Until the Sun Falls

by Cecelia Holland

  Rijart was taller even than Tshant, yellow-haired, with quick pale eyes and a smooth smile. Psin, who did not like him, had known him in Karakorum; Rijart had taught him Latin once.

  Now Rijart said, “Do you remember the Latin? It might be of some use, on the embassy.”

  “You’ll have to refresh my memory.”

  “The Khan wishes.” Rijart smiled. They were hardly out of the Volga camp. The tracks of the latest caravan headed west printed the road before them. Two Nestorians had come with the caravan from Karakorum and were taking messages on to the princes and priests of Rome from the Kha-Khan and Batu. Psin had talked with the Nestorians all the night before, but they knew little more of Rome than he did. They thought it was a city, but also that all the people in Europe called themselves Romans as well as Christians, and therefore it could as well be a nation.

  Rijart recited words, and Psin repeated them. Kaidu listened, grinning. He would ride with them as far as the Dniester, commanding their escort, which they would pick up at Sabotai’s camp north of the Caspian Sea. After the embassy had crossed the Dniester Kaidu would scout the country back toward Pereislav and meet Mongke and Baidar there to start besieging the city. Psin glared at him to keep him quiet and repeated what Rijart had said.

  The steppe was thriving with the summer. In the tough, grey-green grass small blue flowers bloomed, and shrubs sprouted, reddish-leaved, in the hollows around the springs. By noon they had shot enough grouse to make a good dinner. Once, in the afternoon, a courier raced by, the bells jingling on his bridle, and they pulled off to let him pass without hindrance. The wind swept away the dust of the horse’s churning gallop. Only a little way on, they reached the new waystation, where the courier had changed horses; it looked like every waystation between here and the China Sea, except that Russians manned it.

  “We’ve already made our mark on the land,” Rijart said.

  Psin grunted. He resented Rijart’s acting as if he were a Mongol. They watered their horses, changed their saddles to their led remounts, and rode on. Rijart was a patient teacher and by nightfall Psin remembered enough Latin to ask questions.

  They spent the night in a hollow of ground beside a spring. When the sun went down, the grass bending in the wind turned red and gold; it reminded Psin of the Gobi in the late summer when the tamarisk bloomed. Except that the low mountains of the Gobi would have looked wrong on this undulating plain.

  “Rijart, what is Rome?”

  “Rome is a city,” Rijart said, and ran through the forms of the Latin for city. “The Pope reigns in Rome—”

  “The Pope.”

  “The chief priest.” Rijart turned the spit; fat exploded in the fire.

  “Who are the other princes?” He knew all the Latin but the word for other, and Rijart told him.

  “There is the Emperor, who rules Germany, which lies west of Hungary. He is also the King of Sicily. That’s the southern half of Italy. Rome is in Italy, about in the middle.”

  He said it all in Latin, gesturing, and Psin nodded that he understood.

  “Each nation has its own king,” Rijart said. “There are many nations.”

  “They fight all the time.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been away too long to know.”

  “Where were you born?”

  He used the Mongol word for “born,” with a Latin ending; Rijart told him the Latin and said, “In England. I was born in England. That’s an island that lies off the far western coast of Europe.”

  “Enough. I can’t remember all the words yet.” Psin took the meat off the spit. “How did you come to Karakorum?”

  “With a caravan.”

  “Why didn’t you go back?”

  Rijart smiled. “I am an outlaw in the Empire.”

  “But you are an Englander.”

  “Englishman. Yes. But I’d have to pass through the Empire, and they watch for me.”

  “Who is the Emperor now, do you know?”

  “Frederick Hohenstaufen. He’s an odd man. You’d probably like him. He speaks Arabic, so you could talk to him. They say he’s irreligious.”

  “Is he a Muslim?”

  “No, he’s a Christian, or supposed to be. But he’s too learned to be a God-fearing man. They say he’s called Christ a fraud.”

  Psin pulled the meat off the breastbone of his grouse. His mind went seeking after this Emperor. A rival Kha-Khan, maybe, like Jamuga, back when Temujin had not been called Genghis. “Have you ever seen him?”

  “Never. They say he has red hair and green eyes.”

  “Hunh.” Psin stopped chewing. “But he’s round-eyed? Like you?”

  “Yes.”

  Kaidu said, “Red-headed like the Altun?”

  Rijart said softly, “Like most of the Altun.”

  Kaidu flushed; his hand drifted toward his dagger. Psin watched him steadily until Kaidu looked away and lay down, his face buried in his arms. The night wind sang in the grass on the top of the hill behind them.

  A round-eyed Temujin. Psin took another bird from the fire and ate it thoughtfully. Too learned to be God-fearing. That was strange; most of the learned men he knew were devout. Rijart was going off from the fire, and one of the Mongol soldiers going with them to Hungary got up unobtrusively and followed. A horse wandered over to the spring and drank, swishing its tail across its hocks. Psin lay down and drew his cloak over himself and slept.

  The next evening they spent in the waystation at Sabotai’s big camp, and just before dawn rode west with their escort of one hundred men. Kaidu was taking this command seriously and spent the morning wearing himself and his horses out herding the escort into formation. Rijart made up Latin sentences and Psin repeated them, asked questions, and wished Kaidu would send out men to hunt. But Kaidu apparently forgot about it, and they ate gruel for dinner.

  “Tomorrow,” Psin said, “hunt.”

  Kaidu nodded. He slurped up the contents of his bowl and smacked his lips. “I suppose we’ll have to save the gruel for a delicacy.”

  “And post sentries. We’re not on our own ground now.”

  Kaidu arranged for sentries, and the next day he sent off a party of men to hunt birds and antelope. They moved steadily over the plain, their bows loose in the cases. By noon each day the heat drove them all to strip off their coats, but the nights were clear and cold. Psin, learning Latin at the trot, thought he’d know enough to eavesdrop effectively when they reached the Hungarian capital.

  The scouts reported walled houses—the estates of Russian nobles—and they circled to avoid them. Occasionally they saw horsemen far across the plain, and once a band of knights rode parallel to their track almost half a day, but could not hold the pace.

  They reached the Dnepr in the morning of their seventh day riding; broad and full of silt, the river ran sluggishly between sandy banks. Kaidu wanted to send scouts to find a ford, but Psin thought they could swim the river. The horses balked at the bank, and they had to whip them down. The bank crumbled under the hoofs of Psin’s horse, and with a wild neigh it slid into the water. The water sloshed up across Psin’s saddle. He lashed the horse on the neck, and the horse struggled out a little into the river and stood to its belly in the slow current.

  “It’s not deep at all,” Psin called. “Throw me my leadrope.”

  Several of Kaidu’s men plunged their horses down the bank where Psin’s horse had caved it in and made it easier. Rijart tossed Psin his remount leadrope. The dun braced its legs, flattened its ears back, and refused to jump. Rijart raised his whip.

  “Jump back when you hit him.”

  Rijart brought the whip down across the dun’s rump, and the dun kicked back. With a yell Rijart pitched out of his saddle. The dun bolted down the bank, dragging the other horses on the line with him. They splashed into the river and started across. Psin laughed at Rijart, who was scrambling into his saddle, and reined his horse after the remounts.

  In the middle of the river they had to swim. Psin slid out of the sa
ddle and held onto his horse’s mane, letting it drag him through the water. All up and down the river, horses’ heads split the brown water. The river smelled of dirt and fish, and Psin kept his chin high so that he wouldn’t get any water in his mouth. He felt his horse’s hoofs strike ground, hauled himself into the saddle, and braced against the drag of the rope when the dun charged up the far bank.

  The horse beneath him shook itself so hard Psin almost fell off.

  He stood in his stirrups and looked around. There was no sign of any enemy. Two of the Mongols going with him to Hungary were laughing at the third, who had gotten separated from his horse in midstream. One of the men coming after him had scooped him up across his saddle.

  “Eh,” Psin called, “Mago. Do you find that more comfortable than sitting up?”

  Mago sputtered. His hair hung in his eyes. Psin remembered Chan and the episode beside the river and turned hastily away to organize the scattered escort.

  In the following days they rode over plowed fields; they saw peasants by the drove, who fled at the sound of any horsemen. One night they chased a family out of their hut and spent the night there, eating the chickens and drinking the sour red wine, while the mother and her daughters wept and howled in the bushes just beyond the field and the father and his sons rode their plow stock for help. In case they found any, the Mongols set fire to the hut and burned the fields on their way out. Psin looked back and saw the wife and her narrow-shouldered children crouched in the yard, weeping, bright in the glow of the fire.

  “We’ll be back,” he yelled, in Russian.

  Kaidu was excited. “This is a fat land,” he said. “Ripe for us. Have you seen their cattle? And the fields—a man could sit on a good-sized horse in the middle of that grain and never be seen.”

  “Don’t underestimate them,” Psin said. “People with something to defend tend to be zealous about it.”

  They passed a large town, and people shouted at them from the walls; they could hear the bells in the church tower ringing. The gates opened and a band of men rushed out, waved their lances, and ran back in again. Kaidu laughed.

  “Someday we’ll have it all,” he said. “Someday when a Mongol rides through here they will rush out to bow and scrape and give him presents.”

  Rijart smiled.

  They reached the Dniester, and Kaidu with his hundred men turned back. “We’ll see you before Kiev,” he called. “Don’t linger in Hungary.”

  “Be careful. It’s not so easy here as you might think.”

  “Pfft.” Kaidu galloped off. His men strung out behind him, and he headed back east, shouting at the top of his lungs. His standard-bearer rode beside him, and the blue banner flapped wildly against the darker blue of the sky.

  “He’ll get in trouble,” Rijart said.

  “No. He’s lucky, and he’s more sensible than he acts. I think. Come along.”

  They rode upstream at full day, until they were opposite the town where they were to meet guides, and there they crossed the river. The governor of the town would not let them inside the walls. He sent the guides to them in the early morning, so that they left before the sun was up. Psin rode behind Rijart with the Mongol standard: there were no more Latin lessons. The guides spoke to Rijart in Latin, most courteously, and to each other in Russian; the dialect was hard for Psin to understand, but he followed most of it and their discussion of the Mongols amused him.

  “Rough, savage, ugly,” they said, on the first day.

  On the second day they complained of the pace Rijart set and decided that only a dull brute of a Mongol would ride so fast by choice.

  On the third day they didn’t talk at all, but bit their lips, nursing their saddlesores and clinging to their reins.

  Before them, the mountains rose on the horizon like clouds, but denser than cloud. One of the guides complained of sickness and they left him behind in a village where they spent the night. Under the horses’ hoofs the ground began to climb. Trees grew on the rolling plain, strange to see after the treeless steppe, and the small streams they passed bounced white over the rocks, cold from the mountain snow.

  They camped one night in the foothills. Psin and the three other Mongols huddled together under their light summer cloaks, their teeth clacking. The stars burnt like points of ice and the rock shoulders of the mountains heaved up against the sky around them. Psin thought of his sable cloak, stored away in a chest in his house in the Volga camp, and shivered. The man pressed against his back stirred in his sleep and whined. If he had the sable cloak, he couldn’t have used it anyway; it was a sign of his rank.

  When he finally slept he dreamt of Chan, like an ice carving, watching him expressionlessly, and behind her Artai looking withered and much, much older.

  They climbed steadily toward a great pass. Eagles soared over the bare rock of the mountain heights. There was little grass, and the horses grazed all night long to keep fed. Goats browsed on slopes so steep Psin couldn’t see how the goats kept all four legs under them. The guides began to get used to the pace and chattered on, making fun of the Mongol horses.

  “Look at them. They’re tiny. And you could shear them for their wool.”

  Psin’s dun horse scrambled up a little rockslide and paced along a ledge no wider than Psin’s shoulders; the guides’ horses refused the tumbled slope and they had to ride around to an easier, longer trail. Rijart went with them, but the other Mongols with the led horses followed Psin. They waited, their legs thrown casually across the pommels of their saddles, for the guides and Rijart to catch up.

  “What are they saying?” Mago asked Psin.

  “They’re disparaging our horses.”

  The others laughed. Psin shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up and down this slope. Just north of them the trees grew like a living fence, their branches interlaced. He could hear the wind sobbing in them; the smell of pine reminded him of Novgorod. They were still well beneath the pass. The guides reached them and they went on.

  The air grew steadily colder. Psin took his kumiss jug from his saddle, drank some, and with a gesture offered it to the nearest of the guides. The guide looked at Rijart. Rijart smiled and said something, and the guide took the jug. He sipped at it cautiously, smacked his lips, and handed it around to the others.

  “What is it?” he said in Latin.

  “Fermented mare’s milk,” Rijart said.

  The guides all screwed up their faces in disgust. Psin took the jug back and hung it on his saddle. One of the guides said to the others, “Do you suppose they eat horseflesh as well?”

  That night, just before they camped, a knight came down the trail from the pass; they were to have an armed escort from the pass to the city of Pesth. Psin took Rijart aside while the guides were cooking their meat.

  “Discourage him. Tell him we don’t need an escort. Tell him they’ll only slow us up.”

  “They are adamant,” Rijart said. “They won’t let us ride without a guard.”

  “Try, at least.”

  Rijart shrugged. Shivering, Psin went back to the fire and ate.

  The next morning they rode into the pass, and while Rijart argued with the leader of the knights waiting to meet them, Psin looked back over their trail. The trail they had taken was steep enough to discourage anyone, but from here he could see that the guides had deliberately led them up by the roughest way. They had come from the southeast, but a trail broad and gentle as a caravan’s ran due east down across the foothills. And this was not the only pass.

  Rijart had lost the argument. He turned and said, “This is the Knight Denes. He asks me to introduce you to him.”

  “Change my name,” Psin said.

  Rijart nodded. He pointed to Psin and said, in Latin, “Targoutai, my standardbearer.” A ghost of a smile touched his face. Psin stared blankly at the Hungarian knight; he doubted anybody so far west of the Gobi would know that Rijart had just named him after Temujin’s first and greatest enemy. “Mago, Vortai, Kobul.”

  The
knight bowed and made a short speech. The wind screamed across the barren pass beyond it, and the armored men on their great horses shifted uneasily. Their eyes poked curiously at the Mongols. When the knight was through, Rijart replied, bowing and making a lot of fancy gestures, and the knight waved them on. The guides had drawn aside and were chatting to some Hungarians on foot.

  The knights on their big horses reined up on all sides of the Mongols. Psin studied them, his ears full of the groaning of their armor; if they weren’t stupid, they would be formidable warriors. The Russian knights had been only imitations of these, who were better armed and better mounted. He hoped they were as stupid as the average Mongol. The chain armor looked thick enough to stop an arrow at any but close range.

  Beside him rode a young man, watching Psin as curiously as Psin was watching him. His helmet clanged on his saddle’s great square cantle. Abruptly, catching Psin’s eye, he said, “Targoutai?”

  Psin nodded, confused. Rijart turned. The young man put one hand on his own chest and said, “Gabriel.” He pulled off his glove and held out his hand. Psin recoiled.

  “Take him by the hand,” Rijart said. “That’s how they greet friends here.”

  “I’m not his friend.” Psin rubbed his hand over his chest.

  “Pretend. He’ll be angry if you don’t.”

  Psin clasped his hand around the knight’s, and the knight shook his hand hard, up and down. He had strong fingers. Laughing, he said something to Rijart, and Rijart said, “He says he would like to see you fight, sometime. You have strong hands.”

  “He may. Don’t tell him that.”

  Rijart said something to the young knight, who shrugged. He called out in his own language to one of his friends. They rode on through the pass, beneath the wall of a stone fort that stood at the summit, and down toward the foothills on the far side. Psin edged his horse to one side and looked between two knights. Before them the hills lay tier on tier, falling away from the pass, the gullies clogged with trees. Just at the horizon he could see the flat plain. Steppe land. He settled back into his saddle.