by Dan Davis
When a dribble of brown spit ran down my chin, I realised my mouth was hanging open.
“You fought the bloody Tartars?” I said. “When?”
Thomas took a deep breath. “Twelve years past.”
“The second invasion of the Tartars,” I said. “You were there when they smashed the Hungarians?”
“No, not there. I was in the Kingdom of Poland. There was another battle. A series of battles, in fact.” He surprised me with a question. “Where were you twelve years ago?”
“Acre, I think?” I looked at Eva. She returned my gaze with no expression, or confirmation, while she rubbed at her blade.
“And no doubt a mere page at the time,” Thomas said. “Bertrand?”
“Twelve years past?” he said, pausing to take a mouthful of kumis. “Chasing the girls in my father’s castle. That was a year or two before he gave me a castle of my own, you see. By then I had already taken up my sword and won many—”
“What happened in Poland?” I asked while Bertrand scowled at me. “What series of battles? Against the Tartars? Why was your order up there?”
“Our order is everywhere that there are Christians. My brothers and I were stationed there to plan a crusade against the pagan Lithuanians. There was an important leader there, a great lord named Duke Henry the Pious. It was when the Tartars were attacking the Rus, once again, as they had done in 1223. Long time ago. Thirty years, almost.”
“I remember it well,” I said. Eva stared at me. “That is, I remember hearing of it. Please, go on.”
“This Lord Batu led them. He conquered the Rus, all their cities by 1240. Tartar riders were seen everywhere across Poland, in the Kingdom of Hungary, even into the Duchy of Austria. Sometimes in groups of dozens, even hundreds. Not fighting. Rarely even raiding. Just watching. Learning the land, prior to the invasions.”
“Clever,” I said, for that was far from standard practice. We Christians had no tradition of that kind of preparation, as hard as it may be to believe.
“They gathered a vast army and led it against King Bela of Hungary.”
“The battle at the River Sajo,” I said, nodding. “King Bela led the largest Christian army ever assembled, so I heard. And they were destroyed by the Tartars.”
Bertrand belched. “A hundred thousand Christians,” he said. “A hundred thousand fools.”
I scoffed, for that was an absurd number.
“Fewer than that,” Thomas said, glancing at me. “But yes, it was a great many. I was not there but I spoke to men who were. Fifty thousand, perhaps. But they were not fools. They fought well, so it is said.”
“Who says?” Bertrand demanded. “They were all killed.”
“Almost. Not all. Some of my order were there, supporting, observing. The Tartars were led by Prince Batu, a most cunning and brutal commander. He battered, then surrounded all the forces, other than a few here and there. Some small number of my brothers watched the battle unfold across the plain, and so escaped the encirclement and related the tale.”
“But you were in Poland,” I said.
“I was. With seventy brothers from my order, as well as many sergeants and five hundred bondmen from our lands there. It took us time to assemble and gather to protect the great cities. Krakow, in particular. Duke Henry the Pious brought his army. It was a vast force. Twenty or thirty thousand but most of them villeins armed with little more than sharp sticks and the foulness of their breath. But there were thousands of men-at-arms, also. Five thousand mounted and armoured, at least, so they said.”
“I did not know the lands there could field so many knights,” I said.
“They are a good people. Strong in arms. Strong in faith. Worth protecting against the heathens.”
“I do not doubt it.”
“The Tartars sacked a town named Sandomierz. Then, in the month of March, they defeated an army of Poles at Tursko. It was extremely bloody, for both sides, but the Tartars won the field. A fortnight later, another battle, this time at Chmielnik, where the Tartars won again. Not only that, almost the entire nobility of Lesser Poland was killed in that battle. The Tartars sacked Krakow. We advanced with Duke Henry with his thirty thousand men. We were confident, for we knew that King Wenceslaus of Bohemia was coming to join his forces to Henry’s and the Bohemians had forty thousand, so they said. Together, our armies would be sixty thousand men, perhaps more.”
“How many were the Tartars?” I asked, before correcting myself. “The Mongols.”
Thomas sighed. “After the battle, men were saying the enemy numbered a hundred thousand strong.” He gave a snort of derision. “I doubt it could have been much more than a tenth of that. But whatever their numbers, they were all mounted. And that was why they were able to force the Poles to battle before the Bohemians could arrive. Duke Henry should have withdrawn, should have pulled back, denied battle. Should have allowed them to do whatever they wanted to his cities and the people. But he could not. A ruler cannot do such things. His lords would never have allowed him to do so. In any case, he had ten thousand mounted men, well equipped and on good horses.”
“So the Poles had perhaps an equal number of mounted men as the Mongols,” I asked. “Plus ten or twenty thousand on foot? Little wonder he was confident. Were the heathens mounted on these stocky little horses or did they have true war horses?”
Thomas took a deep breath. “I was like you, back then. We all were. We saw those small horses and the riders on their backs. Some of them were so close to the ground, I swear their toes brushed the grass as they rode. And many were mounted archers, with these short bows. And no matter the stories we had heard, how they would shower us with arrows while we advanced, we trusted our armour to protect us.”
“What went wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Thomas said. “We were held in reserve, my brothers and our mounted sergeants and our bondmen soldiers. I had rather a good view from the right of the battle, on a rise, looking out across the fields of the plain. It was a cold day, and we had to keep our horses warm. Tartars roamed and wheeled about, coming close and pulling away again. It was difficult to discern their positions, where they were strong or weak. It was clear they had some sort of order to them but my brothers were convinced the heathens were a disorganised rabble. The Poles sent their levies forward while the thousands of knights waited for a chance to charge. But the levies came under attack from the mounted archers, who simply withdrew as the levies advanced with their spears. Of course, Duke Henry sent his archers and crossbowmen to engage with the horsemen but the Tartars did surprisingly well, riding in and out from all directions to pour their own arrows down on the Poles. Somehow, we lost hundreds or even thousands and yet the Tartars seemed almost untouched. And then, amongst all the wheeling of horse archers, their lancers appeared through a sudden gap.”
“Lancers?” Bertrand said, his voice almost a growl. “They do not have lancers, Thomas. Have you seen a single lance amongst them?”
I silently agreed with the Frenchman.
The Templar ignored him. “There must have been a thousand of them, formed up in ranks and riding knee to knee. Their horses were larger than the others we had seen. The men wore mail and steel helms. They smashed into the ranks of the levies and crossbowmen from the flank and routed them immediately. Exactly what the knights were waiting for and they descended on the Tartar lancers. The Poles were elated. Finally, the heathens would pay for the destruction they had wrought. But the heathen lancers turned and fled at the sight.”
“They did not stand?” I said, interested that the terrifying Mongols would be so cowardly.
“Ha!” Bertrand said. “They could not stand against the Poles. They would certainly die under the hooves of the French, am I correct, Thomas? Not the English, though.”
Thomas was not amused. “The Poles are as fine as any knights in Christendom, and they were well led that day. But the Tartars fled, seemingly in panic. The mounted Poles charged until they were stretched out and separ
ated into groups, the horse archers shooting into the knights and their horses which killed them and disrupted their communication. Further and further, they retreated and our army became disorganised as the lords of Poland tasted victory and charged again and again, but their lances found few targets.”
“What were the Templars doing?” I asked.
“We were on the right, pushing forward in an attempt to keep pace with the greater body of the army. Pushing our levies along with us. Many of my brethren believed that the Tartars were about to be crushed, and they rode on, eager to be part of this great victory. None would listen to councils of caution.”
Stephen Gosset spoke up. “You knew it was a trap?”
“Knew? No. Suspected. I felt only dread.”
“Why?” Stephen asked.
“You are not a knight, Stephen,” Thomas said. “You have not seen a battlefield. You cannot comprehend the disorder. Trumpets are used to sound a unified advance, or sometimes to initiate a more complicated manoeuvre. But men do not often obey, for one reason or another. And battles are loud. Louder than you could imagine. Chaos reigns. But the Tartars, for all their wheeling about and dashing hither and thither, were not disorganised. Their commanding lord sat far to the rear and never once approached the fighting. Instead, his men waved flags upon enormously long poles and the companies of Tartars would discern meaning in those flags. It seemed to me that they differed by shape and colour, and the height or distance from the top of the pole. Orders could thus be relayed immediately across the entire field of battle.”
I could scarcely believe it. “These heathens? These men who cannot build a simple stone wall or a solid timber house? These men with their stinking, meagre food? They are utterly witless folk.”
“My brothers felt then as you do now and urged our men on so that we could slay some heathens ourselves before they all ran away or were killed by the Polish.” Thomas tilted his head back and looked to the darkness above. “Their retreat had been carefully planned in advance of the battle, for there was suddenly a huge cloud of dense smoke drifting across the field. The Tartars had lit enormous fires, with many green branches and pine leaves so as to make a thick smoke. Riders galloped across our front dragging piles of burning brush so that fires burned everywhere. Quickly, we could no longer discern the other side of our army. Soon after, was when they attacked.”
“They turned around and charged?” I asked.
“From the front, yes. But also from the flanks. Thousands more of their forces had lain in wait. That part of the field, many miles from the first clashes, had been chosen by them and they had led us straight into it. By that time of the day, our horses were exhausted from charging. You know destriers and war horses have no legs for a prolonged pursuit. Knights were strung out over miles, even separated from their squires and friends.”
“But man to man,” Bertrand said, outraged. “Man to man, our knights would destroy theirs. Our weapons and armour are vastly superior. And our skill at arms is unmatched in all the world. Look at the Saracens, and they are far richer than these impoverished raiders.”
“We were slaughtered,” Thomas said. “Thousands of men at arms killed. Knights and great lords. Duke Henry himself was killed. Our defeat was total.”
“Bad luck, that is all,” Bertrand said. “Anyone can lose a battle like that. The important thing is that our knights are bigger, stronger and fight better, man to man.”
Stephen, showing signs of arrogance even then when he was so young and naive, spoke up, his voice rising in pitch with indignation. “But they were outmanoeuvred by the heathens. The enemy fought with intelligence and wisdom and—”
“You know nothing, monk,” Bertrand said, shouting him down. “What do you know? Nothing, you know nothing.”
The dying fire cracked and popped as the lit branches collapsed into the coals.
Thomas said nothing for a while. “Have you ever seen a knight train a young page in the sword? The page will swing and thrust while the knight presents his unguarded chest or head only to dance aside, parry the blow and send the sword flying. Perhaps kicking the page in the rump while the other boys roar with laughter.”
I snorted. “I have been both the page and the knight in that situation. Many a time.”
Thomas nodded, slowly, staring at nothing. “We Christians were the page, against the Tartars. They toyed with us. I tell you this, as a knight who has been fighting at the frontiers of Christendom my entire life. I tell you, these Tartars. They are masters of war. And we are children.”
***
And so we came to the ordus of Batu Khan.
After seeing a number of Mongol camps, I assumed Batu’s would be simply a larger version. And it was. But it was much more besides.
It was a city, only one unlike any I had ever seen or even conceived of before. It was a city of tents. The great white tents of the Mongols, their gers. And what is more, it was a city that moved. Hundreds of enormous gers on the backs of wagons so big that their axles were the size of ships masts. Mongol women stood on their own wagon, in the doorway of their ger, holding the reins of the teams of oxen that pulled the massive wagons so that it was like seeing fleets of ships sailing across the great grass sea.
Each ger belonged to a woman, and she belonged to a man. One man may have many wives, but each wife controls her own household, with her children and her servants tending to their home and to the animals that the household owned. And there were many animals. Mostly horses. Hundreds and thousands of horses, everywhere one looked. But cattle, too, and other creatures. It reeked worse than any city in Christendom, worse even than Jerusalem or Paris, and possibly even Rome. A hot, shit-stench that filled one’s throat so thoroughly that the fear was you would never get it out.
Batu Khan’s ordus covered the land from horizon to horizon. And it seemed at first sight to be chaos and disorder. But, like Thomas’ battle, that was deceptive. It was because I could not see what the Mongols saw. I could not understand their organisation, their hierarchies. But when their city stopped moving, each ger was set down in its proper place, to east and west. All doors faced south, as that was the holy direction for those people, and the Khan’s ger had no other to obscure the view in that way. Their homes were set down by order of seniority but more than that, I could not understand, no matter how much Abdullah explained it to me. I suspect that he did not know himself but a scholar would rather lie and invent falsehoods than admit to his own ignorance.
The ger of Batu was not large enough to contain his court. The man was perhaps the greatest lord of the Mongols, other than the Great Khan Mongke. He was of the oldest generation and had proved his mettle by leading countless battles. And Batu was the eldest son of the eldest son of the legendary Genghis Khan, the first and greatest Mongol Khan. We were not the only visitors to the court. There were ambassadors from almost every kingdom and city from Central Asia to the Danube and so the Mongols were not impressed by us in the slightest and they made no special efforts for us.
We were made to wait, half-ignored, for two days, for the ordus to set itself down in its new location and then for the court to assemble. Not simply for the attendants and petitioners to gather but for the structure itself to be strung up.
In place of a ger, they erected a tent the size of a cathedral. Not in height, but certainly in length, made from poles taller than any tree and ropes as thick as any on the most massive of ships. It was large enough to hold a thousand people at least beneath the vast canopy overhead, and, at the head of all the assembled masses, sat Batu Khan.
Eva waited at where our wagons were parked, with the other two squires and Nikolas. She was under guard by the men who had guided us but still, I had no wish to leave her alone amongst thousands of barbarians.
“If they try anything,” I said to her, “do whatever you must to resist them and scream bloody murder. Send the boy to find me.”
She looked me square in the eye. “I will kill as many as I need to.”
&n
bsp; “Try to avoid killing them,” I said. “If you possibly can.”
“I promise nothing.”
She made quips only when she was nervous.
I bent to Nikolas. “Are you well, lad?”
His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. He had spent his short life inside Constantinople and the wonders of that place were like nothing to him. But the wide plains and vast sky had cowed him and now the city of tents, peopled by strange barbarians were more than he could comprehend.
“I am well, sir,” he said.
“Listen, Nikolas,” I said, and took a knee in front of him, placing one hand on his shoulder. “I must leave you and my lady, now. I will be going to see this Tartar prince. Can you keep a look out? Look for any trouble and should any trouble happen, you run and find me.” I pointed north. “I shall be in or around that giant tent in the centre of the camp. The heathens may try to stop you, may shout at you. But you will not stop for anything, will you, Nikolas?”
Eyes wide, he shook his head and his hand drifted to the white, ivory dagger I had given him, which he now wore suspended from his belt so it hung on his hip like a tiny sword. I could see the beautiful carving of Saint George with his lance running the dragon through as it writhed in coiled agony.
He swallowed and spoke solemnly in his thick Greek accent. “I shall protect her with my life, sir.”
I kept a straight face. “Do not fight anyone, Nikolas. You have the heart of a knight but not yet do you have the stature of one. You come find me instead, understand?”
Eva was afraid by the masses around us. She felt as trapped as I did, only now I was leaving her alone. I would not be far, as the crow flies, but we had rarely faced danger apart from the other for thirty-five years. I took her hand in both of mine for a moment. Her eyes spoke of their love and concern for me, and I felt the same.
We brought Abdullah with us to translate our words.
“They say to not step upon the ropes of the structure,” Abdullah said, as our guides gesticulated wildly and babbled at us. “The ropes surrounding the entranceway represent the doorway and threshold of a typical ger. If any of us tread on the ropes, we will be removed from the camp, and banished forever. Another one of these men is disagreeing with his colleague, and claims that we would at once be executed in a most terrible fashion.”
