Until the Sun Falls (64 page)

His men shouted. They started off at a jog, forging through the heavy drifts beside the river. From the army crossing came a bellow of a cheer, and Psin’s men cheered back. The sun grew stronger, and the rings around it faded.

“Kadan is chasing the King of the Hungarians,” Psin said. “He’ll cover our southern flank. In the north ...”

“After the pounding they took last winter they won’t attack us,” Mongke said.

“Don’t be so sure. These are strange people.”

“Yes. I hear you lost your German slave.”

“He ran away, and I had to kill him.”

Mongke said nothing. Their horses heaved themselves through a drift and came out on a place swept almost clear by the wind. “What are you thinking about?” Psin said.

“That if your German had been a Mongol he wouldn’t have been as… good.” Mongke looked up quickly. “Do you follow me?”

“As good for what?”

Mongke grinned. “I’ve forgotten what I was thinking about. Never mind.”

“Bad habit.”

“Not really.”

They rode all that day; at sundown they reached the outskirts of Pesth—the rubble buried under the snow, only a remnant of a wall and a wrecked tower to show where the city was. Across the river was another city, far smaller. Lights burnt all around it. Probably they were waiting for the Mongol attack. Psin let his men camp in the lee of the wall. They had to dig the snow away, and the horses had trouble foraging. In the morning they continued on north.

Just after noon, Mongke said, “What has Batu promised you?”

“For what?”

“To help elect him Kha-Khan. He’s offering us all something. I’m to have southern China, which is kind of him since we don’t hold it yet.”

Batu was fond of giving away things he didn’t have. Psin said, “He’s ready to provide all my children and grandchildren with wives of his own blood.”

“Did you agree?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

Mongke was staring at his horse’s ears. He reached forward and brushed part of its mane over to the right side. “I shouldn’t think he’d try to purchase you so cheaply. Indeed, did he try so cheap? If I ever aspire to the Khanate I shall have to draw up a list of the men I need and how much will buy them.”

“Do you aspire?”

“Not now. I’m too young. Maybe. But it’s locked into Ogodai and his bone, and… only drunkards might raise their eyes so far, it would seem.”

“Batu is no drunkard.”

Mongke grinned. “Batu will never be the Kha-Khan, either. Will he.”

Psin looked away.

Just before dark, the river started to cut to the west. Psin knew this stretch of country well, because his section lay just east of it, and he took them to a good campground, where the snow was only a finger deep and the grass was still good. West of this he had never been. He had spoken to Arnulf about it once, but Arnulf had told him very little. He was surprised to find that thinking about Arnulf unsettled him even now. The merchants said that the hills started a few days’ ride up the river, and that there were parts—waterfalls— that never froze. They said the hills became mountains. Psin began to worry about ambush and sent out scouts and a small vanguard.

All that day and the next it was bitter cold. Storm clouds flew across the sky into the south, and the damp wind sliced through even Psin’s sable cloak. When they camped at night their hands inside their gloves were so cold that they couldn’t undo their girths until the fires were lit and their fingers warmed. Several men, chopping wood, cut their hands to shreds and didn’t notice until they saw the blood on the snow.

By sunset of the second day after the river had begun to bend, they were within sight of low hills to the west. North lay plain, and to the northeast, in the distance, were mountains with snowcaps. Tshant and Baidar had come south from Poland by this route; they said north of the Carpathians was only a great plain.

Mongke said, “It can’t be colder than the Gobi.”

“It’s not. Just wetter.” Psin crouched beside the fire, trying to keep all of himself warm. “Tomorrow, I think, we’ll start meeting people.”

“How pleasant. Why do you think so?”

“There are villages and forts all through those hills. This used to be a boundary. I don’t want any fighting. If we see anything hostile, we’ll run.”

“I’m good at running,” Mongke said. He gnawed on a hard piece of bread.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

During the night Psin woke fifteen or twenty times; his nose was cold, and nothing he did kept it warm. If he buried it in his cloak he couldn’t breathe. If he cupped his hands over his face, his hands as well as his nose got cold. If he lay close to the fire his mustaches and his hair began to singe. He was so glad to see the eastern sky grow light that he leapt up, put on an extra pair of socks, and walked around the camp to check on the horses.

They were all huddled together, tails to the wind, and marks in the snow showed how hard they’d worked to get grass. He dug down and plucked some stems of grass and tasted it. It was poor fodder. When he started through the hills it would be worse. He squinted toward the west. Pine trees covered the slopes; white patches, like scars, were scattered through the forest. Those would be meadows. A hawk was gliding across the sky above the hills. He went back and got the camp moving.

When they rode out he broke the band into five columns, sent one under Mongke’s commander across the river to ride the far bank, and told the other three to ride north certain distances and turn west. Mongke’s column crossed the ice before the sun was entirely up and jogged along the far bank, even with Psin’s column. The two white banners floated back with the speed of the standardbearers’ horses. Most of the men around Psin smeared their faces with grease against the cold. The quick jog was warming them all up. On the leadline the dun horse tried a twisting buck, and the other three horses shied away from him.

The hills humped up before them, pinching the river. Mongke sent three men out ahead—one rode slightly south of west. Birds screamed in the trees when Psin’s men rode under them.

The wind was howling out of the north. Psin worked his hands inside his gloves. One half the sky was cloud, grey and dark grey-blue, the other half was clear, and the line where the two met was straight as a bowstring.

As soon as they were into the hills, Mongke’s column swerved away from the river and rode after the scout who had gone southwest. Hills hid them from sight. Psin swung his column around a great lump of a hill and swerved right back to the river bank. The ice looked unsafe here.

He saw signs of people living around here—smoke, bent under the wind, rising two hills to the north, and traps laid out under the trees. He wondered what they caught—beaver, perhaps, or hares. Two of his men dashed off into the forest and returned almost at once, laughing, with two hares each swinging from their saddles. Psin rode over and looked at them; the hares were big, well-muscled, and by the softness of their ears only yearlings.

“Take one,” the two men said.

“I’m a Mongol. I eat gruel.” He made a face and they laughed.

All morning, while they rode, men darted away to rob traps. The thought of meat made Psin’s mouth water. He had never liked hare but he was beginning to develop a taste for it.

The river curved around to the north, and he reined in. There was a ford in the deepest part of the curve, smothered with snow, and ahead the ground was too even. Hills crowded down on the far bank and the edge of the flat ground. He rode to it, dismounted, and kicked away the snow. The ground was cut into semi-circles, thousands of them, and he nodded. This was a road. When he looked at the river ahead, he was sure that there was a village or a fort just around the bend.

“Bows up,” he shouted. He mounted again. “And we’ll go through at a dead gallop, if you can work it out of your horses.”

They jeered at him. He put his horse into a lope and pushed it steadily up into a flat run. Where the ground was frozen under the snow it was slippery, and he held the horse short to steady it. His remounts strung out behind him, caroming into one another. They veered around a horn of rock and into a meadow, and on the hill behind the meadow stood a tower.

The Mongols yelled; from the tower high-pitched voices answered. Psin threw his leadrope to a passing man and jerked his horse to a stop. His men charged by behind him. He could see people in the tower windows—red and gold banners flew from its peak. The tower was of stone, block on block, without ornament or ledge. Only one gate cut the wall, and that was bound in iron.

Abruptly the gate clanged open, and knights galloped out. Psin’s men were already out of sight, riding along the river. He spun his horse and raced after them. The knights shouted in a language he had never heard. He used his whip on his horse. Dropping the rein, he nocked an arrow and shot it, and the lead knight’s horse leapt violently to one side. The sun flashed on the armor. Psin’s horse leaned into a turn. Its knees drove frantically. Ahead, the other Mongols were waiting beside the river, poised to gallop off again. He gestured to them to keep going, and they whirled and streamed along the riverbank.

The knights pounded after. The ground was rough and rocky, but every few strides the Mongols would turn and shoot back. When the knights raised their shields they aimed for the horses. Psin felt the road veer north and shouted ahead, and the column swung to follow the road. Only a few knights still clung to their trail, far back, and when the Mongols turned away from the river the knights stopped and went back home.

Psin called a halt and they let their horses blow. The pine-covered hills made a fence all around them, with the road clear even under the snow. South, behind and above the hills, he could see the indistinct heights of mountains rimmed with snow. His horses pawed for grass and got only a few mouthfuls, full of thorns.

“Bad graze,” someone said.

“Let them eat the pine bark when we stop.”

He remembered riding back from Khwaresm with Temujin, when they had beaten Muhammed Shah; Temujin had wanted to find a way home through the mountains that lay east of Khwaresm and southwest of the Chinese. They had ridden through a clear cold valley and onto a high ridge, and there they had seen the mountains waiting for them, rock on rock like the knights’ tower, but endless, illimitable, rearing up their sheer faces to the sun, ridged and mortared in snow. Temujin had turned back.

The mountains to the south, the Alps…

But ahead there were no mountains, only more of the shaggy hills. He led his men on and listened to the scouts from the north report on the whereabouts and condition of other roads.

They camped that night in the pines, made low fires, and banked them as soon as their dinners were cooked. With the trees to hold back the wind it wasn’t so cold. The horses chewed on the trees, eating young needles and the bark. Sentries kept watch from the upper branches. At moonrise, Mongke and six of his men rode in and reported; they were camped just across the river.

Psin crawled under a tree whose branches grew close to the ground and wrapped himself in his cloak. The spongy cushion of needles under him was dry and warm. He thought about what his scouts had told him—ahead, more hills, flattening out a little, and the river grew a little wider. A city great as Tver or Vladimir, with a wall. The scouts had said there was little grassland, but beyond, the merchants had said, there was a plain.

He rested his chin in his hands. If the Mongols bypassed Vienna and took the plain beyond, they would have graze, and they could starve the city out. But these hills were full of stone towers and knights, and the stretch of ground between Hungary and the plain was so hilly and close that the knights would have no trouble cutting the Mongol lines of communication. Rough terrain always bothered him.

On the other hand, if the Polish plain extended on far west of this point—

Mongke crept in under the branches. “You’re too clever to live. Ah. It’s warm in here. What’s the matter?”

“I was worrying about taking Vienna.”

Mongke settled down and pulled the hem of his cloak over his feet. “Um. Yes, with a six-day ride through country like this between Hungary and the city—Sabotai will have fun working this out.”

“If we could clear the knights out of these hills—”

“We’d have to siege the towers and it would take a while. And you’ve noticed, I assume, that the towers stand wherever the road is narrow and the slopes alongside steep.”

“Let Sabotai worry about it. You said you thought the summers are mild.”

Mongke nodded. “There’s game, too, even in the winter, although the deer I’ve seen are undersized and ribby. How do you suppose they fed their horses? Those stallions must eat twice what our horses do.”

“Arnulf said that they grain them.”

“Ah? What do the people eat, then?”

“They raise enough food for themselves and their horses.”

“Are there other roads?”

“There’s one a day’s ride north of us that seems to come from Poland. And another north of that, but it’s through a forest and badly kept up. Windfalls and the like.”

Mongke nodded and settled back, with his hands inside his cloak. “Have you ever wondered what we’re doing here?”

For a moment Psin said nothing. Mongke lowered his eyes, taking it as a reproof, and Psin said, “Yes. Sometimes. Last summer, after I’d come here with the embassy.”

“Did you… figure it out?”

“No. Temujin said that we should conquer the world. So we are.”

Mongke’s eyes rose. “We hold all the ground from here to China. Isn’t it enough?”

“You know the reasoning. If we don’t attack them, they’ll attack us.”

“So I’ve been told.” Mongke stretched his arms out. “It says little for us, though, that we keep going just because we started. Sometimes I wonder if we could stop.”

“I think we could. If we had to.”

“Why should we have to? Why can’t we just say, ‘This is enough, we don’t want any more,’ and stop?”

Psin shrugged. “There can be only one overlord on the earth.”

“I know. Temujin said so. Is there no compromise?”

Psin said nothing. He could feel the tension in Mongke, although he looked relaxed and even comfortable.