Empire of Silver

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Baidur and Ilugei moved at blistering speed across the landscape. No sooner had Lublin fallen than Baidur was urging the tumans onwards to the cities of Sandomir and Krakow. At such a pace, the tumans came across columns of men marching to relieve cities already taken. Again and again, Baidur was able to surprise the nobles in the area, his twenty thousand routing smaller forces, then hunting them down piecemeal. It was the sort of campaign Baidur's grandfather had relished and his father Chagatai recounted in detail. The enemy were sluggish and slow to react against a knife thrust across their lands. Baidur knew there would be no mercy if he failed, from his own people or those he faced. Given the chance, the Poles would wipe out his tumans to the last man. It made sense not to meet them on their own terms, or fight to their strengths. He had no reinforcements to call on and he husbanded his tumans carefully, knowing he had to keep them intact, even if it meant refusing to engage.

He did not know the name of the man who led out the regiments of bright knights and foot soldiers against him near Krakow. Baidur's scouts reported an army of around fifty thousand and Baidur swore to himself when he heard. He knew what Tsubodai would want him to do, but he had never seen the race across the north as suicide. At least the Polish noble hadn't retreated behind thick walls and dared them to take the city. Krakow was as open as Moscow and as hard to defend. Its strength lay in the massive army that gathered before it, waiting in camp for the Mongol tumans to attack.

Baidur rode dangerously close to the city with his senior minghaans, observing the formations of soldiers and the lie of the land. He had no idea whether the Poles presented a threat to Tsubodai, but it was for exactly this task that he had been sent north. Such an army could not be allowed to join forces with those in Hungary, but it was not enough to pin them down around Krakow. Baidur's task was to tear a strip right through the country, to make sure that no armed force could consider moving south in support, not with such a wolf loose among their own people. Apart from anything else, Tsubodai would have his ears if Baidur ignored those orders.

Baidur rode to a small hill and stared at the sea of men and horses revealed to him. In the distance, he could see his presence had been marked. Polish scouts were already galloping closer, their weapons drawn in clear threat. Other men were mounting on the outskirts, ready to defend or attack, whatever his presence called for. What would his father do? What would his grandfather have done against so many?

'That city must be rich to have so many men guarding it,' Ilugei muttered at his shoulder.

Baidur smiled, making a quick decision. His men had almost sixty thousand horses with them, a herd so vast it could never remain in one place for more than a day. The horses stripped the grass like locusts, just as the tumans ate anything that moved. Yet each spare mount carried bows and shafts, pots, food and a hundred other items the men needed for the campaign, even the wicker and felt for gers. Tsubodai had sent him well equipped, at least.

'I think you are right, Ilugei,' Baidur said, weighing his chances. 'They want to protect their precious city, so they cluster around it, waiting for us.' He grinned. 'If they are kind enough to stay in one place, our arrows will speak for us.'

He turned his pony and rode back, ignoring the enemy scouts who had come close while he sat and observed. As one of them darted in, Baidur drew an arrow smoothly, fitting it to his bowstring and loosing in one movement. It was a fine shot and the scout went tumbling. A good omen, he hoped.

Baidur left their shouts and jeers behind him, knowing the scouts would not dare to follow. His mind was already busy. With the stores on the spare horses, he still had almost two million shafts – each a piece of straight birch, well fletched – bundled in quivers of thirty or sixty. Even with such abundance, he had been careful to retrieve and repair as many as he could from the battles. They were perhaps his most precious resource, after the horses themselves. He looked at the sun and nodded. It was still early. He would not waste the day. King Boleslav, Grand Duke of Krakow, drummed his gauntlet on the leather pommel of his saddle as he watched the vast cloud of dust that marked the movements of the approaching Mongol horde. He sat a massive grey charger, a beast of the breed that could pull a plough through the black earth all day without tiring. Eleven thousand knights stood ready to destroy the invader once and for all. To his left, the French Knights Templar stood ready in their livery of red and white over steel. Boleslav could hear their voices raised in prayer. He had archers by the thousand and, most importantly of all, he had pikemen who could stand against a charge with lances. It was an army to inspire confidence, and he kept his messengers close by, ready to ride to his cousin in Liegnitz with news of the victory. Perhaps when he had saved them all, his family would finally recognise him as the rightful ruler of Poland.

The mother church would still stand in his way, he thought sourly. They preferred the princes of Poland to waste their strength in squabbles and assassinations, leaving the church to grow fat and wealthy. Only the month before, his cousin Henry had sponsored a monastery for the new order of Dominicans, paying for it all in good silver. Boleslav winced at the thought of the benefices and indulgences Henry had earned as a result. It was the talk of the family.

In his silent thoughts, Boleslav offered up a prayer of his own.

'Lord, if I see victory today, I will found a convent in my city. I will set a chalice of gold on the altar of the chapel and I will find a relic to bring pilgrims from a thousand miles. I will have a Mass offered for all those who lose their lives. I give you my oath, Lord, my troth. Allow me your victory and I will have your name sung across Krakow.'

He swallowed drily and reached for a small bottle of water on a thong hanging from his saddle. He hated the waiting and he still feared that the reports of his scouts were true. He knew they were prone to exaggerate, but more than one had come back with tales of a horde twice the size of his fifty thousand, a great ocean of uncountable horses and terrible invaders, carrying bows and lances like the trees of a forest. His bladder made itself felt and Boleslav winced irritably. Let the damned dogs come, he told himself. God would speak and they would learn the strength of his right hand.

Boleslav could see the dark mass of the enemy as they rode closer. They poured across the ground, too many to count, though he did not think it was the vast army his scouts had described. That thought brought the worry that there might be more out of sight. He had only one report from Russia, but it warned they were fiends for trickery, in love with the ambush and the flanking blow. None of that was in evidence as his pikemen held their position. The Mongol warriors were riding straight at his lines as if they intended to gallop through them. Boleslav began to sweat, fearing he had missed something in the battle plans. He saw the Knights Templar ready themselves to counter-charge, safe for the moment behind the ranks of stolid pikemen. Boleslav watched intently as the pikes came down, the butts firmly grounded in the earth. They would stop anything, gut anyone, no matter how fast or fierce they were.

The Mongols came in a wide line, no more than fifty deep. As Boleslav stared, they bent bows and released. Thousands of shafts rose in the air above his pikemen and Boleslav knew a moment of horror. They had shields, but they had thrown them down to hold the pikes against a charge.

The sound of arrows striking men clattered across the field, followed by screaming. Hundreds fell and the arrows kept coming. Boleslav counted twelve heartbeats between each colossal strike, though his heart was racing and he could not calm himself. His own archers replied with volleys and he tensed in anticipation, only to see the shafts fall short of the Mongol horsemen. How could they have such a range? His bowmen were good, he was certain, but if they could not reach the enemy, they were useless to him.

Orders snapped up and down the lines as officers tried to respond. Many of the pikemen dropped the massive weapons. Some reached for their shields, while others tried to balance shield and pike together, neither one serving its purpose. Boleslav cursed, looking over their heads to the commander of the Templars. The man was like a dog straining on a leash. They were ready to ride, but by the pikemen were still blocking the Templars' path into the enemy. There could be no smooth manoeuvre as the foot soldiers pulled aside and let the Templars thunder through. Instead, they lay in tangled heaps of men and pikes like thorns, cowering under their shields as the arrows flew and thumped into them.

Boleslav swore, his voice cracking. His messengers looked up, but he had not spoken for them. He had seen armies all his life. He owed his power to the battles he had fought and won, but what he was seeing made a mockery of everything he had learned. The Mongols seemed to have no directing structure. There was no calm centre to order their movements. That would have been something Boleslav could have countered. Yet neither were they a rabble, with each man acting on his own. Instead, they moved and attacked as if a thousand guiding hands were over them, as if each group was completely independent. It was insane, but they shifted and struck like wasps, responding instantly together to any threat.

On one side, a thousand Mongol warriors clipped their bows to their saddles and lifted up lances, turning a sweep along the line into a sudden crash into the shields of the pikemen. Before Boleslav's officers could even react, they were riding clear and unlimbering bows yet again. The pikemen roared in fury and raised their weapons, only to swallow the bitter shafts that came buzzing back at them.

Boleslav gaped in horror as he saw the scene repeated up and down the lines. He felt his heart leap as the Knights Templar struggled through, shouting and kicking to clear the way of wounded men. They would make order from chaos. It was their mission.

Boleslav could not know how many hundreds of his footmen had been killed. There was no respite in the attack, no chance to re-form and assess the enemy tactics. Even as he realised they would not stop, two more waves of arrows came at close range, taking anyone who chose his pike over a shield. The sound of yelling, bawling wounded grew in intensity, but the Templars were on the move, beginning the slow, rhythmic trot that put the righteous fear of God into their enemies. Boleslav clenched his fist as they forced their horses through the last of the dazed pikemen, the heavy mounts increasing their speed in perfect formation. Nothing in the world could resist them.

Boleslav saw the Mongols lose their nerve as the knights met them head-on. A few of the smaller ponies were bowled over, hammered aside by greater weight. The Mongol riders leapt clear of their falling mounts, but they were hacked down by broadswords or trampled under hooves. Boleslav exulted as they began to fall back. The fluid movement of their units seemed to stall, so that they jerked and lost their smoothness. The Mongols snapped arrows at the knights, but the shafts skipped away from the heavy armour or even shattered. Boleslav felt the battle turn and shouted aloud, urging them on.

The Templars roared as they struck the Mongol tuman. They were men who had fought in muddy fields as far apart as Jerusalem and Cyprus. They expected the enemy in front of them to give way and they dug in their heels and stretched into a gallop. Their strength was the unstoppable hammer blow, a strike to tear an army in half, to reach the centre and kill a king. The Mongols collapsed, hundreds at a time turning and racing before the knights, the heels of their horses almost within reach of the great swords and heavy lances. The Templar charge pounded on for half a mile or more, driving all before them. Baidur raised his arm. The minghaans had been watching for his signal, the moment that was his to choose. They snapped orders along the line. Twenty men raised yellow flags high and roared to the jaguns of a hundred warriors. They passed the order down to tens. By eye or by ear, it spread like fire through straw, taking just moments. Out of the chaos came instant order. The jaguns peeled off to the flanks, letting the knights come without resistance. Some still ran ahead to draw them on, but the flanks were thickening as more and more men readied their bows.

The Templars had come far from their foot soldiers and their vicious pikes. Perhaps ten thousand of them had ridden out, a massive force, well used to victory. They had plunged deep into the Mongol tumans, carried by confidence and faith. The French knights stared out through slits in steel at the chaos of the Mongol retreat and they cut hard with their swords at anything within reach. They saw the ranks splitting away to each side of them, but they still drove forward, focused on punching right through the enemy and reaching their leader, whoever he was.

From both sides, thousands of Mongol archers ceased their frightened yelling and placed arrows on the strings of bows. With calm deliberation, they picked their targets, looking down the shafts at the plunging necks of the huge warhorses. From the front, the animals were armoured in steel. The sides of their necks were either bare or covered in flapping cloth.

Baidur dropped his arm. All the yellow flags fell in response, almost as one. The bows thumped, releasing the vast tension of the full draw and sending shafts whirring into the mass of horses streaming past them. The targets were not hard to hit at close range, and in the first blows, horses collapsed in shock and pain, their throats pierced right through. Blood sprayed from their nostrils in great gusts as they screamed. Many of the archers winced, but they took another arrow from the quiver and sent it in.

The knights roared a battle challenge. Those struck only once dug in their heels and tried to wheel out of the storm coming from both sides. Their horses began to shudder, their legs trembling in agony. Hundreds of the mounts crashed down with no warning, trapping or crushing the knights on their backs. They found themselves on the ground, dazed and struggling to rise.

For a time, the Templar charge drove on, regardless of losses. It was no easy task to turn the weight of horses and armour aside, but as the destruction mounted, Baidur heard new orders roared across them. The man who gave them became the instant target of every archer in reach. His horse fell, bristling arrows, and the man himself was sent reeling, his head snapped back in its iron shell by the impact of a shaft. The visor was punched in, so that he was blinded by it. Baidur could see the man wrestling to pull it free as he lay on the ground.

The Templars turned, wheeling right and left into the body of archers flanking them. The charge split along a line, with each man taking the opposite path to the one in front. It was a parade-ground manoeuvre, one the Mongols had never seen before. Baidur was impressed. It brought the knights into hand-to-hand combat with the men who stung them, their one chance to survive the carnage the charge had become. They had lost speed, but their armour was strong and they were still fresh. They used the great reach of the lance points to smash in the ribs of his warriors, then the huge swords rose and fell like cleavers.

The Mongol riders danced their mounts around them. They were smaller and less powerful, but so much faster than the armoured men that they could pick each shot with care. From close enough to hear the knights panting beneath their iron plate, they could send their ponies skipping aside, bend the bow and send a shaft wherever they saw a gap or flesh. The longswords swung over them, or where they had been moments before.

Baidur could hear the guttural laughter of his men and he knew it was partly in relief. The sheer size of the knights and their horses was frightening. It was like a cool breeze on the skin to see them flail. When the knights struck cleanly, each blow was terrible, the wounds mortal. Baidur saw one knight with a ragged tabard of red and white bring his sword down with such force that it cut a warrior's thigh through and gashed the saddle beneath. Even as the warrior died, he grabbed the knight and pulled him down with him in a crash of metal.

The smooth volleys from the flanks had become a melee of yelling men and horses, a thousand individual struggles. Baidur trotted his pony up and down, trying to see how his men were doing. He saw one knight stagger to his feet and pull off a battered helmet, revealing long dark hair, sweat-plastered to his head. Baidur kicked forward and cut down as he rode past, feeling the shock of impact right up his arm.

He held back, reining in his horse tightly as he tried to keep a sense of the battle. He could not join the attack, he knew that. If he fell, the command would drop to Ilugei's shoulders. Baidur stood in his stirrups and surveyed a scene he knew he would never forget. All across a vast field, knights in silver armour fought and struggled against the tumans. Their shields were battered and broken, their swords lay where they fell. Thousands were killed on the ground, held down by warriors while others heaved at a helmet, then jabbed a sword into the gap. Thousands more still stood, unhorsed, bellowing to their companions. There was little fear in them, Baidur saw, but they were wrong. It was a time to be afraid. He was not surprised to see the tail of the charge begin to wheel, turning in a chaotic mass so that they could run back to the foot soldiers around Krakow. He gave new orders and eight minghaans moved to follow them, loosing arrows as the knights pushed their tired horses into a canter. There would not be many left by the time they reached a safe haven behind the pikes. Boleslav watched in despair as the cream of the nobility were torn apart almost in front of him. He would never have believed the knights could fail against horsemen if he had not seen it with his own eyes. Those arrows! The force and accuracy was staggering. He had never seen anything like it on the battlefield. No one in Poland ever had.

His hopes were raised when he saw the rear turn back to the city. He had not been able to observe the extent of the destruction and his mouth slowly fell open as he realised how few they were, how ragged and battered in comparison to the shining glory of those who had ridden out. The Mongols came with them even then, loosing their infernal shafts with smooth pulls, as if the knights were merely targets to be picked off.

Boleslav sent out a regiment of four thousand pikemen to protect their retreat, forcing the Mongols to stop in their tracks. The shattered remnant of the Knights Templar came trotting in, almost every man dusty and bleeding, wheezing as chest plates pressed too close on their ribs. Boleslav turned in horror as the Mongol tumans came closer. They would use lances at last, he realised. He had lost his cavalry shield and they would ride through to Krakow. He shouted for the pikes to be raised, but there was no charge. Instead, the arrows began again, as if the knights had never ridden out, as if the Mongols had all day to finish the killing.

Boleslav looked at the sun dipping down on the distant hills. An arrow struck his charger without warning, making it buck. Another hammered his shield, pushing it back into his chest with the impact. He felt a sick fear overwhelm him. He could not save Krakow. The knights had been reduced to a shadow and only his peasant foot soldiers remained. He would be hard-pressed to save his own life. He signalled and his heralds blew retreat across the battlefield.

The light was already failing, but the Mongols continued their shooting as the pikemen began to withdraw. The exhausted Templars formed a thin line in the rear, taking arrows on their armour as best they could to prevent the withdrawal becoming a complete rout.

Boleslav moved into a canter. His messengers went with him, their heads down. Defeat hung on them all, as well as fear. Instead of sending letters of victory, he would be running to his brother Henry, asking for his charity and his pity. He rode numbly, watching the shadows before him. The Mongols had annihilated the French Templars, to that point the greatest fighting force he had ever known. Who could stop them, if not the martial orders? Those knights had slaughtered hordes of Moslem heretics in and around Jerusalem. To see them torn apart in a single day shook his very foundations.

Behind him, the Mongols howled like wolves, hundreds at a time darting in and killing those who wanted nothing more than to retreat. The arrows continued to fall even after the light was poor. Men were dragged off their saddles from behind, tumbling into the arms of men who laughed as they killed them, pushing and shoving each other to get in a kick or a blow.

As full darkness came, Baidur and Ilugei called back their men at last. The city of Krakow stood naked before them and they walked their horses in as the moon rose. The moonlight was strong, the air clear and cold as the yam rider galloped at full speed along the dusty track. He was weary. It was hard to keep his eyes open and the ache in his lower back had become a jarring pain. A sudden panic gripped him as he lost count of the way stations he had passed that day. Had it been two or three? Karakorum was far behind, but he knew he would have to hand on the bag with its precious contents. He did not know what he had been given, except that it was worth his life. The man from Karakorum had appeared out of the darkness and thrust it into his hands, snapping hoarse orders. He had been galloping even before the man dismounted.

With a jolt, the scout realised he had almost slipped out of the saddle. The warmth of the horse, the rhythm of hooves, the bells that jingled under him, all of them lulled his senses. It would be his second night without sleep with nothing but the track and the horse for company. He counted again in his head. He had passed six of the yam way stations, changing horses at each one. He would have to hand over the bag at the next one, or risk falling on the road.

In the distance, he saw lights. They would have heard his bells, of course. They would be waiting with a horse and spare rider as well as a skin of airag and sweet honey to keep him going. They would need the other rider. He could feel exhaustion washing over him. He was done.

He slowed to a trot as he reached the stone yard in the middle of nowhere, the visible sign of the khan's influence and power. As the yam staff clustered around him, he swung his leg over and nodded to the spare rider, little more than a boy. There had been a verbal message as well as the bag. What was it? Yes, he remembered.

'Kill horses and men if you have to,' he said. 'Ride as fast and far as you can. This is for the hands of Guyuk alone. Repeat my words.'

He listened as the fresh rider said them all again in a rush, overcome with excitement. The bag was passed from hand to hand, a sacred trust, never to be opened until it reach its destination. He saw a stone seat in the yard, some sort of mounting block perhaps. He sank onto it gratefully, watching the lad begin his run before he allowed himself to close his eyes. He had never run so fast or far in his life and he wondered what could possibly be so important.