Baidur left their shouts and jeers behind him, knowing the scouts would not dare to follow. His mind was already busy. With the stores on the spare horses, he still had almost two million shafts – each a piece of straight birch, well fletched – bundled in quivers of thirty or sixty. Even with such abundance, he had been careful to retrieve and repair as many as he could from the battles. They were perhaps his most precious resource, after the horses themselves. He looked at the sun and nodded. It was still early. He would not waste the day. King Boleslav, Grand Duke of Krakow, drummed his gauntlet on the leather pommel of his saddle as he watched the vast cloud of dust that marked the movements of the approaching Mongol horde. He sat a massive grey charger, a beast of the breed that could pull a plough through the black earth all day without tiring. Eleven thousand knights stood ready to destroy the invader once and for all. To his left, the French Knights Templar stood ready in their livery of red and white over steel. Boleslav could hear their voices raised in prayer. He had archers by the thousand and, most importantly of all, he had pikemen who could stand against a charge with lances. It was an army to inspire confidence, and he kept his messengers close by, ready to ride to his cousin in Liegnitz with news of the victory. Perhaps when he had saved them all, his family would finally recognise him as the rightful ruler of Poland.
The mother church would still stand in his way, he thought sourly. They preferred the princes of Poland to waste their strength in squabbles and assassinations, leaving the church to grow fat and wealthy. Only the month before, his cousin Henry had sponsored a monastery for the new order of Dominicans, paying for it all in good silver. Boleslav winced at the thought of the benefices and indulgences Henry had earned as a result. It was the talk of the family.
In his silent thoughts, Boleslav offered up a prayer of his own.
'Lord, if I see victory today, I will found a convent in my city. I will set a chalice of gold on the altar of the chapel and I will find a relic to bring pilgrims from a thousand miles. I will have a Mass offered for all those who lose their lives. I give you my oath, Lord, my troth. Allow me your victory and I will have your name sung across Krakow.'
He swallowed drily and reached for a small bottle of water on a thong hanging from his saddle. He hated the waiting and he still feared that the reports of his scouts were true. He knew they were prone to exaggerate, but more than one had come back with tales of a horde twice the size of his fifty thousand, a great ocean of uncountable horses and terrible invaders, carrying bows and lances like the trees of a forest. His bladder made itself felt and Boleslav winced irritably. Let the damned dogs come, he told himself. God would speak and they would learn the strength of his right hand.
Boleslav could see the dark mass of the enemy as they rode closer. They poured across the ground, too many to count, though he did not think it was the vast army his scouts had described. That thought brought the worry that there might be more out of sight. He had only one report from Russia, but it warned they were fiends for trickery, in love with the ambush and the flanking blow. None of that was in evidence as his pikemen held their position. The Mongol warriors were riding straight at his lines as if they intended to gallop through them. Boleslav began to sweat, fearing he had missed something in the battle plans. He saw the Knights Templar ready themselves to counter-charge, safe for the moment behind the ranks of stolid pikemen. Boleslav watched intently as the pikes came down, the butts firmly grounded in the earth. They would stop anything, gut anyone, no matter how fast or fierce they were.
The Mongols came in a wide line, no more than fifty deep. As Boleslav stared, they bent bows and released. Thousands of shafts rose in the air above his pikemen and Boleslav knew a moment of horror. They had shields, but they had thrown them down to hold the pikes against a charge.
The sound of arrows striking men clattered across the field, followed by screaming. Hundreds fell and the arrows kept coming. Boleslav counted twelve heartbeats between each colossal strike, though his heart was racing and he could not calm himself. His own archers replied with volleys and he tensed in anticipation, only to see the shafts fall short of the Mongol horsemen. How could they have such a range? His bowmen were good, he was certain, but if they could not reach the enemy, they were useless to him.
Orders snapped up and down the lines as officers tried to respond. Many of the pikemen dropped the massive weapons. Some reached for their shields, while others tried to balance shield and pike together, neither one serving its purpose. Boleslav cursed, looking over their heads to the commander of the Templars. The man was like a dog straining on a leash. They were ready to ride, but by the pikemen were still blocking the Templars' path into the enemy. There could be no smooth manoeuvre as the foot soldiers pulled aside and let the Templars thunder through. Instead, they lay in tangled heaps of men and pikes like thorns, cowering under their shields as the arrows flew and thumped into them.
Boleslav swore, his voice cracking. His messengers looked up, but he had not spoken for them. He had seen armies all his life. He owed his power to the battles he had fought and won, but what he was seeing made a mockery of everything he had learned. The Mongols seemed to have no directing structure. There was no calm centre to order their movements. That would have been something Boleslav could have countered. Yet neither were they a rabble, with each man acting on his own. Instead, they moved and attacked as if a thousand guiding hands were over them, as if each group was completely independent. It was insane, but they shifted and struck like wasps, responding instantly together to any threat.
On one side, a thousand Mongol warriors clipped their bows to their saddles and lifted up lances, turning a sweep along the line into a sudden crash into the shields of the pikemen. Before Boleslav's officers could even react, they were riding clear and unlimbering bows yet again. The pikemen roared in fury and raised their weapons, only to swallow the bitter shafts that came buzzing back at them.
Boleslav gaped in horror as he saw the scene repeated up and down the lines. He felt his heart leap as the Knights Templar struggled through, shouting and kicking to clear the way of wounded men. They would make order from chaos. It was their mission.
Boleslav could not know how many hundreds of his footmen had been killed. There was no respite in the attack, no chance to re-form and assess the enemy tactics. Even as he realised they would not stop, two more waves of arrows came at close range, taking anyone who chose his pike over a shield. The sound of yelling, bawling wounded grew in intensity, but the Templars were on the move, beginning the slow, rhythmic trot that put the righteous fear of God into their enemies. Boleslav clenched his fist as they forced their horses through the last of the dazed pikemen, the heavy mounts increasing their speed in perfect formation. Nothing in the world could resist them.
Boleslav saw the Mongols lose their nerve as the knights met them head-on. A few of the smaller ponies were bowled over, hammered aside by greater weight. The Mongol riders leapt clear of their falling mounts, but they were hacked down by broadswords or trampled under hooves. Boleslav exulted as they began to fall back. The fluid movement of their units seemed to stall, so that they jerked and lost their smoothness. The Mongols snapped arrows at the knights, but the shafts skipped away from the heavy armour or even shattered. Boleslav felt the battle turn and shouted aloud, urging them on.