Trouble in the Wind

by Chris Kennedy

  Several ear-splitting cracks were heard.

  “Hand cannon!” Chrysoloras cried.

  The ambassador had dropped back and now crowded up next to Chrysoloras. Orrin’s eyes looked crazy with fear.

  “We will be overrun!” the ambassador wailed.

  More ear-splitting cracks.

  “We can’t go back,” Chrysoloras said, his gaze switching from General Ulugan, to the ambassador, and back again.

  “Then we must go through,” the Mongolian officer said with a glint in his eye. Chrysoloras had seen that look on the faces of fighting men before. He grimaced, but nodded his head in approval. The ambassador moaned with horror at the prospect of wading directly into combat, but Chrysoloras’s bodyguards readied their swords and spears, while Ulugan barked additional orders in Mongolian—which rallied all the remaining riders into a wedge shape, with both generals and the ambassador at the center. As a whole, the wedge rode hard for the skirmish line which blocked the road ahead. As they approached, Chrysoloras raised himself out of his saddle and bellowed for the Eastern Roman line to break in the center.

  Galloping full on, the wedge went directly into the gap.

  At almost the same instant, Ulugan’s riders—who’d gone both east and west—came out of the trees and ran at the Turks from both directions. Men and horses died as a volley of hand cannon fire brought down several dozen riders. But the strength of so much cavalry was too much for the Turks, all of whom had been on foot. They were blown back by the mounted assault like autumn leaves before a storm. Spear tips, driven by ton after ton of horse mass, punctured even the heaviest Turkish armor. Crossbow bolts sank into the faces, chests, and stomachs of the Turks who remained out of reach of the Mongolian spears. And the Eastern Roman formation regrouped and pressed after the Mongolian horses—laying waste to the broken ranks of Turks who were trying to get back on their feet.

  Then, as quickly as the ambush had come, it was done. The combined Mongolian and Eastern Roman force found itself in the clear. Albeit diminished from what they had been before the attack. Scores of horses and men lay in the mud or amongst the trees. Moaning, maimed, and dying. Or dead.

  A few Turks fled on foot for the now-distant village.

  “We have no time,” General Ulugan said, reining in his horse and breathing heavily. His own spear had found its mark no less than three times, and there was blood spattered along one of Ulugan’s legs—though not his blood.

  “We can carry the badly wounded in the wagons,” Chrysoloras implored.

  “Do you have room?” Ulugan said doubtfully.

  “We will make room!” Chrysoloras said with determination.

  “Let it be so,” General Ululgan said, and began giving orders to his riders who remained in their saddles.

  They set about collecting survivors and putting them into the backs of the carts being pulled by the oxen.

  Chrysoloras felt his pulse begin to slow, as the survivors were reorganized, the walking wounded judged fit to march, and weapons or equipment taken from the fallen. Mongolian, Eastern Roman, and Turkish alike. He’d never in his life been that close to an actual fight. The visceral impression it had left on him was like the after-image of a lightning strike, rendering him mildly stunned and unable to shake the quick-seared memory of men vomiting up blood as spears went straight into and through their ribs. Blood so dark it had been almost black. And eyes so wide with shock, the whites had been visible to an absurd degree.

  Then Chrysoloras noticed someone was missing.

  “Orrin?” he said, turning about in his saddle to look at the faces of the other riders.

  The young ambassador was nowhere to be seen.

  “Orrin!” Chrysoloras shouted with alarm. Though he’d never considered the young diplomat to be a friend, the ambassador had still been a kindred servant of the emperor, and someone over whom Chrysoloras felt a degree of paternal responsibility.

  “There, sir,” said Chrysoloras’s aide-de-camp, who’d slung an injured arm with a piece of cloth ripped from a dead Turk.

  The aide-de-camp’s good arm was aimed—finger pointing—at a dead horse still lying in the middle of the muddy road.

  General Ulugan rode over to the spot, to peer down at the body.

  “The ball appears to have taken the top of your diplomat’s head off,” he said plainly.

  Chrysoloras could not bring himself to go look. He closed his eyes tightly shut and nudged his horse around until it faced north again. Then he opened his eyes, swallowed thickly several times, and sent his horse forward.

  Gradually, the column reformed with Chrysoloras and Ulugan at the center. They moved slowly—still encumbered by mud—but made progress steadily until dusk, at which point Ulugan cleared his throat and asked if Chrysoloras was prepared to march into the night.

  “I don’t think the men nor the animals will stand it,” Chrysoloras said.

  “It’s terrible country for bivouacking,” Ulugan remarked.

  “Do you really think the Turks will pursue us in the dark?”

  “The fact we were ambushed tells me that the Turks were aware of my cavalry during our approach to your garrison headquarters and may have additional formations searching the land for us right now.”

  “I still wonder how you knew to where to find my headquarters in the first place?” Chrysoloras asked.

  “Rumors travel. The same rumors which brought the Turks to the river, also reached me. My horses were faster than Turkish feet. And now we’re committed by blood to seeing this alliance through.”

  “So it would seem,” Chrysoloras admitted, thinking of the ambassador, whose death had been as random as any foot soldier’s. Was that the fundamental essence of war? To die without a chance to give the moment meaning? There was a coldness to this realization which went far beyond the chill of the night air. No matter how tightly Chrysoloras wrapped his topcoat around himself, he couldn’t stop the shivers.

  “We go until you think it’s appropriate not to go,” he said glumly.

  They traveled until the horns of the moon showed themselves, then the cohort bedded down for the remainder of the night.

  * * *

  Per habit, Chrysoloras skipped breakfast. He found General Ulugan breaking camp with his riders, and sought his counterpart’s counsel as to their next move.

  “It stands to reason that neither the Timurids nor the Turks control the northern shores of the Black Sea,” Ulugan said. “If that is your preferred route then we must circle north and west until we find a port with ships capable of ferrying you back to your capitol. I would go with you, then. I will dispatch one of my lieutenants—with the rest of my cohort—to return to our people and share the news that we Yuan and you Eastern Romans are discussing friendship.”

  “If the Ming Dynasty has closed all of China to you, and the Golden Horde refuses kinship, where are your people now? Are they all living as nomads?”

  “Scattered like dandelion seeds across the vastness of the Kazakh wilderness. It’s hard there. And the Yuan are strangers to the land. We have been scratching an existence from the mountains for too long. In another generation we could forget ourselves completely, unless we forge a new home elsewhere. My khan believes the three seas will protect us, as they presently protect the Turks.”

  “Which makes your job of eventually taking the land from the Turks just that much more difficult,” Chrysoloras said bluntly.

  “We expect Eastern Roman assistance, of course,” Ulugan said.

  “My emperor’s war chests are filled with spider webs these days,” Chrysoloras said. “He has spent us to the brink of dissolution to pay for mercenaries who shore up the home guard which watches uneasily over the western shore of the Bosporus. I fear that once the Yuan are deeply involved in the campaign, my emperor may desire to let you and the Turks exhaust one another. Then he tries to take Ottoman lands for himself.”

  “Palaiologos would be that conniving?” Ulugan said, shocked.

  “He
is a creature of his court,” Chrysoloras said, shrugging. “Is your khan that much different?”

  General Ulugan had to think on the matter for a moment.

  “No,” he finally admitted. “Though I would not dare say such things if I were closer to the khan’s throne.”

  “And you won’t catch me uttering a word of this anywhere near Constantinople,” Chrysoloras said, smiling.

  “We each serve imperfect masters,” Ulugan grunted.

  “That much is for certain,” Chrysoloras agreed.

  Before the combined assembly could return to the road, a quick roll of the living and the recent dead had to be performed. For those wounded who’d not lasted the night, there was a hasty burial in soft earth, after which the wagons and oxen were pushing north once again.

  Throughout the morning, Ulugan dispatched horse scouts in various directions to discover whether or not any Turkish columns were on the move. He absolutely did not want to be caught surprised a second time. Especially not with news of the limited size of his force having reached the ears of interested Turkish commanders. The next ambush would not be something either the Yuan or the Eastern Romans could simply bull through.

  Chrysoloras noticed that some of the ice which had existed between his men and the Yuan had thawed in the wake of the prior day’s battle. Which merely confirmed for him a thing which he had long suspected: nothing worked to fasten men together better than shared strife. Even men from very different places and who could not understand a thing each other said without interpretation.

  Wounded Yuan warriors rode in the carts alongside wounded Eastern Romans. Water and food were passed around freely. Weapons were examined, compared, changed hands, and then exchanged back again. As if the only thing missing between the two peoples had been a twining moment of suffering, which the ambush had provided. Leading Chrysoloras to privately conclude that the attack—while tragic, especially for the ambassador—had not been so pointless after all. In spite of the lives lost.

  Midday saw a fork in the road, and the cohort took the route west. They were still far enough away from the Black Sea that the water was over the horizon, but sea birds occasionally appeared in the air, and before long clouds began to gather for another autumn storm.

  Which the Mongol horsemen seemed perfectly used to, while the Eastern Romans groaned audibly at the expectation of rain. The march was hard enough for them without getting drenched in the process. And there was nowhere for them to seek shelter until it was time to bivouac again for the night.

  “Too many months with a solid roof over their heads,” Chrysoloras admitted as the first droplets of water began to fall from a gray sky.

  “Nature is forever the soldier’s friend,” General Ulugan remarked dryly, putting his palm out to feel the moisture pattering down in tiny droplets.

  “It has never been my friend,” Chrysoloras said, frowning, as he tried for the hundredth time to draw his topcoat around him more tightly.

  “Just how does a diplomat get assigned a soldier’s duties?” Ulugan asked as his horse plodded beside the horse of his counterpart.

  “Back home,” Chrysoloras replied, “my family has money, friends, and influence. Though I returned from Rome without securing the Pope’s—nor any of the other kingdoms’—support, Emperor Palaiologos couldn’t just put a noose around my neck without the potential loss of an important family who stands to back him for the duration of the war with the Ottoman Turks. But he couldn’t trust me with further diplomatic duties, either. So instead of firing me from the job, he pretended to promote me into another. I was to be made military expeditionary commander to the far side of the Black Sea. It was a position I could not refuse, lest it bring shame and political trouble to my family in turn. So I obeyed as a good servant must obey and went off to endure my punishment. There was little hope of securing a worthwhile alliance in soil so poor as that of Georgia. They have no strength with which to keep Tamerlane at bay, much less Tamerlane and the Turks combined. I have to think we were in fact dropped there as bait, with the Turks as the fish, biting a hook.”

  “My fathers have soldiered for khans going back to the great Kublai,” Ulugan said. “The only time any of us were not riding or marching was when we were making a family—so that more heirs could be bred for service. From the days when I was a boy, the spear and the sword have been my constant companions. I have shed blood time and again for my people. If Jorightu Khan is successful and the Yuan are able to settle in peace in our new homeland, I am not sure what my sons or grandsons will do. Farm? Pick up a trade of some sort? Enlist in the bureaucracy?”

  “I am sure there will still be plenty of soldiering to do in the Southern Yuan Dynasty,” Chrysoloras remarked.

  “True,” Ulugan said, then his chin dipped to his chest. “But there are days lately when this life—the choices I’ve made—make me tired. I would never betray my sworn allegiance to my khan. Absolutely not. But is there another life for me, somewhere else in the world? Another future I might create for my sons?”

  “Creating better futures for sons and daughters would seem to be the primary reason why we’re both out here—despite it all.”

  General Ulugan grunted his agreement.

  And the rain began to fall more heavily.

  * * *

  The scout rider returned with bad news.

  “How many Turks?” General Chrysoloras asked his counterpart.

  “Not Turks this time,” General Ulugan said.

  “Timurid?” Chrysoloras guessed.

  “So it would seem.”

  “They never bothered my people before, so I wonder why they would go to the trouble now?”

  “It’s not your people Tamerlane would be concerned with. It’s the Yuan. I said it before, the Timur are of our blood. And though many of them—including Tamerlane himself—have given their hearts to the Qran, they are still children of that great empire first established by Genghis Khan. And few hatreds are so strong as those which exist between certain siblings. The Golden Horde rejected us, but don’t want war with us. Tamerlane, on the other hand, will see our approach from the northeast as an immediate threat and spare no expense to ensure our failure. The Timur people are not friendly with the Turks, no, but their enmity to the Yuan is deeper than politics. My riders and I are direct evidence, now, that the stories of our migration are to be taken seriously.”

  A rumble of thunder punctuated Ulugan’s final sentence. Rain still fell around them as they huddled beneath a huge tree at yet another fork in the road. All of the men, including their horses, had stopped to get their fill of fresh water in a small, swollen creek that ran parallel to the road and passed over a tiny falls at the fork. At another time, the place would have seemed beautiful. Now it was merely cold and damp, and once the riders and the foot soldiers had taken on as much water as they could handle, the two generals pushed them onward, going northwest.

  At nightfall—the men, the horses, the oxen, all exhausted—news came from a different scout that more Timur troops had been spotted probing inland from the Black Sea. As Chrysoloras had said, the Georgians could do little to prevent Timurid armies from roaming freely across and controlling whatever portions of the land Tamerlane saw fit to decree his. And now a Yuan cavalry force was right in the middle of it.

  Horse scouts were dispatched throughout the night, with orders to return regular reports.

  The situation as it developed by morning was not good.

  “They’ve guessed our objective,” Chrysoloras said, worried.

  “Perhaps,” Ulugan replied. “I still think Tamerlane’s men are less concerned with you and your Eastern Romans than they are with me and my horses. If we can reach a port and secure passage to Constantinople, that’s one thing. But my cohort will still be vulnerable and under the command of less experienced men than myself. I am loathe to leave them on the shore of the Black Sea in this way. I doubt they can escape to return to the rest of our people.”

  “What if we were
to split up?” Chrysoloras said, using his finger to draw in the wet sand where Ulugan had just been making a crude map with the point of a stick.

  “Bad idea,” Ulugan said. “Divided, my cavalry stand even less of a chance than if we stick together.”

  “Sorry,” Chrysoloras said, then rubbed out what he’d been drawing and tried again. “Suppose we leave the entirety of the cavalry together, and just you and I try to make it to a safe port? If there’s a chance for your cohort to make it back to the Kazakh steppe before the crab’s claw of Tamerlane closes, we should afford them that chance. Especially when the Timurid troops don’t know our precise position yet.”

  “And that leaves both you and I completely vulnerable,” Ulugan said, frowning. “Besides, what do we do with your infantry? The carts, and the wounded too?”

  “Have them all go together. Now. Cut across country if they must. Directly north, and keep on going until they’re beyond immediate reach of Timurid troops. Once the cohort are free and clear they can return to your people as time and geography permit.”

  “Stranding strangers in the midst of still other strangers,” Ulugan said, frowning.

  “They won’t stay strangers forever,” Chrysoloras said. “You’ve watched them as well as I have, the past two days. They don’t love each other, to be sure, but they don’t hate each other either. They’re all fighting men with a common purpose. They will figure it out. Besides, consider it a kind of guarantee. If anything happens to you while we’re en route to Constantinople, they’re on the hook for it. If anything happens to them en route to the Kazakh steppe, you’re on the hook for it. If this alliance is going to last, we have to start making it work at lowest echelon, is that not so? No better time than the present. They will have strong reasons to keep working together. And so will we, frankly. Because I will want to see those men eventually returned home.”