“Ignore the howling!” he bellowed. “It is merely a pagan trick!”
He heard someone say, “Sorcery!” and he knew he was losing them. The sound the arrows made as they’d flown had nothing to do with sorcery and everything to do with how they had been carved, but there was no time to explain this, not that the knight would believe him even if there were. There was only one thing to do when a soldier’s mind and heart had been captured by the enemy: use the body.
Rudiger drew his sword and raised it high over his head, even as a second volley of arrows howled down from the sky. One struck his wrist and lodged there, but he ignored the pain and held his sword steady.
“For the glory of Christ and for our Lord Jürgen—Charge!”
He slammed his heels into his mount and the horse leaped forward, trampling a fallen knight as it galloped. Rudiger recognized the man and knew him to be a Cainite. Whatever injuries he had sustained were temporary, but even if the knight had been a ghoul or a mortal, Rudiger wouldn’t have spared the time to ride around him. After all, this was war.
He broke free of the vanguard and rode toward the pagans. He didn’t look back to see if anyone was following his lead. Either they were or they weren’t, and Rudiger, commander of the Black Cross knights, gave the matter no further thought as he rode forth to meet his enemy.
The tribal warriors had nocked a third volley of arrows, but Alessandro raised a hand and shouted, “Hold!”
The first two volleys had done their work well, wounding a number of knights and mounts in the Christian vanguard and creating chaos in the ranks. But now a lone rider came charging across the field, sword held high. A few knights followed after him, but that was all.
Alessandro smiled. Perfect.
“Retreat!”
As one, the line of riders turned their mounts around, shouted “Tchoo! Tchoo!” and rode off at a furious gallop. The course of their retreat was set to take them past the small wood which, Alessandro was certain, the Christian knights had searched and determined to be empty.
He grinned. They should have searched with greater diligence.
He cracked his reins. “Tchoo! Tchoo!”
Rudiger heard a chorus of shouts erupt behind him, and he allowed himself a quick smile. It sounded as if he had managed to seize the reins of the army after all.
Before coming to Livonia, Rudiger had studied every account he could find about Tartar battle tactics. They were very few. The Tartars had apparently been harassing the easternmost cities in Rus and other Slavic lands, but very little detail was contained in any letter Rudiger had been able to get ahold of. Still, these pagans seemed to be a more savage version of the Turkish horsemen who had done such damage to crusaders in the holy land.
It seemed that Qarakh favored a strategy of attack and withdraw. It was a tactic that had served the Turks well throughout the centuries, for the larger, less agile horses of Europeans couldn’t match the swiftness of their smaller steeds, and thus a pursuing army could never hope to catch its foe. But the heathens could stop, turn, loose another flight of arrows and ride off again, always remaining maddeningly just out of touch as they whittled down their enemy bit by bit.
But Qarakh had made a serious mistake. His tribesmen weren’t Turks or Tartars who were born to the saddle and learned to ride before they could walk. And these weren’t the open plains of Anatolia or the far steppe. The pagans didn’t stand a chance of escaping.
The tribesmen angled toward the stand of woods, and at first Rudiger thought they were going to ride into it—which would have been an extremely stupid move, as the knights would have trapped them there. But the pagans continued riding past the trees, and Rudiger put their change in direction down to a frantic, undisciplined retreat and nothing more.
By now the others knights from the vanguard had caught up to him, and Rudiger rode at the head of a triangular formation of Christian warriors, all hungry to spill—and if possible, partake of—pagan blood.
A fierce bellow cut through the night air, sounding more animal than human.
Rudiger turned to look. At the edge of the woods, Qarakh himself rose out of the ground on the back of a gray horse, saber in hand, battle lust twisting his features into the face of a mad demon. And the Mongol wasn’t alone—all around him other Cainites emerged from the earth. Wild-haired, wild-eyed, some wielding swords, some axes, others armed with nothing more than dagger-sharp fangs and curved talons. Aside from Qarakh, none was on horseback, but it mattered little.
Rudiger swore. Damn those Gangrel tricks! Rudiger had heard that the animalistic Cainites often slept through the day within the earth, but it had never occurred to him that they might be able to use this ability for concealment.
Rudiger yanked on his mount’s reins, trying to stop the horse so that he could turn the dumb beast to meet this new attack, but the horse only spun around in a circle, chuffing air and raising and lowering its head. Some knights were trying to get their steeds to halt as well, while others—evidently unaware of the Gangrel’s deception—continued riding past.
Rudiger then saw something that made him doubt his senses: six brown-robed figures stepping out from six oak
