thickest, but the rest forced their way through with hardly a drop in speed. In the last moments before impact, they followed the routines drummed into them: bows were jammed onto saddle hooks and thousands of swords were drawn as they reined in slightly, allowing the ranks behind to surge ahead.
Through Kublai’s front ranks came his lancers, each one lowering great lengths of birch as they went. It took enormous strength of arm and shoulder to hold the lances steady at full stretch. They brought them down in the final heartbeat, aiming the point ahead and leaning in, bracing for the impact. With half a ton of horse, rider and armour behind it, the lances slammed through the fish-scale chest-plates worn by the tumans. Kublai’s riders wore no straps to keep hold of the long lances. As they bit, his men let them go, rather than break a collarbone or an arm trying to hold on. The air filled with spinning splinters as ten thousand lances struck and many shattered or broke at the hilt. The enemy rank went down, coughing blood or knocked still and white as they bled inside.
The crash of thousands of warriors meeting each other at full speed became a low thunder of hooves and roaring voices. The two fronts tangled together as they struggled with swords, hacking at each other with insane violence. Kublai’s wide line spread rapidly around to the flanks as Uriang-Khadai continued to give calm orders. His tumans there had kept their bows and they sent another dozen volleys from each side, battering the men loyal to Arik-Boke.
They were answered with arrows every bit as powerful as their own, as warriors on the flanks loosed shaft after shaft back at them. The two sides were close in by then, drawing and loosing with grim stoicism, ignoring the deaths around them as they fought on. At the front, Kublai’s tumans were pressing forward, killing and moving, crushing the head of the snake. The flanks began to crumple back, the aim of Arik-Boke’s archers spoiled as those at the head were forced to give ground. Uriang-Khadai rode up and down his ranks barely two hundred yards from the main lines. As the hammer-head compressed, his men kept up their fire. The rain of arrows in return began to dwindle, but they loosed until their quivers were all empty, having sent more than a million shafts into the crush.
Mongol tumans did not retreat, did not surrender, but Kublai’s forces were overwhelming them. His veteran warriors pressed forward at every slight give, forcing them to move back a step and then another, then a dozen more as two ranks collapsed. They could not move to the sides, where Uriang-Khadai watched with cold eyes. The tumans he commanded on the right drew swords with a sibilant rasp that sent a shudder through the flanks. They had the space to kick their mounts into a gallop. Uriang-Khadai yelled an order and his tumans snapped shut on the flanks, swords coming down in short, chopping blows.
The head of the column collapsed and those in the flanks felt the shift, panic swelling all around them. They tried to turn their horses, yanking savagely on reins as they were buffeted by unhorsed men and loose mounts on all sides. The edges of the flanks were hammered back as Uriang-Khadai’s tumans tore into them and those in the very centre turned their backs on the battle and whipped their mounts desperately. Even then, with the decision made to retreat, they could not get clear. There was no room to move and the press of those behind kept them in place, yelling in fear or pain. The killing went on, with the flanks so compressed men could hardly move at all. Kublai’s tumans cared nothing for those who tried to surrender. There was no possibility of mercy. It was too early yet to stop the killing and the carnage was terrible. Men raising their hands were cut down where they stood. Screaming horses had new wounds gashed in their flesh by racing warriors.
Kublai had not entered the fighting beyond the first charge. With a group of his bondsmen, he waited to one side, watching closely and giving orders to shore up the heaving lines. It was like watching a wave surge up around a rock, but the rock crumbled and fell into sand as he looked on. He caught a glimpse of his brother’s orlok, fighting and roaring orders in the centre, already struggling to get away. Alandar would remember this day, Kublai thought with satisfaction, if he lived through it.
Kublai looked up as Uriang-Khadai sent a horn note across the battlefield. In the fading grey light, he could see fresh tumans coming. It would be the centre formation of Arik-Boke’s sweep line and Kublai guessed his brother would be in the squares riding hard at him. The sun had set while the fighting went on. If it had been noon, he knew the moment was right to go on. His men had broken the tumans in the second battle group and lone riders were already streaming away, heading for the safety of their khan as he entered the field.
Uriang-Khadai sounded the horn again and Kublai muttered to himself. He was not blind, or deaf. Plans and stratagems hurtled through his mind and he sat still, transfixed by the opportunity. His men were weary, he reminded himself. Their arrows were gone and their lances were broken. It would be madness to send them in again, in the dark. Yet he could end it all in a day and the thought ate at him. He clenched his fists on his reins, making his gauntlets creak. The horn sounded for the third time, snapping him out of his reverie.
‘I hear you!’ he shouted angrily. Kublai gestured to his waiting bondsmen. ‘Send the signal to disengage. We’ve done enough today.’
He continued to stare out into the distance as the falling note droned out across his tumans. In the dim light, they had been expecting it and they pulled back quickly, forming ranks and resting on the wooden pommels of their saddles as they rode clear, calling and laughing to one another. The dead lay among the dying and Kublai could hear one man scream with astonishing volume, somewhere in the twitching piles they passed. He had to have broken legs to be left with breath to make such a noise. Kublai didn’t see the warrior who dismounted and stalked over to the wounded man, but the sound was choked off mid-cry. He thought suddenly of Zhenjin, worrying for him. It was always a difficult line to walk for a khan and a father. The men understood he would be worried about his fourteen- year-old son among them, but he could give no sign of his fear, nor leave Zhenjin out of harm’s way. Uriang-Khadai usually placed Zhenjin to the rear of any formation without making a point of it. Kublai looked across the field for his son, but he could not see him. He clenched his jaw, sending a silent prayer to the sky father that he was all right. Uriang-Khadai would know. The man missed nothing.
Thousands of Arik-Boke’s forces had escaped the hammer-blow he had dealt them. They kept going as his men formed up and began to trot north. Kublai looked back over his shoulder, over the dead men and horses, to where his brother still rode in a cloud of dry dust. Already, Arik-Boke’s distant tumans were merging with the gloom as darkness overtook them. Kublai tilted his head in a gesture of mocking respect. Orlok Alandar had won free in the final moments and Kublai only wished he could hear the man explain to his brother how he had lost so many men in just a day.
Arik-Boke raged as he leaned forward in the saddle and yelled ‘Chuh!’ to his mount, kicking it savagely in the loins to keep his speed. Sweat was dribbling into his eyes and he blinked against the sting of salt, peering into the distance. The light was almost gone and the tumans ahead shifted and blurred like writhing shadows. He could hear only the galloping horses around him, so that the battle ahead seemed almost dreamlike, robbed of the clash of swords and the screams of men.
The general of one of his tumans was angling his mount to catch up to the khan, the animal’s head lunging up and down with effort. Arik-Boke ignored him, his focus only on those ahead. He knew he had lost contact with the tumans behind, that his long formation had been attacked at one end. He knew very well that the force with him might not be enough to send his brother running, that he should wait and re-form. He had only four tumans in close formation, but another eight were behind. Together, they would be enough, no matter what Kublai had managed to do. Arik-Boke spat into the wind as his brother’s name flitted through his thoughts. His saliva felt like soup in his mouth and heat breathed out of every pore as he rode on, harder and further than he had galloped for years. It had to be Uriang-Khadai who had organised the attack. Arik-Boke knew he should have allowed for his brother turning over command to a more experienced officer. He cursed long and loud, making his closest men look away rather than witness his rage. He should have done a thousand things differently. Kublai was a weak scholar and Arik-Boke thought he would have made chaos of good tumans. Yet they had struck at exactly the right point, at the right moment. They had beaten Orlok Alandar and he could still hardly believe it. The right wing of his sweep should have been the strongest point, but they had rolled it up. Now darkness was coming and they would escape his vengeance.
The plain was long and flat, but the battle was still a tiny, surging throng of dust as darkness came. In the last moments before they were lost to sight, Arik-Boke was sure he saw tumans streaming away to the north. He clenched his jaw, the heat of his body feeling like fuel for the anger within. Karakorum had few defenders, with his entire army in the field. He felt sick at the thought that his brother could take the capital in a quick strike. He had ignored Alandar’s feeble worries, convinced back then that his brother would never get in range of the capital. It should have meant nothing, but Arik-Boke wanted to roar his frustration. Whoever held Karakorum had a claim to rule. It mattered in the eyes of the princes and the small khanates.
His general had reached him, riding alongside and shouting questions into the wind. At first, Arik-Boke
