Chapter 227: Battle of Voronezh River

Dorbei’s fire archers released at eighty meters.

The arrows traveled down the line in a staggered wave. Arrows climbed, then dropped steeply into the Rus position along the river’s bank.

The far bank answered at once.

A crossbow bolt crossed eighty meters on a flat line and struck a rider two places left of Batu. It punched through the padded coat and the leather underneath, the impact shoving the man backward in the saddle. He made no sound. Momentum carried him forward over his horse’s neck. He slid sideways, fell into the grass along the bank, and lay still.

The bolt protruded from his back where it had exited. His horse took a single step and stopped.

"They’ve got the range already."

A second bolt crossed the river. It entered a rider’s left thigh at the fire line, tore through muscle, and stopped on bone. The man seized the wound, dragged his horse backward, and kept the shaft in place. A rider from the rear rank filled the space immediately.

Two defenders on the far bank were already down. Three more had withdrawn from exposed ground near the water.

Batu watched their return fire. The time between volleys was increasing. Reload cycle, less pressure. A window, but not a large one.

He drove Daichin forward into the river.

Cold water closed around his boots as the depth increased. Spring current pushed north to south against the horse’s advance. Daichin ignored it, pushing the gravel bottom step by step.

The white horse remained clearly visible from the near bank, exactly as Batu intended.

The Khar Kheshig entered the water around him. Steppe riders kept bows high and dry. The norsemen crossed with weapons ready and eyes fixed on the far bank.

At fifty meters from shore, an arrow struck a Khar Kheshig rider to Batu’s right. It entered through the front of the man’s right shoulder and exited through the back. His arm dropped at once. He shifted the reins to his left hand, grabbed the mane for balance, and kept moving. The crossing mattered more than the wound.

Twenty meters later, a crossbow bolt hit a Khar Kheshig horse high in the neck at roughly forty meters.

The horse screamed, the unmistakable sound of a large animal struck somewhere fatal. Its front legs collapsed. Horse and rider went down into the current.

The rider surfaced immediately, hands locked on the floating saddle. The man behind him maneuvered alongside.

"Move, then. Don’t drown here."

He hauled the unsaddled rider toward the far bank.

At forty-five meters, a Rus defender leaned over the bank to fire directly into the force. Dangerous position.

Batu drew, found the man’s chest with a flat shot, and released. The arrow crossed cleanly and hit. The defender vanished backward over the edge.

At thirty meters, a Rus crossbowman was midway through reloading, bolt only half-seated.

Batu drew again and released.

The arrow struck the man’s left thigh and the crossbow fell from his hands. He dropped to a sitting position on the bank, both palms clamped over the wound.

The far bank rose out of the water.

Daichin climbed from the current, hindquarters driving hard beneath him. Batu had his saber out before the horse finished the ascent.

A Rus druzhina horseman charged from twenty meters away. Mail coat. Conical helm. Spear at chest height against a mounted target. He had waited for the force’s most exposed moment and chosen the commander at the front.

Proper judgment.

At ten meters, Batu hauled Daichin sharply left. The spear missed past the horse’s right side.

Batu turned with the movement and cut horizontally at the rider’s extended arm. The saber severed the forearm below the elbow. The spear dropped into the grass.

The man’s short cry had not finished echoing when Suuqai, already moving along the bank, arrived from the right and ended the problem.

A Rus infantryman came from the left carrying a long-handled axe. No armor.

The grip was awkward for a soldier and familiar for a woodsman. A man who had spent years splitting timber and now used the motion for war.

He swung upward from below.

The back edge of the blade glanced off Daichin’s right shoulder. It struck muscle without cutting deep, but the force shoved the horse sideways two steps.

Batu rode through the stagger and cut back at once.

The saber opened the man from the right shoulder diagonally across the chest. Deep at the shoulder. Shallower lower down.

The defender fell backward into the shallows, axe still locked in his hand, while blood spread dark through the water at the river’s bank.

Einar’s horse charged through the water directly behind the center.

A Rus spearman moved fast to block him before the norsemen could steady themselves. He pushed his spear upwards.

Einar took the shaft against his left forearm. Iron scraped across his coat. Instead of giving way, he drove his horse forward with the full momentum of an animal steamrolling what is in front.

The defender disappeared beneath the hooves.

"Odin! Watch me!" Einar roared as he surged up the slope. "Tonight we drink!"

Suuqai fired once at a Rus archer twenty-five meters east of the landing point. The arrow hit the man’s chest. The body was already falling while Suuqai turned his attention to controlling the guard’s spread.

Gunnar sounded the horn. The double-note signal carried above the noise of the crossing.

Both halves of the guard adjusted without spoken orders. Steppe riders opened eastward. The norsemen preserved spacing along the perimeter’s right side. The formation adapted exactly as intended for this moment.

A steppe rider pulled alongside a norseman holding the eastern bank.

"They’re breaking! Look at them run!"

The norseman spat into the grass and watched the Rus formation beginning to withdraw from the river.

"Good. Let’s get at their backs before they remember courage."

"Wait for the signal," the steppe rider snapped. "Then we ride them down."

The Rus defenders who had held the main ford withdrew in control. The druzhina professionals gave ground the way trained men did when they understood a position could no longer be held.

Leave. Reorganize. Continue fighting. Do not die uselessly.

Some stayed.

A cluster of defenders at the ford’s eastern edge maintained position even as the brothers’ tumen began crossing behind the Khar Kheshig. They held position until the growing numbers on the bank reached them.

Then numbers finished the fight.

They died where they stood.

The tone of the Rus shouting changed as the fighting spread along the bank.

When the crossing force first landed, the defenders had called to one another in their own language. Urgent commands. Specific instructions. The meaning carried clearly across the river even without translation.

"Za Ryazan!" one had shouted at the height of the struggle.

Those words required no explanation.

Now the Rus force, roughly one hundred fifty meters inland, was reacting to something east of their position. The movement began along the eastern section of their formation and traveled west. Horses turned eastward. Messages passed rider to rider before Batu understood what had drawn their attention.

He followed their line of sight.

To the east, along the far bank, Orda’s white banner emerged from behind the river bend and moved west.

The White Horde had crossed the undefended ford.

They advanced along the inside bank toward the Rus eastern flank. Dense formation. High speed. Precise movement. A strike aimed directly at the point the Rus force no longer had time to reinforce.

Far west, near the edge of visibility, Torghul’s dust column moved eastward.

The western arm of the encirclement was was about to close.

"There! There it is!" a rider barked near Batu. "Now we’ve got the fuckers."

He spoke with hard satisfaction.

Orda’s lead riders reached the Rus eastern flank.

The slaughter started.