“Dúnedain Rangers and a party of envoys!” the man called Faramir shouted back.
Dzhambul thought it was an extremely odd-sounding name, but there were more important matters at hand. Fifty sharp points leveled at him, for instance, with lots of springy horn and sinew ready to drive them home.
One of them came cantering down.
“Yeah, you’re Dúnedain,” he said, as he pulled up. “What’s the password?”
“Hood Hang Glider,” Faramir said. “Countersign?”
“Horse Heaven Hills,” the man replied, and then examined the Mongols.
“Who are these fellas?”
“Mongols.”
“Jebus!” he replied obscurely. “Genghis Khan rides again!” After a long careful glance: “Tough-looking bastards. And tough-looking bitches.”
Dzhambul picked the words Genghis Khan out of the indecipherable English stream and felt a rush of pride; even across the ocean, they remembered the Ancestor. Susan Mika translated the rest, and there were nods and grins when he passed the words along.
The Mongols did the same careful examination in return; the riders were well-mounted, and each was equipped with a mail shirt and the odd low-domed flare-necked helmet and armed with sword and bow; the one who’d come down to look them over had a saddle decorated with silver studs, a projecting horn at the front and a braided-leather lariat slung over the bowcase in front of his left knee, with a round shield over his back.
Hearing English actually spoken was strange. It sounded so odd and staccato and clipped. . . .
“That cavalry screen looked alert,” Gansükh said a little grudgingly as they swung back into a trot.
The Montivallan horse-archers on the rise above lowered their bows as their leader returned.
“Yes, they were very alert,” Dzhambul nodded. “Which is a good sign.”
They’d been doing what cavalry screens were supposed to, establishing a cordon; he’d picked out one or two hidden stationary observers, too, and was fairly sure that there were others.
“I’d like to see them shoot, though. Their bows aren’t exactly the same as ours. That riser with the cutout looks clever, and their arrows are stiffer-splined because of it.”
“Yes, but they don’t have ears at the ends,” Börte said, referring to the stiff rigid outer parts of a Mongol bowstave that acted as levers. “You can see that the string lies along the curve of the bow right up to the nock. It must come off as the stave pulls through and bends back. I wonder how well that works.”
Dzhambul shrugged. If there was one thing Mongols could talk about endlessly, it was archery and its gear. He’d like to see them shoot too, but he was willing to bet they were fairly good at it.
“They ride well,” she said.
“True,” Dzhambul said. “And that usually goes with shooting well.”
As they passed on at a slow trot-canter-trot one of the cavalry pickets came down the fairly steep part of hillside they’d been watching from at a flat gallop, not bothering to go around to the gentler northwestern slope. He sped off across the low ground ahead, without breaking pace and bow in hand, the reins knotted on the neck of his horse and leaving them behind quickly.
Off to announce us, Dzhambul thought.
The saddle the Montivallan cavalry used was only slightly odd-looking; they also let their stirrup leathers out a bit longer than was steppe custom, with the knee bent but not sharply. It seemed to work. The Mongols’ eyes followed the man. They could all have done the same easily enough, but . . .
“I don’t think they’re farmers at all,” Dzhambul said. “Not the ones we’re seeing here, at least. I think they’re herders, plainsmen. They ride like folk born in the saddle, not just well but as if it was as natural to them as walking.”
Dust was hanging over the bit of coastal plain ahead of them, and the sun was setting behind them; that meant they couldn’t see much, except that the amount of dust argued for a lot of movement. They could hear the edge of the growling racket an army made, too; voices shouting, since war meant raising your voice a lot, boots, hooves, hammers pounding in tent pegs, hammers on anvils as someone set up a field-forge.
“They shoe their horses,” Börte noted.
The other thing their people talked about, even more than archery, was horses; only the state of the grazing and weather came close—though there was ample justification for that, since a tumer dzud, a combination of a brief thaw and intense cold could kill half the livestock in the country and mean hunger for all.
The two men nodded, having seen the steel shoes on every mount. There were advantages both ways, though Mongols mostly left their horses without. That was fine on the grass of the steppe or the sand of the Gobi, and if it went unshod a horse’s hooves were naturally tougher. Though there was no disputing that shod hooves held up better on rock or gravel or in soft wet dirt or on pavement.
They’d had several mounts go lame on their flight south, which was why they’d eaten a lot of horsemeat, mostly raw.
Then again, for shoeing you had to drag a lot of weight around in the form of farriers, their anvils and fuel and tools, and the shoes themselves, since horseshoes needed to be renewed frequently and it needed a skilled hand to put one on, or take it off for that matter. Dzhambul had learned a little of the craft years ago, just in case.
There were also odd metallic ratcheting sounds from the camp ahead . . . and the smell of massed smoke and sweat and crap that accompanied armies like an invisible flag. Lights flickered through it, since it was just late enough for fires to show, and the odd blink of metal catching the falling sun.
“Those look awkward,” Börte said, as they and their escorts passed a block of men on foot, marching along carrying giant spears sixteen feet long.
Then the three Mongols watched silently as a trumpet sounded. The great weapons the infantry were carrying swung down to present a line of points four deep and then back upright without a lost pace in the block of men. Apparently, they spent much time in practice. . . .
“Or possibly not so awkward as I thought,” Dzhambul said, and Gansükh grunted thoughtfully. “Even if that was put on for our benefit.”
The two Dúnedain and the Lakota woman were watching the Mongols watch the pikemen. Dzhambul was fairly certain that Susan Mika didn’t speak Mongol better than she’d let on, but that wasn’t the same as being absolutely certain.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Börte said. “I wouldn’t want to charge them if they had an unbroken front.”
Noise and dust grew as they penetrated deeper into the newcomer’s perimeter, but there was little confusion. But . . .
There are so many different styles of gear and clothing!
He thought he recognized the Japanese samurai from descriptions in rumors and old books, but the others! Much of what he saw was so strange that the eye of the mind slipped off it, and he had to deliberately focus. All the Mongols were maintaining a good stone face; his people had that reputation among strangers, while in reality they were mostly cheerful and talkative . . . under ordinary circumstances and among their own.
There were a lot of soldiers coming ashore, and a fair number with their boots already on the rocky beach in the pale light of a winter dawn. The sun rising out over the sea backlit the spiky forest of . . .
Masts, he thought. That’s the word.
. . . and many boats propelled by oars, which looked more familiar from those he’d seen on rivers, and lakes like Dalai Eej. Others were more broad and stubby, like floating boxes, and were carrying catapults and horses. Those got keenest attention from all his party; the beasts ranged from those not unlike the steppe ponies or Börte’s Uyghur horse, to monsters taller than most men at the shoulder, long-legged muscular beasts like the vision of a horse in the mind of one of the Tengri.
“Those things probably have trouble turning quickly and I
’d say they don’t have much endurance,” Gansükh said critically. “And look, they’re feeding them grain, as if they were human beings, or at least Han peasants. How can you keep an army moving if you have to carry along grain for the mounts? Though feeding on the enemy’s stocks is all right, of course, if you’re careful not to founder the animals.”
Mongol ponies had strong guts, but they could bloat themselves to death if allowed to eat too much rich food like oats or millet. Horses were like children confronted with honeycomb that way.
“Yes, but they could probably knock a horse-shaped hole in a fortress wall in a charge,” Börte said. “And they’d be fast enough with some time to get going. Imagine one ramming into your horse shoulder-to-shoulder at speed.”
“They’d bowl you over like a rabbit,” Gansükh said immediately, estimating the weights and then adding in the suit of steel armor the riders wore. “Then trample you into mutton fat. Best not be where they want to run, then. Stand off and pepper them.”
Some of the riders were covered in articulated steel plates from head to toe, and carried lances twice the height of a tall man. Many others were armed more normally to Mongol eyes, and the foot soldiers were obviously not the sort of peasant rabble he was accustomed to in that role.
Field engineers had marked out a fortified camp and other troops were either standing guard or had stacked their wildly varied arms to dig under the specialists’ supervision. Piled up beside them were other materials; angle-iron posts, coils of barbed wire, which might be salvage or made post-Change, and baulks of timber with steel spikes driven through them to create barriers. The troops were swinging picks and using shovels to throw the dirt from the ditch on the inside, where still more pounded it flat in layers. Watchtowers of prefabricated wood with sheet-metal exteriors were going up too.
It looked as if it had all started that morning and was about half-finished, and the Montivallans hadn’t landed in strength more than a day or two before that. Dzhambul pursed his lips and looked at his sister, who replied with a similar expression and a nod. The Mongol armies had good engineers, some their own, trained in schools in Ulan Bator and on the job, some hired Han or Russki experts, but they were both impressed. Of course, an army composed almost entirely of mounted archers had less need for field fortifications than one with a lot of infantry and wheeled supply trains like this, but it was still impressive. He also mentally increased the size of the Montivallan army overall; he’d been calculating on the area needed for cavalry and their remounts, and you could get a lot more footmen into the same space.
“Forts,” Börte said.
“Yes,” Dzhambul replied.
Korea had a lot of forts. Relative to the size of the place, it had even more than the Chinese states to the south of Mongolia, past the ruins of the old Great Wall, and that was saying something. It had a lot of very big forts, combined with much more mountainous terrain than China. If the men from across the eastern sea were as good as this at digging in, they were probably good at siege-work generally. Which left the question of why they were here, and how determined they were. No matter how good your gear or training, laying siege to forts and walled cities was slow work, expensive in treasure and in blood.
“Funny-looking bastards,” Gansükh said as the Mongol party went through various checkpoints, in a tone of queasy disgust. “Their skins are almost leprous, as if they grew up in caves.”
“That’s not fair. They can’t help the, ah, the odd way they look,” Börte said. “Though I admit, even my mother wasn’t that ghostly.”
The oddness was more than the clothes. Most of the strangers had the odd bleached blood-pinkish tone that the two Dúnedain, whatever that meant, shared, and even odder beaky elongated faces. And they were elongated in body too; Dzhambul was used to being taller than most, and now found himself no more than average. Though others were perfectly normal in appearance, and some were a very dark brown that made them look like overdone bread, nearly as odd-looking as the pink ones.
The gateway to the camp was made by overlapping two stretches of the earthen wall they were building, so that you had to take a ninety-degree turn to get inside. There were gates, set up on wheels so that they could be rolled aside.
I’d hate to have to attack these gates; you’d have enemies shooting at you from both sides, Dzhambul thought. That’s really very clever. These people take war seriously and think about it.
Inside the growing earthen wall, tents were going up beside a rectangular grid of streets, along with horse-lines and vehicle-parks full of wagons or parts of wagons being knocked together. Field kitchens and hearths were being lit, and there was a smell of unfamiliar cooking as soldiers formed lines with empty bowls ready. The grilling meat was unmistakable, but there were strange spices—Mongols didn’t usually use many at all besides salt—and odd yeasty odors. And someone was boiling rice not far away, which he at least recognized.
There was an inner core of guards; archers on foot, with bows of an absolutely unfamiliar make that were taller than they were. They wore pleated skirts, knee-length and all of the same checked pattern, some had savage-looking designs painted on their faces, and in this contingent nearly as many were women as men.
Börte smiled slightly. “I think I like them already,” she said, and Gansükh sighed inaudibly and rolled his eyes.
One of their officers, a scar-faced man in middle years, held up a hand imperiously. The trio of Montivallan scouts swung down from the saddle, and Dzhambul followed suit . . . although putting himself on the ground among so many folk who were so unreasonably tall and mostly armored to boot was a little disconcerting, like running back in time to a childhood memory of toddling around among adults.
The three exchanged words with the guard officer; the short one who looked a little like a Mongol raised her voice and slapped the hilt of her sword. The man shrugged and spread his hands, and darted the Mongols a look.
“I’d bet he wanted to disarm us,” Gansükh said.
Nobody objected when they kept their sabers and daggers, though they tactfully left shield and bow with their horses, which made the quivers slung at their belts merely symbolic.
“As the Kha-Khan’s Kheshig guards would, with unknown strangers in a hostile land,” Börte said.
Gansükh gave her a baffled look as if to ask what that had to do with anything. Of course no stranger would be allowed armed before the Khan, and of course the Khan’s men should go where they pleased as they pleased whatever damned foreigners wanted.
No, the Tengri did not make him of the leather from which diplomats are sewn, Dzhambul thought affectionately—he’d come to like the blunt-spoken officer a good deal. Fortunately, he does not have to try.
He took a deep breath and threw his shoulders back. He did have to try, and the fortunes of his people in this war might well depend on his success. A lane was cleared for him at a word of command; he and Gansükh and Börte were ushered forward and the rest kept back. He could see Gansükh start to object, then shrug—they were eighteen among an army of thousands, and if the outlanders wanted to kill him, they could.
The last circle of guards were in plate armor, but of a type that came only to the thighs; he could pick out the details, because large and very bright lamps had been lit, mounted on poles. Their flared helmets had visors, smooth curves with a long narrow slit across the eyes like a window into a cave as they turned to follow him. The hair tried to start up on the back of his neck, and he forced it down again, scolding himself for being childish.
They stood with the butts of their weapons planted between their boots, seven-foot shafts with a long angular cutting blade on the top like a giant slanted straight razor that in turn topped by a foot of spike and backed by a cruel-looking hook. The three Mongol leaders gave them a considering look; with a strong skilled man behind it that thing could be very dangerous to a horseman at close range, and the armor would make
it very, very difficult to use a sword downward to any effect. It was probably good protection against arrows from a distance, too.
“These bastards are dangerous,” Gansükh murmured. “And not just because they’re rich and have good weapons. They’ve had wars since the Change where they come from.”
“Like us?” Dzhambul said, making himself smile.
Gansükh shook his head doggedly. “But they’ve had different kinds of wars. I know how to fight the Han and the Uyghurs and Kazakhs and the man-eaters. I wouldn’t know how to fight these people, but I have this feeling that we wouldn’t be nearly as much of a surprise to them as they would be to us and it would be a bad time while we learned.”
He is thinking in terms of fighting them, but the same thought gives me hope, because it shows they can fight the man-eaters. I’m not afraid of them killing us, I’m more afraid of failure to get their help, he thought. I don’t suppose they’re going to turn around and go away because of anything I say or do, but Tengri witness, what a gift an alliance would be to the Kha-Khan my father, and to all the Mongol people!
The fact that he hadn’t suspected there was anything to win until just now made the thought of failure worse, not better.
“If it’s any comfort, they’re a lot farther from home than we are, Gansükh,” Börte said. “I think it must be a strain for them to fight here . . . and that going to where we live would be even worse for them. Like us trying fight a war in the Kirghiz marches.”
Gansükh grunted again. “Well, you have a point, Princess. We’re a people of the steppe, and from the look of all the ships, they’re a sea people.”
He paused a moment, then went on: “But from the look of their cavalry, they know about steppes too. And we did fight the Kirghiz in the Ancestor’s time, yes, and went beyond to sack Moscow.”
He’s no fool, Dzhambul thought. And he can think of new things, if he must.
The guards with the spear-axe-hook things all had the stylized head of an animal on their breastplates in orange paint; from the chisel teeth, he thought it was meant to be a beaver.
The Sky-Blue Wolves Page 29