Batu raised his hand and brought it down.
Torghul’s front went south. Nine mingans in line abreast, pushing from stationary into a canter in the space of a few strides, the signal traveling the width of the line and the n moving before it finished traveling.
The sound of it ca up from behind. Seven thousand horses going from standing to full drive, and the ground transmitted it as a single sustained vibration that built and did not drop.
Torghul went with the front rank. Batu went with him.
The distance closed in seconds. At a hundred ters the arrow exchange was still running, both sides releasing continuously into a target that was large and close.
At fifty ters the shafts had nowhere to miss. Riders in the leading ranks drew and released at the n directly in front of them and the effect was a continuous removal from both lines, each gap closing as the depth behind pushed through.
The sound was a sustained tearing, the collective release of hundreds of bows, the impacts of shafts finding horses and n, the whole exchange layering over itself into sothing that covered every other sound on the field.
At twenty ters the bows went away.
Riders were drawing sabers and axes, anything that could reach across the gap remaining. Berke’s leading rank was close enough to read the faces behind the weapons.
Then the gap was gone and the line beca sothing else entirely.
The collision arrived as a wall of noise before any individual part of it registered. The crash of horses driving into horses at full pace, the brutal crack of it traveling back through both forces as the two fronts drove into each other.
The depth pressing from behind kept the whole grinding press moving south because a force that large had no room to stop.
Batu’s horse took a hard check from the animal to his left and he held the saddle with his knees and pushed through.
A rider from Torghul’s rank lost his horse directly in front of him, the animal’s legs going out from a shaft at near point-blank range. The man was thrown forward into the mass of hooves coming behind.
A saber swung from the right and he dropped under it and drove south.
The two forces had beco a single mass at close quarters, every man in it fighting the nearest man.
Torghul was ten horses ahead and lost in the dust.
The relay rider from Penk found Batu inside the fight, threading in from the left with his horse pushed hard.
"Right mingan drove forward with the push," he said, his horse keeping alongside Batu’s through the press. "The relay timing ran its cycle. The signal went out to tighten inward after the mingan was already moving south. The gap is open."
Batu looked right. He could see to the edge of the nearest mingan and no further.
Past that edge, a dust column was moving on an axis that had nothing to do with the fighting at the center. East to west, pressing north, across the ground where the junction stood.
The relay cycle had been set for the arc the plan assud. What ca was faster and wider.
The cycle was already behind it when it ran.
"Dorbei," Batu said.
"The ssage went before I ca to you."
Batu pressed east through the outer edge of the collision. Past two of Torghul’s riders cutting down a pair from Berke’s center who had been driven clear of their formation and were surrounded.
Past a horse running east with no rider and two shafts in its side. Past the edge of the collision zone and clear of it, onto the open steppe between the center fight and the right.
The second relay rider ca from that direction at a spent gallop.
"Kirsa’s outer riders are off the line. Arc is at the junction. Chaidu’s n are taking contact."
Batu pressed further east.
From his position east of the main fight the engagent had a shape. To his left, Torghul’s drive was in full contact with Berke’s center, the dust rising above it.
The sounds of the close fighting carried back across the field in a continuous roar.
The air downwind slled of blood and kicked earth and horses pushed past what they had left.
To his right, the flanking force was pressing north and west along the steppe Kirsa’s outer riders had held before it drove them off, its approach dust still building.
Chaidu’s riders had been reforming when it found them.
The horses from the withdrawal had co back blown. Their necks were down and their sides were heaving.
The riders had been moving supply horses up, checking arrow loads, working his riders back into so kind of order.
On the outer edge, two veteran riders, Toqar and Segen were still at their positions from the withdrawal, their horses not yet recovered. The animals were not capable of another hard run.
Chaidu’s riders were facing north, toward the rear of the formation. The flanking force ca in from the east.
It hit the outer edge of Chaidu’s riders before the inner riders had a full front to et it. It drove through the outer edge and into the center of his force.
They had nowhere to fall back because the rear of the formation was directly behind them.
A relay rider from Chaidu ca back through the line.
"Toqar is down. Segen is down. The outer riders are holding the contact but they’re pressed against the rear line."
Batu heard it and kept moving.
Toqar had been at the outer edge since the withdrawal, his horse not yet recovered when the flanking force ca in from the east. He had held his position through the contact and gone down there.
Segen had been beside him through the withdrawal and the reforming and the wait, and it had found them both in the sa mont.
The timing failure had landed there. What it cost would go into the accounting when the field was done.
From there the full shape of it was readable. Torghul’s drive had pressed Berke’s center back from the initial contact point.
The mass had moved south, which ant Torghul was pushing through.
To the right the incoming column pressed north and west against Chaidu’s riders, his n absorbing it against the rear of the line.
The gap between Torghul’s rightmost mingan and Kirsa’s force was still open with that column moving inside it.
Then the eastern side of the field changed.
The dust there turned. A new column rose south to north along its rear, a ford body coming from the right at speed.
Dorbei’s wheel. Kirsa’s riders at its outer edge.
Arriving behind it while it was still extended in the approach, its front in contact with Chaidu’s n, its rear not yet consolidated on the ground it had taken.
That commander would have to read it and decide.
Drive Chaidu’s riders further into the rear of the formation with Dorbei arriving from behind.
Pull off the junction and face Dorbei on open steppe, giving Chaidu’s n room to recover.
Hold the contact and hope the wheel closed too slow to matter before sothing in the junction broke.
Each choice cost sothing and none of them were what it had been sent to do.
To the west, Berke’s center was in full contact with Torghul’s drive. Seven thousand horses and however many thousands Berke had put in that line, fully committed.
Grinding south against each other on open terrain with nothing to break either side’s depth.
The sound of that fight carried the full width of the field.
What rose from it had rged with the haze of the junction and the approach, and the sky above the engagent had gone brown with dust.
Nothing of the morning was visible through it.
Berke had his center in it and his flanking force in it and both were taking contact at the sa ti.
The decision that commander made in the next few minutes would tell Batu whether Berke had prepared for this contingency or was solving it from the field.
User Comments
0 comments from readers