Until the Sun Falls

by Cecelia Holland

  “I hate cities,” Psin said. He reined the dun horse down to match the cart’s pace. The baggage train was so long that he had had to form it up in a triple column. He swung around to look back at it. The thin line of horsemen stretched over the last hill. On the far side of the train the herds spread out almost to the far stand of trees. If anybody attacked… He bellowed to Kuchuk to bunch up the herds more tightly.

  “You lived there,” Ana said. She snuffled.

  “Girl, I’ve been easy with you. You are not my slave, but you are a slave, and it’s improper for slaves to bawl and carry on.” He took a drover’s whip from under the seat, and Ana cringed. “Djela, come with me.”

  Djela veered over to the wagon and said, “Don’t worry, Ana. Spring will be here soon.”

  Psin started off around the head of the train. Djela galloped after him, yipping. The oxen were plodding along at a fast walk; their dewlaps swaying, they thrust through the wet snow. The dun wanted to stretch out, and Psin held him down tight. He could smell rain coming.

  “It will be colder before it’s warmer,’“ he called to Djela. “Don’t be too hungry for spring.”

  Kuchuk and his men were turning the cattle herd back toward the train. Their whips snapped over the bony rumps. Psin untied the thong that held his whip curled, shook it out, and pointed to Djela to ride in front of him. Djela galloped up past him. Snow flew into the dun’s face, and he squealed.

  “Hee-yah. Get around there, you.”

  The cattle broke into a trot, lowing. Beneath their hoofs the snow was churned to filthy marsh. A bull roared, flinging up his head. Psin took a piece out of his ear with the whip, and the bull lumbered hastily back into the herd.

  “The horses, Kuchuk.”

  Kuchuk and his men dropped back to keep the horse herd from running up into the cattle. Behind the horses was the little herd of reindeer Psin had collected. The sheep and goats, butchered and trimmed, hung neatly in the carts above the heaps of gold, the stacks of fur, the chests full of folded cloth. Psin remembered the campaigns in China, when after a city fell every Mongol wore silk underwear and necklaces like breastplates of jewels.

  Djela shouted and threw a snowball at a cow trying to sneak out of the herd. Psin fell back, watching her. She was heavy with calf, but she moved quickly enough getting back to the herd. Horns rattled.

  Across the ridged backs of the cattle Psin could see Ana slumped on the cart seat, her hands in her lap. He sighed. When they reached Tver she would be overcome, if the burning of Susdal bothered her so much. Tver would be a greater fire.

  “Grandfather, look.”

  Djela pointed up at the sky. Psin shaded his eyes against the sun. Vultures were circling, high overhead, their wings cupped to the wind.

  “They always follow baggage trains,” he said. The vultures probably thought that the train would take them to a battleground. He turned the dun and galloped down to the reindeer and back, more to give the horse some work than to check their progress. The reindeer was the totem of Sabotai’s clan, and Psin meant to supply him with roasts for the rest of the campaign.

  The wind was soft. Maybe spring was coming. It was too early, but… He remembered Mongke’s saying that he had found signs of deep, hard freezes in past years—rocks and trees split. A late thaw and a freeze would do that.

  Quyuk was riding at the head of the train, his reins slack, probably asleep. Psin had talked to him only once since the fall of Yaroslav, and they had said very little beyond where Quyuk would ride on the march. Psin remembered how Quyuk had spoken, that other time, when they’d talked of Novgorod. One by one, he had lost the Altun. When he’d been unable to rule Psin, even Kaidu had fallen away. Now only Buri was Quyuk’s friend.

  Tshant, perhaps. They had always gotten along surprisingly well. Quyuk had to be the Kha-Khan; he’d lost everything between the Khanate and misery. The deep and the peak.

  He rode back to the carts for something to eat. Djela importantly took over his place, shouting. The cattle threw up their heads. Ana wasn’t crying, but the Kipchak woman looked as sour as before.

  “I’m sorry,” Ana said. “I… lived there most of my life.”

  “I know.” He filled up a leather jug with kumiss and slung it from the pommel of his saddle.

  “Will Tshant be there?”

  “At Tver? Yes.”

  She smiled faintly. Psin put his rein against the dun’s neck, and the horse spun around and galloped up toward the head of the train. Quyuk’s horse jumped, and Quyuk woke up and lifted his head.

  “Shall I go scout a campground?”

  “Yes.”

  Quyuk lashed his horse and cantered away. The dun gathered itself to charge after him, and Psin hauled hard on the bit; the dun squealed and bucked, lurching in the snow. Quyuk rode up a slope and over the height of it and was gone, and the dun quieted. Psin swung into place at the head of the train and picked up a slow jog.

  Tver hadn’t trusted in the Grand Duke. Three huge mounds of snow ringed the city, and the ice of its river was chopped to shreds, so that a horse could cross it only at a slow and careful walk. Tshant and his army had camped before the main gate. Psin brought the baggage train in to camp a long bowshot from the first snowring, opposite the south gate. He could see Tshant’s patrols riding innocently along the outermost of the snowworks. Apparently Tver wasted no arrows.

  “You got here fast enough,” Tshant said. “Sabotai is still a day away.”

  He reined his horse around and nodded to the city. “Have you had a close look at it? You should. This one may be more trouble than Yaroslav. They’re getting wiser, these Russians.”

  “Too late,” Psin said. His yurt rose into shape, just behind Tshant’s taut face. The framework wavered, and loose felt flapped in the wind. From inside came a muffled curse.

  “You seem to think we’ll be here awhile,” Tshant said. “If you set up your yurt.”

  “I like my comfort.”

  Djela galloped up. “Ada. I went looking for you.” He slid off his horse onto Tshant’s and hugged him. Tshant settled him more comfortably, his arms around him.

  “What do you think?”

  Psin shrugged. Ana and the Kipchak woman came out of the yurt and began to lace down the sides. Dmitri was still inside. Kuchuk was riding up, probably with questions about the herds. “I’ll have to go look.”

  “They were careful,” Tshant said. “The outermost ring is not inside bowshot range of the city.”

  “Yes, but once we get inside we can use the snow for shields.”

  “I told you to look,” Tshant said. “See for yourself. They must have begun building them when Riazan fell. Otherwise they would never have had the time.”

  Ana was looking at him, waiting for him to say something to her, but Tshant hadn’t even glanced at her yet. Psin said, “Do you want your slaves?”

  “My—”

  He turned and looked at Ana. She blushed.

  “Yes. Send her over. She can watch Djela. And go look at those rings.”

  “I will.”

  He rode off. Ana stared after him. Psin dismounted and went once around the yurt. Kuchuk jogged after him and called, “We’ve turned the cattle out north of the city, on the river, and the horses and reindeer south of it. Is that all right?”

  “Yes. Very good.”

  Ana brushed past him into the yurt. The Kipchak woman said, “Will you want your dinner now, Khan?”

  He nodded and slitted his eyes against the glare of the sun to look toward Tver. Three rings.

  While he ate, Ana kept close to him, serving him, taking his empty dishes. At last she said, “When am I to go to him? “

  He drank some kumiss, thinking how to warn her, but he decided she would learn better if she found out unprepared. “I’ll send you over when I’m done,”

  She nodded. Her face with its strong bones seemed almost stolid but her eyes shone with desperation. He emptied his cup. Before he had gotten to his feet, she was at the door
. He followed her out. From the dimness of the yurt into the glare was like coming out of a dead sleep. He called to Kuchuk and told him to send Ana and two male slaves over to Tshant’s yurt in the other camp.

  “And bring me my horse.”

  Kuchuk bellowed orders. Psin went back into the yurt after his bow, and the Kipchak woman said, “Am I to have no help?”

  “Dmitri.”

  “Dmitri has gone to help the herders.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, tomorrow you’ll have help again.”

  She grunted. Her hands were full of dirty dishes. “Is the little noyon to live here?”

  “Only me.”

  She giggled, looking at him with bright black eyes. Psin stared at her, startled, and she put the dishes down. She swung her thick hips in a grotesque parody of a young girl flirting. He laughed, and she began to giggle again, until they were both sobbing with laughter so hard they could barely stand up. Psin turned toward the door.

  “Don’t seduce anybody while I’m gone, beauty.”

  “How could I look at another man when I know the Khan will be at my side?”

  They both started laughing again, and Psin ducked out the door. His horse was waiting for him.

  Tshant galloped up to him before he reached the snowworks. “I want to see your face,” Tshant said. “Be careful. You shouldn’t ride in there alone.”

  “Ah?”

  “Wait and see.”

  The outermost ring was twice as high as a man, four times as thick as its height, and frozen solid. Tshant pointed to the sheer ice wall. “They must have poured water over it to melt it so that it would freeze like that.”

  “They were thorough.”

  “Very.”

  “What were the tunnels like, in Yaroslav?”

  “As the Russian said. They built them from the riverbank into the city. For sewage, I suppose. In places they were caved in. The one I followed came up in the middle of the city. We went in at moonset.”

  Psin could see the tunnels in his mind, icy probably, stinking of garbage, full of rats—the torchlight flickering over the sagging walls, the bad air.

  “You did well,” he said.

  “I know.”

  They rode in through a gap in the snowworks, hewn with axes. One axe still lay half-buried in the ice. Chunks of old snow cluttered the gap; it was just wide enough for one horse. Tshant uncased his bow.

  “Be careful.”

  Psin nocked an arrow and reined the dun into the gap. Ahead was only a flat space and the next wall—lower, this one, and pierced with great wood poles slanted down toward the ground. One of the spikes was blood-stained.

  Something moved in the corner of his eye, and he twisted in the saddle. A man darted back under cover and an arrow thunked into the ice beside Psin’s head. He whirled the horse, but Tshant said, “Don’t. He’s gone by now. Come look. Keep an eye on the alley behind us for me.”

  Tshant jogged his horse down the space between the walls. Psin glanced over his shoulder, saw nothing, and started after him. He heard something behind him and jerked the dun around, and another arrow hissed by him. He saw the man running away and shot him. The man sprawled into the packed snow and slid along it, his face against the ground.

  “Good,” Tshant said quietly. “Usually we don’t kill them.”

  The dun cantered up to Tshant’s horse, and Psin leaned down. A cave bored into the wall at ground level. He dismounted and looked in and saw that it went clear through to the other side.

  “I see,” he said.

  “Yes. We managed to cut the one gap. They run back and forth in these rings. They know all the tunnels, and they pick us off, one by one.”

  Psin frowned.

  “I haven’t got the men to pour them in here and hunt all these rats down.”

  “I understand.” Psin straightened. “I want to see it all.”

  “We’d die before we got past the second wall.”

  “Come, now. Are we Merkits or Chinese?”

  “You’re a Merkit. I’m a Mongol. I’m too clever to go into a warren when I don’t know all the tunnels.”

  “Take our horses back to the gap. I’ll watch you.”

  Tshant stared at him. “If I hadn’t seen the hole in your leg I’d swear you were shot in the head. All right. But if we die here, think of our widows.”

  He took the dun’s rein and cantered back to the gap. Psin crouched in the mouth of the tunnel and watched, glancing up and down the empty alleyway between the walls. Once he saw a flash of bright color, but before he could swing his bow it was gone. Tshant left the horses at the gap and ran back, his head low.

  “Come along,” he said, and started down the wall, keeping close to it. Psin walked backward after him.

  The silence was irritating. Tshant’s boots made no sound on the stone-hard ice. Once or twice he looked behind him, making sure Tshant hadn’t gotten too far ahead, and found Tshant so close their backs nearly touched. That made him angry. His nerves were bad if he couldn’t keep track of a man walking so close to him.

  “Here’s a tunnel,” Tshant said.

  “Ssssh. Next time, just tap me on the shoulder.”

  They went on. He saw nothing, no moving thing, and he began to wonder if the rings were so full of Russians as Tshant believed. He counted his steps, and when they had gone thirty-seven strides Tshant tapped him on the back. He turned, saw the tunnel, and ducked into it, holding the bow lengthwise. The tunnel was so low he scraped his head on it, crawling through. When he reached the far end, he put three arrows on the ground, nocked a fourth, and looked out.

  Four men were crouched against the wall across from him, at the mouth of another tunnel. He shot one, and the others whirled. An arrow bounced off the ice near his hand. He shot again, missed, and the three men were gone, and the ring was empty. He swore.

  “I should do better than that.” He backed out again.

  Tshant said only, “Watch. We’re coming to the steps.”

  Steps. They were all city-builders, Russians; give them a snow-fort to make and they turned it into Karakorum. He inched along the wall, wishing he had gone after his arrows.

  “Duck,” Tshant cried. “Look—up on the wall.”

  Arrows pelted around them. Tshant gasped. Psin dropped close to the wall and looked up; Russians were kneeling on the top, shooting. He put an arrow through one, and the others slid down and were gone.

  “Are you all right?” Tshant said.

  “Yes.”

  Tshant had taken an arrow through the fleshy part of his hand. He kept watch while Psin broke the shaft in two at the head and drew it out. The blood dribbled down Tshant’s wrist. Psin kicked at the packed ground until he had broken off a little bit of ice. “Hold that. Let’s go back.”

  “I knew you’d never get past this ring. I want to show you the steps. It’s just a little way.”

  “Don’t be a—”

  “Come on.”

  Tshant ran down the wall, taking short steps to keep from slipping, and Psin followed him. He kept his head turned on his shoulder to watch behind them. Tshant halted and Psin slammed into him. For a moment they slid wildly around on the ice, clutching each other.

  “Look—and then let’s get out of here.”

  The steps were cut into the ice—broad and deep, carefully salted with gravel. They were covered with old blood sign.

  “I lost fifty men here,” Tshant said. “We fell back. We were beaten.”

  “I see. Come on.”

  They started back slowly, Tshant walking backward this time. A red scarf lay on the snow ahead of them, near the mouth of a tunnel. While Psin watched, a hand darted out and snatched it away.

  He started to call to Tshant, realized it was a trap, and whirled, dropping to one knee. Four Russians popped out of the tunnel just beyond the steps. Psin drew his bow, saw their startled faces, and shot. Tshant was swearing at his bad hand. Two arrows skipped over the ice and careened away, and three Russians dropped. The fourth dov
e back into the tunnel. Psin whirled and ran; the tunnel of the red scarf was empty.

  “Nasty people,” he said.

  “Come on.”

  The Russians were apparently out of tricks. They let Tshant and Psin get out of the rings without any more trouble. Their horses were waiting. Tshant said, “Now, Father, what shall we do about that?”

  Psin cased his bow and gathered up his reins. “Remember it. It might come in useful sometime.” He mounted. “When Sabotai comes, maybe we’ll think of something.” He smirked at Tshant and rode away.

  The next morning, he rode to Tshant’s camp. The glare from the ice walls still hurt his eyes, but now grey clouds were streaming up over the sky. He sniffed hopefully. He did not want rain. He wanted a good solid snowstorm. Rain would pour down those ice walls and turn the rings into rivers. The rats might drown in their tunnels but the Mongols would drown as well trying to fight them.

  At Tshant’s yurt he paused and looked around. This camp was neat, strictly ordered, and looking very permanent. Three suits of silk underwear hung to dry on a line strung between a yurt and a pole, and two young children were digging industriously and uselessly in the snow behind another yurt. He dismounted, hitched his horse, and went inside.

  Ana was stirring a pot. Each stroke of her arm was like driving in a knife. He stood behind her and sniffed, and she still didn’t hear him. Her hair hung across her cheek.

  “Something good?” he said, in Russian.

  She jumped. “Oh. Oh. You scared me.”

  “Did I? I’m sorry.” Her face was white and taut, and her eyes were dull. “I came to ask my son if he would loan you back to me. My Kipchak says she can’t do all the work.”

  Tshant came out of the back of the yurt. “What are you doing here?”

  “Borrowing a slave, I hope.”

  “She’s watching Djela.”

  “She seems to be. Miraculous eyesight. Djela’s off with the reindeer herd.”

  Tshant made a face. “Take her, then. Have you thought of any way to break the rings?”

  “The weather will break the rings for us, sooner or later.”

  “Later would be disastrous.”