Until the Sun Falls

by Cecelia Holland

  He did not know what he would do if they ever fought hand to hand. Mongke was right. Tshant would beat him. He wondered if he could bear that. When he thought of it he was filled with dread.

  The rain continued all day long. Snow slid heavily down on them from the branches of trees. The dun’s neck streamed darkly with water. On the slopes, bare rock nudged up out of the rotting snow. One of Sabotai’s horses broke a leg in the afternoon, and they butchered it and ate it for dinner. In the marshes, the horses staggered and leapt forward and sank down to their hocks, neighing madly, while the stink of the putrefying earth stuffed up their riders’ noses. Sabotai sniffled and sneezed constantly.

  Toward sundown they drew up on a ridge Psin knew was only a short ride from Novgorod’s lake. The sky was dark grey and no sunlight came through; the forest was full of a vast dripping. He could smell marsh at the foot of the ridge. Boulders lay tumbled all down the slope.

  Two scouts came toward them, splashing through black mud. They paused halfway up the slope, and one called, “Marsh all ahead. We have a deer.”

  “The ravine down the way?” Psin shouted.

  “Full of water.”

  Sabotai cursed. He had wanted to ride the ravine north.

  Psin looked behind him. He could see only the first few ranks of the army. Kadan sat slouched in his saddle, his horse’s hoofs on a flat rock. Tshant, behind him, looked grim and tired.

  “Yes,” Sabotai said. “I see what you mean.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “The road?”

  They had crossed the road twice, so far, and each time their horses had sunk to their stifles in the mud. The sentry raised both hands and shrugged. “It’s under water.”

  “Hunh.” He swung toward Psin. “We’ll camp the night here. Tomorrow…”

  Psin looked up at him from under his eyebrows.

  “Tomorrow we go back,” Sabotai said, and sighed.

  Hungry, cold, drenched to their underwear and so tired that they swayed in their saddles, they turned south. The thawing spring swept over them like a flock of birds. When they reached the place where the pine forest gave way to oaks and beeches, they found the open meadows running with melted snow. A few days later, Batu and Kaidu with their personal guards joined them. Batu had left the bulk of the army under the command of his brothers; he said they were spread across the hills to the Kama River, and that they had come decently through the winter.

  “I’m glad they did,” Sabotai said, and sneezed.

  They swung west, to bypass Tver and the land they had already taken, crossed the Dnepr on ice that heaved and shuddered beneath the horses’ hoofs, and looted all the estates on the river’s east shore. These were many and rich, but even so the army’s supplies shrank dangerously. Some of their horses died, so that they had meat.

  “We can’t stop to take cities,” Sabotai said. “Look—look.”

  He threw his right arm out toward the forest. Through the thin sheet of dissolving snow, grass thrust, startling green. The trees were hazy with new buds. Psin nodded. The air was heavy and sweet, almost singing with warmth. Flowers showed where the sun reached in through the canopy of branches. The horses dug wildly through the shell of snow to get to the new shoots.

  He had never liked Russia before, he had thought of it only as land to be taken, as grass for horses and cattle, a source of supplies, but that spring made him love it. When they had left Tver to ride north, the cold had clutched at them; now no one wore a coat. The air was so rich he could not breathe enough of it. The dun horse bucked and played like a foal, although his ribs showed and hollows lay deep under his hipbones.

  They reached the margin between the forest and the steppe, turned along it, and plundered two villages in one day. Sabotai left three hundred men to keep watch on the country around them. The villages, full of tanned leather, furs, even gold and silver from the churches, gave up nothing to eat but some dried vegetables and a few baskets of grain, and Sabotai chafed.

  “We’re almost out of food.”

  “We can reach the Volga camp on what we’re carrying now.”

  Sabotai twitched. “We’re not going there. I want to summer west of it, on the steppe.”

  “Well, we can get there.”

  “No.”

  They forded the Dnepr again and headed due south, crossed a smaller river where the water ran cold and clear over rocks and chunks of ice butted into the green shallows to be torn apart by the current, and plunged on. Two days later, scouts reported a small city up ahead on a hill.

  “Ah,” Sabotai said. “How big?”

  “Ask Tshant,” Psin said. “He scouted this region.”

  Sabotai turned and passed the word back for Tshant. Psin reined the dun off some little way and let his reins slide. Tshant galloped up. The dun lowered his head and grazed; Tshant glanced at Psin and pulled over beside Sabotai.

  Psin was too far away to hear what they said. He looked back at the army. The horses were tough, and on the new grass their necks were filling out, their coats regaining the shine of good health. But the men looked tired.

  Tshant rode around to Sabotai’s other side, and Psin trotted back. Sabotai said, “He says it’s Kozelsk, on a bluff over a spring, hard to get at, but small.”

  “Large enough to have something to eat in it?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I wouldn’t like asking them to fight uphill.”

  “For food they’ll do anything. It’s right in our path. Let’s take it.”

  They did not take the city in the first attack, nor in the second. Before they had regrouped—dusty, swearing—twilight rolled in, and Sabotai ordered the army to camp. Psin looked up at the city and grunted.

  “You don’t seem to have thought this out properly,” he said to Sabotai. “You know we can’t withdraw now.”

  “We’ll take it tomorrow.”

  Psin glanced at him and turned back to the city, perched at the edge of the bluff. Against the luminous twilight sky the walls made a black lump. Torches shone abnormally bright on the stubby towers. The only approach lay between two great shoulders of basalt, a steep and narrow trough from the lower ground where the spring was to the thick stone walls. The Mongols could not bring their full weight to bear on the gate.

  He walked the dun back through the camp and listened to the voices of the man hunched around their fires. Most of them were already asleep, their dinner bowls licked clean. The few who spoke sounded angry.

  Stone walls. Tshant should have mentioned that. Perhaps he had, but Sabotai hadn’t thought it worth repeating. They could not burn Kozelsk, they could not storm it; the city they were attacking for its food supply they would probably have to starve into submission. He tried to raise the energy to laugh at that.

  The deep night was full of a soft wind. The sky shone, dark rich blue. Everything seemed more distinct than usual, more alive. A nightbird shrilled. He dismounted and pulled his saddle off the dun, and great swatches of loose hair came with the blanket. He rubbed the horse down. On the dun’s shoulders his soft new summer coat showed in patches through the shed, three shades lighter.

  If he were not on campaign he would be beside the Lake now, moving the herds slowly into spring pasturage, tending the foaling mares, counting new calves. The yurts would have patches after the long winter. Malekai’s new son would have a coat made of a lamb’s skin, and the meat would suddenly be tasting better, the kumiss more pungent, the game fatter.

  We are hunters, he thought. We are herders. In God’s name, how did we come to be here?

  “Do you think we’ll take it?” Tshant said, behind him.

  “Eventually.”

  “You didn’t discourage him much.”

  Psin kept his back to Tshant. “I didn’t know it would be so hard to take.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Psin hunched up his shoulders. After a little silence he heard footsteps going away. He looked up at Kozelsk, at the black walls. It seemed to him that the lan
d under his feet was tensing to throw him down.

  Three times the next day they charged up the trough to the gate, and the Russians on the walls screamed and hurled stones and arrows and lances down on them, and they drew back, shouting with rage. Few died—Sabotai ordered them back each time just when it was obvious that to go on would cost too much.

  They had to take Kozelsk now, no matter how long it took, and the army knew it and ground its teeth over it. To Tshant it seemed that the fresh wide pastures of the bursting spring lay just over the southern horizon, that the rest and food he had done so long without waited for him only two days’ ride south. But they had to stay, because Sabotai hadn’t judged this properly.

  He rode out with four hundred men to raid the Dnepr. Psin was dispatching as many as half the army at a time to forage. Already the grass around Kozelsk was eaten down to the root. The grain was old and tasteless. Tshant didn’t like the way the water tasted, metallic from the rock just below the soil. He rode slowly, letting his horse graze.

  Kaidu, cheery as ever, had demanded the whole story of the campaigns against Yaroslav and Tver. In return he had told Tshant about the winter in the north. “It was cold, and we spent all day long hunting. All day long. Our grain was gone long before you came by on the way to Novgorod. The hunting is fine, up there. Not like the Gobi, but interesting. How is Quyuk?”

  “Mending. He broke his shoulder at Tver. What did he and your grandfather fight about?”

  Kaidu shrugged. “I didn’t hear. Quyuk’s an odd sort. No, I guess I’m the odd sort, aren’t I? Everyone else is like Quyuk.”

  “Even me?”

  “Oh, of course.” And Kaidu laughed.

  One of Tshant’s scouts rode up. “There is a herd of cattle in a meadow just ahead.”

  “How many herders?”

  “Six men and a boy.”

  Fresh beef. “Did they see you?”

  “Yes. They sent a messenger west, on foot.”

  “Good.” Tshant wheeled. “Kaidu, take command of the right flank. I want a crescent formation.” He looked at the scout. “Is the meadow in a wood?”

  “No—there are trees all around, but not thick. It’s just beyond that ridge.”

  “Good.” Tshant pointed to the dozen men nearest him. “You, you, you—when we attack, you tend the herd. Keep them bunched. Don’t let them run. Nogai, take the banners and ride at the tip of the left flank.”

  Nogai and Kaidu began to yell, and the men riding along behind them whipped up their horses and shoved forward into the crescent shape. The ends of the formation spread out swiftly and moved slightly ahead of the center. Nogai on the far west spread out the black banner and waved it in a circle on the high pole. The band broke from its trot into a canter.

  The ground below the ridge was marshy. Tshant’s horse splashed through it, throwing mud up over its shoulders. If the messenger had gone on foot their help couldn’t be far away. Tshant strung his bow and laid an arrow to the string. The ridge was sprinkled with beech trees. A man dodged behind one, and Tshant lifted the bow and shot. The arrow missed but the man raced away, yelling, and another Mongol shot him down. They careened up to the summit of the ridge, weaving in among the scrawny trees, and flung themselves down the other side.

  The cattle were moving through the trees on the far side of the meadow. Tshant heard the high calls of the herders. They looked over their shoulders at the sound of the Mongols. Their mouths, wet, red, gleamed in their white faces. They threw down their staffs and ran, screaming. Tshant shot; his arrow flew up with four hundred others and the herders slapped into the young grass, quilled like porcupines. The cattle began to bellow.

  Nogai was waving the yellow banner; he hadn’t stopped to string it on the pole and it flapped in his hands. Tshant reined in. Two horses collided with his from behind, and they skidded entangled down the slope. The dozen men chosen to herd galloped by after the cattle. Nogai was riding back up to the summit of the ridge, to watch the east. Tshant leaned back to look at his horse’s hindlegs, saw them still whole, and glared at the men behind him. They grinned, ashamed.

  “Watch the banners, you fools.”

  The cattle stamped out into the meadow again, their horns swinging. The Mongols yelped and beat at them with their bows to keep them close together and moving. Two bodies lay in the herd’s path, and the cattle split to pass around them.

  Nogai whistled from the height of the ridge. Tshant jerked around; the blue banner was up. He filled his lungs and yelled, “Kaidu—what do you see?”

  Kaidu was farther down the ridge from Nogai; he stood in his stirrups and looked east and shook his head.

  Tshant gnawed his lip. Nogai was still signaling. Abruptly Tshant kicked his horse forward toward the cattle herd. He paused long enough to shout, “Drive them straight to the camp,” whirled his horse, and charged toward Nogai, urging on the others with his arm.

  Now Kaidu was shouting, but Tshant couldn’t hear the words. He took an arrow from the quiver. His horse raced madly up toward Kaidu, who was swinging his men around to face whatever was coming. Arrows lifted from their bows. The men behind Tshant yelled. They surged up over the summit of the ridge and swept right down into the oncoming knights.

  Tshant’s horse smashed into another horse, reared, and plunged on its hindlegs through the pack. Armor clashed. The bow was useless. Tshant drew his dagger, ducked a swordthrust, and leaned out to swipe at a knight’s jaw. An arm swept him all but out of the saddle. He clung, feeling the horse stagger beneath him. Harsh enemy voices thundered in his ears. He stabbed at the men snatching for him, hauled himself back onto his horse, and ducking swords and outflung arms bored free of the tangle.

  There were far fewer knights than Mongols, he saw at once, but the Mongols could not use their bows and the knights like boulders were grinding them to pieces. The horses reared and plunged down across one another, and the swords of the knights glanced occasionally off Russian helmets. Tshant dragged his horse back, thrust three fingers into his mouth, and whistled.

  The Mongols looked around toward the banner and wheeled away. Many of them could not get free of the knights and were cut down. The knights charged heavily after. Tshant’s bow was broken, and he flung it down and wrenched his spare out of its case. “Shoot,” he yelled. The knights wheeled toward him. Their huge eyes shone above the cheekpieces of their helmets. They lumbered along, while the Mongols got back their senses and bent their bows and the arrows hissed into the iron-clad swarm. Some of the knights tried to turn, but before they could work their horses out of the pack the arrows felled them.

  Nogai on the summit was waving the blue banner again. Tshant whistled, and the Mongols looked at him, looked at Nogai, and trotted up the slope. The Russian knights did not follow. Tshant galloped after his men. On the ground behind him lay as many Mongol dead as Russian.

  Never mind, Father. I’ll make up for it. The cattle herd was already south of the ridge and plodding energetically toward Kozelsk. Tshant caught up with it, ranged his men on all sides, and let his horse graze while he walked.

  His father would be angry. Let him be. This time Tshant had learned something worth the dead. The old man had to learn to treat him more gently, anyhow.

  Long before they reached Kozelsk, the following morning, he saw the smoke in columns all down the bluff. Psin was taking no risks. Any Mongol detachment, hunting or raiding, could follow the smoke back to the camp. When Tshant and his men brought up their herd, they found the pasturage at the foot of the bluff already jammed with cattle, sheep, horses, even swine, and nearby a slaughter pen big enough to keep the whole camp in fresh meat.

  “We’ve scoured everything for two days’ ride,” Kadan said, across his campfire. “Everything that walks on more than one leg is or will be slaughtered for us before the day after tomorrow.”

  “Have they tried to storm the wall again?”

  Kadan nodded. He lay back on the ground and shut his eyes. “Twenty men could hold us off from that
height. You didn’t find anything to drink, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Ayuh. I think Sabotai is deliberately keeping me sober.”

  “They’re sending out parties to find grass for the horses, now,” Baidar said. “Look at the dust.”

  Tshant nodded. “And we’ve only been here ten or twelve days.”

  “You lost some of your men,” Baidar said. “What happened?”

  “I ran into some knights.”

  “How many?”

  “Eighty, if that.”

  Baidar stared at him; Tshant lifted his head, slowly, and the muscles at the hinges of his jaw tightened.

  “Eighty? You had almost four hundred.”

  “Yes. I mean to talk to my father about it.”

  Kadan muttered under his breath. Tshant spun toward him. “Say something, Kadan. Anything.”

  “Not me.” Kadan lifted both hands. “I’m too sober to fight.”

  “Psin is over at the spring,” Baidar said.

  Tshant rose. Baidar stood up with him and swung to face him.

  “He’s tired, Tshant. He’s done too much this winter. And he was wounded. His temper’s short.”

  “It’ll be shorter.”

  Tshant brushed past him. He heard Baidar’s blunt cursing and Kadan’s low voice beneath it. Catching his horse, he rode over to the spring.

  It lay in a sink just below one of the great cliffs that framed the trough up to Kozelsk, and while the water was pure there wasn’t enough of it for all the horses and men in the camp. Psin was standing sentry duty on the sentries, to make sure no one broke the rationing. He sat on a bulge of the rock, just a little lower than Tshant on his horse. Sabotai was there, and Batu, sitting on the ground to Psin’s left.

  “Good hunting?” Sabotai said.

  Tshant’s head bobbed. “I met some knights—we lost twenty men.”

  “Ah?” Sabotai frowned and glanced up at Psin.

  “In God’s name,” Batu said. “Is there so large a band of knights running around here? I wouldn’t have thought so.”