Chapter 232: The Last Druzhina
The streets inside the city ran narrow between the buildings. Smoke from the fires to the north had already drifted into them, hanging low and flat, reducing visibility as Gal’s arban moved at a canter. The walls on either side trapped the sound of the horses and pushed it forward, concentrating the noise around every corner before they reached it.
Above the rooftops and through the smoke, the church’s gold dome still stood. Everything below it was burning.
Ahead, muffled by smoke and distance, came the sound of horses striking shields and men shouting in two different languages. There was no space for either side to withdraw.
When the street opened into the gate area, Gal understood the situation almost immediately.
The gate stood open. The main assault had already broken through and was forcing its way into the area with a dense mass of riders. Dozens of men pushed against a defensive line stretched across the entire width of the gate interior.
Druzhina professionals held the center in disciplined formation, shields raised and spears set. They used the narrow confines of the gate to keep the enemy front compressed.
Militia filled both flanks. Most carried farm tools, hunting bows, and too little armor for this kind of fight. Some still held their ground. Most were close to breaking.
Every defender faced toward the assault.
Not one of them had turned to their flanks.
Nasan reined in beside Gal and studied the exposed eastern flank.
"Not a damn one of them’s watching the flank," he muttered.
Gal was already moving.
At thirty meters, Nasan and Chaqu raised their bows.
The militia on the eastern flank heard approaching hooves and began to turn. They had not completed the movement when the first arrows arrived.
Nasan’s opening shot struck a militia man square in the chest. The man had been holding a long-handled billhook, extended forward instead of upward to intercept cavalry. The arrow punched through him, burst from his back in a spray of blood, and drove him over the billhook’s shaft as his knees gave way.
The man behind him stumbled over the collapsing body and lost valuable seconds.
Chaqu targeted the right side of the flank. His arrow entered one man’s throat from the front and tore out through the side of the neck. Blood poured through the wound immediately. The man dropped his woodcutting axe, clawed at his throat with both hands, staggered several steps, then crumpled into the dirt.
Across the gate area, the assault riders pressing from the south loosed arrows at the same time.
Missiles struck the defenders from two directions at once.
Militia on the flanks died first while the druzhina at the center compressed even tighter behind their shields.
One broad militia fighter on the eastern edge possessed a proper shield but used it poorly. He had turned sideways to defend against the southern attack, leaving his back exposed to the riders hitting the flank.
A rider behind Gal put an arrow between the man’s shoulder blades from fifteen meters away.
The point burst through his chest. He pitched forward and hit the ground face first.
Three druzhina on the eastern edge of the center recognized the new threat and broke away together to face it.
A brief command carried over the fighting. They turned in unison with shields raised.
The adjustment solved one problem but created another. The center line lost three professionals, and the assault from the south immediately gained two meters it had failed to take before.
Chaqu watched the three men lock shields into a defensive front.
"There. That’s it."
His eyes stayed on them.
"That’s where the line cracks."
The three druzhina understood exactly what they were doing.
The first slammed the iron rim of his shield into the face of Gal’s lead horse as it closed. The animal veered sharply right. For two seconds the maneuver opened a gap in the flanking attack before the riders behind compensated.
The second caught a rider’s saber on his own blade and answered with a short thrust that split open the rider’s right forearm. Blood streamed down the man’s wrist and dripped from his fingers as he pulled back.
Gal drove through the gap left by the veering horse.
His own mount still carried a slight pull from the neck wound it had suffered during the breach. He came at the third druzhina from the side. The man’s shield position protected his front and left. It was set for the attack he expected.
Gal struck from the direction he did not.
His blade cut diagonally from the right shoulder across the chest, opening cloth, flesh, and mail links beneath. Blood spread across the man’s tunic almost instantly.
The druzhina dropped to one knee. He planted the edge of his shield against the ground and used it to keep himself upright. Even wounded, he remained facing south, focused on the battle his men were still trying to hold.
The next rider finished him.
Behind Gal, a rider took a short axe to the ribs from a druzhina pressed against a building wall. The defender had run out of space and switched to a shorter weapon because nothing larger would work there.
The axe slipped between two ribs on the rider’s right side and buried deep.
The man barked out a sharp cry and pulled away from the fight with both hands gripping his horse’s mane. Blood soaked through his side as he rode. He was finished as a combatant.
Orkhon moved through the gate area with his saber in his right hand and his left arm resting flat across his thigh.
A young militia fighter, still in his late teens, charged the horse with both hands locked around a spear. His feet were planted and his commitment absolute.
What he lacked was an understanding of what cavalry demanded.
The spear scraped across the horse’s shoulder without penetrating.
Orkhon’s return cut crossed the young man’s shoulder and arm in a single stroke. Blood splashed across the spear shaft.
The youth dropped the weapon, clutched the wound with both hands, and collapsed to his knees.
Near the center of the gate area, the druzhina professional who had been leading the south-facing line killed a horse with his spear.
He drove the point in low as the animal charged.
The horse went down screaming and blocked the space for several seconds while assault riders struggled around it.
A saber struck his shield rim.
He answered by smashing the shield’s edge into the jaw of the next horse.
The ground behind him remained secure until the flanking riders pushed deep enough into the gate area that his back became exposed. His shield was pointed toward the wrong threat when the attack finally reached him.
A voice rose from somewhere within the druzhina formation, short, controlled, and focused on keeping order.
"Hold! Hold!"
The men who heard it obeyed.
They continued holding their positions until pressure from two directions made holding impossible.
Nasan watched one druzhina fighter who no longer had a shield.
The man wielded a short sword in both hands, making compact cuts from a narrow stance. He kept moving his feet, never remaining in one place long enough for an easy kill.
He opened a rider’s thigh with a rising cut that no one anticipated.
Then an arrow from the southern assault punched through his side.
He kept fighting.
There was no room for retreat and no help coming. Blood ran down his leg with every movement, yet he continued cutting until numbers solved the contest by force.
Nasan watched him fall.
"Hard bastards, those ones."
The fighter finally disappeared beneath the crush.
"That’s real training."
The final three druzhina made their stand against the wall at the western edge of the gate area. They used the corner of a building to secure one flank and reduce the directions from which they could be attacked.
Each of them forced the assault to pay for at least one clean exchange before going down.
They died facing the enemy with weapons still in hand.
None attempted to flee into the open street.
The sounds of battle had already moved north into the city streets, spreading ahead of the assault as it pushed deeper into Ryazan.
Behind it, the gate area held only the remains of the fight. Horses stood among the bodies. Men checked wounds. The dead lay where they had fallen across the width of the space.
Through the gate opening, hundreds of riders continued pouring in from the south. The flow never seemed to stop. They split into the street grid beyond the gate area and spread into every road and alley available to them.
Smoke from three separate fires still rose above the rooftops.
Above all of it stood the gold dome.
Chaqu looked at the streets filling with riders and understood what the sight meant.
"It’s done."
Gal was already looking north toward the next objective.
Through the gate, the assault continued. Hundreds of riders poured into Ryazan until the sound of their advance became the city’s only remaining sound.