The formation had been standing since morning and the southern horizon had been empty since morning. And then it was not.
The darkening ca first. A sar against the pale sky south of the line, thickening as it spread, the kind of column that only ca from a mass of horses moving over dry ground at pace. Batu was behind Torghul’s left position when the relay rider from the outer screen ca back at a hard gallop and pulled up with two words.
Ford line.
Batu looked south and read the dust himself. A commander who dressed his riders before beginning the advance had used his scout’s report and used it correctly. Berke had not co north in march column.
The arc was planned before he moved.
The horses nearby knew it before the n registered it fully. Along Torghul’s front the animals had their heads up and their ears set forward, reading the sound coming through the ground before it reached the air.
The low continuous percussion of thousands of hooves transmitted through the dry steppe in a way that moved through a man’s boots and up through his legs. And settled in his chest like a second heartbeat.
The riders held their animals without difficulty. Everyone in the formation had been waiting for this.
The mass resolved out of its own dust.
It ca up dark and wide across the full approach, riders stretching as far as the flat ground showed. Banners moving above the front rank at intervals, the depth of the column visible behind the leading edge as more rows pressed forward.
The sound ca fully into the air now, thousands of animals and thousands of n and the equipnt of an army at march. The front hearing it held.
Torghul sat his horse on Batu’s left and watched the advance co on without expression.
Batu said one word to the relay rider beside him.
"Chaidu."
The rider went.
The mingan was already moving. Seven hundred n separating from the front, spreading as they cleared the position and dressed into a fighting line facing south.
The sound of their departure was swallowed imdiately by the larger sound coming from that direction. They moved out across the open ground between the two forces.
Dust rising hard behind them, and the distance began to close from both sides.
Berke’s riders were still at a walk. The spacing held. They ca on without urgency, the leading rank maintaining its intervals while the depth behind it pressed forward.
A commander holding his force until he was ready.
The range dropped.
Chaidu’s riders opened first. The release ca as a collective sound, hundreds of composite bows in the sa heartbeat, a tearing hiss that carried across the open ground.
And behind the sound the shafts went up in a dark arc against the sky.
They were visible at the top of their flight for a mont before the angle took them down.
They fell into the leading rank of Berke’s center and the effect moved through the line visibly. Horses going down, n with them.
The mass pressing around the gaps without stopping because a force at that scale did not stop for what fell at its front.
The dead were ridden over and the advance continued.
The return volley ca seconds later from Berke’s center. The arc of it ca north and fell across Chaidu’s front and into the leading edge of the main body behind him.
A horse two positions to Batu’s right in Torghul’s front mingan took a shaft through the neck and went down fast, legs folding, the rider thrown clear and rolling.
Another shaft buried itself in a rider’s upper arm and the man kept his position, leaning into his horse. Blood running down the arm and across the animal’s shoulder.
A third struck the ground a few ters out and stood upright, still shaking.
Chaidu’s riders sent the second volley. Berke’s center sent theirs.
The exchange beca continuous, both sides shooting at a range that was still dropping as the advance continued.
And the sound layered over itself into a sustained noise that covered everything.
The flight of the shafts was audible. A mass hiss outbound, a mass hiss inbound.
The two sounds crossing each other in the air above the space between them.
The impacts were audible too.
The wet sound of arrows finding horses, the shorter sound of arrows finding n. And beneath it the constant creak and labor of the mass absorbing what ca at it and continuing to function.
The gaps in Chaidu’s front were multiplying. Where riders had gone down the front had closed and moved on.
But the closures were happening faster now as the range shortened and the accuracy of both sides increased.
Riderless horses ran back toward the main body, so of them trailing their reins, so of them hit and running wrong.
A man near the left edge of Chaidu’s riders took a shaft in the chest at mid-range and ca off his horse slowly. Folding forward over the animal’s neck before sliding.
The horse kept moving for several strides before peeling away.
The advance was at a trot now. Following the fire north.
The plan had that much of it.
Chaidu turned his mingan.
It went as one movent, the whole front reversing at once. And the riders who had been facing south were facing north and running at a full canter before Berke’s leading rank had registered what it saw.
They ran for the gaps in the main body that Penk’s relay had marked before the engagent opened.
Running hard with the dust rising behind them and Berke’s riders accelerating behind that.
As they ran they drew and shot backward.
The mangudai shot required the bow arm to extend behind the body at full draw while the horse moved under the archer at a full gallop.
The angle opposed to the direction of travel, the shaft released over the horse’s rump toward the pursuing force.
The technique was difficult and many riders had it imperfectly and many had it well.
The ones who had it well sent shaft after shaft into the closing riders at a dead gallop. The arcs low and flat, the delivery continuous through the full length of the withdrawal.
Shafts dropped into Berke’s accelerating riders from a force running away from them.
And their front took the fire and kept coming because a force committed to a pursuit did not stop for arrows coming from the thing it was chasing.
Berke’s center ca north at a canter.
Chaidu’s riders hit the gaps in the main body and passed through.
Seven hundred n moving through a ford position at speed, the body opening and closing around them. The sound of the passage loud and brief and then done.
They were through and behind it. And Berke’s center was a hundred ters from Torghul’s position and closing.
Torghul looked back at Batu. The look said everything. His mingans were set.
The center drive was the next order.
The relay rider ca from the right before Batu raised his hand.
He ca at a hard pace, horse pushed, leaning forward in the saddle. He pulled up at Batu’s position and spoke without ceremony.
"Kirsa reports a flanking force on the eastern arc. Ford mass, moving north past the formation’s right edge. He puts it past mingan scale. They’re already past his outer screen."
Batu looked east. Dorbei’s riders stood between him and whatever was happening on the far right.
The right-center mingans visible in their positions, holding their spacing.
Past the eastern edge of Dorbei’s last mingan, past the rightmost visible position in the Jochid formation, a column of dust was climbing the sky that had nothing to do with the fighting at the center.
It moved north along the outer edge at the pace of a ford force on open steppe.
Faster than Berke’s advance, covering ground that had nothing on it to slow it.
More than a mingan.
Moving past the outer screen.
Already.
Berke’s center was a hundred ters from Torghul’s position and Torghul was still looking back at Batu waiting for the drive signal.
And Dorbei had not yet received the order to wheel.
And the dust on the eastern side kept moving north.
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