Until the Sun Falls (20 page)

“The Russian field army is on the Sit’ River,” Sabotai said. “Halfway to Novgorod. They aren’t coming to meet us.”

“I know where they are,” Psin said. “I camped there while I scouted Novgorod. He’ll be waiting for an army from the north.”

Tshant and Buri had caught up with them the day after they left Moskva. Buri’s face carried bruises on each cheek, and Tshant had a broken nose, but neither of them would talk about what had happened.

“Let me go support Quyuk,” Buri said. “Maybe we can—”

“No.” Sabotai glanced at Psin, who nodded. “No. First we have to take Vladimir.”

“Cut him off from his supply base,” Tshant growled. He rode on Sabotai’s left; Buri rode on his right. “Are you stupid, whelp?”

Buri spat at him, and Sabotai jerked back. “If you must fight, don’t do it across me.”

The Kipchaks grumbled at the pace Sabotai was forcing. They thought they had done well enough at Moskva to earn a rest. Buri thought that Sabotai should ease the drive enough so that the baggage train could keep up. Psin and Tshant shouted him down, and they left the baggage train behind with half a tuman to guard it.

“We’ll lose all our plunder,” Buri said.

“We can always steal it back again.”

Tshant and Buri fought without pause. They argued over the cooking fires, they taunted each other in the dark while sensible people were trying to sleep, and they rammed into each other during the day’s riding. Three days after they’d left Moskva, Buri lost his temper completely and started to flog Tshant with his riding whip, and Tshant yanked out his bow and flogged back, and they galloped the length of the army beating one another while the soldiers hooted and jeered them.

“Let them fight,” Sabotai said. “It sharpens their wits.”

Psin sat twisted in his saddle, one hand on the horse’s rump, and watched the two racing back and forth. The snow in their tracks was flecked with lather and blood. “Somehow I think your reasoning rather too fine.”

Buri’s horse, wheeling, slipped and somersaulted, sending Buri headfirst into a snowdrift.

“Think what the army will say about their commanders,” Baidar said.

Buri clawed himself out of the snow, ran to his horse, and without missing a stride hurled himself into the saddle. He set out again after Tshant.

“They’ll say that the Altun ride like leopards,” Sabotai said mildly. “Superb co-ordination.”

Tshant drove his horse square into Buri’s. Both horses fell.

“Rough on the mounts,” Baidar said.

Psin cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Scouts coming.”

Tshant froze, halfway into the saddle, and looked ahead of the army. Four men were galloping down. Buri mounted and cantered back to his place in line, casing his bow, and Tshant following didn’t try to catch up.

“Can you keep discipline if they fight like that?” Baidar said.

“Some men are not to be disciplined,” Sabotai said.

“The Ancestor—”

“Those were the Ancestor’s words,” Sabotai said. “Temujin said that to me thirty years ago.”

Psin rode out a little to meet the scouts. He heard Baidar say, “He must have been speaking of slaves.”

“Vladimir is just ahead,” the first scout said, and Psin nodded. He turned to call Mongke.

Sabotai said, “He was speaking of a young man who sometimes disobeyed orders, but always for the better.”

“Mongke,” Psin shouted.

The army stopped talking and tensed, eager; they knew when the commanders sent for Mongke they were about to fight.

“Who was it?” Baidar said.

Mongke galloped up the line.

Sabotai said, “It was Psin.”

Psin jerked around to face him. Sabotai lifted his head and smiled. Psin’s gaze dropped to the snow at his horse’s feet. In his memory he saw Temujin’s fierce eyes.

Dead Psin, they might call you, soon enough.

Mongke said, “Vladimir is just over the horizon.”

“Yes,” Psin said.

Sabotai crowded his horse in between them. “Then let’s go take it,” he said.

Tshant jogged through the camp, looking for his father. Djela had wandered off and Tshant knew he would be with Psin. He glanced up once at Vladimir’s great wall. Sabotai had offered the city terms: if they surrendered outright, no one would be killed, but if they resisted, the whole of the people would die. Vladimir was resisting.

“Ada.”

Djela was waving to him from beside a fire near a snow wall. Tshant trotted over and dismounted. “Don’t run off without telling me where you’re going, will you?”

“You were asleep.” Djela sat down. “Grandfather’s gone to talk to Sabotai. When are we going to take the city?”

“Pretty soon.”

“Can I—”

“No.” Tshant picked up a leather jug, shook it, and heard the kumiss sloshing. “I’ve told you. You can’t go into a city until you’re old enough for a man’s bow. Fighting in the open is different. You can always run.”

He drank some of the kumiss and retched; it had honey in it.

“My cousin Buri was here, he was looking for you, and I told him—”

“Buri?”

“Yes. He’s my cousin. I didn’t know that. He says that Mongke is my cousin, too. Mongke taught me a new game.”

“You’ve forgiven him for cutting me up, have you?” 

“You hit him on the head and almost broke his skull, Grandfather says. Anyhow, Grandfather says you wouldn’t get into so much trouble if you didn’t hunt it out. Grandfather—”

“Damn your grandfather. What new game?”

“You play it with string.” Djela pulled a clot of string out of his coat. He untangled it carefully.

“Everybody knows that one.”

“This isn’t the same one.”

Djela wound the string between his fingers. “Now. You do this, and this—” He dropped loops and picked them up again, and the string made a star. “See?”

“That’s very—”

“Tshant.”

Tshant whirled. Buri climbed over the snow wall. He looked around and sat down quickly beside Djela.

“What do you want?”

“I think we should call a truce between us,” Buri said.

Tshant relaxed. “Why?”

“Because it does nobody any good when we fight. You know I’m not afraid of you.” Buri thrust his jaw out.

“I’m not afraid of you either.”

They stared at each other. Djela began to hum a song. Tshant gathered himself to leap on Buri, and Buri hunched his shoulders, ready to meet him. Tshant’s eyes began to itch. Abruptly they looked away simultaneously.

“All right,” Tshant said. “Truce.”

“Good.” Buri leaned forward. “You know they’re fighting, on the other side of the city.”

“Yes.” Vladimir stood on a crossroads, and the gigantic main gate opened up across the city from Psin’s camp. The garrison had been trying to foray out ever since the Grand Duchess declined Sabotai’s terms, but each time the Mongols had turned them back.

“And you heard what your father did at Moskva.”

“He burnt out part of the wall and rode through it.”

“I say we ought to try that here. Not to ride through it. But if we burn out a part of their wall, they’ll have to post more men at the breach to hold it, and they may weaken the guard on the main gate enough to let us in.” 

“Hunh.” Tshant looked toward the city. They’d been here now for four days, waiting for something to happen—for Sabotai to think of something. “We could try it.”

“If I mention it in the council, will you support me?”

“Yes.” Tshant moved closer to him. “We’d better work out the details first, though. Where do you think we should start?”

“I thought of it,” Psin said. “But they’ve soaked the wall with water. It won’t burn, it’s too wet.”

Buri leaned forward. His hands opened and closed. “Tshant and I talked about that. We think we can dry out the wall if we light bonfires under it.”

Psin glanced at Tshant, startled. Tshant was listening intently. Sabotai shifted a little and said, “And what are we to use for fuel, children? Bonfires won’t burn on nothing.”

Tshant said, “The baggage train came up yesterday. Use the carts. Fill them with old clothes, firewood, anything. Smash them up, stack them under the walls—”

“We need the carts,” Sabotai said. He flushed dark red. “This plan of yours is profligate in the extreme.”

“We’ll find other carts in the city,” Batu said. “I like the idea.”

“You would,” Sabotai said. “Kadan?”

“We have some prisoners,” Kadan said. His gaze was unsteady. Psin thought he got confused about sieges: never drunk on campaign, always drunk in his leisure, he’d been half-drunk for two days. “We could use the prisoners to move up the carts.”

Mongke said, “Their water supply is close to the wall. If we burn it out we can cut off their water, maybe.”

Sabotai caught Psin’s eye, and Psin nodded to him. Sabotai leaned back. “Ordu, what do you think?”

Ordu glanced at the rest of Batu’s brothers, and they all nodded in unison. Berke said, “We can’t maintain a siege much longer, Sabotai. We’ve very nearly grazed off the forage.”

“We needn’t use prisoners,” Psin said. “The garrison would kill them as soon as they would us. The catapults could throw bundles of dry wood against the wall, and we could shoot fire arrows into the bundles.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Batu said.

Mongke elbowed him roughly in the ribs. “We’ve agreed on the idea. We’re looking for a way to handle it.”

“Don’t shove me, you—”

Kadan reached out and tore Mongke away from Batu. “Sit down and quipe—and keep quiet.”

Mongke snarled at him. Psin caught his eye and scowled, and Mongke leered back sullenly.

“Stop making faces,” Sabotai said. “I agree with Psin. The catapults are no use to us now.”

Psin looked up at the sky. Just that morning Sabotai had talked of the catapults as if they were the totem of his clan. The black sky was full of stars, and the wind cried over it; the moon was just rising.

He refused to believe that Tshant and Buri were sudden friends. But Djela had said something of it, in his casual way, when Psin came back to his camp in the early afternoon. Maybe Sabotai was right. He sneaked a look at the two of them, sitting side by side; Buri was expounding the advantages of burning down various specific parts of the wall. Tshant, watching Sabotai’s face, murmured something, and Buri slipped in a smooth appeal to Sabotai’s vanity. Sabotai snorted, unflattered.

Mongke said, “The well they get most of their water from is here.” He jabbed a thumb at the sketch of the wall in the dirt before them. “It’s very close to this angle. If we can collapse the wall in upon it—”

“How can we do that?” Kadan said, and slapped at him. Mongke slid easily out of Kadan’s reach.

“We can catapult stones into the wall while it burns.”

“Oh.” Sabotai looked at Psin. Amusement danced in his eyes, and Psin wrinkled his nose at him.

“At any rate,” Batu said, “we can’t linger. We have to take Vladimir and go catch the Grand Duke’s army before their reinforcements from Novgorod reach them.”

“We’ll try this tomorrow,” Sabotai said. “Mongke’s suggestion of the wall near the well satisfies me. We can break up six or seven carts and tie them into bundles. We’ll have to arrange for a continuous volley of arrows to rake the top of the wall so the garrison can’t wet down the carts before they get burning well enough. Buri can see to that.”

Buri nodded and started to get up.

“Sit down. I’m not through. To hold the defenders off the wall, we’ll need to shift many of the men now grouped before the main gate over to Buri’s command. Tshant will be in charge of holding the main gate while we try this trick. Batu and I will supervise the use of the catapults, and Psin and Kadan will organize some effective diversion elsewhere along the wall.”

Kadan lurched upright. “What kind of diversion?”

“You and Psin may decide that.”

Psin said, “We’ll take the battering ram over to the north gate.”

“I need it,” Tshant said.

“Do without it.”

“You cut your own. The ram is there, and it stays there.”

Psin stared at him. “
You
cut your own. You wouldn’t have remembered about the ram if I hadn’t mentioned it first.”

“Of course I would have.”

Sabotai said, “Psin, take the ram. Tshant’s men can cut down one of the trees at the foot of the hill. Are there any questions?”

Tshant’s teeth clicked shut. Psin looked off, past Mongke’s right ear. Mongke seemed interested in something; he was thinking hard, and slowly he turned his head to look straight at Psin.

“No questions,” Sabotai said. “It’s late. Let’s get some sleep. We’ll start before dawn tomorrow.”

“Keep moving, you oxen!” With his bow Psin beat at the men jamming the street. He could see nothing. The shouts and yells of the men drowned out his voice. He took a deep breath to shout again and tasted the smoke in the air. The roof of a house just across the way from him was smoldering—falling embers must have caught in its thatch. “Great God—move!”

The mob shuffled forward, the horses fought, the men howled and shot useless arrows at nothing. Psin looked over his shoulder. The main gate lay hardly six lengths behind him, and through the shattered uprights hundreds of horsemen poured, to collide with the men already crushed together in the street.

“Father.”

Tshant was on the roof above his head, clinging with one hand to the coping. “They’ve thrown up barricades ahead—get them shoving. That’s the only way we’ll—”

“I’ve been,” Psin roared. “What’s happening?”

“Fires all through the quarter where we burnt the wall.” Tshant looked out over the city. “They’re looting in this section and we’ve not even taken the citadel yet.”

Psin kicked his horse, and the dun surged forward, nipping, driving the horses in front of him. Abruptly the dun shied back. In the narrow opening he left in the pack Psin could see two dead men in the street, trampled to gore. He whipped the dun across them.

“Look out,” Tshant cried. He swung himself up onto the roof and ran easily along the edge toward the alley. A flight of arrows thumped into the roof where he had been. He leapt down into the alley.

“Russians,” Psin shouted. “Blue flank—”