Until the Sun Falls (63 page)

“If there ever was a man in China—”

He broke off. Her eyes were snapping. He muttered under his breath. Her unexpected smile burst over her face, and she dove into his arms. “Keep me warm.”

He tightened his arms around her. “Chan. You’ll drive me to my death.”

She was laughing, the sound muffled against his chest. He lay back, and she curled up against him. Her cats were sprawled all around the couch; they got up and purring started to lick Psin’s face and Chan’s, until they had to pull the covers over their heads to get away from them.

The next day he spent the whole afternoon talking to Kerulu about Quyuk and his mother and wife. Tshant came home just before sundown and Psin spoke with him a moment and left. When he went back to his own yurts, Artai said, “I’m glad you’re finally here. I have work for Arnulf.”

Psin stooped to sniff at the cooking pot. “Grouse? What does my coming here have to do with Arnulf?” 

“Chicken. I sent him after you.” She shook out a robe and folded it, with three of her women holding the other corners. “But I suppose whatever you were doing had—”

“You sent him after me?”

“Yes. He said you’d gone down to the—where is he?”

“I never saw him. Dmitri.”

Dmitri looked in the door.

“Where is Arnulf?”

“I’ve not seen him, Khan.”

“Get me a horse. Artai, I was over at Tshant’s yurt all day. Where did he say I’d gone?”

“To the river to check on the herds.” She sat down heavily. “And he took a horse—I said he could.”

“God above.” He pointed to the Kipchak woman, who was rolling up felt socks. “Go over to my son’s yurt and tell him that Arnulf has run off. Tell him to call up all the men around here.” He took his bowcase from the wall and counted his arrows. The Kipchak woman trotted out, holding up the slack in her trousers with one hand.

Artai said, “Be easy with him.”

“The Yasa says he must be killed.”

He went outside. The dark was filled with an unnatural soft wind. Dmitri ran up with the dun horse and held him while Psin mounted. Dmitri said, “Khan, you were too easy with him. He never understood—”

“Don’t criticize me. Get me a torch.” The dun pawed at the ground and swung his hindquarters.

Tshant rode up on his dark brown horse. “Where did he go?”

“West. He has the white-footed bay horse, I think. That mare.”

Four or five men milled in the darkness before Psin’s yurt, getting on their horses. Dmitri came out with the torch and Psin thrust it into the lashings of his saddle.

“What did you do to him to make him run away?” Tshant said.

“Nothing. He’s European. They’re all crazy.”

Dmitri took hold of Psin’s stirrup and said, “Khan, don’t hurt him. He doesn’t know.”

“He knows.”

They rode out of the camp to the west. Before they’d passed the last yurt six other men had joined them—Kipchaks. Psin told them to spread out and yell if they saw anything. The plain rolled away before them to the river, and under the moonlight everything looked more distinct. They rode at a fast lope. Arnulf would have left the camp as if to find Psin—he’d told Artai that Psin was by the river so that he could go that way. Probably he had hidden in the trees on the bank until dark. Everybody around here knew Psin Khan’s yellow-haired slave.

The plain looked black as tundra under the full moon. He could smell the pitch on the torch, and far to his left one of the riders carried a torch lit. That had to be a Kipchak. No Mongol would ruin his night vision with a lit torch.

They reached the river and searched quickly through the trees. Psin studied the far bank, looking for hoofprints. He was sure Arnulf had crossed by now. Tshant called out, and he started at a canter toward him, ducking branches; suddenly the dun snuffled the freshening wind and neighed.

Psin reined him to the riverbank, stood in his stirrups, and looked. The grass of the plain beyond the river crawled under the wind. The hills at its far edge were under the horizon. The dun was staring at something, and looking where he looked Psin saw the moving thing, all but lost between the huge sky and the plain.

He turned the dun and started into the river. Tshant called a question and Psin pointed ahead. The others leapt into the shallow water and waded their horses across. Scrambling up the far bank, the dun broke into a gallop, and Psin had to pull him back to a trot.

Arnulf was far ahead. If he reached the hills they’d have to get help to dig him out. The other Mongols had seen him, and they drew closer together and in a single rank trotted after the knight.

The moonlight was hard on Psin’s eyes. Sometimes it seemed like a liquid, like silver tears. He stopped watching the knight all the time. The horse’s trot relaxed him and made him realize he was hungry. He dropped the rein over the pommel of his saddle and rode with his hands on his thighs, wondering what to do with Arnulf. He was too easy with his slaves; everybody said so, and wondered how he could live so well in households full of people constantly expressing their own opinions. He’d never had a slave run away before.

He looked up. Arnulf was slightly nearer than before. He had to have seen them coming. If he turned back and surrendered himself, or even if he stopped and waited, Psin would only have to flog him.

The horses trotted along almost in a loose rank. He looked over at Tshant. In the moonlight Tshant’s face was gaunt, and the bones stuck out like rocks from the earth. Psin called to him, and he veered over.

“What shall I do with him?”

“You know the Yasa. Kill him.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Maybe he wants you to. Maybe he thinks his honor requires him to run away.”

“Maybe.” Why had he waited so long?

“The Christians believe that when they die they are made birds and taken up into the sky. So they aren’t afraid of dying. If he’s unhappy with us—”

“I told him I would send him back to Rome. I don’t understand him.”

“Neither do I. But just because we don’t understand doesn’t make it impossible.”

Psin glanced at him, amused. “You sound like a shaman. Are you learning new things at your age? And trying to teach me, too.”

“Kerulu told me that Djela acts older than I do, sometimes.” Tshant nodded ahead of them. “He’s stopped. He’s waiting. Has he got a weapon?”

“Possibly.” Psin looked. The white-footed bay was still, and Arnulf had dismounted. But Arnulf turned and mounted again and rode off. “If he had none when he left he has one now.”

“A stone, a stick—”

“He’s strong. You saw him fight. Would you like to go up against him, hand to hand?”

“No.” Tshant rubbed his chin. “Not at all.”

They trotted on. The knight had lost ground to them when he stopped, but he wasn’t moving his horse out; he seemed content enough with this distance.

“Do you remember Kobe Sechen?” Tshant said.

“Yes.”

“Whenever he sent off mounted slaves, he gave them wind-broken horses.”

“I hope he never sent them off with urgent messages.” 

“We’d have caught him by now if that bay were windbroken.”

“Am I to herd unsound horses, just in case I’ve got a restless slave? That mare has a bad hock. She’ll go lame sooner or later.”

They were catching up with Arnulf. The mare wouldn’t have a chance to go lame. The dun horse trotted along, his ears pricked.

Tshant said, “Your horse is hard as rock.”

“He’ll go all day like this.”

“Do you think it’s the Ferghana incross? “

“God, no. It’s the steppe pony. You remember that black stallion of mine—the one with the bald face and the white patch behind the girth? This horse is linebred back to him. All the black’s foals had bottom. I should never have given him to Temujin.”

“When the Ancestor asked—”

“He never asked. He told me. I warned him the black would never throw white foals, but he said if necessary he’d paint them white. He rode a colt by that black during the campaign he died on. It was a red bay, bright as blood, with no white hair on him. Beautiful black points. Arnulf’s almost within bowshot.”

Tshant turned and called to the others, “Don’t hurt him. The Khan wants to talk to him.”

They spread out again. Arnulf looked back, saw them, and turned his horse. Facing them, he waited. In his hands he carried a long stick, like a lance. Moonlight flashed on the tip. Psin frowned. The stick he must have cut from the trees beside the river; he’d tied his dagger to it. Psin pulled out his bow and an arrow.

“Arnulf,” he called. “Surrender to me, and you’ll get nothing but a whipping.”

Arnulf said nothing. He raised his head. In the silver light his hair gleamed. He sat the bay mare like a knight, not like a Mongol; his stirrup leathers were let down so that his legs were almost straight, and he carried his head and shoulders back. Psin nocked his arrow.

The knight lowered his lance and held it out before him, with the butt clamped between his elbow and his side. Psin heard him click his tongue to the bay horse, and the bay burst into a gallop, headed straight for Psin. Psin threw one hand out to keep Tshant and the others from doing anything. The bay charged down on him. When the horse was so close he could not doubt his aim, he shot Arnulf in the chest.

The knight flew out of the saddle and rolled over once in the crisp grass. Psin rode to him. The knight lay on his back, one knee drawn up. His hands were locked around the arrow shaft.

“You’re a fool,” Psin said.

The knight muttered something in Latin and smiled. He shut his eyes. The arrow trembled in his chest. His mouth slipped open, and the arrow stood still. Psin dismounted and bent to make sure he was dead. He took the arrow by the shaft, put his foot on the knight’s chest, and tore the head out of the wound.

“Go home,” Tshant said to the other men.

They rode off. Psin threw the knight’s body over the empty saddle and lashed it tight. They started back, more slowly to the others to let them get ahead. Tshant was fretting.

Abruptly, he said, “How can we rule these people?”

“I don’t know,” Psin said.

A few days before the winter solstice, Sabotai called up six tumans and prepared to cross the Danube; on the other side, there were four or five Hungarian towns still untaken. Psin went up to meet him to talk about reconnaissance. The vicious wind had made ripples in the scarred ice of the river. The whole army shivered around its fires.

On the day Sabotai had meant to cross, it began to snow. The three thousands already on the ice scurried back to the Mongol bank. Sabotai swore and postponed the crossing until the next day, but on the next day the snow continued to fall. Psin, who was not crossing, sat wrapped in his sable cloak and smiling listened to Sabotai’s soft cursing.

“Laugh all you want to,” Sabotai said. “The word’s all over Hungary that you are supporting Batu for the Khanate.”

“That’s not so. He asked me, and I told him I would think about it.”

“What has he offered you?”

“Nothing much.”

“What precisely?”

“I won’t tell you. He let it out, not I. Ask him.”

“I did. He wouldn’t say. Tell me.”

“I’ve forgotten.”

Sabotai gnawed his thumbnail, and the snow pounded the yurt.

Water dripped in through the smoke hole. Psin lay back. “I’m leaving within five days.”

“Where for?”

“On my reconnaissance.”

“Oh, yes. Well, do whatever you feel is necessary. Tell me what—”

“No.”

“Damn you.” The wind howled suddenly, and he ducked, but the yurt only shook a little. “This weather is terrible.”

“They say such storms are common, this early in the winter. Later on it gets better.”

“All right. Yes. You’re going to follow the upper part of the Danube west to some stinking German city.”

Psin nodded. “The merchants I’ve spoken to say there’s a plain beyond it we could graze our herds on. I’ll scout as far as I can.”

“How many men are you taking?”

“Five hundred and Mongke.”

“I know Mongke’s going. You’ll need more men.”

Psin shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“What’s the name of that city?”

“Vienna. Beyond it there are more. I’ll try to capture prisoners for information.”

Batu crowded in through the door; snow blew after him into a furrow on the carpet. “Someone play chess with me.”

“Not I,” Sabotai said. “You’ve beaten me too often.”

Psin turned his head toward the back of the yurt and bellowed for Tshant. Batu said, “Ah. I wondered where he was.” Tshant came out, yawning as if he had been asleep. Through the tail of his eye he gave Psin a piercing look. Psin pretended not to notice. Batu, talking happily, set up his chess board and men, and Tshant without a word sat down across from him.

It snowed for two days more. Sabotai was entertaining all through—he ranted, beat his fists on the ground, stared gloomily into the swirling grey and white storm, and refused to eat. Djela played chess with Batu and lost only narrowly, while Batu cheered his every good move and explained why the bad ones were bad. He mentioned to Tshant that he had a little granddaughter just Djela’s age, and Djela’s mouth fell open. Tshant said that while his younger brother was unmarried Djela could not be pledged.

“But don’t give her to someone else,” he said. “Sidacai has to marry someday.”

“We might take care of that,” Batu said, smiling.

On the fifth day, at last, the sky cleared. From the door of the yurt the east bank of the river was a series of tiny hills; except for the dark circles around their smoke holes the yurts were covered with snow. A few horses stood in the lee of Sabotai’s yurt, eating the hay dumped there. Pale as ice, the sun shone through a double ring, and the wind moaned over the crusted snow.

“It’s going to get colder,” Mongke said.

They roused their five hundred and pulled off to the north of the main army. Already a full tuman was riding up and down the far banks, bows ready. Occasionally the wind lifted the snow like a veil and hid the army from their sight. Sabotai was crossing his baggage trains.

“Let’s go,” Psin said. He turned to the standardbearer. “Black banner.”