Until the Sun Falls (10 page)

Quyuk said, “If all Russians fight like that, we’ll be building ships on the ocean shore before the summer’s out.”

“I think we surprised them,” Baidar said.

Quyuk laughed. Psin shook himself and looked around. “Well, go collect your arrows. Arcut, I want a column again. Where’s Kadan?”

Kadan was coming toward him. Dmitri sat in his saddle, looking stonily at the forest across the field. Psin gave him a hard look and rode up to meet Kadan.

“What happened?”

Kadan shrugged. “They chased us—there were at least five hundred of them, and I didn’t know what you wanted me to do. So I ran on ahead of them. But they stopped or something.”

“They probably couldn’t keep up.”

“Maybe. I turned around and came back after them, and my scouts told me you were coming, so I rushed them and held them here until you could take them from behind.”

“Good. We’re too close to the city, though. You might have sent a messenger to me and had me ride faster. There weren’t five hundred of them, either.”

Kadan shrugged. “They covered so much ground—”

“They charge in looser ranks than we do.” Psin looked back. “Move out. They may have more men in the city. Our rearguard is coming after us and I don’t want them to run up on our backs. Push your horses.”

“I’ve been pushing my horses since we left Bulgar.”

Psin laughed. “Oh, well, if you think so you don’t know what pushing means. Arcut, white banner.”

Dmitri said, “You gave them no warning.”

“If they hadn’t been shouting so much they would have heard us,” Psin said. “Why should we give them warning?” 

“It’s not . .”

After a pause Dmitri used a Russian word, although they had been speaking Mongol. Psin said, “What does that mean?”

“It means to give your enemies a reasonable chance.”

“Hunh.” Psin lay back. They had camped early, to let Kadan get out ahead of them again. The road had tapered off to a narrow trail, and their camp sprawled through the trees around a knob of a hill. “To give them a chance to kill more Mongols than necessary? Dmitri. Consider this. The essence of war is to kill your enemy and not get killed yourself. We are not a numerous people, we Mongols, especially so far from home as this.”

Dmitri glanced all around. His wide brow was deeply wrinkled. Psin drank some kumiss and put the bowl down again, near the fire.

“Why are the Christians your enemies?”

“Because they are not our friends.”

“You never asked us—”

“Oh, we asked. We sent ambassadors to each city west of the Volga. If the ambassadors were lucky they came back alive. How long have you lived in Mongol camps?”

“Since… last spring.”

“Then you should know better than to ask me such questions. Talk Russian. I’m not learning it as well as I want to.”

Tshant cupped his hands behind his head, put his back against his saddle, and said, “I know even now what my father will say. We can’t lay siege to these towns.” He poked around his upper jaw with his tongue and spat out a pine needle. “Tell that pig’s rectum not to put the cooking pots under the trees.”

“Why not? “Kaidu said.

In the banked firelight Tshant’s face turned a mottled purple. “Because the needles get into the gruel.”

“I mean, why can’t we siege these towns?”

“Oh, we can. For a few days. Enough to soften them up. We can’t starve them out. We can’t live so long off this country, not in winter. We’d starve first.”

Djela ran into the shelter beneath the tree, singing a song Tshant’s Russian slave had taught him. Tshant caught his coat and pulled him down, rolling him over and over in the soft pine needles. Djela whooped with laughter. The branches overhead swayed, and the Russian slave ambled in.

“How far to this obscene river?” Tshant said.

“For a Russian, many days,” the slave said. Kaidu could never remember if he was Alexei or Gregor. “For a Mongol, who knows?” The Russian thrust out his thick lips and shrugged heavily
.

“Aaaah.” Tshant lay back, Djela hooked securely under one arm. “My father will be halfway to Novgorod by now.”

“I like your father.” Kaidu smiled,

Tshant’s face lay in shadow; his voice came muffledly out of it. “That’s because you haven’t caused him trouble. If he decides you’re difficult he’ll go at you like salt in a wound.”

“Nevertheless—”

“If your great-grandfather had died at birth my father would be a clan chief who thought the trip from Lake Baikal to Karakorum a long ride.”

Kaidu could think of nothing to say to that. He looked down at the stirrup leather on his knee and, taking the knife from the fire, began to bore a new hole in it. They’d left Bulgar ten days before; every time he mentioned Psin, Tshant bristled. Kaidu had liked his own father, who was dead, and he thought his grandfather even finer. It bothered him when Tshant talked about Psin that way.

“We’ll never see Mongke now,” Tshant said. “We’re too far out of his way.”

Kaidu glanced over and grinned. They had followed a river most of the way out, until Tshant decided that its twists and turns were delaying them too much. But when they passed a Russian city—Murom, the Russian slaves thought, or Riazan—Tshant had lingered half a day, hoping to sight Mongke’s army. Now after crossing featureless steppe they were riding along a river Tshant thought emptied into the Dnepr.

“Many days,” Tshant said, abruptly. “How many days, Gregor?”

“Many,” the Russian said.

“Ten? A hundred?” 

“Ten, maybe.”

“Or maybe a hundred?”

The Russian grinned. “Maybe.”

“Go to sleep.”

The Russians were unbelievably stupid. Kaidu had mentioned it to Tshant, and Tshant had burst out laughing. That had surprised Kaidu more than anything else. Tshant had shouted, “You be so stupid, boy, if you’re ever captured and asked questions.” And had galloped off, with Djela right behind.

Kaidu studied the Russian’s pleasantly broad face. The man was stupid. Tshant gave them too much credit. If he were Tshant he would start by burning the Russian’s feet off and ask the questions afterward.

Two days later, the northern flank of Tshant’s army passed another city. Kaidu, riding point, sent a message down the line, but Tshant declined to come see.

“It’s big,” Kaidu said to the Russian riding beside him.

“Not as big as Novgorod.”

With rising panic Kaidu realized he should be remembering everything he saw. Smoke rose from the southeastern corner of the compound and trailed off toward them. He supposed they were signaling. Maybe they had a warcamp outside the city. If they were signaling they meant to attack. He passed the word down, his heart thundering in his throat. He could hear his men shouting to one another, commenting on the great walls opposite them. The ice gleamed under the light snow that covered the river, gleamed and went dull. Kaidu looked up at the sky. Clouds were thrusting up from the west, roiling and black. The wind had torn their undersides to shreds that hung down almost to the steppe.

“Noyon,” the Russian said patiently.

Kaidu whirled. The man next to him in line said, “Noyon, the commander says the smoke is from burning garbage.”

Hot blood rushed into Kaidu’s ears. The faces of the men around him were politely blank. He jerked his eyes toward the city.

He could see people on the walls, pointing. The wall looked monstrous. It was made of wood; stumps covered a field alongside the river. The snow blurred everything.

Burning garbage.

That afternoon, unexpectedly, they came to a stretch of river too turbulent to freeze. When they first approached, Kaidu took the low booming ahead for thunder; the clouds overhead were ferocious. But when they moved closer he saw the foam and the spray over rocks in the riverbed, and saw the rapids charging wildly off across the plain.

“Noyon,” the Russian said. “We are to camp here. The commander—”

Kaidu gestured that he heard. He wheeled his men around to make a campsite; before the steamy odor of gruel had risen Tshant was there, riding around looking. Kaidu went to his fire and watched his Russian stir the pot.

“It’s going to snow,” Tshant said.

Kaidu sprang up. In the constant howling of the rapids he hadn’t heard Tshant behind him. He looked west; under the clouds, the sky was a dirty pink. “Yes, I think so.”

“Tell me about that city.”

Tshant dismounted and stripped his saddle off his horse. Djela appeared behind him, on a rangy black.

“Well,” Kaidu said. “My Russian says it’s not as big as Novgorod.”

“Your Russian’s name is Alexei. And he’s probably never been to Novgorod.”

“It wasn’t very big. It’s got a wooden wall—”

“What kind of wood?”

“I wasn’t close enough to see.”

“Oak, probably.”

“The wall looks about five times man height.”

Tshant nodded. He dumped his saddle on top of the saddlecloths, dug a rag from his saddlepouch, and scrubbed vigorously at his horse’s back. The horse sighed and its head sank.

“There must be ramparts. I saw people standing on the walls.”

“That makes sense.”

“I saw only one gate.”

“You saw only one side.”

“They’d cut down the trees all around it. I saw the stumps.” 

“Any boats?”

“I didn’t see any.”

“How fast is the current in the river?”

“How fast is the…”

“Was the ice smooth or rough? These rapids are part of that river. It’s obviously steeper here than there. How much more?”

“The ice was smooth.”

Tshant ducked under his horse’s neck and scrubbed from the far side. Kaidu could see no sign of approval on his face—no expression at all.

“What do they grow in their fields?”

“The fields were covered with snow.”

“Any herds?”

“I didn’t see any.”

“Any people outside the walls?”

“No.”

“What were they burning?”

“I… don’t know.”

Across the horse’s back Tshant’s stare was too even. “Wood? Vegetables? Grain? Old clothes, dead Mongols?”

“I don’t know.”

“Use your nose. Was there a road?”

“I didn’t see one.”

Djela in his gold-hooked coat came by, tugged at Kaidu’s sleeve, said, “Gregor is teaching me more Russian,” and ran off.

“Gregor,” Tshant bawled. “Keep watch on him.” His eyes followed his son’s progress through the camp. Gregor plunged off in pursuit, and Tshant walked to the horse’s head and wiped out its nostrils.

“I’m sorry about the smoke,” Kaidu said.

“The Russians don’t signal with smoke. They don’t camp their fighting men outside the walls, either.” Tshant turned the horse loose and let it find its own way to the grass. He shook the snow out of his saddlecloths and stretched them over a frame near the fire to dry. “My father’s first campaign under the Genghis Khan was in China. He told me the first time they attacked a Chinese city, the Chinese set off rockets and burning lights. He says if he’d been in command the army wouldn’t have stopped running until the Gobi turned to pure water.”

Kaidu laughed, thinking of Psin, solid, immovable, running from burning lights. “He must have been young.”

“He was younger than you.”

Djela ran back, shouting Russian words at the top of his lungs. Behind him, carrying a skin of kumiss, Gregor strode. Djela rushed up to Tshant and hugged him, thrusting his head under Tshant’s arm. “I’m happy.”

“Good. Gregor—”

Tshant sat down with a thump; Djela had tripped him. Djela danced out of reach, dodged a snowball, and caught another square in the mouth. Tshant pointed to the ground. “Sit, will you? If you don’t behave, I’m sending you to the Volga camp.”

Gregor came over with bowls of kumiss and handed one to Tshant. Kaidu opened his mouth to ask Tshant what he thought of the city they had passed, but before he could speak a white flake dribbled down onto his chin. He looked up; the sky was darker, and snow floated down toward his face.

“Rough going tomorrow,” Tshant said. “Sleep.”

Psin and his column plowed through the forest, headed northwest. The road was off to their right, but it was so narrow that only half a dozen men could ride abreast down it, and Psin wanted to stretch out. He was sure there were other roads.

“It’s getting hilly,” Baidar said.

“And rocky.” Psin took his feet out of the stirrups and worked them to get the blood back into his toes. Immediately his feet warmed up. In Russian, he said, “Novgorod is on a lake in the middle of hills. Isn’t that right, Dmitri?”

Dmitri looked around, startled; he said, “I’ve never been to Novgorod.”

“Why do I speak Russian with a Novgorod accent, then?”

“How do you know you do?”

Psin laughed. His progress in the language amused him. It wasn’t as easy as Chinese, but it wasn’t as hard as Arabic. “When you know the language a man speaks, you can think like him. I am from Novgorod.” 

“God help us.”

Baidar and Quyuk beside them couldn’t understand, and rode staring straight ahead, affronted. Quyuk’s right cheekbone was bruised. In the darkness the night before he had tried to shove Psin under a horse, and Psin had clubbed him across the side of the head with a convenient rock.

“Khan,” Arcut shouted. “Message coming.”

Psin turned and looked back. Through the trees he could see men riding together. The message was coming up from the southwestern flank, from man to man. Finally one rode into the center and said, “There is another road, parallel to the one north of us.”

“Tell Buri to send a scouting party along it. Twenty men.”

The man trotted off through the trees with his message. Psin and the others rode up a steep slope and angled down the other side.

“Are we going to keep on like this?” Quyuk said.

“No,” Psin said. “We’ll make a camp before tomorrow night and use that as a base.”

“Where?”

“Up ahead.”

“Where up ahead?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Quyuk reeled in false dismay. “Is there something Psin Khan doesn’t know? Can it be?”

“Shut your mouth,” Baidar said.

At noon of the next day they found the place where the two roads met; three others met there too. It was a wide stretch of open ground, large enough to pasture their horses, high enough not to get sloppy when the snow melted around their fires. Psin ordered the flanks to make a camp.