Read a free extract from Templar Assassin
The second book in the Mongol Knight trilogy, which is based the 13th-century Englishman who fought for Genghis Khan, came out last month. If you haven’t had a chance to read Templar Assassin, this extract might whet your appetite.
This extract is from the middle of the book and is about the battle of the River Kalka (1223), which took place in what is now Ukraine (Donetsk Oblast). The Mongol army under their greatest general Subutai took on the combined might of the Rus’ princes of the region and their steppe-dwelling Cuman allies. There are some Mongolian words that you should be aware of to fully understand this extract. A mingghan is a military unit of 1,000 men commanded by an officer called a noyan – the plural is mingghat; a jagghun (pl. jagghat) is a company of about one hundred; a deel is a thick, woollen wrap-around robe worn by most Mongols. A baghatur is a hero, a high honour conferred upon a very few successful warriors.
Extract begins
Robert sat on the back of Bayard, his Arab-Persian destrier, and looked out at the dusty plain ahead of him. He was very tired, in bone and blood, worn down by months of hard riding back and forth on the rolling steppe north of the Sea of Azov, yet somehow his mind was sparkling bright, aglow with a keen, almost feverish excitement.
For it was the day of battle.
On his left sat Taghachat, the lieutenant of his jagghun; on his right sat Idar, his fearsome Circassian bodyguard. Behind him was the No.4 jagghun itself: ninety-three battle-hardened dauntless Mongols sitting on their ugly little steppe ponies; near a hundred iron-hard men who called him akhmad, or captain, and some who even called him friend.
On either side of Bayard’s flanks, stretching for half a mile each way, was Subutai’s entire Mongol army of eighteen thousand horse-warriors, grouped into five blocks of mounted men, both light and heavy cavalry, with their backs towards the fast-foaming Kalka river, and their faces east towards the enemy. There was nowhere to run to. They must confront the enemy here.
And the enemy was surely coming. The heavily armoured knights of Prince Mstislav the Bold were a low smudge of brown in the distance but fast approaching. After an exhausting nine-day chase, the combined enemy force of Rus’ and Cuman cavalry had finally caught up with the Mongols on the long western bank of the Kalka.
Robert had done as he was ordered and taken the Black Falcon mingghan west along the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Black Falcons had been the tip of the Mongol spear. Behind them came Subutai’s force, nearly twenty thousand Mongol horse-warriors with wives, children, herds of sheep and goats, and thousands of spare ponies – the herd animals far outnumbering the fighting men – the baggage wagons, tents and everything else. It was the equivalent of a town on the move across the grassy, herd-feeding steppe, and moving surprisingly swiftly.
They had reconnoitred beyond the Dnieper river, even as far as the distant Dniester, and plundered scores of drab Rus’ peasant villages, living off the steppe and their captured booty, and gaining more intelligence with every mile they rode and every Rus’ steading they burned.
However, the intelligence they gathered was daunting: Grand Prince Mstislav of Kiev and Prince Mstislav the Bold, along with their ally Mstislav of Chernigov, and several other Rus’ noblemen – Robert thought of them all as being called Mstislav, although he knew that some of them must have had other names – had raised a vast army between them, some eighty thousand men, outnumbering the Mongol force by more than four to one.
True, much of the Rus’ army was composed of peasant levies, thousands of poorly equipped men on foot, armed with only spears, knives or crude farm implements; and the various Rus’ contingents were all commanded by their own independent Mstislavs – there being, as far as Subutai and his scouts could divine, no overall Rus’ commander – but it was a formidable force to reckon with, nonetheless.
Robert wondered if Subutai understood what he had provoked, when he ordered his Mongols, burning and pillaging, to venture so deeply into the rich Rus’ farmlands.
To Subutai’s credit, when the Mongol general finally comprehended the true size of the enormous enemy force pitted against him, he did immediately begin to retreat.
He left a single rearguard mingghan of heavy cavalry under a dashing young noyan called Hamabek on the east bank of the Dnieper and fled back towards Tana. Hamabek’s mingghan savaged the Rus’ army’s flanks as they tried to cross the river, his horse-archers cutting down Rus’ cavalry in their hundreds. But they were only a thousand men, and were soon trapped and slaughtered, swamped by overwhelming numbers of their enemies and completely wiped out.
Hamabek did, however, buy Subutai just enough time to evade disaster.
The Mongol army fled before the victorious Rus’ and their gleeful Cuman allies – Khan Köten and his Cuman riders up in the vanguard with Prince Mstislav the Bold. And this lord of the Rus’ lived up to his fearless name, galloping boldly ahead of the main army with his ten thousand horsemen, while the rest of the Rus’ army was left to straggle over a fifty-mile stretch of steppe between the Dnieper and the Kalka. Which was exactly what Subutai had hoped for.
The Mongol general halted his army on the western bank of the Kalka river, and turned it around to face the foe. Subutai, accompanied by Chormaqan and a dozen senior staff, now rode along the lines of his tired Mongol troopers, calling out encouragement to favoured individuals and repeating his orders for the day in his brass-lunged battle-voice.
The massed Mongol horsemen sat there, stock still, their flat, weather-battered faces, pale, dust-grimed and impassive under their steel helmets or fur-lined felt hats, not a man among them displaying his fear. They trusted Subutai. They trusted, too, in their own prowess. It was time to show the enemy they were Mongols, not fleeing vagabonds. Above their heads the spirit-banners, the sulde – tall spears that had a crossbar adorned with horse-tails – fluttered in the breeze, one for each noyan. They were the soul of the noyan, the rallying point and sacred symbol of a mingghan.
Subutai spotted Robert sitting on Bayard with his jagghun, and raised his riding whip in salute to the Englishman. Robert thought he might stop and address him personally – instead General Subutai, in his carrying battle-voice, called simply out, ‘Remember, my brothers: the yellow flag is for you light cavalry, the red flag is for the heavies. Make all your mothers proud this day. Make me proud, too, my boys!’
The Black Falcons were light cavalry scouts and Robert, a trained Christian knight, used to fighting in full mail and great helm, with lance and shield, felt ill-protected that morning, dressed in his woollen deel and fur-lined hat. He was no bowman but he had six throwing javelins in a bucket-holster at Bayard’s withers, a flanged mace tucked in his belt, and his Mongol sword at his left side.
He had donned his mail hauberk beneath his deel and under his fur hat was a basic steel cap with a nasal guard. Yet he still felt horribly vulnerable to the Rus’ heavy knights.
Today, he told himself, he would fight as light cavalry. His task was to wield the No.4 jagghun as a weapon; and make sure they followed all Noyan Shulet’s orders to the letter.
Robert had no particular desire to impress his noyan. He was a red-faced, rather stupid man, much given to shouting at subordinates. Shulet treated Robert with a wary civility, since he knew Robert was a baghatur and confidant of Subutai. But Robert suspected that Shulet resented the fact that he had taken the Black Falcon mingghan off to plunder the wealth of Soldaya, when the noyan himself had been left behind recuperating from his wound.
As Subutai spurred away along the battle line, loudly repeating his orders, Robert realised it was not true. He was no longer a confidant of Subutai. In previous engagements, he had ridden beside the general as his aide or lieutenant, now he was reduced to a captain of a jagghun, part of another man’s mingghan.
He wondered, not for the first time, why Subutai was acting so coldly towards him.
The smudge of brown had come closer, and resolved into a mass of cavalry. Two distinct formations, as far as Robert, squinting hard, could make out. On the right, from his perspective, were the Rus’ – Western-style knights and mounted men-at-arms, glinting in polished mail with long lances upright, perhaps ten thousand of them. He saw high helms and painted shields – Mstislav the Bold’s heavy cavalry.
Over on the left, was a looser formation of shaggy men on little steppe ponies, some mail visible, but a raggedy, fur-clad mass of irregular troopers – Khan Köten’s Cumans, he had no doubt, and massed in similar numbers to the Rus’ knightly vanguard over on the right.
Both formations were coming up swiftly on the Mongol line, not seeming to slacken their pace in the slightest. Robert expected them all to rein in soon, order their ranks, take a pause for breath, before attacking in the usual, well-measured manner.
But on they came, at the trot. Relentless. He could now make out individual riders in the first rank of Mstislav’s force. Five hundred paces away. It was puzzling. They made no pause to reset themselves. It seemed they meant to charge the Mongols without delay.
Noyan Shulet rode out in front of the battle line. He turned his pony briskly to face his mingghan and bellowed, ‘Black Falcons – it is time to do your duty! Follow me!’
All the way up and down the Mongol lines, Robert could see big yellow flags being waved by the designated signallers. And the first of the whistling arrows, shafts with small tubes attached to create an eerie fluting sound, was soaring up across the face of the army, to reinforce the Mongol general’s flag message.
It was time to face the enemy. Time to fight. Time to deploy the fire-pots.
His mingghan began to move forward at a walk. All along the Mongol line the light mingghat – eight thousand riders – were doing the same. Heading towards the oncoming Rus’ cavalry.
Robert turned in the saddle to look at his designated fire-pot men, a picked group of a dozen riders commanded by Arslan, many of them from his arban, who were bunched together behind him. Robert nodded at the trooper, and Arslan gave him a curt nod in response. Then the Mongol let out a whoop, and he and his comrades, galloped forward and hurled themselves at Mstislav the Bold’s advancing cavalry.
The fire-pot men seemed to cover the ground between the two forces in a matter of moments. Each man in Arslan’s command carried a small clay pot in a basket of rope, the pot containing live coals, tar-soaked straw and wet leaves or grass. As they rode at the enemy, they whirled the fire-pots around in a wide circle on the right side of the horse, and the clay pots burst into flame, emitting a thick black smoke.
When they came within fifty paces of the enemy, the fire-pot men hurled their clay missiles in the manner of slingshots towards the enemy horse, and they landed, spilling showers of red sparks, in front of their pounding hooves. All along the front, small groups of Mongols from each of the eight light mingghat were doing the exact same thing, and in no time at all, a thick wall of smoke was rising through the air, obscuring the sight of the Rus’ attackers and terrifying their charging horses.
And into this dense barrier of smoke, hurtled eight thousand Mongol light horsemen.
Yet the galloping Mongols did not confront the enemy head on, they did not smash directly into their ranks, instead they came galloping in, screaming like fiends, at an oblique angle to the oncoming Rus’. The Mongol riders emerged suddenly out of the wall of smoke and skated across the face of their regiments, loosing arrows from their bows at close range, before turning and galloping away.
Robert, with his howling jagghun around him, spurred Bayard along the front line of a smoke-wreathed Rus’ cavalry regiment. He grabbed a javelin from the bucket-holster, hefted it and hurled the light spear to his left into the body of an astonished Rus’ knight, perhaps even a Mstislav, given his elaborate silver helm. The javelin sank a good foot into the man’s chest, and the man let out a horrible bubbling cry and slumped back in his saddle.
Robert heard an arrow hiss past his ear and reached for another javelin.
Behind him Taghachat was shooting his short, horn-and-sinew bow like the master horse-archer he was. The Mongol warrior plucked a shaft from his quiver, nocked and loosed it into the mass of enemy horse; then, almost faster than thought, he plucked another, nocked and loosed again. Arslan was now at Robert’s other side, shooting his own short bow like a centaur. The Englishman pulled back his right arm and hurled his second missile deep into the enemy ranks, and found himself at the far end of the Rus’ regiment, with Idar now at his side.
The Circassian was also shooting a bow but at a slightly slower pace than the Mongol troopers, taking time to aim his shots. Then they both turned their horses at the same time and galloped away, the angry taunts of the Rus’ echoing in their ears.
The wall of smoke and the close-range arrow storm slowed, then halted the Rus’ advance. There was now confusion in their ranks. There were horses screaming on the ground, riddled with arrows, and dead and wounded trampled underfoot. Some Rus’ horses refused to go through the smoke, which drifted in thick, stinking skeins across the field.
But not all.
Formed bodies of Rus’ horsemen appeared like armies of wraiths out of the dense clouds. Robert turned Bayard around, calling his jagghun to him and, after a moment in which they reformed the ranks, they charged again at a Rus’ squadron, a mass of a hundred horsemen, their faces covered to the eyes in mail aventails under plumed helmets; frightened men who seemed to have lost all direction in the chaos.
Their leaders were shouting in their alien tongue, and pointing in three different directions, as Robert’s jagghun swept out of the smoke and across their front once more. The Englishman and his men showed the Rus’ no mercy. They rode in fast and lacerated their ranks with a blizzard of lethal shafts, loosed at a range of no more than twenty paces. Three, four, five times, the steel-tipped Mongol arrows, propelled by their powerful bows, slashed deep into the roiling enemy ranks, the shafts easily penetrating the Rus’ iron-link mail at that catastrophically close range.
Robert hurled two of his javelins in quick succession, knocking one mail-masked knight clean out of the saddle with the first; the second disappearing into the tight-packed, shifting mass of Rus’. The enemy howled in rage and spurred after them, but Robert’s nimble men whipped their ponies round and cantered away.
Robert led his jagghun back out of the smoke, to a clearer patch of the field. A whistling arrow tootled over his head – continue the attack – he knew that signal meant. He could see two other jagghut of Black Falcons regrouping to his right, and there was Noyan Shulet, under the Spirit Banner, pointing his sword at the mass of enemy. Ordering another assault on the disordered ranks of Mstislav the Bold’s men.
Robert turned to Taghachat. ‘We’re going again. Jagghun, all of you, on me!’
As they galloped again towards the nearest Rus’ formation, with Noyan Shulet and two other jagghut riding immediately on their right, Robert had just enough time before they hit the enemy to glance left, then behind him, at the rest of the field.
The army of Khan Köten had been pushed further to the south, beset on all sides by buzzing swarms of Mongol light horse. There was a widening gap of several hundred yards between the beleaguered Cumans and Mstislav the Bold’s chaotic regiments. Behind him he could see the heavy cavalry mingghat ordering their ranks.
He looked ahead, beyond the mass of Mstislav’s troops, which seemed to be hemmed all around now by Mongol light cavalry. And what he saw chilled his soul.
There were two more huge blocks of Rus’ heavy cavalry – tens of thousands of horsemen in total – coming forward. They were still half a mile’s distant, but they were hastening towards the fight, and beyond them, three or four miles away, were yet more enemy regiments – infantry formations this time, he thought – thousands of peasants tramping stolidly towards the whirling dust and smoke-obscured battle.
Robert had no time for fear. He was galloping with a score of Black Falcons at the shaky lines of enemy cavalry. Once more they rode in obliquely, Robert hurled his second-to-last javelin, missed the man he was aiming for and saw his spear sink into the haunch of a dun mare. The horse went wild, kicking and bucking off his rider.
The Rus’ formations were coming apart now, the enemy riders surging forward in ones and twos out of their ranks, shouting out their hatred for the gadfly Mongols, and Robert found himself ducking under the strike of a long lance, which passed over his right shoulder. Bayard snapped his great yellow teeth at the oncoming horse’s neck and caused the animal to rear up in panic, nearly throwing its rider. Which gave Robert time to draw his blade and hack at the Rus’ rider’s right arm as he passed.
He felt the contact of the blow, the crunch of steel against mail and bone. There were horses and enemy knights all round him. His opponent had disappeared in the swirling melee. He exchanged ringing sword cuts with a giant, red-bearded man, then sliced his blade across the fellow’s big shouting face, opening his nose with a spray of hot blood, before spurring Bayard quickly out of the crush and into a patch of space.
The din was appalling. His view of the field came and went in wind-shifted patches of smoke. Yet, over the screams of the wounded and the war cries of Rus’, the clash of steel, the crack of wood and bone, the neighing of frightened horses, the Englishman could hear the drumming of thousands of iron hooves on the dry earth.
He turned his head eastwards and saw that Subutai had chosen that exact moment to launch his superb heavy cavalry into the fray.
Ten mingghat – ten thousand Mongol warriors clad in iron mail and steel plate, on massively strong armoured horses – threw themselves into the fight.
Ten thousand steppe-hardened riders wielding long lances, swords and maces, surged forward from the Mongol battle lines. They smashed straight into the mass of frightened, milling, arrow-thinned cavalry of Khan Köten.
They plunged deep into the Cuman ranks like a sharp knife sinking into a block of wet curd. As the sulde poles danced above the heaving, dust-cloaked, deafening scrum, the horse-tails whipping in the steppe wind, the Mongol cavalry crushed the Cumans; they cut them down in bloody sheaves, culling them like pigs in a slaughterhouse.
Their long Mongol spears, driven by the full weight of mailed rider and charging horse, tore into the lightly covered bodies of Khan Köten’s men, sinking into their flesh up to the hook behind the blade. When the lances were embedded in bodies, snapped or discarded, the Mongols drew swords and began to hack and slash the foe into bloody ruin.
Extract ends
Templar Assassin is available as a paperback, eBook or audio file from Amazon. Templar Traitor, the first book in the Mongol Knight trilogy, is also available in the same formats.
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