Orda POV

Džuketau sat in the low ground below the rise, a cluster of timber buildings along two crossing roads. Market stalls ran down the center of the wider road, a grain warehouse stood near the river, with its loading dock still extended over the water.

Morning fires burned in the buildings, and people moved in the streets below. It was not the normal movement of a town opening its day, but the quick, purposeless movement of people who did not know where to go.

The garrison had set themselves at the main road’s north entry. Wagons and carts were stacked across the road, foot soldiers behind them, archers on the rooftops of the nearest buildings. A few hundred men at most, the town had what was left after everything else had gone south toward Bulgar.

His White Horde was spread around the full perimeter, every road out covered, the river at the town’s back acting as a blockade rather than an escape route.

A jaghun commander came alongside.

"All mingans are in position."

Orda looked at the barriers on the main road, then at the flanks.

"Send it," he said.

The relay went out.

Süke POV

Süke was in the east flank formation, looking at the town, and thinking about silver.

Džuketau was a trading town, traders came from the east steppe and the forest to the north and met here in the middle. Wherever two trade routes crossed, someone ended up keeping the money, and that someone had an office, and offices had strongboxes, and strongboxes had silver. He had been thinking about this since the orders came through two nights ago.

"Süke, what’re you looking at?" his arban companion Yasa said from his right.

"The fiscal buildings, past the market stalls. That’s where what we want is."

Yasa looked at the town. "We’ve got to get through the garrison first."

"That won’t take long."

The relay signal came, and the formation moved.

The garrison at the road barriers was maybe three hundred men. The wagons were on their sides, carts stacked on top, enough to stop a horse going straight in.

The White Horde did not go straight in. They came around both flanks at the same time, and the men behind the barriers watched the flanks closing. Some of them came out from cover and ran before the center had even engaged.

The ones who stayed lasted a few minutes, arrows raining down and taking them out cluster by cluster.

A White Horde rider three positions to Süke’s left took an arrow through the upper arm as the east flank closed. The man grunted, loud enough to hear over everything, a short hard sound through clenched teeth, and grabbed at the wound with his free hand. He held on for another twenty strides, his face warped in pain, the arm not working the way it was supposed to.

Then the hand slipped and he started to go sideways, slow at first, leaning like he was just shifting his weight, and then he was not on the horse anymore. He hit the road and the horse ran another fifty meters and stopped there, looking back with its head low.

The man on the ground moved for a bit.

Süke was already past him. The barriers were behind them and the town was ahead.

The main road was wide enough for three horses side by side. A building on the left was burning, someone had torched it while the barriers were still being fought, and the thatch had gone fully, orange under a column of black smoke that rose straight in the still air. The fire made a low sustained crackling sound that ran under everything else.

Süke pulled off the main road with Yasa and two others from his arban, taking the side street east. Market stalls had cloth and grain and ceramics, all useful but all heavy. Silver traveled in pockets.

The side street was narrower and darker.

A woman crossed the street ahead of them, pulling a boy by the arm, not looking back, her coat half-open from running. They made it into a building on the far side and the door closed. Süke rode past without slowing.

Further along the street, a man in a merchant’s coat stood in the middle of the road. He froze, looking at the horses coming toward him.

Yasa dealt with it as he rode past, a quick downward cut. The man made a sound like someone who had been startled by an unexpected knock at a door, short, sharp, confused, and then he folded into the mud and his coat spread around him.

Yasa did not slow down. None of them did. The cry he had made was already behind them.

The first house that looked right had a carved door and second-story windows. Süke dismounted and broke the door open.

Two riders from another arban were already inside. One was filling a sack, the other had a wall chest open. They both looked up, the one with the sack shook his head.

"Already claimed," he said.

Süke looked at the sack. Copper goods and folded cloth. He looked at the man’s face.

"Nothing worth taking."

"It was here when I got here."

Yasa said from behind Süke’s shoulder that merchants did not keep their silver where they slept. They kept it where they worked, where the goods were weighed and the tolls recorded. The grain warehouse had an office attached, and the right office would have what they were looking for.

Süke looked at him. That made sense.

He mounted and they pushed toward the river.

The town was different now than when they had entered. More fire, on more buildings. The crackling had become a constant low roar under everything else. Under that were voices from multiple directions, calling things in languages Süke did not fully know.

He had heard these cries of despair before on the Kama river settlements and had stopped listening to what they were. He kept riding.

The garrison had one pocket left. Twenty men or so had blocked the roa near the market center with their own carts, and they had put archers on the roof of the nearest building. When Süke’s small group came around the corner, an arrow came across the open space and hit the horse of the rider behind him.

The horse screamed.

That noise cut through everything, raw and high, nothing like a human voice, going on longer than seemed possible as the animal twisted sideways and went down, its legs folding at a canter. The rider was thrown over the horse’s neck and hit the ground on his hands and knees.

He stayed there for a moment, head down, getting his air back.

Süke looked back at him for a second, but the main formation was coming up the road behind them. He kept moving.

He heard Yasa stop and tell the man on the ground to get up behind his saddle, but the man said something about his arm. Yasa told him they needed to move now. Süke was already around the far side of the road, where the garrison pocket was getting dealt with by the riders coming up from the main road.

Twenty men against steppe riders were not capable to do anything. They went down in the order the riders reached them. Some of them made it easy. They put their weapons down and stepped back, hands out. The riders moved past them and left them there or did not, depending on the rider.

One man at the far end of the pocket fought past the point where fighting was going to do anything, past the point where stopping made sense, and when the riders closed in from both sides and there was nowhere left to stand he turned and ran through the burning edge of a building to get away.

He made it through the fire and came out the other side before he fell with an arrow on his back.

Süke watched it for a moment. Then he looked toward the grain warehouse at the end of the street, the office next to it on the north, a small window above the door.

Behind him, the town was burning in a dozen places now. The smoke had built up over the rooftops into a single dark mass that spread across the sky and blocked the sun, and where the wind caught it the light turned a low strange orange, the color of a late afternoon that had not happened yet. Embers dropped from the thatch into the street in small drifting sparks that went cold before they landed.

He kept riding toward the office.