Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 59: On Foot

The first shafts crossed before either group had closed half the distance between them.

Flat and fast at this range, both sides releasing as their horses came forward at a canter, the arcs almost gone from the trajectories, the shafts arriving in both groups in the space of a breath.

A man two positions to Batu’s left took one through the upper chest and came off his horse to the left, the animal carrying on without him.

One of Berke’s riders went down on the right end of the cluster, his mount going with him, the two of them rolling together across the frost-hard earth before the animal found its feet without the rider.

Then the distance was gone.

The two groups drove into each other and the melee became immediate and close and loud.

The impact of a horse driven sideways by another animal, the short crack of a saber finding a crossguard, a man’s voice going hard and then cut short.

Batu had his saber out before the first collision, and the man who came at him from the left found the blade across his path before he had finished his cut.

The guard rider went past Batu’s right and was taken from behind by one of Batu’s men.

Kirsa was at Batu’s right, his mount compact and well-controlled in the press, moving through the available spaces with short precise movements, the animal never carrying more momentum than he needed it to carry.

He cut down one of Berke’s riders at close range and pulled his horse left immediately, reading the next angle before it arrived.

The engagement pressed south.

Berke’s group had the channel’s near bank behind them, the secondary drainage running east to west at their backs, and as the fighting pushed them back the rear animals of their group were finding the bank’s descent.

The near bank dropped toward the channel floor at a shallow angle, enough to unsettle a tired horse under pressure.

A horse at the rear of Berke’s group stepped onto the descent and slid slightly, its rider pulling it hard, and the animal beside it crowded into it from the impact of the fighting from the north, and both went sideways.

The sound of hooves on the thin ice at the channel floor was flat and sharp and distinct through the noise of the close combat, a register different from anything else on that ground.

Batu drove south.

A rider from Berke’s group came at him from the right at close range, the saber already in motion.

Batu took the impact of it on his own guard and the shock ran up his arm as he pushed the blade off and drove his own cut at the man’s side, and the man pulled his horse out of range before it landed, and two of Batu’s guard riders were already past that position and the man had other problems.

There was a gap in the engagement to the left.

Batu moved into it and found one of Berke’s riders cutting at a Jochid guard on foot, the guard having lost his mount somewhere in the opening exchanges, fighting from the ground with his saber.

Batu came at the mounted rider from the blind side, and the man read him at the last moment and turned his horse hard right, and the turn put the animal between Batu and the man’s sword arm for the space of a second.

Batu used the second.

The rider fell.

The man who had been on foot nodded once and looked for a horse.

The fighting had been running long enough that the ground around the channel’s near bank was marked by what it had cost.

Two of Batu’s guard riders were down on the terrain to the north, neither of them moving.

Three of Berke’s men were down between the two initial positions, one of them still trying to clear himself from under his animal.

The riderless horses moved through the melee at the edges, their bulk and momentum adding to the confusion, pressing through whatever gaps opened.

Then Batu’s horse took the shaft.

It came from the left at almost no arc, flat and direct from one of Berke’s riders at a range where accuracy required almost nothing.

The shaft went into the animal’s chest just behind the shoulder and it lurched hard to the right, its front legs going first, the motion giving Batu two strides of warning before the animal had fully committed to going down.

He was off it before it hit the earth, clearing the saddle and landing on both feet with his saber in his hand, the horse going down behind him and lying still.

The melee kept running around him.

Mounted men on both sides in the close fight, the engagement continuing at the edges and the center of the space between the two groups.

On foot he was at a different height than the riders around him, the horses’ sides and legs at eye level, the noise of the combat coming from above as much as from ahead.

He moved south through the melee on foot, staying between the animals, reading the gaps.

Berke’s group had been pushed close to the channel’s near bank.

The rear animals of his group were on the bank’s descent now, some of them with their back feet lower than their front, fighting for footing on the frost-slick surface at the bank’s angle.

One horse went down into the channel bed entirely, its legs finding the thin ice and going sideways, the animal thrashing in the shallow cold water at the base of the cut.

The horse directly behind it was Berke’s mount.

The falling animal went into it at the hip as it collapsed, and the impact drove Berke’s horse sideways onto the bank’s descent, and at that angle with that momentum it had nothing to find its footing on.

It went down onto its side at the bank’s edge. Berke came off it onto the frozen earth and was on his feet.

Both on foot.

The riders nearest to each of them pulled away by instinct or by the close combat redirecting around two men who were no longer mounted.

The fighting kept running at the edges.

Kirsa’s riders working through what remained of Berke’s group on the far side, a cluster of close engagements still running to the north where the initial collision had started.

Berke had his saber in his hand.

His breathing was hard from the fall. The wrapped forearm was still wrapped.

A cut across his left cheek, fresh, the blood running into his beard.

Batu looked at him across the opened space.

"Still Jochi’s sons," Berke said. His voice was harder than it had been before the fight.

No inflection now. Just the fact of it.

"Still on the same ground," Batu said.

Berke looked at the frozen earth between them.

The channel at his back. The close fighting running at the edges around them.

"Our father’s ground," he said. "Come and take it then."

He came forward.

Batu met him.

The first exchange of blows was fast and hard and neither man gave the other what he was looking for, and the cold flat steppe held them both.