His beard and moustaches were thin, rather stringy, and black.
Since it was winter, he was covered with thick furs although, hidden beneath were underclothes of the finest Chinese silk. He wore felt socks, and over them heavy leather boots. On his head was a fur cap.
He was, in fact, twenty-five, but wind and weather, war and the hard living on the open steppe had made his age seem indeterminate.
Tied to his belt was a leather drinking pouch containing the fomented mare’s milk – kumiss – that his people loved. Attached to his saddle was another pouch, containing dried meat. For as a Mongol warrior, he always travelled with all the bare essentials that he needed.
These also included his wife: together with a baby, she rode with the huge camel train that carried the baggage behind.
There was only one physical characteristic that distinguished this warrior from other men. Four years before, a spear had just missed his left eye but made a gash from his high cheekbone, across the side of his head, and taken off his ear, leaving only a jagged stump. ‘I was lucky,’ he had remarked, and thought little more about it.
His name was Mengu.
Slowly the vast army rode across the frozen steppe. As usual, it was drawn up in five large contingents of roughly equal size: two – a vanguard and a rearguard – on each wing; and in the centre, a single division.
Mengu was on the right wing. Behind him rode the hundred men he led. They were light horsemen, each carrying two bows and two quivers with which they could shoot at the gallop. The bows were fearsome – very large, composite, with a pull of over one hundred and sixty pounds – more powerful, that is, than the famous English longbow. They had a destructive range of up to three hundred yards. Like all his men, Mengu had first learned to draw a bow when he was three.
To his left moved a party of heavy cavalry who carried sabres and lances, a battle axe or mace, according to preference, and a lasso.
Mengu himself rode a coal-black horse – a fact which at once marked him out as belonging to the black brigade of the elite imperial guard. With the great herd of spare horses behind went his four remounts, all black.
He was glad his wife and firstborn son were with him. He wanted them to see his triumph. For this was his first command.
The Mongol army, and the empire that grew from it, was modelled on the decimal system. The lowest command was ten men. Then a hundred. The senior men commanded a thousand, and the generals led the myriads, the ten thousands. Mengu commanded a hundred. ‘But by the end of the campaign,’ he promised his wife, ‘I’ll have a thousand.’ And by the time the rest of the western lands were conquered, the lands which merchants had told him stretched to the end of the plain, he might even lead a myriad, a ten thousand.
Promotion: how he desired it. But one had to be careful.
For although all men were equal in the service of the Great Khan, and promotion was on merit, the most important things were judgement and tact. The old proverb of the Asian steppe said it all: ‘If you know too much they’ll hang you, and if you’re too modest, they’ll walk all over you.’
It also helped to belong to a successful clan. ‘And I am,’ he mused, using the Mongol phrase, ‘of the same bone as two generals already.’ That had helped him get into the imperial guard.
There was another factor, however, which he thought might advance him even more.
In the beauty contests which the Great Khan regularly held, to which all the prominent Mongols sent their daughters, his sister had been singled out. ‘A moon-like girl,’ the Great Khan himself had remarked: this was a high term of praise. She had been allotted, as a senior concubine, to Batu Khan himself. Several times he had seen her by the khan’s tent.
She will find a way to bring me to his notice, he thought confidently. And his hard, impassive face looked towards the horizon with satisfaction.
Soon, Mengu knew, they would reach the edge of the forest.
In the twelve-year animal calendar of the Mongols, there were two years to go until the year of the Rat. By the end of that year, the land of Rus would be conquered. This he knew as certainly as that the sun would rise and the stars shine.
For the Mongols were going to conquer the world.
It was Genghis Khan who had told them so. Genghis Khan, by birth the leader of a noble clan, who in 1206 – only thirty years before – had united all the Mongol clans under him and taken, from the ancient Turkish empires of the Asian plain, the title of Kagan or Khan. Genghis: also called the Dalai – the all-powerful.
Others before had borne this title, but none had ever built an empire as the Mongols were to do.
From their homeland in the pasture lands above the Gobi Desert, these warriors born to the saddle and the bow struck southwards across the Great Wall into China, and westwards against the Turkish, and now Moslem, states of Central Asia and Persia. These were not defenceless states, but powerful. The fighting was tremendous. But Genghis crushed them. In a few years the northern city of Peking had fallen; by 1220, most of Persia was his; and then, like all the conquerors from the east, the Mongols came to cross the crescent of mountains and ride down into the great, open north Eurasian plain.
It was the aim of every Asian empire to control the rich caravan routes to the west. To do so was very profitable. But it was the aim of Genghis Khan not only to do this, but to set up a state to rule the entire world. It was not only his mission but his duty.
‘Tengri, the god of the Great Blue Sky, has granted me to rule all who live in felt tents,’ he declared. But if this meant merely the nomad dwellers on the plains, he took it to mean the world. And like the Chinese emperors he conquered, he claimed a mandate from heaven.
His object – which popular history, with some reason, often forgets – was universal peace. The rules of this new world order were all set forth by Genghis in his code – the great Yasa – a copy of which was kept, like the Covenant, sacred and hidden from the eyes of the people at each of the Mongol capitals.
‘All men are equal,’ declared the Yasa, ‘and all, on their merits, shall serve the great Khan.’ It was a formula that other empires, like the Chinese, had used. ‘The old and the poor shall also be protected,’ the Yasa ordered. And indeed, in the empire of Genghis Khan, there was a kind of welfare state.
Wiser than many despots, he also allowed freedom of religion. ‘You may worship as you please,’ the conquered were told, ‘but in your prayers, you must also pray for the Great Khan.’ And all this was bound together with the simple formula: ‘There is one God in heaven, and one lord upon the earth – the Great Khan.’
In 1227 Genghis died. Like the falcon that was the tamga of the clan, he had flown up into the heavens, many believed. But his empire did not falter. For centuries the Khans would be elected from the large number of his direct descendants, the state clan.
The empire Genghis left his sons and grandsons in his Will was divided into four parts. In the oriental world, each of the four points of the compass had a colour: the north was black, the south red; the east was blue and the west white. And the centre, the royal centre, was gold.
Thus it was that the descendants of Genghis were called the Golden Kin.
To his sons, Genghis gave the order: expand. And to each, in his Will, he left not silver and gold, but armies with which to get them.
The great army that descended upon the western world in 1237 was led by Batu Khan, a junior ruler and grandson of Genghis. At his right hand was the great Mongol general Subudey. The clan council of the Great Khan had decided that his army, though it belonged to the western of the empire’s four divisions, should be supplemented by large detachments from the other divisions as well. It consisted, it is estimated, of about 150,000 men: the core Mongol, the rest mainly Turks from the conquered lands of Central Asia.
History, since that time, has usually referred to this army, and the vast western empire it was to rule, as the Golden Horde. In fact, this name comes from a misreading of a text written centuries la
ter. The huge western Mongol lands were not called golden: being western, they were white. And the horde within this vast white division, that had come to subdue Russia, was called the Great Horde.
The Mongols’ information was excellent. Back in the time of Genghis, they had sent an expedition across the southern steppe, past the River Don; but the Russians had not understood who these soldiers were. Since then, spies had come, and merchant caravans had told their story: there were always many whispers across the steppe. While the Russians hardly knew of their existence, the rulers of the mighty empire had prepared their plan. ‘It will not be a long campaign,’ Mengu had told his wife.
Indeed, while the Mongol council believed that to subdue the entire empire of the Chinese, north and south, might take sixty years, they had estimated that the conquest of the Rus would take three.
In order to understand the shape and nature of the Russian state, it is necessary only to consider her greatest rivers. And the pattern they make is very simple: for they form, roughly speaking, the capital letter R.
First, from the beginning, there was the great north-south network of waterways that led from the cold northern lands by the Baltic Sea, down to the broad River Dniepr and thence through pleasant forest, across the dangerous southern steppe and at last to the warm Black Sea. This was the upright of the R, on which lay Novgorod in the north, Smolensk in the middle, and Kiev just above the southern steppe.
The tail of the R, stretching south-east from the centre, out across the steppe and down to the eastern corner of the Black Sea shore and the settlement of Tmutarakan, was the great River Don.
The loop of the R was made by two rivers: the upper part by the mighty Volga as it started its journey with an enormous curve up through the dark, north-eastern forest before turning south again; and the lower part by another river, the sluggish Oka, that came out from the centre and curved northwards to meet it. From their meeting point, about halfway up the loop, the Volga flowed away to the east again, to continue its journey across the endless Eurasian plain.
Within this huge loop – a land of forests and marshes, where primitive Finnish folk had dwelt since time immemorial – had gradually been established towns: Suzdal in the central section, sometimes called Suzdalia; Rostov further north; and on the outside of the loop, on the River Oka, the towns of Riazan and, above it, Murom.
Four chief rivers: Dniepr, Volga, Oka and Don. From the frozen north to the warm Black Sea: about a thousand miles. From west to east across the loop: nearly five hundred. This was the R of Russian rivers, the shape of the state of Rus.
In the century that followed the reign of Vladimir Monomakh in Kiev, however, one great change had taken place in the state of Rus. Its leaders had taken an increasing interest in the lands within the loop of the Russian R. New towns like Yaroslavl and Tver grew up. Monomakh himself had set up an important city in Suzdalia and given it his own name: Vladimir. Meanwhile, in the south, not only did the Cumans continue to raid from the steppe but – thanks to the near wrecking of Constantinople during the west’s confused Crusades – the Black Sea trade had weakened and the great city of Kiev entered a slow decline.
As a result of these developments, the centre of gravity in the state of Rus had shifted to the north-east, into the loop. The proud descendants of Monomakh preferred the forest lands where the Cuman raiders did not penetrate. The senior member of the royal clan called himself Grand Duke of Vladimir now; and golden Kiev, like a famous woman growing older but still glamorous, became only a possession that rich and powerful princes liked to display at their side.
The Grand Dukes of Vladimir were mighty indeed. They usually controlled Novgorod, and its huge trade with the Hanseatic German towns and far beyond. They received the great caravans that came across the steppe and forest from the lands of the Volga Bulgars and the orient.
And, to add religious importance to their new northern capital, they brought from Greece a sacred icon of the Mother of God and installed it in the new cathedral of Vladimir. No object was more reverenced in all Russia than the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir.
There was, however, one central weakness in the state of Rus: it was disunited. Though the rules of brotherly succession still applied for the position of Grand Duke, individual cities had gradually become power bases for different branches of the numerous royal house. The disputes were endless. No ruler in Vladimir ever imposed unity upon them from the centre.
The state of Rus was disunited. The Mongols knew it very well.
1239
Yanka was awake at dawn. The sky was growing pale.
Quietly she slipped off the warm shelf over the stove and made her way to the door. She could hear her parents and her brother breathing. No one stirred.
Pulling on her furs and her thick felt boots, she unlatched the door and stepped out on to the crisp snow.
In the half light, the village seemed grey. A few feet away on the right was a small dark dot on the ground. She inspected it. It was just a dog’s mess that had frozen to stone in the cold clear night. There was no wind, and only the pleasant smell of woodsmoke that emanated from the chimneyless huts. No one was about as she began to walk.
There was no particular reason why Yanka should have walked through the woods that dawn; except that, after a restless night, she was glad to go out into the cold open spaces away from the village for a while. She began to walk along the path through the trees.
She was seven years old: a quiet, rather self-possessed little girl, with hazel-flecked blue eyes and straw-coloured hair. Of the children in the village of Russka, she was one of the most fortunate: for her mother’s family were descended from the peasant Shchek, the keeper of the honey forest in the days of the boyar Ivan and the Grand Prince Monomakh. By the time of his death Shchek had acquired numerous beehives of his own and even now, generations later, in addition to the traditional distaff, salt box and butter press that came with every bride, Yanka’s mother had brought a handsome dowry, including several beehives. She was a gay, quick-witted woman, resembling her ancestor mainly in her thick dark hair and square build; and she loved to sing. Sometimes, it was true, Yanka had noticed some tension between her parents. She had even heard her mother speak words of scorn. But for the most part their household seemed happy.
The sun was about to rise. Its rays caught a single, small white cloud overhead, causing it to gleam. Yanka wandered on. She smelt the faint earthy scent of a fox that must have crossed the track. Turning, she saw it, watching her through the trees thirty paces away on the right. ‘Good morning, fox,’ she said quietly.
The fox slipped away across the snow, like a shadow dropping foot-prints as it passed.
It was time to turn back. Yet she did not. Something seemed to beckon her to the edge of the steppe. I will look at the sun rising over the steppe, she thought, before I go back to the village.
The settlement of Russka had become rather isolated in recent times. The fort was still there but poorly manned, for recently there had not even been a prince in Pereiaslav. The boyar’s family had long ago become strangers to the village. Ivanushka’s grandson, another Ivan, had married a Cuman girl, and their son, a strange, fair-haired fellow called Milei whose blue eyes were set in a rather high-boned Turkish face, had taken no interest in Russka. ‘The Turk’ the villagers called him; although by the standards of the Russian princes, some of whom were now seven-eighths Cuman, he was not particularly Turkish. Apart from this, the boyar’s family owned large estates in the north-east, beyond the River Oka. The boyar lived in the city of Murom. His steward came to inspect the village from time to time, and to take the profits from the honey. The family also kept up the little church, although it was sometimes left with only an ancient, half-blind priest to look after it.
During Yanka’s brief life, the village of Russka therefore was a place of benign torpor, its inhabitants gathering harvest and honey, cheating the absent boyar, sitting outside in the long summer months, and often singing in the summer ev
enings at the border of the southern steppe.
Except for the threat over the horizon.
Yanka did not know what to make of that. A huge raid from the steppe had taken place in the north the previous year. The Cumans, or whoever they were, had done great damage. And that autumn, the boyar’s steward had not appeared. Who knew what it meant? ‘But don’t worry,’ her father had told her. ‘You’ll be safe with me.’
When she came to the edge of the trees the sun had just cleared the horizon. Ahead, to the east, the white snows seemed to stretch for ever, as though the sun had come from some hidden declivity in their distant wastes. Now the great, golden sun was rising like an emperor in the blue sky of the east as she stared, transfixed, at its splendour.
The air was completely clear and silent. About a mile away, a little to the left, a small bump marked the place where there was an ancient kurgan. Far to the south, long layers of greyish clouds stretched along the horizon from steppe to forest, their edges gleaming gold.
Yanka stepped out from the trees and walked out on to the plain. Almost at once, its huge, empty silence seemed to envelop her. She took a deep breath of icy air and smiled. Now she was ready to go home.
Just as she was about to turn, however, her sharp eyes noticed a minute dot, far away on the horizon. She stared at it, shielding her eyes from the sun, not even sure if there was something there or not. It did not seem to be moving. Was it growing? She finally decided it was not. How strange, she thought, as she gazed. It must be a tree, casting a long shadow in the sunrise.
And then she turned to go home, while the sun, lord of the blue sky, took possession of the morning.
Mengu watched her.
He had ridden out from the camp at first light and before long had come to a low rise which gave him a good view. Across the open steppe, ten miles away, he could clearly see the line of trees and he had seen the little figure even as she emerged from the wood.
For while Yanka’s eyes were sharp, the eyes of the man of the steppe were far keener.