Two days later, leaving Quyuk in command of the garrison near Tver, they started out for Novgorod. The horses were gaunt from winter feeding, and the snow was deep and wet, hard to plow through. After four days of it, Psin told Sabotai that he doubted they would reach Novgorod before the thaw.

“We’ve covered less than half as much ground in four days as we did when I rode reconnaissance here. Look at the sky, look at the sun—spring’s coming. I saw some hay from Novgorod; it was half weeds. Their springs are wet. The army is tired.”

Sabotai looked out through the trees toward the west. That wing of the army stretched out across the slopes, sagging in their saddles. Already the trees were growing more thickly, and the hills were treacherously steep under the snow. He said, “We’ll keep going.”

They pushed on. Batu’s outflung western flank made contact with them two days later. When Sabotai asked for supplies the scouts only smiled.

“We were hoping you’d bring us some.”

“No matter. Tell Batu to hold this line.”

The only advantage to this, Psin thought, was that the riding was so hard and the food so scanty that neither he nor Tshant had the strength to fight. They seldom met. Tshant rode in the eastern wing and Psin stayed near Sabotai in the center.

He had thought at first it would be difficult riding with Sabotai; he was sure that Mongke was right about the fighting between the Altun. But it didn’t seem to make any difference between them. He and Sabotai were old friends, and he discovered that the long patterns of association between them held up easily enough even now.

Once Sabotai said, “You’ve fought with Tshant, haven’t you.”

“Yes.”

“Is there no way to reconcile you?”

“Oh, there probably is.” Their horses jogged side by side over a little meadow. “But there’s no sense in it. We don’t like each other. It’s better if we don’t force it.”

Sabotai looked sharply at him, but the horses were on the upward slope and they both had to concentrate on riding.

The forest closed in on them, and the going was twice as hard as before. The horses gnawed the bark from the trees and still neighed from hunger. At night the men crouched over their fires and made thin gruel from their grain, protecting the pots and the fires from the dripping trees all around them. The wet cold crept inside their coats and cloaks. Psin’s teeth chattered all night long, and his lips chapped and bled.

On the eighth day of the ride north they woke up in the rain. It came without wind and fell like the stones of Tver. The snow, already soggy, turned to slop. Psin bundled himself into his cloak and swore.

“Don’t open your mouth, you’ll drown,” Kadan said cheerfully. “Here. Eat.”

Psin looked at the diluted gruel. “That might drown me sooner.”

“How close are we?”

“A day’s ride in dry weather on the flat steppe.”

“Three days’ ride, like this.”

Psin threw down the empty bowl. “Thank you. Where is Sabotai?”

“Here,” Sabotai said. “I’m catching cold.”

“I hope you sneeze yourself back to the Volga camp.” Psin threw his saddle onto his dun horse and yanked up the girths. “The trail from here to Novgorod is due north. It goes up a steep hill and down a steep hill and through what is by now undoubtedly a marsh deep enough to lose a horse in. Shall I lead off?”

Sabotai laughed, coughed, and wiped his nose.

Psin, riding, caught a glimpse of Tshant, a good distance away. He had left Djela behind, in Quyuk’s camp, with Ana and Dmitri to look after him.

Ana had said, “What’s wrong? Are you two fighting?”

“Woman, we are always fighting.”

He did not know what he would do if they ever fought hand to hand. Mongke was right. Tshant would beat him. He wondered if he could bear that. When he thought of it he was filled with dread.

The rain continued all day long. Snow slid heavily down on them from the branches of trees. The dun’s neck streamed darkly with water. On the slopes, bare rock nudged up out of the rotting snow. One of Sabotai’s horses broke a leg in the afternoon, and they butchered it and ate it for dinner. In the marshes, the horses staggered and leapt forward and sank down to their hocks, neighing madly, while the stink of the putrefying earth stuffed up their riders’ noses. Sabotai sniffled and sneezed constantly.

Toward sundown they drew up on a ridge Psin knew was only a short ride from Novgorod’s lake. The sky was dark grey and no sunlight came through; the forest was full of a vast dripping. He could smell marsh at the foot of the ridge. Boulders lay tumbled all down the slope.

Two scouts came toward them, splashing through black mud. They paused halfway up the slope, and one called, “Marsh all ahead. We have a deer.”

“The ravine down the way?” Psin shouted.

“Full of water.”

Sabotai cursed. He had wanted to ride the ravine north.

Psin looked behind him. He could see only the first few ranks of the army. Kadan sat slouched in his saddle, his horse’s hoofs on a flat rock. Tshant, behind him, looked grim and tired.

“Yes,” Sabotai said. “I see what you mean.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “The road?”

They had crossed the road twice, so far, and each time their horses had sunk to their stifles in the mud. The sentry raised both hands and shrugged. “It’s under water.”

“Hunh.” He swung toward Psin. “We’ll camp the night here. Tomorrow…”

Psin looked up at him from under his eyebrows.

“Tomorrow we go back,” Sabotai said, and sighed.

 

Hungry, cold, drenched to their underwear and so tired that they swayed in their saddles, they turned south. The thawing spring swept over them like a flock of birds. When they reached the place where the pine forest gave way to oaks and beeches, they found the open meadows running with melted snow. A few days later, Batu and Kaidu with their personal guards joined them. Batu had left the bulk of the army under the command of his brothers; he said they were spread across the hills to the Kama River, and that they had come decently through the winter.

“I’m glad they did,” Sabotai said, and sneezed.

They swung west, to bypass Tver and the land they had already taken, crossed the Dnepr on ice that heaved and shuddered beneath the horses’ hoofs, and looted all the estates on the river’s east shore. These were many and rich, but even so the army’s supplies shrank dangerously. Some of their horses died, so that they had meat.

“We can’t stop to take cities,” Sabotai said. “Look—look.”

He threw his right arm out toward the forest. Through the thin sheet of dissolving snow, grass thrust, startling green. The trees were hazy with new buds. Psin nodded. The air was heavy and sweet, almost singing with warmth. Flowers showed where the sun reached in through the canopy of branches. The horses dug wildly through the shell of snow to get to the new shoots.

He had never liked Russia before, he had thought of it only as land to be taken, as grass for horses and cattle, a source of supplies, but that spring made him love it. When they had left Tver to ride north, the cold had clutched at them; now no one wore a coat. The air was so rich he could not breathe enough of it. The dun horse bucked and played like a foal, although his ribs showed and hollows lay deep under his hipbones.

They reached the margin between the forest and the steppe, turned along it, and plundered two villages in one day. Sabotai left three hundred men to keep watch on the country around them. The villages, full of tanned leather, furs, even gold and silver from the churches, gave up nothing to eat but some dried vegetables and a few baskets of grain, and Sabotai chafed.

“We’re almost out of food.”

“We can reach the Volga camp on what we’re carrying now.”

Sabotai twitched. “We’re not going there. I want to summer west of it, on the steppe.”

“Well, we can get there.”

“No.”

They forded the Dnepr again and headed due south, crossed a smaller river where the water ran cold and clear over rocks and chunks of ice butted into the green shallows to be torn apart by the current, and plunged on. Two days later, scouts reported a small city up ahead on a hill.

“Ah,” Sabotai said. “How big?”

“Ask Tshant,” Psin said. “He scouted this region.”

Sabotai turned and passed the word back for Tshant. Psin reined the dun off some little way and let his reins slide. Tshant galloped up. The dun lowered his head and grazed; Tshant glanced at Psin and pulled over beside Sabotai.

Psin was too far away to hear what they said. He looked back at the army. The horses were tough, and on the new grass their necks were filling out, their coats regaining the shine of good health. But the men looked tired.

Tshant rode around to Sabotai’s other side, and Psin trotted back. Sabotai said, “He says it’s Kozelsk, on a bluff over a spring, hard to get at, but small.”

“Large enough to have something to eat in it?”

“Apparently.”

“I wouldn’t like asking them to fight uphill.”

“For food they’ll do anything. It’s right in our path. Let’s take it.”

 

They did not take the city in the first attack, nor in the second. Before they had regrouped—dusty, swearing—twilight rolled in, and Sabotai ordered the army to camp. Psin looked up at the city and grunted.

“You don’t seem to have thought this out properly,” he said to Sabotai. “You know we can’t withdraw now.”

“We’ll take it tomorrow.”

Psin glanced at him and turned back to the city, perched at the edge of the bluff. Against the luminous twilight sky the walls made a black lump. Torches shone abnormally bright on the stubby towers. The only approach lay between two great shoulders of basalt, a steep and narrow trough from the lower ground where the spring was to the thick stone walls. The Mongols could not bring their full weight to bear on the gate.

He walked the dun back through the camp and listened to the voices of the man hunched around their fires. Most of them were already asleep, their dinner bowls licked clean. The few who spoke sounded angry.

Stone walls. Tshant should have mentioned that. Perhaps he had, but Sabotai hadn’t thought it worth repeating. They could not burn Kozelsk, they could not storm it; the city they were attacking for its food supply they would probably have to starve into submission. He tried to raise the energy to laugh at that.

The deep night was full of a soft wind. The sky shone, dark rich blue. Everything seemed more distinct than usual, more alive. A nightbird shrilled. He dismounted and pulled his saddle off the dun, and great swatches of loose hair came with the blanket. He rubbed the horse down. On the dun’s shoulders his soft new summer coat showed in patches through the shed, three shades lighter.

If he were not on campaign he would be beside the Lake now, moving the herds slowly into spring pasturage, tending the foaling mares, counting new calves. The yurts would have patches after the long winter. Malekai’s new son would have a coat made of a lamb’s skin, and the meat would suddenly be tasting better, the kumiss more pungent, the game fatter.

We are hunters, he thought. We are herders. In God’s name, how did we come to be here?

“Do you think we’ll take it?” Tshant said, behind him.

“Eventually.”

“You didn’t discourage him much.”

Psin kept his back to Tshant. “I didn’t know it would be so hard to take.”

“Neither did I.”

Psin hunched up his shoulders. After a little silence he heard footsteps going away. He looked up at Kozelsk, at the black walls. It seemed to him that the land under his feet was tensing to throw him down.

 

Three times the next day they charged up the trough to the gate, and the Russians on the walls screamed and hurled stones and arrows and lances down on them, and they drew back, shouting with rage. Few died—Sabotai ordered them back each time just when it was obvious that to go on would cost too much.

They had to take Kozelsk now, no matter how long it took, and the army knew it and ground its teeth over it. To Tshant it seemed that the fresh wide pastures of the bursting spring lay just over the southern horizon, that the rest and food he had done so long without waited for him only two days’ ride south. But they had to stay, because Sabotai hadn’t judged this properly.

He rode out with four hundred men to raid the Dnepr. Psin was dispatching as many as half the army at a time to forage. Already the grass around Kozelsk was eaten down to the root. The grain was old and tasteless. Tshant didn’t like the way the water tasted, metallic from the rock just below the soil. He rode slowly, letting his horse graze.

Kaidu, cheery as ever, had demanded the whole story of the campaigns against Yaroslav and Tver. In return he had told Tshant about the winter in the north. “It was cold, and we spent all day long hunting. All day long. Our grain was gone long before you came by on the way to Novgorod. The hunting is fine, up there. Not like the Gobi, but interesting. How is Quyuk?”

“Mending. He broke his shoulder at Tver. What did he and your grandfather fight about?”

Kaidu shrugged. “I didn’t hear. Quyuk’s an odd sort. No, I guess I’m the odd sort, aren’t I? Everyone else is like Quyuk.”

“Even me?”

“Oh, of course.” And Kaidu laughed.

One of Tshant’s scouts rode up. “There is a herd of cattle in a meadow just ahead.”

“How many herders?”

“Six men and a boy.”

Fresh beef. “Did they see you?”

“Yes. They sent a messenger west, on foot.”

“Good.” Tshant wheeled. “Kaidu, take command of the right flank. I want a crescent formation.” He looked at the scout. “Is the meadow in a wood?”

“No—there are trees all around, but not thick. It’s just beyond that ridge.”

“Good.” Tshant pointed to the dozen men nearest him. “You, you, you—when we attack, you tend the herd. Keep them bunched. Don’t let them run. Nogai, take the banners and ride at the tip of the left flank.”

Nogai and Kaidu began to yell, and the men riding along behind them whipped up their horses and shoved forward into the crescent shape. The ends of the formation spread out swiftly and moved slightly ahead of the center. Nogai on the far west spread out the black banner and waved it in a circle on the high pole. The band broke from its trot into a canter.

The ground below the ridge was marshy. Tshant’s horse splashed through it, throwing mud up over its shoulders. If the messenger had gone on foot their help couldn’t be far away. Tshant strung his bow and laid an arrow to the string. The ridge was sprinkled with beech trees. A man dodged behind one, and Tshant lifted the bow and shot. The arrow missed but the man raced away, yelling, and another Mongol shot him down. They careened up to the summit of the ridge, weaving in among the scrawny trees, and flung themselves down the other side.

The cattle were moving through the trees on the far side of the meadow. Tshant heard the high calls of the herders. They looked over their shoulders at the sound of the Mongols. Their mouths, wet, red, gleamed in their white faces. They threw down their staffs and ran, screaming. Tshant shot; his arrow flew up with four hundred others and the herders slapped into the young grass, quilled like porcupines. The cattle began to bellow.

Nogai was waving the yellow banner; he hadn’t stopped to string it on the pole and it flapped in his hands. Tshant reined in. Two horses collided with his from behind, and they skidded entangled down the slope. The dozen men chosen to herd galloped by after the cattle. Nogai was riding back up to the summit of the ridge, to watch the east. Tshant leaned back to look at his horse’s hindlegs, saw them still whole, and glared at the men behind him. They grinned, ashamed.

“Watch the banners, you fools.”

The cattle stamped out into the meadow again, their horns swinging. The Mongols yelped and beat at them with their bows to keep them close together and moving. Two bodies lay in the herd’s path, and the cattle split to pass around them.

Nogai whistled from the height of the ridge. Tshant jerked around; the blue banner was up. He filled his lungs and yelled, “Kaidu—what do you see?”

Kaidu was farther down the ridge from Nogai; he stood in his stirrups and looked east and shook his head.

Tshant gnawed his lip. Nogai was still signaling. Abruptly Tshant kicked his horse forward toward the cattle herd. He paused long enough to shout, “Drive them straight to the camp,” whirled his horse, and charged toward Nogai, urging on the others with his arm.

Now Kaidu was shouting, but Tshant couldn’t hear the words. He took an arrow from the quiver. His horse raced madly up toward Kaidu, who was swinging his men around to face whatever was coming. Arrows lifted from their bows. The men behind Tshant yelled. They surged up over the summit of the ridge and swept right down into the oncoming knights.

Tshant’s horse smashed into another horse, reared, and plunged on its hindlegs through the pack. Armor clashed. The bow was useless. Tshant drew his dagger, ducked a swordthrust, and leaned out to swipe at a knight’s jaw. An arm swept him all but out of the saddle. He clung, feeling the horse stagger beneath him. Harsh enemy voices thundered in his ears. He stabbed at the men snatching for him, hauled himself back onto his horse, and ducking swords and outflung arms bored free of the tangle.

There were far fewer knights than Mongols, he saw at once, but the Mongols could not use their bows and the knights like boulders were grinding them to pieces. The horses reared and plunged down across one another, and the swords of the knights glanced occasionally off Russian helmets. Tshant dragged his horse back, thrust three fingers into his mouth, and whistled.

The Mongols looked around toward the banner and wheeled away. Many of them could not get free of the knights and were cut down. The knights charged heavily after. Tshant’s bow was broken, and he flung it down and wrenched his spare out of its case. “Shoot,” he yelled. The knights wheeled toward him. Their huge eyes shone above the cheekpieces of their helmets. They lumbered along, while the Mongols got back their senses and bent their bows and the arrows hissed into the iron-clad swarm. Some of the knights tried to turn, but before they could work their horses out of the pack the arrows felled them.

Nogai on the summit was waving the blue banner again. Tshant whistled, and the Mongols looked at him, looked at Nogai, and trotted up the slope. The Russian knights did not follow. Tshant galloped after his men. On the ground behind him lay as many Mongol dead as Russian.

Never mind, Father. I’ll make up for it. The cattle herd was already south of the ridge and plodding energetically toward Kozelsk. Tshant caught up with it, ranged his men on all sides, and let his horse graze while he walked.

His father would be angry. Let him be. This time Tshant had learned something worth the dead. The old man had to learn to treat him more gently, anyhow.

 

Long before they reached Kozelsk, the following morning, he saw the smoke in columns all down the bluff. Psin was taking no risks. Any Mongol detachment, hunting or raiding, could follow the smoke back to the camp. When Tshant and his men brought up their herd, they found the pasturage at the foot of the bluff already jammed with cattle, sheep, horses, even swine, and nearby a slaughter pen big enough to keep the whole camp in fresh meat.

“We’ve scoured everything for two days’ ride,” Kadan said, across his campfire. “Everything that walks on more than one leg is or will be slaughtered for us before the day after tomorrow.”

“Have they tried to storm the wall again?”

Kadan nodded. He lay back on the ground and shut his eyes. “Twenty men could hold us off from that height. You didn’t find anything to drink, did you?”

“No.”

“Ayuh. I think Sabotai is deliberately keeping me sober.”

“They’re sending out parties to find grass for the horses, now,” Baidar said. “Look at the dust.”

Tshant nodded. “And we’ve only been here ten or twelve days.”

“You lost some of your men,” Baidar said. “What happened?”

“I ran into some knights.”

“How many?”

“Eighty, if that.”

Baidar stared at him; Tshant lifted his head, slowly, and the muscles at the hinges of his jaw tightened.

“Eighty? You had almost four hundred.” 

“Yes. I mean to talk to my father about it.”

Kadan muttered under his breath. Tshant spun toward him. “Say something, Kadan. Anything.”

“Not me.” Kadan lifted both hands. “I’m too sober to fight.”

“Psin is over at the spring,” Baidar said.

Tshant rose. Baidar stood up with him and swung to face him.

“He’s tired, Tshant. He’s done too much this winter. And he was wounded. His temper’s short.”

“It’ll be shorter.”

Tshant brushed past him. He heard Baidar’s blunt cursing and Kadan’s low voice beneath it. Catching his horse, he rode over to the spring.

It lay in a sink just below one of the great cliffs that framed the trough up to Kozelsk, and while the water was pure there wasn’t enough of it for all the horses and men in the camp. Psin was standing sentry duty on the sentries, to make sure no one broke the rationing. He sat on a bulge of the rock, just a little lower than Tshant on his horse. Sabotai was there, and Batu, sitting on the ground to Psin’s left.

“Good hunting?” Sabotai said.

Tshant’s head bobbed. “I met some knights—we lost twenty men.”

“Ah?” Sabotai frowned and glanced up at Psin.

“In God’s name,” Batu said. “Is there so large a band of knights running around here? I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“Eighty.” Tshant shrugged. “Much less, now.”

“Eighty knights? You had five times that many. How did you manage to lose even one?”

Sabotai glanced up at Psin again. Tshant let his reins run through his fingers. Psin’s face was impassive. He was braiding together some wisps of straw, but his eyes were on Tshant, not on his moving hands.

“We met them just below the summit of a hill—when we rode over the hill we didn’t know they were there,” Tshant said to Sabotai. Through the tail of his eye he saw Kadan and Baidar strolling toward them, all innocence. “We got mixed up with them, very close quarters, and we aren’t lancers or swordsmen.”

“And before you could pull free they had killed twenty of you.”

Tshant nodded. Sabotai looked at Psin for the third time, but Psin was having none of it; he never looked at Sabotai, and he said nothing.

“How did they fight?” Batu said. “Did they try to run you down or throw you off your horses?”

“They just swung whatever they had in their hands.”

Batu looked around. “Psin. What do you think?”

Psin’s eyes were still on Tshant. “If he lost only twenty, he’s lucky.”

Sabotai murmured something. Psin threw aside the bits of straw. “Knights are heavy cavalry. If they can reach light cavalry, like Mongols, they’ll ruin us.”

“We’ve fought knights before,” Batu said. “Without any problem.”

“Because we could get out of their way.”

Batu spat. “Their horses are slow. We can run before them all day long.”

“Providing the terrain lets us. On a steppe, yes. On country we know, yes. But over unfamiliar ground, hills, forests, rivers—”

“Where do you see hills and forests that we don’t know? Not even in the north.”

“Europe,” Psin said. “Sabotai wants to fight in Europe. You’ve spoken of it. The steppe breaks up, there. And the Europeans are knights. So.”

He turned and stared off across the plain. Kadan and Baidar began to tease Sabotai for another drink of water. Tshant was braced, ready for a fight, but somehow Psin had gotten out of it. He scowled.

 

 

The siege dragged on through the lengthening days. On the walls at night, the Russians paced uneasily from torch to torch. Psin kept two or three men with bows watching, to shoot down any they could, but the Russians learned quickly enough not to stand against the sky. Sometimes, late at night, Psin could hear them talking on the walls.

Every day since they had first come up to Kozelsk, the city’s cocks had crowed in the morning, but gradually their number thinned. On the twenty-eighth morning of the siege, only one cock crowed, and on the twenty-ninth, none. By the thirty-first day, the dogs didn’t bark any more. Psin, arranging his foraging parties, shaded his eyes to count the heads behind the rampart.

“Soon,” Kadan said.

“Ah.” Psin turned away. “It was a mistake to begin with. We shouldn’t have come up so grandly, now we have to stay until it’s all over.”

Mongke had been gone three days, now, and Kaidu five. The horses grazed nearly half a day’s ride away. Coming back from a six-day raid, Tshant had reported a caravan moving across the edge of the steppe, far south. Sabotai did not want to attack it.

“If it’s going to Karakorum it’s under the Kha-Khan’s protection.”

“Tax them,” Psin had said. “Cut their herds. Anything.”

“No,” Sabotai had said.

“Damn you,” Batu had roared. “We are slowly starving.”

“Kozelsk will fall soon enough.”

Now Psin told Kadan, “Don’t raid south too much. When we move on we’ll need that forage.”

Kadan nodded glumly and reined his horse around. His three hundred men waited, impatient; away from the camp they could find water, graze for their horses, small game not worth carrying back here but far better than what the camp lived on. Psin watched them go. The dust of the ruined pasture rolled up under the hoofs of their horses.

If it were winter they would have been forced to drop the siege long before this. No man could live in the winter on the scraps of meat and fish the rationers doled out. It was worth marveling at that no one tried to steal or hold back supplies. Most of the men spent the daylight  sleeping in the sun and the cool nights gambling. Twice in the last ten days they had attacked the city, probing, only to retreat as soon as the shower of stones and arrows and debris started to pelt them.

Tshant was sitting beside the spring, sipping his day’s cupful of water. He looked up when Psin came near and his eyes took on the stony stare he’d been favoring Psin with since the business at Tver. Psin put his hands on his belt; his temper edged him.

“Stop sulking, will you?”

“Oh.” Tshant put the cup down empty. “Am I sulking?”

He stood, close enough that Psin had to look up to see his face. “I didn’t know I was sulking. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

Psin backhanded him as hard as he could. Tshant staggered and fell to his knees beside the spring. Psin glanced quickly around; there was nobody nearby, except for a handful of men dozing down where the pebbles turned to sand. He bent and picked up a rock just small enough to close his fist over.

Tshant lunged to his feet, his hands clenched, took a deep breath, and leapt for Psin. His right hand gathered up the front of Psin’s shirt, and the other arm cocked back to strike. Psin smashed one arm up against Tshant’s right wrist, and when Tshant threw his punch he ducked under it. Tshant wobbled, off balance. Psin hit him behind the ear with the hand that held the rock. Tshant fell hard and lay still. Psin looked around again. No one had seen it. He knelt, made sure he hadn’t fractured Tshant’s skull, and walked quickly away.

He hoped Tshant wouldn’t realize that he’d hit him with a rock. Out of sight of the spring, he opened his hand. The sharp edge of the rock had torn the insides of his fingers. He tossed it away and wiped off the blood on the tail of his shirt.

 

“No,” Sabotai said. “We leave the caravan alone.”

Batu grumbled. “You’re mad. Let me take half the army south, at least. Get away from this place.”

Psin lifted his head, thinking about that, but Sabotai at once said, “No.”

“Why, in God’s name? If you mean to starve them out you cannot need so many—”

“Because we have been here so long the whole country knows where we are. How can we know there won’t be an army after us?”

Batu threw his head back. “Sabotai. We have beaten their army.”

“Only one. There are more. There are always more.” Sabotai shook his head. “No. We stay, and we suffer through it. When the city falls we can move south again, and by the time we reach the steppe the grass will be full grown and the game ready for hunting.”

“If we can find the men to hunt them with.”

Psin said, “Sabotai is right.”

He looked at his hand, at the scraps of dead flesh clinging to the insides of his fingers. He hadn’t seen Tshant since the fight.

Baidar, across the table, leaned forward and said, “We can wait a while longer before it becomes entirely impossible to hold this position. Maybe we can storm the city before then.”

“What have they been burning?” Sabotai asked Psin.

“You’ve smelled it.”

“Yes, but my nose is older than yours.”

“Wood. Nothing else. No garbage. No meat.”

“Meat, burning? “ Baidar said.

“Their dead,” Batu said. “We may not live to see this place collapse.”

“We haven’t lost a man, a horse or a cow to starvation,” Psin said. “Or to thirst, which is the worse of the two. If it would rain—”

“It rained itself out when we rode to Novgorod,” Baidar said.

Footsteps crunched the sand behind Psin. He recognized them; he didn’t look up.

“Where have you been?” Batu said. “I wanted you to play chess.”

“I was by the spring,” Tshant said. His voice rasped across Psin’s ears. “You didn’t look hard enough.”

“Who goes near water he can’t drink?” Batu laughed. “Come along. We can play now.”

“Not right now,” Tshant said. “I have something else to attend to.”

His hand fell to Psin’s shoulder, and Psin leapt away from the table, whirling; he snatched the dagger out of Tshant’s belt. Before Tshant could draw his fist back Psin had the dagger up, the tip against Tshant’s breastbone. Tshant froze.

“Go attend to it,” Psin said. “Now.”

Tshant looked down his nose at the dagger. The jewels in the hilt caught the sunlight and threw bright color over Psin’s hand. Psin’s arm shifted a little, and the point indented Tshant’s coat. With all that weight behind his arm Psin could gut him in a single lunge. Tshant opened his eyes wide and smiled.

“Yes, of course. I would love to play chess with you, Batu.”

He backed up two steps, and Psin lowered the dagger. Batu was rising. Tshant turned halfway toward him. 

Through the corner of his eye he saw Psin reverse the dagger to fling it onto the table. He spun around, threw his whole strength behind his fist, and knocked Psin head over heels.

The others bounded up, but Sabotai’s voice held them back. Tshant dove after Psin. He caught him just rising and smashed him flat again, face to the harsh sand. He wrapped both arms around Psin from behind, pinning down his arms, and pulling his face back away from Psin’s shoulder took a deep breath.

Beneath him his father’s tremendous strength flexed smoothly, and he felt himself rolling helplessly over. A heel struck him in the shin, and one of Psin’s arms ripped out of his grasp. He braced himself just before the elbow crashed into his ribs. Psin was breaking free. His weight held Tshant under him.

Tshant whipped his legs around and wound them around Psin’s. That elbow smashed him in the mouth; blood spurted over his tongue. Psin, his back still to Tshant, heaved himself off the ground and fell back on Tshant’s chest. The breath exploded out of Tshant’s lungs. He lurched up, grabbing for Psin’s forearms, and Psin fell on him again. He could hear his father’s breath hissing through his teeth. Psin was squirming around to face him, and Tshant straightened his legs to keep his hold tight. Psin clubbed him on the knee with one fist and flipped himself over, belly to belly with Tshant.

Somebody yelled, far away. Psin was dragging one arm up. Tshant could not hold him; every time he managed to wrap his arms or legs around his father Psin in a violent convulsion tore loose. Psin reared up, planted one knee in Tshant’s stomach, and drew his fist back. Tshant saw the fist coming, and he saw that Psin had another rock in his fingers.

He flung himself to one side. The fist grazed his ear and crashed into the rough sand behind his head. He heard a howl of pain. He swiped one arm awkwardly around and got hold of Psin’s belt. The knee in his stomach was grinding his guts through his backbone. He wrenched, and Psin slipped sideways, and Tshant flung him off and lunged to his feet.

He gulped for air. His mouth was full of blood, and he spat it out. Psin came up on one knee, panting. He was stronger than Tshant, and faster than he looked. Tshant made himself relax. If he let Psin get in close he’d never beat him.

The look on Psin’s face puzzled him; it was as if Psin didn’t recognize him. Wary, he backtracked a little. Psin got to his feet, arms dangling. He’d never seen his father look so harsh.

He glanced up at Sabotai, wondering when he would stop this, and saw him, up there, his face cold and remote. He remembered the fight with Mongke—the fights with Buri—

Psin hit him, and he reeled back. Psin was coming in, crouched and reaching. Tshant backed up fast to get out of his way, ducked, feinted, and hit Psin cleanly in the face. Psin wobbled, but when Tshant bored in got both arms up to protect his face and kicked Tshant’s legs out from under him. Tshant landed on his side and rolled.

He felt the hands on his coat and the strength behind them, ready to drag him up, and getting one foot under him he sprang forward. He butted Psin in the jaw. Psin started to fall, and Tshant hit him twice in the belly. Psin kicked him in the knee and raked one elbow across Tshant’s face, but Tshant, collapsing, brought his father down with him and rolled and finally had Psin underneath him, face down. He clenched his fingers in Psin’s hair and drove his face against the ground.

He could feel Psin coiling up beneath him. He jerked Psin’s head back and pounded his face against the sand again. This time Psin wouldn’t get away. He could feel his father’s strength ebbing. He let go of Psin’s hair, swung his shoulders back, and drove his fist into the back of Psin’s head. His knuckles split. He gasped at the pain shooting through his arm, but Psin no longer moved. He almost cried out in triumph; he drew his fist back to hit him again.

They threw him off, wrestled him back, away from Psin, shouting at him. He couldn’t hear the words. He swung his weight against them, but they were fresh, and they flung him up against the basalt and roared in his ears.

“He’s your father,” Baidar shouted. “Do you want to kill him?”

Tshant’s head swam. He panted; his lungs burnt. Baidar and Batu stepped back, their faces taut. All the exultation was gone. He looked down at Psin and saw the blood pooled under his head, soaking into the sand. His stomach contracted.

“Why did you let me do it?”

Batu said, “If you can’t—”

“Shut up,” Baidar said. “Is he all right, Sabotai?”

Sabotai was beside Psin, his fingers pressing against Psin’s skull. “Why did you let me do it?” Tshant said.

“I think he would have done it to you,” Baidar said softly. “He was frightened of losing.”

Tshant couldn’t catch his breath. Sabotai came up toward them.

“He’s only sleeping.” His eyes rested on Tshant. “You hit him hard enough, that time, to murder him.”

Tshant spat in his face. Batu murmured. The bloody spittle dribbled down Sabotai’s beard. Tshant turned and went off down the slope, stumbling. His legs felt weak, and he could barely see. It was only when he was nearly to his own fires that he realized he was weeping.

 

“You have a skull like a piece of rock,” Tshant said.

“Is that fresh water?”

“Yes.” He squeezed out the cloth and pressed it against the mess of Psin’s face. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Remorse. And the nursing on top of it. If I could find my right arm I’d break your neck.”

“I didn’t know you were so strong. If you weren’t so strong I wouldn’t have lost my temper.”

Psin’s eyes glittered feverishly. Whenever Tshant put the rag to his face, he flinched, shivering. The sand was embedded in the raw meat of his cheek, and he’d bitten the inside of his mouth to shreds. Tshant rinsed the cloth and started to soak out the sand, but Psin’s left hand caught him around the wrist.

“Why? I’ve got friends enough. I don’t need you working over me.”

“Because of your friends,” Tshant said. “The way they look at me, I may get an arrow in the back the next time I turn it.”

The grip of the fingers loosened. “It was Sabotai.” Psin shut his eyes.

“I know. I finally figured that out.”

The blood ran freely down into Psin’s hair. His limp mustaches clung wetly to his jaw. Tshant picked up Psin’s right hand and bandaged it, hoarding the water.

“Baidar, Batu, Kaidu and Sabotai all gave up their water ration for you.”

“Tshant. I’m tired of fighting with you.”

“You’re sick. You wouldn’t say—”

“I am. I don’t want to fight anymore.”

Tshant paused. He stared down at the wreck of his father’s face in the wavering torchlight. That Psin might weaken he had never considered. His hands trembled; he could not bear that, that Psin should weaken.

“I must be… older than I thought,” Psin said. He shut his eyes.

“No.”

Psin’s eyes slowly opened. His lacerated cheek stretched into a smile; his fingers moved and caught Tshant by the wrist. “Unnatural,” he said. “Unnatural. You came by it naturally enough, monster. I’d rather fight you than the Russians. Go away. I’m tired.”

Tshant stood up, uncertain. Psin pulled his sable cloak over him and shifted his weight a little; his eyes shut again. The torchlight lay now on the better side of his face. Tshant gathered up the cloth and filthy water and went away.

Mongke walked up out of the darkness. “I hear you beat him.”

Tshant stopped, surprised. Mongke had come back from patrol after sundown. If he knew already the whole camp knew. “Who told you that?”

“Many, many. Did you beat him?”

Mongke of all people should have been gleeful, but Mongke was not. Tshant grimaced. “No. I knocked him cold. That was all.”

Mongke’s teeth flashed in a grin. “I didn’t think you had.” He went on by. Tshant looked after him, thinking of following, but after a while walked on up the slope.

 

Psin leaned back against the warm stone. After forty days of siege there was no reason to be hasty. The lines of the city wall stood out unnaturally clear against the blazing sky, unblurred by smoke. Behind the thick parapets no heads moved. That wasn’t unusual. The Russians had learned early not to make targets for the Mongol bowmen.

He glanced down the slope, to where Sabotai, Batu and Mongke were crouched talking over a dead fire. Kaidu and Baidar were off raiding; Kadan was with the horse herd, moving it still farther off, and Sabotai had sent Tshant to forage immediately after the fight. He said that it was because the Altun in the camp were likely to do Tshant damage for nearly killing Psin.

“He didn’t nearly kill me.”

“It looked as if he did.”

Sabotai was angry because the fight hadn’t settled much of anything. Psin had heard about Tshant’s spitting in his face. Sabotai would have to find another weapon. He stood and went down there, by habit circling the area that the Russians could reach with their arrows.

Mongke said, “Enjoying the sun?”

“Very pleasant.”

Batu had been describing a battleplan with small sticks and pebbles. He stood up. The boredom of the siege was eating at him: his face was sour with it. “Do you smell burning meat?”

“No.” Psin turned to Sabotai. “I don’t smell anything at all.”

“The wind’s wrong.”

“There was no smoke yesterday, Sabotai. No smoke today. No heads on the walls. No sound.”

Mongke’s eyes narrowed; he turned and looked over his shoulder at the city. Sabotai stood up. “Anything else?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

Sabotai nodded. “Mongke, go down and get the men in the lower camp up here. Batu, you command on the right flank. Psin, go back and watch.”

Psin nodded and walked back up to the place he’d just left. The wind was still wrong. He moved in closer, moving as quietly as he could. Usually at this time of day the wind changed.

The men from the lower camp were trotting up, bows in their hands, swords clanging at their heels. Russian swords, most of them, from Moskva, from Vladimir and Susdal and the Sit’ River and Tver. Running, the Mongols went into formation, under orders barely spoken.

A head moved behind Kozelsk’s rampart, and a thin shout rose. Nobody answered in the city. Across the forming ranks of the Mongols Sabotai yelled to Psin and Psin pointed to the city and nodded. Mongke, running neatly over the rougher ground beneath the basalt height, shouted and led the others up the trough.

Psin stood up. On the wall men appeared, bows and rocks in their hands—but fewer, much, much fewer even than three days ago. The rocks and arrows pelted down, and the Mongols flung up their shields. Batu’s men were already bending to let the men behind them scale the wall. The Mongols around Sabotai shot back at the Russians. Psin pressed himself against the rock. The Mongols swarmed up the wall and ran along the ramparts, and the Russians retreated before them, not even shouting any more.

The wind had changed. Psin took a breath of it and nausea swam in his throat. He whirled and waved to Sabotai. “Get them back out here!”

Sabotai frowned, not understanding, and Psin plunged down toward him. Before he reached him the gate to the city burst open and the Mongols charged out, yelling, fright in their voices. The men still outside the wall faltered, whirled, and ran away.

“Plague,” Psin yelled. He dodged in next to Sabotai. “You can smell the stink—”

The army was streaming back from the walls. Russian dead hung over the rampart, all of them probably dying before the Mongols cut them down. He realized he was standing stiffly and shuffled his feet. Sabotai said, “Pleasant thing to find.”

The last of Mongke’s ranks were out of the city. Mongke himself jogged along behind, red in the face, looking as if he didn’t care at all that the city was full of plague. He swerved over and stopped beside Sabotai.

“It stinks in there. Psin, your nose has gone bad on you.”

“It’s been living too near the rest of me too long.” He laughed, shaken. “Silly end to it, isn’t it?”

“If it gets to the army,” Sabotai said, “it will be a not very silly end to everything.”

It was over. In one brief charge and flight, the whole siege was over, and Psin was still twitching because it shouldn’t be. No smoke —because there was nothing to cook, no corpses burnt because the living dared not go near the dead to drag them to the fires. He turned back to the city. The gate yawned, and through it he saw a wide street, small buildings. Empty. Dead, and full of ghosts.

“We have to get out of here,” Batu said. “Let’s march. Now. Leave sign for the others to follow us.”

Sabotai nodded.

We have to get out of here. Dead, unappeased, untended. The wind swept down from the city and the full stink made Psin turn his face away. The men were already down on the flat plain, and Mongke and Sabotai were running after them to send for the horses.

The wind hissed softly over the rocks. Nothing moved between Psin and the city; on the walls a loose shirt flapped sluggishly, as if it were sick as well. Not even the carrion birds would come to Kozelsk. The open gate with the glimpse of cobbled streets and buildings fascinated him. He was sick with it. So long sitting here, waiting for that gate to open. All he had to do was walk up there and in. It was his city. He had waited for it.

“Come along,” Sabotai shouted. “We are done here.”

Psin turned his back on the gate and went after him down the slope. The horses were coming. Most of the men were running to meet them. Psin kicked three fires to pieces, waved Sabotai on, and rummaged for a flat stone. In the space between the two basalt cliffs he laid the stone on the warm sand and scratched on it with the tip of his dagger.

South, the scratches said. He arranged sticks alongside the stone: Don’t go into the city. Follow us. He scratched the Yek Mongol totem onto the flat stone above the signs, and beneath them cut in his own clan sign, the mark of the ox.

“I’ve got your horse,” Sabotai said.

Psin rose, sheathed his dagger, and mounted. Ahead of them, the army moved off to the south; many of them were singing. The fresh wide plain lay ahead of them, and the whole long summer. He couldn’t help but smile.