Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 57: The Pursuit

The outer sections went first.

Riders on the left end of Berke’s remaining center, the ones who had been in contact longest, whose horses were blown and whose arms were past controlled work, turned and went south.

A handful of them. Then more. The officers nearest to them shouted and some stopped and some did not, and the ones who did not stop were at a full canter within three strides.

Batu saw it from where he stood on the south bank.

The gap that opened on the left end was small at first. Six men, ten.

The Jochid riders coming over the far lip pressed into the space before the officers could fill it. A man in Berke’s remaining front tried to cover the gap by moving laterally and a shaft from close range found him in the shoulder.

He lurched forward onto his horse’s neck and the gap stayed open and the riders behind him stopped watching their officers.

More men turned on that side.

The officers in the center were still holding it. Their presence was the instrument.

They were in the line, not behind it, and the men close enough to see them held. The men at the outer edges were past seeing anything except the position failing on both flanks and the Jochid riders coming over the lip in a continuous stream and the fleeing men ahead of them who were still alive.

The right end went the same way the left had gone. Ten riders, then twenty, the formation pulling apart at its edges.

Those holding the center had a shrinking perimeter with fewer men on each side of them each second. One officer rode laterally across the back of his own line, shouting, pulling a man back by the bridle.

The man he pulled back turned south the moment the officer passed. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

A Jochid rider clearing the far lip drove into the edge of Berke’s center at pace and the collision was loud and close.

The horses went into each other chest to chest and both animals staggered.

The Berke rider was still in the saddle and cut at his attacker’s arm, the cut landed and the Jochid rider kept pushing forward with the arm bleeding and the two horses grinding against each other until a second Jochid rider came off the bank behind them and the edge of the center gave way at that point.

Then the center went.

It went in under a minute. A held line becoming a mass in motion, the men making the same read at the same time, the officers going with their men because a man in rank who stays when the formation is already past him is a man who dies at the position where he stayed.

The banners moved with the fleeing men and meant nothing as markers because there was nothing left to mark.

The sound changed.

The close-fight noise dropped through its levels. Outer sections first, the contact thinning as men created distance.

Then the center releasing from the press, the ground between the two forces opening, the dense roar of close combat giving way to the scattered percussion of a large force in flight, with horses at full gallop going south in groups of three and five and ten, no order, each man on the line that felt open.

The Jochid riders coming over the far lip pressed into what the break had opened.

They were among the fleeing men before those men had found their pace. A rider from Berke’s force turned back and loosed at close range and a Jochid horse went down hard and the rider came off rolling and was up with a saber before the animal had stopped.

The man who had loosed had no time to nock again. Two Jochid riders came off the bank behind the first and the man who had turned went down under the press.

Further away from the bank, men going south at pace were caught from behind before they had opened enough distance to be safe.

Horses driven into on the open ground with no formation around them to cover the angle. Men who turned to fight found two riders for every one of them.

Horses that stumbled in the frost-hard grass went down and did not get up. The steppe south of the streambed was filling with what the collapse had cost.

A relay rider came from the north at a hard canter.

The direction was wrong for Penk’s field cycle and the pace said what the direction said.

The western contingent was at the camp’s western face.

Torghul arrived at Batu’s position before the relay rider had finished speaking.

"Your tumen goes north," Batu said. "The western face."

Torghul looked at the broken mass going south. One second.

"Go," Batu said.

Torghul went. One tumen turned north toward the river.

Batu looked east along the line.

Dorbei’s tumen had already turned south. They had read the collapse in the same moment and the pursuit was running.

The formation pressed into the scattered mass, driving it further from the streambed, preventing it from finding the distance it needed to reform.

To the south and east a cluster of riders moved at a different pace from the scattered men around them.

Compact. Moving with a heading, on a line chosen before the engagement opened.

Their horses carried more in their stride than the animals dispersing around them, kept for exactly this moment.

Kirsa was at Batu’s position.

He looked at the cluster. Then at Batu.

"Forty or more," Kirsa said.

Batu turned to his guard riders. Fifty men.

"With me."

They went south after the cluster at a full gallop.

The flat steppe opened ahead.

Frost-stiff grass, pale ground, cold air coming hard against the face at this pace.

Behind them the sounds of Dorbei’s pursuit were already further away, the distance growing as Batu’s group separated from the main body and the open ground ahead absorbed them into its own sound.

Fifty horses at a hard run, specific, the battle’s noise no longer covering it.

The cluster was visible.

Dust behind them, a compact dark mass at full pace moving with direction.

Kirsa pulled alongside.

"He knows this country," Kirsa said.

"So do you," Batu said.

They ran south.

The horses in the cluster ahead had been held back through the crossing and the south bank fight.

The animals under Batu’s group had stood in sustained fire, crossed a drainage cut under concentrated volleys, and fought on the far bank before the pursuit began.

The flat steppe ran on under the pale near-winter sky.

The cluster was still visible.

Still closing.