Until the Sun Falls (33 page)

Kaidu, cheery as ever, had demanded the whole story of the campaigns against Yaroslav and Tver. In return he had told Tshant about the winter in the north. “It was cold, and we spent all day long hunting. All day long. Our grain was gone long before you came by on the way to Novgorod. The hunting is fine, up there. Not like the Gobi, but interesting. How is Quyuk?”

“Mending. He broke his shoulder at Tver. What did he and your grandfather fight about?”

Kaidu shrugged. “I didn’t hear. Quyuk’s an odd sort. No, I guess I’m the odd sort, aren’t I? Everyone else is like Quyuk.”

“Even me?”

“Oh, of course.” And Kaidu laughed.

One of Tshant’s scouts rode up. “There is a herd of cattle in a meadow just ahead.”

“How many herders?”

“Six men and a boy.”

Fresh beef. “Did they see you?”

“Yes. They sent a messenger west, on foot.”

“Good.” Tshant wheeled. “Kaidu, take command of the right flank. I want a crescent formation.” He looked at the scout. “Is the meadow in a wood?”

“No—there are trees all around, but not thick. It’s just beyond that ridge.”

“Good.” Tshant pointed to the dozen men nearest him. “You, you, you—when we attack, you tend the herd. Keep them bunched. Don’t let them run. Nogai, take the banners and ride at the tip of the left flank.”

Nogai and Kaidu began to yell, and the men riding along behind them whipped up their horses and shoved forward into the crescent shape. The ends of the formation spread out swiftly and moved slightly ahead of the center. Nogai on the far west spread out the black banner and waved it in a circle on the high pole. The band broke from its trot into a canter.

The ground below the ridge was marshy. Tshant’s horse splashed through it, throwing mud up over its shoulders. If the messenger had gone on foot their help couldn’t be far away. Tshant strung his bow and laid an arrow to the string. The ridge was sprinkled with beech trees. A man dodged behind one, and Tshant lifted the bow and shot. The arrow missed but the man raced away, yelling, and another Mongol shot him down. They careened up to the summit of the ridge, weaving in among the scrawny trees, and flung themselves down the other side.

The cattle were moving through the trees on the far side of the meadow. Tshant heard the high calls of the herders. They looked over their shoulders at the sound of the Mongols. Their mouths, wet, red, gleamed in their white faces. They threw down their staffs and ran, screaming. Tshant shot; his arrow flew up with four hundred others and the herders slapped into the young grass, quilled like porcupines. The cattle began to bellow.

Nogai was waving the yellow banner; he hadn’t stopped to string it on the pole and it flapped in his hands. Tshant reined in. Two horses collided with his from behind, and they skidded entangled down the slope. The dozen men chosen to herd galloped by after the cattle. Nogai was riding back up to the summit of the ridge, to watch the east. Tshant leaned back to look at his horse’s hindlegs, saw them still whole, and glared at the men behind him. They grinned, ashamed.

“Watch the banners, you fools.”

The cattle stamped out into the meadow again, their horns swinging. The Mongols yelped and beat at them with their bows to keep them close together and moving. Two bodies lay in the herd’s path, and the cattle split to pass around them.

Nogai whistled from the height of the ridge. Tshant jerked around; the blue banner was up. He filled his lungs and yelled, “Kaidu—what do you see?”

Kaidu was farther down the ridge from Nogai; he stood in his stirrups and looked east and shook his head.

Tshant gnawed his lip. Nogai was still signaling. Abruptly Tshant kicked his horse forward toward the cattle herd. He paused long enough to shout, “Drive them straight to the camp,” whirled his horse, and charged toward Nogai, urging on the others with his arm.

Now Kaidu was shouting, but Tshant couldn’t hear the words. He took an arrow from the quiver. His horse raced madly up toward Kaidu, who was swinging his men around to face whatever was coming. Arrows lifted from their bows. The men behind Tshant yelled. They surged up over the summit of the ridge and swept right down into the oncoming knights.

Tshant’s horse smashed into another horse, reared, and plunged on its hindlegs through the pack. Armor clashed. The bow was useless. Tshant drew his dagger, ducked a swordthrust, and leaned out to swipe at a knight’s jaw. An arm swept him all but out of the saddle. He clung, feeling the horse stagger beneath him. Harsh enemy voices thundered in his ears. He stabbed at the men snatching for him, hauled himself back onto his horse, and ducking swords and outflung arms bored free of the tangle.

There were far fewer knights than Mongols, he saw at once, but the Mongols could not use their bows and the knights like boulders were grinding them to pieces. The horses reared and plunged down across one another, and the swords of the knights glanced occasionally off Russian helmets. Tshant dragged his horse back, thrust three fingers into his mouth, and whistled.

The Mongols looked around toward the banner and wheeled away. Many of them could not get free of the knights and were cut down. The knights charged heavily after. Tshant’s bow was broken, and he flung it down and wrenched his spare out of its case. “Shoot,” he yelled. The knights wheeled toward him. Their huge eyes shone above the cheekpieces of their helmets. They lumbered along, while the Mongols got back their senses and bent their bows and the arrows hissed into the iron-clad swarm. Some of the knights tried to turn, but before they could work their horses out of the pack the arrows felled them.

Nogai on the summit was waving the blue banner again. Tshant whistled, and the Mongols looked at him, looked at Nogai, and trotted up the slope. The Russian knights did not follow. Tshant galloped after his men. On the ground behind him lay as many Mongol dead as Russian.

Never mind, Father. I’ll make up for it. The cattle herd was already south of the ridge and plodding energetically toward Kozelsk. Tshant caught up with it, ranged his men on all sides, and let his horse graze while he walked.

His father would be angry. Let him be. This time Tshant had learned something worth the dead. The old man had to learn to treat him more gently, anyhow.

Long before they reached Kozelsk, the following morning, he saw the smoke in columns all down the bluff. Psin was taking no risks. Any Mongol detachment, hunting or raiding, could follow the smoke back to the camp. When Tshant and his men brought up their herd, they found the pasturage at the foot of the bluff already jammed with cattle, sheep, horses, even swine, and nearby a slaughter pen big enough to keep the whole camp in fresh meat.

“We’ve scoured everything for two days’ ride,” Kadan said, across his campfire. “Everything that walks on more than one leg is or will be slaughtered for us before the day after tomorrow.”

“Have they tried to storm the wall again?”

Kadan nodded. He lay back on the ground and shut his eyes. “Twenty men could hold us off from that height. You didn’t find anything to drink, did you?”

“No.”

“Ayuh. I think Sabotai is deliberately keeping me sober.”

“They’re sending out parties to find grass for the horses, now,” Baidar said. “Look at the dust.”

Tshant nodded. “And we’ve only been here ten or twelve days.”

“You lost some of your men,” Baidar said. “What happened?”

“I ran into some knights.”

“How many?”

“Eighty, if that.”

Baidar stared at him; Tshant lifted his head, slowly, and the muscles at the hinges of his jaw tightened.

“Eighty? You had almost four hundred.” 

“Yes. I mean to talk to my father about it.”

Kadan muttered under his breath. Tshant spun toward him. “Say something, Kadan. Anything.”

“Not me.” Kadan lifted both hands. “I’m too sober to fight.”

“Psin is over at the spring,” Baidar said.

Tshant rose. Baidar stood up with him and swung to face him.

“He’s tired, Tshant. He’s done too much this winter. And he was wounded. His temper’s short.”

“It’ll be shorter.”

Tshant brushed past him. He heard Baidar’s blunt cursing and Kadan’s low voice beneath it. Catching his horse, he rode over to the spring.

It lay in a sink just below one of the great cliffs that framed the trough up to Kozelsk, and while the water was pure there wasn’t enough of it for all the horses and men in the camp. Psin was standing sentry duty on the sentries, to make sure no one broke the rationing. He sat on a bulge of the rock, just a little lower than Tshant on his horse. Sabotai was there, and Batu, sitting on the ground to Psin’s left.

“Good hunting?” Sabotai said.

Tshant’s head bobbed. “I met some knights—we lost twenty men.”

“Ah?” Sabotai frowned and glanced up at Psin.

“In God’s name,” Batu said. “Is there so large a band of knights running around here? I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“Eighty.” Tshant shrugged. “Much less, now.”

“Eighty knights? You had five times that many. How did you manage to lose even one?”

Sabotai glanced up at Psin again. Tshant let his reins run through his fingers. Psin’s face was impassive. He was braiding together some wisps of straw, but his eyes were on Tshant, not on his moving hands.

“We met them just below the summit of a hill—when we rode over the hill we didn’t know they were there,” Tshant said to Sabotai. Through the tail of his eye he saw Kadan and Baidar strolling toward them, all innocence. “We got mixed up with them, very close quarters, and we aren’t lancers or swordsmen.”

“And before you could pull free they had killed twenty of you.”

Tshant nodded. Sabotai looked at Psin for the third time, but Psin was having none of it; he never looked at Sabotai, and he said nothing.

“How did they fight?” Batu said. “Did they try to run you down or throw you off your horses?”

“They just swung whatever they had in their hands.”

Batu looked around. “Psin. What do you think?”

Psin’s eyes were still on Tshant. “If he lost only twenty, he’s lucky.”

Sabotai murmured something. Psin threw aside the bits of straw. “Knights are heavy cavalry. If they can reach light cavalry, like Mongols, they’ll ruin us.”

“We’ve fought knights before,” Batu said. “Without any problem.”

“Because we could get out of their way.”

Batu spat. “Their horses are slow. We can run before them all day long.”

“Providing the terrain lets us. On a steppe, yes. On country we know, yes. But over unfamiliar ground, hills, forests, rivers—”

“Where do you see hills and forests that we don’t know? Not even in the north.”

“Europe,” Psin said. “Sabotai wants to fight in Europe. You’ve spoken of it. The steppe breaks up, there. And the Europeans are knights. So.”

He turned and stared off across the plain. Kadan and Baidar began to tease Sabotai for another drink of water. Tshant was braced, ready for a fight, but somehow Psin had gotten out of it. He scowled.

The siege dragged on through the lengthening days. On the walls at night, the Russians paced uneasily from torch to torch. Psin kept two or three men with bows watching, to shoot down any they could, but the Russians learned quickly enough not to stand against the sky. Sometimes, late at night, Psin could hear them talking on the walls.

Every day since they had first come up to Kozelsk, the city’s cocks had crowed in the morning, but gradually their number thinned. On the twenty-eighth morning of the siege, only one cock crowed, and on the twenty-ninth, none. By the thirty-first day, the dogs didn’t bark any more. Psin, arranging his foraging parties, shaded his eyes to count the heads behind the rampart.

“Soon,” Kadan said.

“Ah.” Psin turned away. “It was a mistake to begin with. We shouldn’t have come up so grandly, now we have to stay until it’s all over.”

Mongke had been gone three days, now, and Kaidu five. The horses grazed nearly half a day’s ride away. Coming back from a six-day raid, Tshant had reported a caravan moving across the edge of the steppe, far south. Sabotai did not want to attack it.

“If it’s going to Karakorum it’s under the Kha-Khan’s protection.”

“Tax them,” Psin had said. “Cut their herds. Anything.”

“No,” Sabotai had said.

“Damn you,” Batu had roared. “We are slowly starving.”

“Kozelsk will fall soon enough.”

Now Psin told Kadan, “Don’t raid south too much. When we move on we’ll need that forage.”

Kadan nodded glumly and reined his horse around. His three hundred men waited, impatient; away from the camp they could find water, graze for their horses, small game not worth carrying back here but far better than what the camp lived on. Psin watched them go. The dust of the ruined pasture rolled up under the hoofs of their horses.

If it were winter they would have been forced to drop the siege long before this. No man could live in the winter on the scraps of meat and fish the rationers doled out. It was worth marveling at that no one tried to steal or hold back supplies. Most of the men spent the daylight  sleeping in the sun and the cool nights gambling. Twice in the last ten days they had attacked the city, probing, only to retreat as soon as the shower of stones and arrows and debris started to pelt them.

Tshant was sitting beside the spring, sipping his day’s cupful of water. He looked up when Psin came near and his eyes took on the stony stare he’d been favoring Psin with since the business at Tver. Psin put his hands on his belt; his temper edged him.

“Stop sulking, will you?”

“Oh.” Tshant put the cup down empty. “Am I sulking?”

He stood, close enough that Psin had to look up to see his face. “I didn’t know I was sulking. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

Psin backhanded him as hard as he could. Tshant staggered and fell to his knees beside the spring. Psin glanced quickly around; there was nobody nearby, except for a handful of men dozing down where the pebbles turned to sand. He bent and picked up a rock just small enough to close his fist over.

Tshant lunged to his feet, his hands clenched, took a deep breath, and leapt for Psin. His right hand gathered up the front of Psin’s shirt, and the other arm cocked back to strike. Psin smashed one arm up against Tshant’s right wrist, and when Tshant threw his punch he ducked under it. Tshant wobbled, off balance. Psin hit him behind the ear with the hand that held the rock. Tshant fell hard and lay still. Psin looked around again. No one had seen it. He knelt, made sure he hadn’t fractured Tshant’s skull, and walked quickly away.