***
Even from three quarters of the way back, Taras was nearly unhorsed by the explosion. Jasper, along with all the other horses on the plain, reared and whinnied, wide-eyed with fear, and it was all Taras could do to get him under control again.
A cloud of thick, black smoke obscured the walls from view. It didn’t bother the men around him. They charged forward as soon as they got their horses under control. Taras followed them, spurring Jasper into a full-speed gallop, and praying they weren’t all running toward an intact stone wall.
Two hundred strides from the wall, the gaping hole where the tower came into view. Only rubble remained, strewn about both inside and out like garbage. The Russian army streamed through the divide, climbing and leaping over the rubble like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The cavalry had a more difficult time getting through, as the horses fought to keep their footing. Taras fell into line with them.
Russian soliders poured into the city. The unprepared Tatars fell back, fleeing toward the acropolis, where the Khan and royal family were hiding in the palace.
Taras fought ferociously, swinging his sword with constant motion, first on one side of his horse, then the other. He had to or risk losing a leg. The onslaught of Tatars didn’t lessen as he moved into the city, and he killed several dozen men before reaching the palace gates where he knew the Khan would be.
The Russian army invaded people’s homes, now, so the Tatars fought like lions to protect what was theirs. Taras took several wounds to his arms, legs, and face.
Knowing that only capturing the Khan would end the war, Ivan's soldiers slammed against the palace gates as one. Taras could see rocks being used as battering rams up ahead. It took several minutes, but with a resounding boom, the gates burst inward and the Russians poured into the courtyard.
The fighting grew more frantic between the gates and the palace walls. Taras dismounted to help. He ran three men through and took a severe gash to the right side of his jaw, which dripped blood. Before long they took the courtyard, but the palace doors were still barred.
Two-dozen men brought a tree trunk the size of Jasper’s round flanks into the courtyard. They got a running start and slammed it into the massive wooden doors of the palace. It would only be a matter of time before the doors gave way under that amount of force.
Taras jogged back to the gates, looking out at the city beyond. The fighting grew fiercer by the minute. Everywhere he looked, men clashed with swords, axes, knives, guns, even hands.
A soldier running by with his arms loaded caught Taras’s attention.
“You there, solider!”
The man stopped.
“What is the situation on the west side of the city?”
“The Tatars are retreating, my lord. Many are scrambling over the walls, trying to find refuge in the forest beyond the Kazanka River.”
“Are they succeeding?”
“No, my lord. Many are making it over the walls, but Prince Kurbsky’s army is directly north of that. They aren’t making it to the river, much less the forest.”
The boom of the log against the palace doors sounded over and over, a jarring drumbeat. Taras nodded, then glanced down at what the man held in his arms. Several bags filled with something that clanged like metal. Taras couldn’t see their contents clearly, but it sparkled in the sun.
“What are you doing?”
“Booty, sir,” the man said proudly. “I’m taking it back to my camp. Have to secure my own future, if you know what I mean.”
Taras stared at the man. He was going back to camp to take booty? The fighting hadn't even ended yet.
“Drop that load, soldier. Now. Get back to your post.”
Just then the solid thunk of the tree trunk resulted in an ear-splitting crack. Taras turned. The thick oak of the palace door splintered. Another few blows and they would be in.
Taras turned back to the soldier. The other man ran toward the eastern gates, trailing bronze coins as he went. Taras sighed, shaking his head. He didn’t have the authority to put a stop to it.
The palace door cracked again, moaning as it crumpled inward. The men holding the tree abandoned it, climbing over it and the remnants of the wooden door to get into the palace. Taras followed.
People packed he palace. The people of Kazan must have known it would be the last defended place, and ran there for shelter once the walls were breached. The hallways, antechambers, and rooms--even the kitchens--were filled with people who'd grabbed what possessions they could and camped out on the palace floor, praying the castle would remain a sanctuary. Their prayers had gone unanswered.
Kazan’s soldiers would protect the castle, where their Khan hid, with their lives, but they didn’t stand a chance against the sheer numbers of Russian soldiers pouring through the ruined gates. Several lines of men cut down up ahead of him were cut down.
Then the plundering began.
The army moved through the castle like a swarm of black locusts, leaving death and devastation in their wake. The soldiers slaughtered everyone in their path. Peasants and merchants clad in threadbare rags, starving and deprived of water, sat on their knees begging for mercy. They were cut down. Most of them lived for several minutes before expiring, the sight of their own blood the last thing they would ever see.
Taras couldn’t understand why those who surrendered were being killed. He was powerless to stop it. The army flooded through the rooms of the palace like a serpentine demon, moving as one entity. Taras was pulled along by the waves of the capricious mob. He could not go forward or back, only with. He could not get ahead of the army to stop their murder, and even if he could, he would probably be trampled. By the time he reached the victims, the light had already left their eyes.
Taras fought his way to one side of the horde, near the wall, and when they passed another room, he lunged in. Dozens of others followed him, but at least he’d escaped the pull of the mob. The room looked like some sort of dining hall, twenty feet wide and twice as long, with an oblong wooden table down near the opposite end.
Taras stood panting, hand on his chest. He became aware of the sound of a woman crying out. She was screaming, but with the sounds of the army thundering through the castle, it sounded faint. He turned toward the table to see a handful of soldiers standing around another soldier who held a woman by the waist. By her garb, she was a servant here in the khan’s palace.
Perhaps even a maid.
Taras covered the distance between himself and the men in seconds. He made no attempt to hide his passage. His boots clicked loudly on the wooden floor with each step, and his armaments jingled as he walked. The man trying to force the woman’s knees apart still gaped in surprise when Taras bore down upon him.
Flexing his fingers wide, Taras slammed the heel of his hand into the man’s nose. It shattered soundly beneath the blow. The man stumbled backward, clutching his face. Blood gushed out from between his fingers, leaving red trails on the front of his armor and dotting the floor with crimson raindrops. He fell against the table, then slid to the ground. Taras grabbed the woman’s wrist and yanked her around behind him, putting himself between her and the men.
“You will not do this!” Taras’s voice thundered in the huge chamber. “These people are not soldiers or politicians. They go where the wind blows them. They are trying to surrender. They must be treated with respect.” The men in the group, apart from the one still nursing a flattened nose, stared at Taras with wide eyes. They exchanged looks, as though unsure how to react.
Then something happened—a strange noise from behind.
Ice hardened his veins and closed in around his heart. Feeling the life drain out of someone a man is trying to save is the loneliest thing he can feel. Taras felt it, not with his senses or his heart, but with his soul—with that quiet tether to the unseen world all men feel on the outskirts of their consciousness. Taras knew, even before he turned toward the sickening, sluicing sound, that she was dead.
br /> He turned in time to see tip of a blood-slicked blade wrenched back from between her breasts. The woman crumbled to the ground at Taras’s feet.
Behind her stood Sergei.
He resembled like a demon from Celtic legend. Covered head to toe and fingertip to fingertip, with blood, it dried on him in layers, some dark and chipping, some wet and gleaming in the faint light. His hair was slicked back with it.
Taras felt horror as he stared, open-mouthed at the demon who had murdered the woman, inches from Taras’s sword. Blood smudged the fronts of his teeth.
Sergei sneered at him, his voice slippery and obsequious. He bent from the waist and flung out his arm in a mocking bow. “Prince Taras is right. It is beneath us to mingle our blood with these heathens who do not recognize the true god of the universe.” He straightened and smiled broadly. “Kill them all.”
Taras glared at Sergei, trying to control his breathing. He’d known since Inga first approached him that Sergei was not a good man. The supposition had been supported time and again during the last year and half by simple observation of Sergei at court. Taras still hadn’t understood the extent of ghoulish inhumanity truly housed in the other man. Until now.
Sergei raised an eyebrow at Taras before spinning on his toe and walking toward the door. The other men behind Taras chuckled appreciatively at Sergei’s “suggestion” and lumbered out through a side door. Taras was so absorbed in his shock that he didn’t register it, and by the time he turned around they'd already gone.
Taras took in the empty corner, Sergei’s retreating back, and the lifeless woman on the floor. Her blood fanned out around her in a widening whirlpool. A tendril of blood reached out and touched Taras’s boots. When it made contact, the blood flooded forward, filling the intervening space. Taras stepped back, but too late. His boots were already stained a brooding red. Once blood stained leather, it never washed out. Taras crouched down beside her and put his hand out to rest on her shoulder. He came within inches, but did not touch her, unsure what curses touching the murdered could bring.
Still crouching, he spun away from her on his toe and vomited. Then he straightened, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm, and stalked toward the door the demon had gone through.
“SERGEI!”