“Wake up,” Batu shouted.

Psin bolted upright. Batu laughed in his ear. The darkness was smothering; through the cart walls Psin could hear horses neighing and the high voices of the men. He threw his robe off and crawled down to the tailgate.

“Eat something,” Dmitri said. “Something hot.”

“Later.” He dragged on one boot and reached for a sock to put on over it.

Sabotai was struggling to get his arms into his coat sleeves and shouting orders that no one seemed to hear. A loose horse galloped by, shrilling. Psin hunted through the cart for his left boot, swearing under his breath. Torchlight flickered weakly in over the tailgate. He found the boot and thrust his foot into it. The two women went on serenely cooking gruel. Dmitri held out his coat.

“I hate gruel,” Psin said. “Can’t we have something else to eat?”

“I’ve put honey in it, Khan.” The Kipchak woman handed him a bowl.

“Eat it,” Batu said. He spooned the stuff into his mouth. “Good for you.”

“Tepid, weak, stomach-turning—I hear you, Sabotai.”

“Then why don’t you come out?”

“I’m not dressed yet.” He poured the gruel down his throat and laced up his boot. Something struck the cart so hard it rocked. Dmitri dodged the flood of gruel when the pot tipped over; hot coals skittered across the floor. The women danced about, scooping them up with horn spoons.

“Tshant and Buri will bring the baggage train,” Batu said. “We have to ride like Mongols now.” He walked hunched over to the end of the cart and jumped out. Psin followed on hands and knees.

“Psin, come catch this brute of a horse.”

Psin dragged his saddle out from under the cart. “Why, can’t a bunch of Mongols handle a Merkit horse?”

The horse whistled and kicked out. Its hindhoofs cracked on the side of the cart, which swayed violently. Psin plunged through the men trying to hold the horse; the dun saw him coming and spun around, legs braced.

“Calm down, lambkin. Easy, sweeting.” Psin took the rope and went quietly to the horse’s head. “You cock-eyed spittle of a perverted dragon.”

The dun licked his hand. Sabotai was mounted and giving yet more orders. Two couriers flashed through the torchlight. Beyond the light lay only a vast and noisy darkness, full of horses.

A drover’s whip cracked. They were linking up the baggage train again. Psin forced the bit between the dun’s teeth and jerked his girth tight. The dun would not stand still to be mounted. Psin swung up, and the dun tried to bolt.

“Ride on the north wing,” Sabotai said. “Carry a green lantern and watch for my signals.”

Psin nodded. He wheeled the horse over to the nearest cart and took down one of the lanterns hanging from the side. The army was moving. The center of the column was already out of the camp. His remounts jogged up, and he hooked the leadline to his saddle. The last of the column cantered past his cart. He swung out to ride around them and come up on the north side.

The beech trees on the next ridge crawled with horsemen. Out of the racket and confusion of breaking camp had come the single motion of an army riding. The rumble of the horses’ hoofs drowned out the wind. Lanterns glowed, red, green, blue, white and yellow, and the tossing manes of the horses were like pine branches in the wind. For a while, cantering around to take up his post, he was separate from the great mass of the army. In the middle of the dark night the swarm did not seem like many riders, but one great creature that bounded over the ground and spilled through the stiff and naked trees.

The dun horse bucked. Psin whipped him and maneuvered him around a clump of rocks that lumped up the snow. The horse lengthened its stride to pass the mob alongside them. Psin gave him his head.

In the darkness the riding was treacherous. The column spread out far more than in the daylight, because if a horse stumbled or a rider fell the men behind would ride right over him before they saw. Sabotai’s lanterns flashed busily, directing the sides of the column this way and that. Psin acknowledged the orders under his sign by swinging his own lantern. The stars were out, shivering cold, and the wind rose steadily. North of Psin a wolf howled.

Ahead the green lantern flashed three times. Psin waved his red lantern and bellowed, “Swing out, north wing.” He dropped back a little, yelling, and the north wing spread out toward him. He looked up toward Sabotai and saw the green lantern flashing more complexly.

“Move up—come up level with the front of the column.” He rode around to the end of the extended wing and galloped forward, and as if he were linked to the line they all burst into a gallop and hurtled along through the total darkness beside him. They swept up a slope and charged down the other side, gaining ground swiftly on the head of the column. Sabotai was turning toward them a little, and Psin corrected his course.

Light glowed up ahead—watchfires, leaping against the trees. Russians. He pulled his bow out of the case, leaving his rein draped over the dun’s withers, but before he could nock an arrow lanterns winked on and off in the midst of the fires. Mongke’s scouts must have lit them to guide Sabotai in toward the river.

They plunged down toward the fires. Psin’s remounts loped freely beside the dun; whenever the wind changed a little he could hear them pounding over the snow, the breath whumping out of their nostrils. The lanterns ahead flashed an order and Psin shouted to his wing to slow down.

They swept in between fires. Men dodged wildly out of their way. Psin, expecting the riverbank, checked the dun hard just before they slid down it. The ice rang like stone beneath the horse’s hoofs. The leadline strained, and a horse ran into the dun from behind. The dun kicked back. Psin’s remounts got tangled up, bit and clawed at each other, and straightened themselves out before they had to scramble up the far bank.

The column was veering south, and Sabotai’s green lantern flashed again: Psin and his wing held back hard to take up the rear of the swerving column. Faint light streaked across the snow, and the watchfires seemed paler. The eastern sky bristled with the dawn. Psin relaxed a little. He leaned out to whip his remounts into line again. The snow was blue, the air itself was blue, and the watchfires they passed on the far bank shrank down to puddles of weak light. The wind shrieked around his ears.

Some of the men around him were changing horses already—leaping onto the bare backs of their nearest remounts and leaving the saddled horse to gallop along beside them. They hadn’t been riding long enough to change horses, and Psin started to yell at them. But the green lantern started to wink and he had to charge out of the midst of the rearguard to see.

The lantern winked four times quickly and twice slowly. Psin swore. He shuttered his lantern to show that he didn’t understand. The green lantern flashed off entirely. Sabotai was definitely getting old if he couldn’t even send signals anymore. Now the yellow lantern was winking, and the center of the column slackened speed.

They were coming up to a thick stretch of trees. The column thinned down to pass between it and the river, along the bare space there. Psin swore again and swung the dun horse into the thick of his men; he flung his leadrope to one and dashed off again. He galloped the dun straight through the thick trees. The horse leapt like a deer over a windfall, smashed Psin’s knee against a tree, and plowed through a clump of birches. Psin held his hat on with one hand. The dun thrashed out of the wood and Psin lashed him once to keep him settled. The horse flattened out, racing at top speed toward Sabotai.

The snow, still glittering blue in the dawn light, flew past under the horse’s reaching hoofs. The main column fell behind as if they weren’t moving at all. Sabotai was playing with the green lantern again. Psin could see him clearly, his features unnaturally distinct in the fresh light. He charged the dun up to him and slowed the horse to Sabotai’s pace.

“What in God’s name do you want me to do?”

Sabotai shouted, “I was warning you about the trees ahead.”

“Four short and two long? Did you just make it up?”

“Three long to slow down.”

“I read four short and two long, Sabotai. It may be fun to invent new signals but—”

The dun collected himself and jumped a small stream. Psin rocked back in his saddle.

“I told him three long.”

Sabotai sounded angry. Psin shouted, “I definitely saw six flashes.” A tree branch might have gotten in the way, so that a long flash seemed two short ones. He spun the horse around and galloped back along the line of the column. The green lantern flashed two long.

“Sabotai. This is no time for lantern drill.”

He fell back to his own wing and collected his remounts; they picked up speed, obeying the order. But Sabotai had forgotten to tell the center of the column to move out, and Psin’s wing began to run up on the center’s heels.

“Batu,” Psin roared. “Move up.”

Batu was galloping along beside the center, a little apart from the main group. He waved. “Sabotai gave me no signal.”

“Damn Sabotai. He’s a—”

The white lantern flashed, and Batu answered it with his own. The center plunged on, finally drawing ahead of the rearguard. It was full day, and the lanterns were getting hard to see. Psin thought perhaps Sabotai had signaled and Batu hadn’t caught it.

He rode in close to the nearest of his remounts, kicked his feet out of the stirrups, and jumped. The horse shied away from him and he landed off center, his arms around the horse’s neck. The horse staggered. Psin hauled himself up onto the heaving back and steered over closer to the dun. The dun reached out to nip Psin’s new mount, and he grabbed his rein, whipped his horse up ahead of the dun so that he could kick the dun in the nose, and settled down. Ahead, Sabotai was raising the banners, and in the east the first long rays of the sun shot across the horizon.

They rode down on Moskva well before noon. Kadan was already camped around the city, on the frozen swamp at the foot of its low hill. The main army washed in like a flood, split exactly down the middle, and swung around to embrace everything, Kadan, hill, city and all. They crashed through the heavy woods opposite one gate and spilled out over the narrow strip of fields, and the two wings came together precisely before the tall stone main gate into the city. Psin’s wing, charging around the east side, packed the river from bank to bank with racing horses.

The Mongols already there cheered, and the Mongols coming in cheered, and the people on the city wall screamed insults; the horses neighed, the wind howled, and the pine around the hill moaned. In the uproar Psin halted his column and posted them into camps, two on the city’s side of the river, one in the middle on the far bank. The ice between the city and the far camp was trampled free of snow and blazed under the high sun. Psin jogged across it to find Sabotai.

From the peaks of the city’s towers pennants flew. People crowded the walls and the roofs of the buildings near the gate. The snow at the foot of the hill was flecked with arrows. Just below a gate lay half a dozen dead and frozen knights and two horses with their guts strung over the ground. Psin’s horse shied, and he realized that he was still riding bareback, with only a halter and leadrope for bridle.

“Psin.”

Kadan jogged up. His face glowed, and he smiled.

“Have you lost that strange horse of yours? I could have taken this pile six times by now. Did you see the bodies? They tried to run off. Sabotai’s over there.”

Psin looked up at the city. “It doesn’t look like any problem, does it?”

“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 young 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 flames—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.