Until the Sun Falls

by Cecelia Holland

“No. They shoot stones at us with catapults, now and then, and all night they were popping fire arrows over the wall. Odd people. They d-don’t seem to know that snow won’t burn.”

  “They’re frightened,” Psin said.

  “They should be. I have some Kipchaks, you know. And they’re going to take Moskva or die, so they’re quite definitely going t-to take it.”

  “We had a ride getting here. Oh. Sabotai’s invented a whole new signal. Four short and two long mean ‘trees ahead, bear south.’ Remember that, it might prove useful.”

  Kadan frowned. “I didn’t know—”

  “I’m joking. I have to go find him.”

  “Where is my brother?”

  “Sabotai sent him off hunting for the Russian field army.”

  “Good. I’d hate to have to share a siege with him.”

  “We won’t siege it.”

  He turned his horse and jogged over to Sabotai’s camp. Three men were busy rigging up a sort of tent, using lances and a bearskin. Sabotai sat before a fire warming his feet. His boots stood beside him, the laces dangling.

  “I’m sorry about the signal,” he called, when Psin rode in. “Esugai heard me to say four long. Something must have cut up the first two long flashes.”

  “Trees.” Psin dismounted and a man took his horse. “This looks like a village.”

  “It’s not an important city.” Sabotai curled his toes. “Except to me.”

  “Which way did you send Quyuk?”

  Sabotai grinned. “I thought you’d figure out about that. I sent him over toward Tver. If the Grand Duke is there he could be troublesome. If he’s not he won’t bother us.”

  “Tver is… west of here?”

  “West and north. Here. Drink.”

  “God. You’ve put honey on it. How can you ruin kumiss like that?”

  “Because I’m an old man.”

  “Tell me when you get arthritis.”

  “We can storm it this afternoon, I think. Look at them up there. They’re gawking at us.”

  Psin finished the bowl of kumiss. “It’s not going to be so easy. That’s a steep ride to the main gate.”

  “I have men cutting battering rams, and when the baggage train gets here we’ll have catapults. We can scale the wall with ropes.”

  “Kipchaks first, of course.”

  Sabotai nodded happily. “Batu’s brothers are out looking for the best places on the wall.”

  “I’m sure you’re going to create a diversion. What?”

  “You.”

  “You’re very funny, Sabotai. Do I dance?”

  “If you’d like to. You should take half a tuman and set fire to the wall at some point opposite the one we’re trying to storm.”

  “Better than climbing up a rope. Can I choose my men?”

  “Yes, if you want.”

  “I’ll take Mongke’s honor guard and Arcut Boko, the thousand-commander who went with me to Novgorod. That’s three hundred men. I don’t need half a tuman.”

  “If the wall collapses—”

  “I doubt it will, but if it does three hundred men can hold a breach.”

  A courier was picking his way through the camp toward them.

  Psin stood up. The man trotted his horse over and saluted.

  “I come from Quyuk Noyon. He has good information that the Russian army is gathering on the Volga due north of Vladimir.”

  Sabotai jerked his head toward Psin. “Find Mongke.” To the courier, he said, “How reliable is this?”

  “Very. We met some of the tuman that’s scattered over this country and they say they had to run from the army only six days ago.”

  Psin had sent a slave to Mongke’s camp. He swung around. “They won’t stay on the Volga, they’ll go north, toward Novgorod. If they stay on the Volga they run the risk of being encircled.”

  “Do they know that?” Sabotai said.

  “I should think so.”

  “Well, then.” Mongke was coming; Sabotai nodded to the courier. “Go back to Quyuk and tell him to maintain contact with the army and harass them if possible. Mongke, assign one of your scouts to take Baidar and his tuman to Kolomna.”

  Mongke nodded. His coat was thrown loosely over his shoulders, and he thrust one arm through the sleeve. “I’ll go.”

  “No. We need you. Let Baidar command alone.”

  Psin said, “Sabotai, maybe—”

  A roar went up from the walls of the city above them. The gate had swung open. Psin shaded his eyes with his hand. A company of knights was riding out down the road, pennants flapping over their heads, and they had a truce flag hitched to one bannerstaff. Sabotai muttered something under his breath.

  “Psin, go find out what they want.”

  Psin took the courier’s lathered horse. This whole side of the Mongol camp was on its feet, watching. Most of the men held their bows ready. The knights proceeded solemnly down the steep road toward them. The city’s ramparts swarmed with people watching.

  “What is it?” Batu shouted.

  Psin waved at him and shrugged. He rode at a canter to meet the oncoming Russians.

  They stopped and waited for him; there were twenty of them, all glistening in their armor, their full beards lying on their breasts. The banners crackled in the stiff wind.

  “Do you speak Russian?” one of them bawled, when Psin was within talking range.

  Psin reined up. “Passably. What do you want?”

  Their leader stepped his horse forward. “I would speak with Batu Khan.”

  “Batu is indisposed.”

  “Sabotai, then.”

  “Sabotai as well.”

  The man laid one gloved hand on his yellow beard. His eyes darted over the camp. “To whom do I speak?”

  “I am Sabotai’s chief aide.”

  The men behind the leader cried out. They wanted to talk to Batu, not to a subordinate. Sabotai himself would not do. The leader swung and silenced them and turned stiffly back to Psin, his armor creaking.

  “What is your name?”

  “Psin Khan. They call me Psin the Stubborn.”

  “We come to warn you that your doom is at hand. While your puny army lingers here the Grand Duke Yuri marches against you with five hundred thousand men.”

  Psin’s mouth twitched. “Even if that were so our doom would rest in God’s hands and not the Grand Duke’s. But Yuri is on the Volga and he hasn’t gathered up all his men yet. We shall have Moskva by nightfall.”

  A young man behind the leader called, “Come and try, pagan.” The others rumbled angrily and nodded. Their hands tightened around their lances. Psin looked them over, still smiling, and lifted his reins.

  “If you’ve nothing more to do than tell us about ghost armies, I’ll go.”

  The leader raised one hand to keep his men quiet. “Do you have the power to make terms?”

  The young man shouted, “Never.”

  Psin nodded. “Sabotai speaks through me.”

  “And Batu?”

  These people obviously thought Batu was the commander. Psin dropped his reins on his horse’s neck. “Batu as well.”

  “What terms for the peaceful surrender of Moskva?”

  “No,” the young man cried.

  “Complete surrender,” Psin said. “We will sack the city and burn it. The people will be slaves.”

  For once the company was silent, their eyes filled with shock. The leader said, “Is there no mercy in you?”

  “Mercy enough. You will live. If you don’t surrender, you’ll die.”

  “And many of you as well.”

  Psin shrugged. “Everybody dies. I’ve said what the terms are.”

  The leader looked away, toward the river. Behind him the young man dropped the point of his lance. “We shall never surrender,” he shouted. His horse bolted forward. The leader whirled, throwing one hand out to stop him, but the young man only brushed past. The lance was aimed at Psin’s chest.

  Psin whipped his horse around. The youn
g man tried to follow but his horse, bigger and more burdened, couldn’t turn so fast. The lance wavered past Psin, close enough that he could have caught it. His horse reared, and the young man fought his own horse around to bring the lance to bear.

  Six arrows impaled him, all at once. They thrust up from his chest, his side, his throat, and out of the Mongol camp rose a deep snarl like a bear’s inside a cave. The young man pitched out of his saddle and lay on the frozen ground, face up.

  Psin flung his arm up to stop the charge he knew was coming. To the leader he said, “Get back inside your wall.”

  “We are not truce-breakers,” the Russian said. “He was mad—”

  “He was a Russian—you all lie. Get inside before I let them kill you all.”

  He galloped off down the slope. The Mongols strained, waiting for the single order to charge. When he cantered into the camp a cheer ripped out of them. The thousand-commanders, riding bareback, raced up and down the lines to keep order. Psin jogged back to Sabotai’s camp.

  “What did they want?” Sabotai said. “Other than your blood.”

  “Terms. I told them.”

  The courier from Quyuk was gone. Mongke and Batu were stringing meat on an iron spit. One of Mongke’s hands was red with raw juice, and his sleeve was soaked. Psin dismounted. “What happened to you?”

  “h,” Mongke said, laughing. “When that Russian charged you I had a chunk of meat in my hand, and I squeezed it too hard.”

  “Will they take the terms?” Sabotai asked.

  “No.”

  Sabotai looked relieved.

  “Fire,” Psin called.

  Mongke’s guard drew their bows and shot. The fire-arrows hurtled up into the blue sky, trailing smoke, and slipped down into the wall. The defenders on the ramparts screeched something. Psin trotted back and forth behind his line, watching the arrows burn down. “Light them.”

  The defenders leaned off the wall to beat at the flames with sacks and coats. Psin lifted one hand, dropped it to his side, and shouted. Another volley of arrows streaked across the slope. On the wall a man took one through the chest and fell, tumbling, into the snow at the foot of the wall.

  Dim under the roar of the fires burning at intervals along his line, the screams and cheers of the fighting on the far side of the city reached Psin’s ears. The defenders scurrying back and forth on the walls would sometimes throw up their arms, pointing back across the city’s roofs. When the arrows flew again, they whirled back and began to pour cauldrons of water down the wall.

  “Fire at will,” Psin called. He reined the dun horse down and laid both hands on the saddle pommel.

  The wall was burning, down near the foot. Heavy black smoke rolled up, blotting the wall out of their sight. Psin kicked the dun into a jog again. “Can’t you shoot any faster than that? Are you Mongols or Chinese? Arcut, get your half of the line firing at the top of the wall.”

  “We can’t see it, Khan.”

  Off near the main gate something crashed; horses began to whinny and a lot of people shouted all at once.

  “What do you mean, you can’t see it? You know it’s there, don’t you? Shoot faster, you fumble-fingered crossbred pack oxen.”

  The air between the line and the wall was a constant bridge of arrows. Smoke rolled thickly across the wall. The wind changed, and the smoke blew suddenly away. This whole section of the wall streamed flames. No Russian stood on the rampart behind it. Arcut bellowed, “Remember where—” The smoke swept back across the wall, and Arcut cursed it.

  A plume of smoke rose from the far side of the city, the color and shape of a whirlwind. Psin stood in his stirrups. He was sure the smoke came from inside the wall.

  “Arcut. Mount up your half of the line. Get your ropes out, and let’s pull that wall down.”

  Half the line broke and ran for their grazing mounts. Arcut ran past Psin, slowed just enough to say, “Are you out of your mind?” and caught his horse. Psin unhitched his rope from the cantle of his saddle and galloped in toward the flaming wall.

  He could feel the heat long before he was halfway there, even through his leather armor. The smoke was filthy with embers. The dun slackened, and Psin talked him on. He charged into the smoke, coughed, choked, and held his breath. The wall rose up before him, at the top of a small cliff—high as a pine tree, blazing, the wall leaned inward already. Psin beat his way through the smoke. He could hear people screaming on the far side of the wall. His lungs ached from not breathing.

  The smoke blew away, and he gulped the delicious air. The roar of the flames and the heat made the dun flinch back. Arcut and his men were close behind him. Arrows thudded into the burning wall.

  “You didn’t tell them to stop firing,” Arcut yelled.

  Psin tied a great knot in the end of his rope and flung it up. The knot caught between two of the logs in the wall just at the edge of the blaze, but the wind bellied it out and it swayed across the flames. Before Psin could pull it taut it fell back, burned in half.

  “Stay upwind of it.”

  Some Russians still clung to the wall, just to windward of the burning; they hurled rocks and pots at the Mongols. A shard bounced off the dun’s shoulder. Psin swung around and waved his arms at the rest of his bowmen, still firing grimly into the wall. He pointed straight up and over toward the unburnt section, and they shifted their aim. A rock struck him in the small of the back and he gasped.

  The stretch of wall windward of the blaze was smoking, and the Russians were retreating back along it, away from the heat. A great splintering roar burst up from the smoke and flame, and the wall caved in of itself. Arcut and three other men had gotten ropes over the wall where it was smoking and were urging their horses away from it.

  “Get in there or you won’t get to plunder,” Psin shouted. “Sabotai is in the city. Hurry up.”

  “We’re hurrying,” Arcut shouted. “This damned—” A chunk of paving stone smashed into the side of his face. He reeled; Psin caught the reins of his horse and kept it pulling while Arcut recovered. Blood streamed down the side of his face.

  The wall swayed, and the men tugging at it cheered. Smoke drifted over them. The wind was changing again. Psin threw Arcut his reins, twisted around, and waved the rest of his men in. They whirled after their horses. The wall split and cracked and with a high crash pitched forward toward them.

  “In. In. Go on, you idiots, you’ll lose your plunder.”

  They charged up the steep slope; their horses clawed their way across the fallen wall and into the city. A group of Russians on foot waited for them, hayforks and spades in their hands. When Psin’s men swung toward them the Russians turned and screaming fled down a street toward the center of the city. Psin pulled his bow out of the case and followed them.

  “Eeeeeyyyyyiiiiiaaaah!”

  The dun horse never faltered; when he reached the last of the fleeing Russians he ran right over him. Psin heard the man whine under the great hoofs. The street forked, and he reined the dun to the left. A shower of stones and household goods met him. Something heavy thudded off his shoulder. He swayed, and the horse lost its footing and skidded, shrilling, halfway across the street. Psin raised his bow, saw a face in a window two floors above the street, and shot. The arrow struck the scroll work but the face dropped out of sight. The dun heaved himself up on his feet and charged on.

  “Burn them—”

  That was Arcut. Psin glanced back and saw him racing along behind him, the first of a stream of Mongols coming at a full gallop with torches in their hands. Arcut wheeled his horse straight for a doorway that stood half open on the right side of the street. The horse clattered up the step and into the house. The door caromed off something inside and slammed shut. The men behind him were all plunging into the buildings nearest them, screaming and waving their torches. Most of them left their horses in the street.

  Flames shot out of an upper-storey window, and a woman shrieked. Something large and squirming sailed out of the window between the fl
ames—a man, wrapped up in a carpet. The rain of stones and furniture halted entirely. Four Mongols staggered out of the house nearest to Psin. One carried a girl over his shoulder. The others were heaving rugs full of plunder along behind them. The girl was screaming with each step.

  Psin turned the dun and galloped off down the street. The houses he passed were empty, the alleys deserted. Ahead, he could hear fighting, and behind him the swelling crackle of flames. The dun stretched out into a pounding run. Cinders floated down into the street before him. The street curved, and the dun on the wrong lead sailed around the corner and into the midst of a mob.

  Men shouted, the dun reared, and Psin reversed his grip on the bow. All around him were blond heads. He stabbed at them with the sharpened tips of his bow. A man lunged up toward him, and Psin’s bowtip gashed open his face. The dun began to kick and rear. The Russian mob shoved by him, wailing. Many of them were women. Psin shouted at them in Russian to surrender and, when they did not, thrust at them with his bow, aiming for eyes. They didn’t even try to attack him; all they wanted was to get by him.

  He rode through them to the edge of the great square and saw why. The square was packed with people. At the far end, against the brown buildings, banners were spread out and waving: the yellow, the red, the black. An ocean of heads washed around him. He turned the dun broadside to block the street.

  The mob stopped moving. Mongols were crushing through them, to encircle the square. There were hundreds of people here, and all the ways out were blocked. The Russians milled, dazed, their stained and haggard faces turned upward toward the riders. The noise swelled, hysterical. Psin could see that some of them had been trampled in the press.

  Batu’s voice rose, from across the square. “Surrender or we’ll kill you all.”

  Psin took a deep breath and translated it at the top of his lungs.

  The people gave one last outcry and fell silent. All around the sound of weeping rose. Batu pushed his horse forward, the yellow banner behind him. He called to Kaidu to organize the horde of prisoners. His brothers were shouting to their men. Sabotai sat back in his saddle, one foot up on the pommel, watching expressionlessly. Above the weeping of the Russian women the harsh voices of the Mongols resounded like the cries of triumphant birds. Psin looked up into the smoky sky. It was just sundown.