shield cover.

The shouting dimmed for an instant, as if everyone paused at once to take a breath, and Psin could hear the sound of mallets. A cart lumbered away empty from the gap, and another, full of timber, took its place. A whip curled across the backs of the oxen, and they lowed.

“Grandfather—”

“Ssssh.”

A great yowl went up from the area around the steps. Psin tensed; he took a deep breath. The Russians dashed backward up the steps. Mongols charged after them. The swords flashed like the ice rings, and a cloud of lances streaked into the pack of Russians. Bodies slipped down off the wall.

“White banner,” Sabotai said. “Psin, look.”

“I see.”

Russians were running nimbly along the wall toward the steps, coming from the west, and while Psin watched several leapt down onto the ceiling of shields. They bounced up and down on it, testing its strength. Arrows thumped the shields all around them. Some of the Russians had torches.

The Mongols on the steps knelt to shoot, but the Russians paid no attention. A single file stood on the shield ceiling. Buckets passed swiftly along it. The arrows slit into the line and here and there Russians fell, but the buckets emptied over the ceiling, and the torches fell onto the soaked shields, and flames sprang up. Djela murmured something; he had crawled up onto the platform and stood watching, one hand clutching Psin’s coat.

Sabotai spoke to the aide with the banners, and Psin patted Djela on the head. “This we foresaw, noyon.”

Three banners stood out from the staff. Carts lurched hastily away from the gap, and Mongols streamed out, four abreast. The ceiling remained standing behind them, shored up from underneath and braced with timbers. The fires burning on it drove the Russians back as well as the Mongols, and the men on the steps were swiftly rigging their own shelter of shields.

Outside the wall, the Mongols leaned pine trunks up against the snowbank and scampered up with buckets to douse the flames. Arrows met them, and they ducked, but the flames rose like a wall between them and the Russians. Psin could see both sides—the Russians feeding the fires, the Mongols drenching them. The flight of the Mongols from beneath the burning ceiling continued unslackened. On either side of the steps stood a shield wall, and Psin could see the men sitting safe in it, far from the fires, relaxed and talking. Their bows lay on their knees.

Buri, Quyuk and Kadan were circling around near the gap; their banners dipped suddenly. Psin said, “They’re asking for orders.”

“Yes. Bring them in.”

To the aide with the banners, Psin said, “Raise the gold.” He turned back, frowning, to look at the rings. The fires were dying slowly. Most of the Russians were gone.

The yellow flag ran up the staff, and the Mongols around the gap turned and jogged on foot back into the camp for dinner. Djela tugged at Psin’s sleeve. “Is Ada coming back?”

“No. He’s in command of the steps.”

“But he’s hungry.”

“He’s got food with him.”

Buri was riding up, no cleaner than before. Sabotai said, “We’ll have to go down and hear his report. When do you want to go in?”

“Are you going in there?” Djela’s mouth described an O.

Psin nodded. “Let’s get onto firm ground.”

Several men were stationed at each corner of the tower to hold it steady. Sabotai lowered himself cautiously from crossbar to crossbar, his feet groping beneath him. Djela said softly, “Grandfather, maybe—”

“Ssssh.”

He started down; Djela maneuvered around the tower’s side just above him, nonchalantly clinging to the crossbars with one hand. “Can I—” 

“No.”

The sun was setting. Psin jumped the rest of the distance to the ground and faced Buri. Quyuk was behind him. Soot smeared one of Quyuk’s cheeks, and a long scratch parted one eyebrow. Buri was talking about the fighting for the steps.

Quyuk said, low, “Are you still going in, Khan?”

“Yes. At moonrise.”

“You’re a fool.”

Quyuk’s slaves were gathering around him. One handed him a cloth, and another held out a jug of kumiss; Quyuk held the cloth in one hand while he drank from the jug, swiped disinterestedly at the dirt on his face, and threw the cloth aside. His fingerprints in soot stood out vividly on the white fabric. He walked away, trailing slaves. The other Altun were riding off to their yurts. Buri had finished his report. Psin looked up at the sky. The red light from the sun climbed from the western horizon toward the summit of the sky, sheer as flame. Under it the fire-blackened snowbanks turned rose-color.

“Progress enough for one day,” Sabotai said.

“Do the Altun think so?”

“Of course not. They say we should have taken the city by now. They are impatient. I don’t think it’s necessary that you go inside the wall tonight.”

“I’m not sure they’ll do what we wish.”

Sabotai’s eyes narrowed. “Besides, they’ll fight better if you are there.”

Psin looked at him, startled. “What makes you think that?”

“Nothing. Come along, you’ll need sleep.”

Tshant shook himself awake, yawned, stretched, and stood up. He was alone on the steps; when the fires on the shield ceiling had gone out he had sent most of his men to posts all along the roofed-over section. The night air still smelled of charred, wet wood and old smoke.

Behind the city wall, fires gleamed, and he saw fires in the Mongol camp, but between them lay nothing but dark. The snowbanks even looked dark. The cold touched him, and he shivered.

The dead silence made him uneasy. He liked the quiet nights on the steppe, the rare calm of the Gobi, nightbirds and the wind and the whisper of grass or sand, but in this stillness his ears strained and his back prickled as if someone were creeping up behind him. No wind at all, tonight, and the stars looked dimmer than usual.

He picked up his fur cloak and went down the steps into the roofed-over ring. The six men clustered at the foot of the steps came lazily to attention. Under the ceiling the dark was thick and foul-smelling. He walked back toward the gap, kicking at the shields blocking the tunnels through the inner wall. Tonight those shields came off.

His father was damned clever. Unless it had really been Mongke’s idea, the whole thing. He doubted that. Mongke was a raider, strike and fly, not capable of something like this. Mongke was too impatient for sieges. He stopped still and listened and heard only the creaking of the timbers.

He could see little in the darkness. Ahead, far ahead, a small fire burnt in a pot, marking the gap. Boots crunched on the packed snow, and he spun around.

“Yuba,” a voice called. “Sentry, noyon.”

“Pass.”

Yuba strode by him. A timber groaned, and the ceiling seemed to sag. Tshant dodged away. But the shields held, braced up and lashed together. He trotted toward the gap, passing Yuba again. Coming nearer the burnt section he could smell the smoke in the stagnant air, the faint odor of burnt meat: Russian bodies, maybe even Mongol.

“Who comes?” the sentry hailed from the gap.

“Tshant Bahadur.”

The sentry stepped aside. Tshant ducked a jutting beam and slipped into the fresh cold air outside the gap.

Silent, motionless, a vast army of Mongols waited there. They sat on their heels in even rows, watching the gap; when Tshant came out they gave no sign that they saw him. Tshant took a deep breath. To keep so many men quiet… He looked for his father but didn’t see him.

The silence tore at him. He wanted to shout, to bang something, just to break the stillness. With the nervousness working in him he stepped farther from the gap and looked around. There was no sign of Psin. But in the east the moon was gliding up over the horizon, huge, bright orange, flooding light over the snow.

Heavy footsteps. He looked over his shoulder and saw Psin coming, his bow in his hand. His edginess drained away. Psin lifted one hand casually to him and went in through the gap without hesitating. Tshant started after him. Behind him, the rows of the army stood and softly, softly crept into the roofed ring.

No sense asking if they all knew what they were to do. Tshant caught up with his father and walked beside him, one hand on his sword. Psin said nothing. The roof of shields caught the sound of feet behind them and made them boom. In the dark Tshant could see only Psin’s shape. He shortened stride so that he did not outwalk Psin and wondered if he always did that, or if this was not some new sign of weakness.

He is old. He must slacken. He was recently sick.

The familiar anger swept over him, and from long habit he fought it down. He shouldn’t hate a man because he was strong. I don’t hate Psin, he thought. But he wasn’t sure.

The closed ring pressed down around them. They passed a sentry, answered his low challenge, and walked on. Tshant could hear no one following them. They had passed the steps, they were nearly to the end of the shield ceiling, and the air was like cobwebs around them. Tshant’s nose tickled and he suppressed a sneeze.

Psin’s hand touched his shoulder. They were at the end, where the roof ended against a wall of snowblocks hacked out of the ring. Here it was utterly dark. Tshant closed his useless eyes and listened.