His generals registered the lack of orders for a brief time, then filled the gap, working together. Those below them in the chain of command barely had time to grow worried before new orders came down the line and they were moving again. Jaguns of a hundred formed up in solid blocks, seeking only to hold back the flank attack until their main force was able to swing out of the valley.
It might have been enough to save the battle, but the tumans they faced were the veterans of the Sung territory. When the fighting was fluid, they moved in overlapping lines, so that they always brought the maximum force against the weakest points. When the fighting came down to swords and lances, they gave no ground, so that Alandar’s tumans were smashed back.
Those in the valley ran clear at last and Alandar shook his head in disbelief as he saw the force that pressed them from behind. He had assumed it was no larger than the few thousand he had seen in the taunting glimpse that morning. Instead, the hills vomited warriors under Kublai’s banners, such a flood of them that he realised he should have worked to keep them between the hills where they could do less damage. He was outnumbered by at least two to one and the Arab boys riding to make a dust trail watched open-mouthed as his tumans were crushed, hemmed in and hammered.
Alandar could see only chaos, too many groups racing back and forth. From his first move, he knew he had been dancing to Kublai’s plans and the knowledge burned him. Arrows darted in all directions and men were falling everywhere. He could hardly tell them apart in the press, though the enemy tumans seemed to know their own. His guards had to fend off a yelling warrior barrelling past, using their swords to turn the man’s lance away from Alandar. As the man went on, Alandar found himself thinking clearly, though he felt his guts twist in anguish. There was no help for it; he would have to call the retreat.
His own horn had been lost with his fallen horse and he had to yell to one of his officers. The man looked ill as he understood, but he blew a sequence of falling notes, again and again. The response seemed to be lost in the roiling mass of fighting men, except to call attention to that part of the battlefield. More arrows lifted into the air, seeming to move slowly, then dropping with a whirr all around them. One struck the horn-blowing officer high in the chest, puncturing the scaled armour. Alandar shouted in anger as the man slumped, wheeling his horse over and yanking the horn away.
He was panting heavily, but he raised the horn and repeated the signal. Slowly, he was answered by men too hard-pressed to disengage easily. They pulled back over the bodies of friends, raising swords and lances horizontal to hold the enemy off.
The gaps they made were suddenly filled with whining shafts. Hundreds more warriors were sent tumbling, choking on wooden lengths through their chests or throats. A few ranks made it to Alandar and formed around him, panting and glassy-eyed. They held position long enough for their numbers to swell to a thousand, then pulled back, joined by free riders as they went until some three thousand were moving across the field of the dead.
Of his generals, Alandar could see only Ferikh with him, though he had around twenty minghaan officers. They had all been in the fighting and they were battered and showing wounds and cuts. He saw the enemy tumans spot their moving group, men pointing across the valley floor. He felt the blood drain from his face as thousands of fierce eyes turned to see the orlok retreat.
His small force were still picking up stragglers as they struggled through to him, but by then the enemy were forming ranks, ready for another charge. Alandar looked across the battlefield. The losses appalled him to the point of illness: thousands of dead, broken bows, kicking horses and screaming men with wounds that poured blood onto the ground. One of the enemy rode to the front rank and said something to those near him. They roared a challenge, the noise making Alandar jerk in the saddle.
Barely five thousand battered men rode with him. He had thought to combine them with the rest of his tumans, but the fighting seemed to have stopped across the valley. With eight hundred paces between the armies, his men drew to a halt, exhausted and fearful as they looked to him for orders. Against him, the valley had filled with tumans, standing their ground in eerie silence as they all turned to watch. Alandar swallowed nervously and without a command, his remnant drew to a halt. He could hear the laboured breath of them, men muttering in disbelief. They had been outfought and outmanoeuvred. The sun was still up and he could hardly take in how fast it had happened.
‘Behind us, the khan approaches with enough men to destroy these,’ he said, raising his voice to carry to as many as he could reach. ‘We have lost only the first skirmish. Take heart that you fought with courage.’
As he spoke the last word, the enemy leader roared an order and the enemy surged forward.
‘Go!’ Alandar shouted. ‘If I fall, seek out the khan!’ He turned his horse and dug in his heels, kicking the animal into its best speed. The Arab boys scattered before his men, jeering and shouting as they ran.
As soon as Alandar had ridden clear of the valley, Kublai called a halt. Uriang-Khadai came riding up to him in short order and they nodded to each other.
‘Arik-Boke won’t keep that formation now he’s found us,’ Kublai said. He did not congratulate the older man, knowing Uriang-Khadai would take it as an insult. Beyond a certain level of skill and authority, the orlok needed no praise to tell him what he already knew.
‘I have often wanted to show Alandar the errors in his thinking,’ Uriang-Khadai said. ‘He does not react well under pressure, I have always said. This was a good first lesson. Will you turn for Karakorum now?’
Kublai hesitated. His army was still relatively fresh, the victory keeping their spirits high as they dismounted and checked their mounts and weapons. He had told his orlok he would try for a quick attack on the head of Arik-Boke’s sweep line just as it became a column and turned towards them. After that, the plan had been to ride hard for the capital and seek out the families they had left behind.
Uriang-Khadai saw his indecision and brought his pony alongside, so that they would not be easily overheard.
‘You want to go on,’ he said, a statement more than a question.
Kublai nodded warily. His own wife and daughter were safe in Xanadu, thousands of miles to the east. It was not a small thing to ask his men to keep fighting with the fate of their families hanging over them.
‘There is just a short time before my brother brings his tumans back into a single army. We could roll them up before us, orlok. If there were no women and children around Karakorum, would that not be your advice? To hit them again and quickly? If I head north now, I will be throwing away the opportunity to win. It may be the only chance we get.’
Uriang-Khadai listened with the cold face, giving nothing away as Kublai spoke.
‘You are the khan,’ he said quietly. ‘If you order it, we will go on.’
‘I need more than that at this moment, Uriang-Khadai. We’ve never fought an enemy with the lives of women and children in his grasp. Will the men follow me?’
The older man did not answer for what seemed like an age. At last, he dipped his head.
‘Of course they will. They know as well as you that plans change. It may be the best choice to go on and fight again here, while we have the advantage.’
‘But you want to head north, even so.’
The orlok was visibly uncomfortable. He had sworn an oath to obey, but the thought of his wife and children in the hands of Arik-Boke’s guards was a constant drain on him.
‘I will … follow orders, my lord khan,’ he said formally.
Kublai looked away first. He had known many moments where hindsight showed him a choice, a chance to turn his life one way or the other. It was rare to feel such a moment as it happened. He closed his eyes, letting the breeze pass over him. He felt death in the north, but the smell of blood was strong in the air and he did not know whether it was a true omen or not. When he turned east to face his brother’s distant armies, he felt the same cold shiver. Death lay in all di
rections, he was suddenly certain of it. He shook his head, as if to clear cobwebs from his thoughts. Genghis would not have wasted a moment. His men knew death, lived with it every day. They slaughtered animals with their hands and knew when a child began to cough that it could mean finding them cold and still. He would not fear such a constant companion. He could not let it influence him. He was khan at that moment and he made his choice.
‘My orders are to go on, orlok. Grab what arrows we can and chase Alandar into the tumans coming up. We hit the next battle group with everything we have.’
Uriang-Khadai turned his horse without another word, shouting orders to the waiting tumans. They looked confused, but they mounted quickly and formed up, ignoring the wounded and dying all around them. The sun was setting, but there were hours of grey summer light to come. Time enough to fight again before dark.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Kublai gave thanks for his brother’s poor decisions as he sighted four tumans riding hard against him. The great general Tsubodai had once employed the same system, five fingers stretching across the land in search of enemies. It was a powerful formation against slow-moving foot soldiers. Against the tumans he commanded, it had a weakness. His brother had formed a separated column a hundred miles long to search the land. Kublai and Uriang-Khadai had hit the end of the sweep and as the column turned to face him, he could work his way down it, bringing almost twelve tumans against each battle group as they reached him. Arik-Boke could still halt and let his tumans join up, but until he did, his warriors were vulnerable to simple numbers and overwhelming strength.
Overall, Kublai and Uriang-Khadai were seriously outnumbered, even after slaughtering Alandar’s men. That disadvantage would dwindle as they cut through the snake piece by piece. In his head, Kublai went over his plans for the thousandth time, looking for anything to improve the odds yet again. He did not have to check Uriang-Khadai was in position. The orlok was more experienced than anyone Arik-Boke could field and his tumans showed it in the way they flowed over the land, moving well together.
The second block of his brother’s tumans was too far away for Kublai to hear their horns, but over the vast plain of green grass, he could see them begin to shift and move in battle formations, reacting to his presence. He frowned as the wind whipped by him, checking the position of the sun. The soft grey twilight lasted for hours at that time of year, but it might not be enough. He hated the idea of having to pull out before the battle was done, but he could not be caught in one place. Every manoeuvre was intended to reduce his brother’s ability to move, while enhancing his own. He could not be caught in the dark, with armies closing on his position.
Against stolid Sung soldiers, he would have kept his final orders to the last moment, too late for the enemy to react to them. As it was, the Mongol tumans he faced could shift and reply just as quickly. Even so, he had the numbers. With Uriang-Khadai keeping order, he sent his men forward in a column, like two stags rushing at each other. At a mile, he felt the first urge to give the final order, his heart beginning to hammer at him. Arik-Boke’s tumans were moving fluidly, darting back and forth as they came on. He did not know who led them, or whether Alandar had reached the apparent safety of their ranks. Kublai hoped he had, so that he could send the man running twice in one day.
At half a mile, they were sixty heartbeats apart. Kublai gave his order at the same moment he saw the enemy tumans swing out to envelop his column head. He grinned into the wind as Uriang-Khadai and his generals matched the formation. Both hammer-heads widened, but Kublai had more tumans and he could imagine how they must appear from the enemy’s point of view, spreading like wings at his back, further and further as his forces were revealed.
It seemed an instant before the arrows flew on both sides. The wide lines could bring many bows to bear and the shafts soared out by the tens of thousands, one every six heartbeats from men who had trained to it all their lives. For the first time, Kublai felt what it was like to meet such a barrage in anger and he had to struggle not to flinch from the whirring air. The volleys spat like a war drum beating, crossing each other in the air. He could hear the thumps of them hitting flesh and metal, the grunts and cries of men on both sides and ahead of him. His own place in the fourth rank was not spared as shafts arced overhead and fell among them. Yet his wider lines could answer with thousands more shafts and the air was blacker on his side as they fired inwards, hardly troubling to aim against so many.
The first volleys broke holes in the galloping front ranks; the second and third tore men and horses away, so that those behind went piling into them. On both sides, the storm of arrows punched through armour. The heavy shields Kublai had picked up in Samarkand were long behind, left to rust on the valley where they had beaten Orlok Alandar. It had been a tactic worth trying, but the true strength of his tumans lay with the archers, the smashing power of bows of horn and birch, drawn back with a bone thumb ring and loosed at the moment when all hooves left the ground. The fourth volley was brutal, the air so thick with arrows that it felt hard to breathe. Thousands were hit on both sides and horses crunched to the ground, turning over at full speed so that their riders crashed down hard enough to kill.
Kublai’s tumans kept their formation better than those they faced. They had spent years in battle against the Sung, against forests of crossbows and enemy pikes. The lines bunched in places where the arrow storm had been thickest, but the rest forced their way through with hardly a drop in speed. In the last moments before impact, they followed the routines drummed into them: bows were jammed onto saddle hooks and thousands of swords were drawn as they reined in slightly, allowing the ranks behind to surge ahead.
Through Kublai’s front ranks came his lancers, each one lowering great lengths of birch as they went. It took enormous strength of arm and shoulder to hold the lances steady at full stretch. They brought them down in the final heartbeat, aiming the point ahead and leaning in, bracing for the impact. With half a ton of horse, rider and armour behind it, the lances slammed through the fish-scale chest-plates worn by the tumans. Kublai’s riders wore no straps to keep hold of the long lances. As they bit, his men let them go, rather than break a collarbone or an arm trying to hold on. The air filled with spinning splinters as ten thousand lances struck and many shattered or broke at the hilt. The enemy rank went down, coughing blood or knocked still and white as they bled inside.
The crash of thousands of warriors meeting each other at full speed became a low thunder of hooves and roaring voices. The two fronts tangled together as they struggled with swords, hacking at each other with insane violence. Kublai’s wide line spread rapidly around to the flanks as Uriang-Khadai continued to give calm orders. His tumans there had kept their bows and they sent another dozen volleys from each side, battering the men loyal to Arik-Boke.
They were answered with arrows every bit as powerful as their own, as warriors on the flanks loosed shaft after shaft back at them. The two sides were close in by then, drawing and loosing with grim stoicism, ignoring the deaths around them as they fought on. At the front, Kublai’s tumans were pressing forward, killing and moving, crushing the head of the snake. The flanks began to crumple back, the aim of Arik-Boke’s archers spoiled as those at the head were forced to give ground. Uriang-Khadai rode up and down his ranks barely two hundred yards from the main lines. As the hammer-head compressed, his men kept up their fire. The rain of arrows in return began to dwindle, but they loosed until their quivers were all empty, having sent more than a million shafts into the crush.
Mongol tumans did not retreat, did not surrender, but Kublai’s forces were overwhelming them. His veteran warriors pressed forward at every slight give, forcing them to move back a step and then another, then a dozen more as two ranks collapsed. They could not move to the sides, where Uriang-Khadai watched with cold eyes. The tumans he commanded on the right drew swords with a sibilant rasp that sent a shudder through the flanks. They had the space to kick their mounts into a gallop. Uriang-Khad
ai yelled an order and his tumans snapped shut on the flanks, swords coming down in short, chopping blows.
The head of the column collapsed and those in the flanks felt the shift, panic swelling all around them. They tried to turn their horses, yanking savagely on reins as they were buffeted by unhorsed men and loose mounts on all sides. The edges of the flanks were hammered back as Uriang-Khadai’s tumans tore into them and those in the very centre turned their backs on the battle and whipped their mounts desperately. Even then, with the decision made to retreat, they could not get clear. There was no room to move and the press of those behind kept them in place, yelling in fear or pain. The killing went on, with the flanks so compressed men could hardly move at all. Kublai’s tumans cared nothing for those who tried to surrender. There was no possibility of mercy. It was too early yet to stop the killing and the carnage was terrible. Men raising their hands were cut down where they stood. Screaming horses had new wounds gashed in their flesh by racing warriors.
Kublai had not entered the fighting beyond the first charge. With a group of his bondsmen, he waited to one side, watching closely and giving orders to shore up the heaving lines. It was like watching a wave surge up around a rock, but the rock crumbled and fell into sand as he looked on. He caught a glimpse of his brother’s orlok, fighting and roaring orders in the centre, already struggling to get away. Alandar would remember this day, Kublai thought with satisfaction, if he lived through it.
Kublai looked up as Uriang-Khadai sent a horn note across the battlefield. In the fading grey light, he could see fresh tumans coming. It would be the centre formation of Arik-Boke’s sweep line and Kublai guessed his brother would be in the squares riding hard at him. The sun had set while the fighting went on. If it had been noon, he knew the moment was right to go on. His men had broken the tumans in the second battle group and lone riders were already streaming away, heading for the safety of their khan as he entered the field.
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