Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [89]
The first stone completely broke down the parapet over the gate. The second smashed the gate itself.
At Mengu’s order, the Mongols streamed through into the fort. They moved rapidly but methodically. Every door was kicked open: every room, every crevice searched. They used spears and swords. Any living creature, man, woman or child, was quickly and efficiently butchered. They were so quick and thorough that, apart from a few moments of sheer terror, few of the people there even suffered very much.
Inside the fort they found some modest quantities of fresh food and ten tons of stored grain, which they removed in carts taken from the village. Then, leaving the bodies where they were, they set fire to every building, and to the wooden walls.
The huge bonfire on the little hill grew rapidly. Soon the whole fort was alive with fire, and over its walls, new walls of roaring flames appeared, hurling smoke and sparking cinders high into the air above the forest. As the broad-faced Mongols watched below, the whole place seemed to shudder with the roar, crack and whine of the little fort’s destruction.
Mengu turned to a decurion. ‘Twenty bowmen, with fire arrows,’ he ordered. ‘Surround the church.’
A few moments later there were broad-chested Mongols in leather jerkins and with huge, curved bows at the ready before each of the church’s walls. At a nod from Mengu, they took out long, heavy arrows with huge cloth heads that had been dipped in pitch, and lit them.
‘Fire.’ The arrows began to fly, and to crash through the church’s narrow windows. Soon smoke emerged; then flame.
Mengu wondered whether the people inside would come out of the door, and stationed more bowmen opposite. But though the force of the fire within seemed to be causing the door to tremble, it remained closed.
After a time, the little dome collapsed and fell with a crash into the building. No one could possibly be alive in there by now, he thought. The place must be a roaring furnace. Even the bricks were starting to glow. A wall fell, then another. It was good. In case the general thought him soft about the child, he meant to show he knew how to be harsh.
That evening, as a few villagers crept out of the woods, they saw in place of the fort and the brave little church, only blackened ruins beside which the birds were swooping curiously.
The report the general made to the mighty Batu Khan that evening was sensible and clear-headed.
‘He lost concentration because a woman ran towards him. He should have seen her before and ordered his men to cut her down or remove her. He didn’t. He waited until she reached him, then he killed her. He took his eyes off the job.’
‘Then?’
‘There was a little girl. He picked her up and threw her out.’
‘Waste of time. What then?’
‘He took the fort. Burned it down.’
‘Very well. Anything else?’
‘He burned down a church.’
‘Inside the fort?’
‘No. Outside.’
‘Was it defended?’
‘No.’
‘That is bad. The Great Khan respects all religions.’
‘I do not think he has a cool head,’ the general concluded.
That night, the mighty Batu Khan changed his mind and did not sleep with Mengu’s sister.
That same night, as she rocked herself to sleep in a shelter her father and brother had improvised in the bee-forest, Yanka remembered only one thing about the Mongol who had killed her mother: he had a scar across one side of his face, and was missing one ear.
She would never forget it: never.
1246
Softly the raft drifted through the early morning mists. Until the previous month, to escape detection, they had travelled only at night, inching their way upstream, reconnoitring every village in case of patrols. Once, on a moonlit night, they had almost run into a party of soldiers camped on the river bank.
It was August. Making their way northwards by the curving rivers, they had already covered a distance of some five hundred miles. It had taken them three months.
Last month they had left one river system and made their way overland to another. The boat by which they had come so far – a huge single tree trunk,