“What are they saying?” Tshant said. “The Russians.”
Djela strained his ears. “I don’t know the words.”
“I’m sure it’s something pleasant.”
Mongke charged by. A clod of earth spun up by his horse’s hoofs struck the half-covered yurt. Tshant shouted, but Mongke did not pause to answer.
“Here come the damned women,” Tshant said. He pulled Djela back, away from the yurt. Their slaves jogged up, baskets of grain on their shoulders, set down the baskets, and went to work on the yurt. They had been sewing shields.
“Ada, can I—”
“Yes.” Tshant was staring up at the city. “Just be back before dark.”
Djela whooped and ran off toward the tethered horses. He wished he had understood what the Russians on the wall had said; still, that Tshant had asked him pleased him. He jerked his horse’s leadrope loose from the line and scrambled up bareback. The only trouble with knowing Russian was that it reminded him of Ana. But his father had said he had a new brother in the Volga camp, and that was worth not having Ana anymore.
He jogged through the belt of yurts around the city, looking for his grandfather. Psin wasn’t supposed to come into the ordu, but they were having trouble with the great gate, and he might have sneaked in to confer with Sabotai. Three women hanging out wash yelled at him for splashing mud into their baskets, and one set a dog on him. He galloped away, leaving the dog barking in the street behind him. When he reached the place where the plateau dropped off into a steep slope, he reined in and looked toward the city.
There was a wide stretch of flat ground between the gate and the slope, and most of the Mongol army was packed onto its western rim. The gate itself was coated in copper, so pitted and dirtied now it didn’t shine even when the sun shone full on it. The shield roof jutted out from it like a tongue from a mouth. While he watched the shield roof shook and swayed, and the Mongols beneath it bolted free. Other Mongols raced up on foot with bows, to keep the Russians off the wall.
The teeming action delighted him. The whole plateau seethed with men and horses running. Overhead, ravens circled, waiting for the dead. Quyuk, his coat draped over his shoulders, cantered his horse down toward Psin’s yurt; Mongke was riding up from the lower camp, and Tshant and Sabotai trotted together to meet them. They would be changing their tactics. Djela drew a deep breath and let it out in a whoop. The cold wind and the wild action made his blood sing. He whipped his horse into a flat run and bounded down the rocky slope toward the open plain.
Quyuk said, “I have enemies enough. You’ve been just to me, and I trust you, even if you hate me.”
Psin glanced at him. In the darkness Quyuk’s face was unreadable. “I don’t hate you.”
Behind them, in the forest that clogged all this slope, two tumans shifted and murmured in the dark. Quyuk said, “You set Tshant against me. We used to be friends.”
“You set Tshant against yourself. You shouldn’t have tried to bully him.”
“Do you think we’ll take the city tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Tshant is ... I don’t think between here and Korea there’s a better fighter.”
“There isn’t.”
“But he doesn’t use it to effect at all.”
“He’s under a disadvantage,” Psin said. He pulled the top off his quiver. The sword dragged at his belt, and he eased it. Quyuk said nothing, and Psin said, “Why don’t you ask me what it is?”
“Because you’ll tell me anyway.”
“It’s that he is my son.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. You take it so seriously. We’re all working under the same disadvantage. Consider Mongke.”
Psin laughed.
“What was your father like?”
Psin looked up at the city. Its walls were rimmed with torchlight, and he could see the sentries marching along the ramparts. “Big, strong and stupid, like me.”
“That sounds like something I said to you when I was drunk. If I did I didn’t mean it.”
Under the shield roofs, it would be hot, close, and noisy. If a horse stumbled or a man fell, there would be no rising. Sabotai was suddenly enamored of night fighting, probably because of the burning lights.
“I was very fond of my father,” Psin said. “Everybody said it was unusual. It runs in my blood, the sons always hate the fathers. But my father died when I was young, just thirteen. Maybe that was it.”
Quyuk’s horse pawed at the ground, and Quyuk whacked it on the shoulder. He jabbed his chin toward the torchlit wall above them on the crown of the bluff. “They must know we’re coming.”
“Sabotai thinks they’ve lost their heart for fighting.” Most of the Kievan men had died in the fighting outside the city. Besides, half of the Mongols were gathered up in front of the copper gate; they’d been unable to break it, but during the afternoon they’d built another shield roof here, on the south, and chopped the gate-doors to pieces. Once inside, Psin was supposed to see that the copper gate was forced from within. He doubted Kiev had enough men to defend both gates simultaneously.
“Did my grandfather kill your father?”
“Yes,” Psin said.
“Would you be angry if I asked why you were spared?”
“When I went back to my people, after my father was dead, I had two choices. I could go for protection to Totoqua, the Grand Khan of the Merkits, or to Temujin. I went to Temujin.”
“Even though he killed your father.”
Psin nodded. “There goes the rocket.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t feel like dying.” He jerked his head to the standard-bearer. “Two short blues.”
The standardbearer pulled the strings on the lantern, and overhead the rocket exploded. Fountains of light poured down on Kiev.
Every Mongol on this slope yelled, and the sound lifted Psin and Quyuk like a wave and carried them headlong up the stony slope. Sentries rushed madly around toward the south gate. A shower of stones pelted them. Psin took a deep breath and held it. They charged in under the shield roof. The dun tried to swerve away but the weight of horses behind them thrust him on. The air under the roof was stale and stank of hide. Horses collided in the dark and neighed, and a man screamed. The things falling on the roof made it drum. Through the smashed gate faint light glimmered, and they struggled toward it. Horses kicked out. Quyuk yelled, “Slow down, behind,” but the pressure only increased, until Psin and Quyuk squirted through the gate and into the narrow open.
“Watch your head,” Psin shouted. “Let’s go—up the wall.”
He wheeled the dun, whipped him close to the wall, and jumped. The defenders were running away—they were old man, children, women. The rampart lay naked and open. Psin hung at arm’s length from the rampart’s edge, swung himself up, and for a moment lay flat, trying to catch his breath. With a crash the barricades fell apart under the sheer weight of the men rushing through.
Quyuk was beside him, and the standardbearer. The streets leading off from the gate were mobbed with horsemen. Psin couldn’t see a Russian anywhere.
“Two reds, two blues,” he said. “Quyuk. Round up as many men as you can and clear the wall.”
“It’s already—”
The building opposite Psin exploded into flames. Heat washed over him, and he staggered back. Quyuk was running north along the wall, shouting, and half the men packed into the street below him scrambled up onto their saddles and leapt onto the rampart. They drew their swords and charged off, yelling. Psin peeled off his coat. The light from the blazing building would make it hard for Sabotai to see his lanterns.
“Douse the lanterns. Nobody can see them. We’ll have to yell.” He looked back over the wall. The next tuman was mounted on bay horses. The standardbearer was trimming his lanterns, lined neatly against the inside of the rampart. Psin said, “Climb up on the gate frame and tell me what’s happening.”
The man rushed off. Psin knelt and called down to the men moving t
hrough the gate. “Who is your commander?”
“Buri.”
“Here,” Buri said. He rode up. “Where do I go?”
“Get up on the wall and clear it. Go west.” Psin pointed. “No prisoners, remember.” He stood up again and looked down to Sabotai’s post. The lanterns ranged there were blinking steadily.
Buri charged off. On the gate frame, the standardbearer called, “I can’t see any resistance anywhere. Maybe in the houses. The square is full of people. Women, children. Old men.”
“Any Mongols there?”
“No.”
“The copper gate. What’s there?”
“Sentries. A barricade.”
Psin bent down and hailed the nearest officer, a thousand-commander from Buri’s tuman. “Take your men and ride to the copper gate. Force it. There will be men on the outside waiting. There is a barricade and sentries.”
He straightened up and looked down the slope toward Sabotai. The lanterns there were signaling that he didn’t understand Psin’s signals. He swore. The building behind him was still flaming. He took three lanterns, strung them together, and lowered them over the outside of the wall.
“There’s fighting on the wall near the copper gate,” the man on the gate frame shouted. “Buri and his men.”
Psin nodded. He pulled the strings on the lanterns, and Sabotai’s winked back to confirm. Half a tuman broke out of the ordered ranks behind Sabotai’s post and rode toward the south gate. Psin sent the next thousand-commander through the gate down to help Buri.
“Psin,” Mongke shouted. He galloped through the gate and whirled his horse to look up. “There’s no fighting—what do I do?”
“Standardbearer, how do you get to the square?”
“Take this street all the way down,” the man called from the gate frame. He had hooked his legs over the crossbar and was swinging lightly; every time a new band of Mongols struggled through the gate the timbers quaked.
“Go to the square,” Psin said to Mongke. “It’s full of people. Remember that they are not to live—none but the smallest children. And loot the houses.”
Mongke galloped away, and his men raced after him.
“The copper gate’s fallen,” the man on the gate said. “Tshant’s tuman is coming through. Batu is with them—I can see his banner.”
Only Batu would bring banners into a city in the middle of the night. “What’s burning?”
“Only this building.”
“Good.”
“Batu is signaling—he’s sent Tshant to clear the eastern side. Yeeow!”
The gate was coming down. The man clung with both hands. Men streamed through the gate—Kadan, Kaidu. Psin bawled to them to get clear. The frame shook, swayed, and collapsed grandly into the city. The standardbearer leapt clear just before the crossbar broke in half.
Kadan was yelling, and Psin bent to hear him. Kadan cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Sabotai says that we are to start looting if you think—”
“Yes. Go. Start at this end. There shouldn’t be anything burning yet. I haven’t seen a Russian since I came in.”
“He wants to know why you don’t signal.”
“I will. Goon.”
They scattered into the streets around them. Psin drew back to the wall. The standardbearer was climbing back up, unhurt. The roar of the fire across from them was dimming, and Psin could hear the timbers crashing inside. There was no sound of fighting.
“One yellow, three red,” he said to the standardbearer. “The lanterns are all over the side.
The man leaned over to see. The last of Kadan’s tuman dribbled through the gate and galloped off. The silence was unnatural, pricked through with yells and the sound of this fire. There was nobody in the street beneath Psin.
He sat down, putting his coat on again. The standardbearer said, “Two white from Sabotai.”
“Two white.” Psin rubbed his jaw.
“Withdraw,” the man said, helpfully.
“I know. Can you see Batu’s post from here?”
“No.”
“See if you can rig up a mast and run the lanterns up on it.”
“It would be easier to—”
“Wait. Here comes Mongke.”
Mongke rode up, alone. Psin called, “Go over and find out what’s happening in the southern part of the city. What have you done?”
“We are killing them.” Mongke’s mouth drew crooked. “You know I have no stomach for it. Ask if we may spare the mothers of the children. Otherwise it would be more merciful to kill them all, to the last infant.”
“Yes.” Psin turned to the lanterns and swung back. “My order. All the mothers of suckling children may live. Go find out—”
“I will.” Mongke rode back toward the square to change his order.
Psin sat down on his heels. By the Yasa every creature in Kiev had to die, because of the Mongol envoy killed. But Sabotai had said that the children should live, and now the mothers were to live. The law was losing its meaning. Tuli, Mongke’s father, had cut the heads off all the corpses in Nishapur, so that none could live by feigning death. “Consider Mongke,” Quyuk had said.
Women, weeping and screaming, pushed down the big street toward the gate. Mongols herded them. Three men galloped up to stand guard by the gate, and the women started through. The weeping had died abruptly, as if they were all too tired to cry. Their faces were slack with despair. Most of them clutched children, but none of them held more than one, and several had none at all. Psin chewed his mustaches. Mongke was stretching the order. The women filed out beneath the eyes of the guards, who kept them from shoving or stopping. One woman paused, just beneath Psin, to wait until there was room; she held a child of two or three years in her arms. The child’s head lay on the woman’s shoulder, and its big eyes stared up at Psin. It looked neither frightened nor angry, just tired. The woman found a place in line and went on.
Mongke rode up. “Batu has told Tshant that he and his men could loot in the south. There is no resistance. All the men are dead.”
“Send all your men out. We’re supposed to withdraw. Go back and tell Batu, will you?”
“Withdraw? It’s not looted yet.”
“Kadan and Quyuk will do the looting. We’ll split it up afterward. Go on.”
Mongke called over his shoulder to a thousand-commander and sent him to Batu. Psin said, “If you’re going out, make sure these people don’t get into our camp.”
Mongke waved and rode out after the women. Buri and his men rode up and organized themselves into double columns to leave. Mongke’s gate guards had gone with him. Batu cantered up with his men and went out before Buri. Psin saw him collecting the women and moving them to a place to camp. He was playing khan, protecting his people as soon as they became his people. It made an interesting point: when did a conquered Russian become the responsibility of his khan?
Kadan and Quyuk appeared, and wagons moved in through this gate to transport the plunder. They would loot street by street and burn it all afterward. Psin stayed on the wall until he was sure everyone was out who was not with Quyuk and Kadan. When he left, the moon was rising, a thin scrap of pale yellow. Down in the Mongol camp, dogs began to bark, and a little inside the city wall, Russian dogs answered.
“Quyuk is gone,” Kaidu said.
Psin nodded. “Did Buri go with him?”
“Yes.”
Tshant moved a pawn, and Psin frowned at the board. He did not like chess. He always did well enough at the beginning but when the game drew out his mind drifted on to other things and any child could beat him. Djela, hanging over the edge of the table, said softly, “Grandfather, look.” He pointed to the threatened elephant.
“Will he be the Kha-Khan when Ogodai dies?” Kaidu said.
“Who, Buri?” Tshant slapped at his son. “Djela, don’t tell him what to do.”
Djela folded his arms on the edge of the table and rested his chin on his hands.
“No. Quyuk, o
f course.”
“Turakina will have it for him, if she can,” Psin said. “And Oghul Ghaimish.”
“The sorceress,” Kaidu said. “Who drives out men’s souls from their bodies.” He pulled over a stool and sat down.
Psin remembered Oghul Ghaimish, her face with its treacherous mouth and the long flat eyes. They said that Quyuk had married her under a spell.
“There are better men for the Khanate than Quyuk,” Kaidu said.
“None in the bloodline,” Tshant said. “Quyuk is very capable.”
“Quyuk is a drunk. Batu—”
“Check,” Tshant said.
“Grandfather,” Djela said, in a pained whisper.
“Don’t you think Batu should be the Kha-Khan?” Kaidu said.
Psin looked up, amazed. “No. Of course not.”
“He is the heir of the eldest son—”
Psin got up and pulled Kaidu away from the others. He heard Djela arguing with Tshant; Djela wanted to finish Psin’s game. Near the window, Psin looked out and saw no one and turned back to Kaidu.
“You know the story about Juji. Batu will never be the Kha- Khan. Nor any other of Juji’s blood.”
“No one ever proved—”
“Temujin was sure. Why else would he call him the Guest? Borte was almost a year in somebody else’s yurt. Don’t mention it. There’s bad blood from here to Lake Baikal about it.”
“Batu—”
“Batu would like to be the Kha-Khan. So would all the Altun.”
“I am of the Ancestor’s blood.”
Kaidu’s face was flaming, and his mouth grew tight. Psin said, “I believe it. You know that Borte was thieved away by Merkits—When I was a child I knew the man Temujin thought was Juji’s father. There was nothing of him in Juji.”
“Then why—”
“When the Merkits attacked, Temujin fled. He left Borte behind. He had less than a dozen men—he couldn’t have defended her, he would only have died. It was his fault she was taken, and he always knew it. But he wasn’t a man who liked to be reminded of his mistakes. Juji reminded him.”
“It’s unjust.”
Until the Sun Falls Page 38
