Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 56: The South Bank

The rider came through the rear of the formation at the pace of an animal pushed hard from a long distance.

He threaded between the horses of the rear ranks, his mount’s sides heaving, and reached Batu’s position.

"They’re in the water," he said.

Batu raised his hand.

The signal went through Penk’s relay across both formations simultaneously, carried by the riders already in position across the full width of the line.

The pace changed. A push, committed and hard, the kind that does not slow for what falls ahead of it, and the sound of it rose up through the frozen ground and into every rider on the line.

Thousands of horses going from the sustained cycling advance into a forward drive, the mass of the whole in motion at once.

Berke’s south bank saw it.

The fire intensified.

The south bank had been managing its rate through the full duration of the fight. Now it released everything.

Shafts came north in higher density than at any point in the engagement, concentrated at the leading line pressing toward the near edge in the final stretch of the approach.

A horse in Torghul’s leading rank took two shafts in the neck in the same volley and went down hard, rolling, and the riders behind it came through the gap before it had stopped.

A rider to Batu’s left took one through the shoulder and kept his pace. Another took one through the jaw and came off his horse slowly, the animal carrying on without him and pressing forward into the front of the mingan.

Then a man three positions ahead of Batu folded over his horse’s neck and slid off sideways, and the horse that had been carrying him walked south on its own into the closing distance.

The near edge came up.

The drainage cut’s near side sloped slightly toward the floor below. The horses felt the descent and some checked at the lip, a half-stride short, and the riders drove them forward with their legs and they went.

The leading rank hit the floor and the ice hit back.

It broke all at once.

Hundreds of horses on the frozen surface simultaneously, the full width of the approach finding the ice in the same moment, and the sound of it fracturing ran east to west along the cut in a continuous chain of flat sharp reports that sat beneath the sustained noise of the battle like its own separate register.

Each impact finding the next until the whole surface had spoken.

The floor underneath was frozen earth and broken ice and cold water opening at the fracture lines.

Some horses found solid footing between the shattered pieces. Some broke through to the mud below and their legs went sideways at pace and they dropped.

A horse dropping at a full crossing takes the animal behind it. The men with them went into the bed of the cut or cleared the falling mass or they did not clear it.

Men in the water.

Men on foot in the broken ice, hauling themselves toward the far side while the line behind them came through and around them and in some cases over them.

The fire from the south bank poured into the crossing.

The slight elevation had its full effect here. The mass of men and horses compressed into the cut’s width, unable to spread, receiving fire from ground fractionally above and directly ahead.

Shafts going into the crossing from above, horses collapsing in the broken ice, men going down with them. The dead accumulated at the bed and the living pressed over them and through them.

A shaft struck the ice beside Batu’s horse and stood upright in the frozen mud. His horse broke through a solid section a stride later, the cold water rising to the animal’s belly for two steps before the floor firmed, and the far side’s rise came up ahead.

The south bank lifted from the floor at the same fractional angle as the near edge had descended.

Horses that had crossed in order took the climb. The ones whose animals were blown checked at the rise, the drive not finding the same power they needed, and the riders behind pressed them through or around them.

A rider cleared the far lip and a shaft from directly above found him at the crest and he came off his horse and the horse went south without him.

The first riders over came onto the south bank at pace and they were in it immediately.

Berke’s leading rank was right there. Arm’s reach. The bows went away.

Sabers came out. Axes. Anything that covered a horse’s length.

The Jochid riders clearing the lip carried the momentum of the crossing and drove it into a line that had been standing on that ground since the fight opened, their horses holding position, their men cycling through the exchange all morning.

The collision was loud and dense and close.

Horses into horses, the sound of it carrying back across the cut to the riders still in the water. Men cut down.

Men who cleared the lip into the space where a rider ahead of them had just gone down and found the man who had put him down still at the same range.

Batu took the far lip with the drive.

His horse cleared the cut and found the south bank and he was in it.

A saber from his right, close and flat, and he dropped under it and the blade passed above his shoulder.

He drove south and a second rider came across his front from the left, cutting at his horse’s neck. Batu pulled left to put his own horse into the angle before the cut could find the animal, the collision hard enough that both horses checked, and he cut down at the exposed arm while the man was still inside the impact.

The south bank was loud and specific and close.

Each sound had its own character inside the general noise. A horse screaming when a saber found its neck. A man’s voice going out in the middle of something.

The percussion of blade on leather, on bone, on the frozen earth when a body hit it. The grunting labor of horses forced into each other at close range.

Torghul was ahead somewhere. Lost in the press and the dust and the mass of riders still coming over the far lip.

The flanks of Berke’s line were going.

The riders at the outer ends had no depth left. The Jochid line coming over the far lip spread wide as it cleared the crossing, covering the full available surface of the south bank, and the flanks found themselves with Jochid riders moving around their outer edges.

They pulled back. Step by step, covering each other, the horses moving south under orders. The men there were not running. They were withdrawing the way trained soldiers withdrew, giving ground in sequence rather than all at once.

The center held.

Berke’s center was deep and it was ordered and the commanders in it were in the line with their men.

The riders coming over the far lip found the hardest fighting on the south bank at the center, men absorbing the incoming press and pushing back with what they had left after the exchange, and the south bank there was full of the dead from both sides lying in the frost and the mud of the broken ground, and the living fighting over and around them.

More riders cleared the far lip every second.

The full line still coming through the cut behind them. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The center had yet to break.