Argun POV
The volleys came from above without warning.
Both ridgelines fired at the same time. A tearing wave of bowstrings rolled down from the heights on either side of the channel, crest to hillside, disciplined and sustained. The arrows came in steeply. Height changed everything. This wasn't the flat, close-range exchange that had dominated the entrance fighting. These shafts dropped almost straight down.
The first volleys struck Siban's riders at the deepest point of the push.
A horse near the front of Argun's line took a shaft through the upper neck, just behind the skull. The animal's front legs collapsed instantly. It drove nose-first into the packed earth, all that momentum stopping in barely two strides.
The rider behind had no time to react.
His horse slammed chest-first into the fallen animal at a canter, momentum carrying it forward and over. The horse's neck twisted under the impact. The rider pitched over the shoulder, hit the ground hard, and rolled.
He tried to rise.
The next horse hit before he could clear the path.
The impact echoed up the channel walls and came back distorted.
Three horses down within ten meters.
The riders behind couldn't see the obstruction clearly, only the pressure in front of them slowing. They pushed forward anyway, compressing tighter against the blockage. The mass thickened. The plunging fire became more effective with every second.
Then the western ridgeline released again.
Arrows from the left slope crossed with arrows from the right, converging into the packed riders below. The fire came from both sides at once.
Argun had learned long ago that every impact carried its own sound. Stone rang sharply when shafts struck the channel floor. Horses made a heavier noise. Wet. Human impacts made a third sound entirely. He no longer needed to look to understand what it meant.
The passage in front of his line was filling with bodies.
Horses lay across the channel at uneven intervals. Some still kicked weakly. Most didn't move at all. Men staggered between them. Some fought to pull themselves clear. Others pressed toward Argun's line because there was nowhere else left to go. Some had already stopped deciding anything.
One mounted rider tried to force his horse over the haunches of a fallen animal.
The horse refused.
Instinct overruled discipline. The refusal turned the animal sideways across the narrow passage, sealing even more of the route behind it. The riders following had nowhere to maneuver.
Then the mangudai swept past Argun's right flank at full gallop.
Jochid riders driving south at maximum speed, horses stretched flat beneath them. They twisted in their saddles and fired backward over their horses' hindquarters. The bows moved low and smooth. Releases came over the rump, sending arrows flat and fast into the packed mass behind them at the height of a seated rider.
A different kind of fire.
The ridgeline archers were killing from above. The mangudai fired directly into faces and chests.
Siban's riders kept moving anyway.
Argun understood the reasoning. Stopping beneath plunging fire guaranteed losses. Movement at least offered the chance of escape. So they forced forward despite the cost.
The return fire began before the mangudai had fully cleared his position.
Siban's archers adjusted upward and started shooting into the ridgelines. The shots were difficult. Firing steeply from inside a confined channel limited visibility. Targets vanished beneath the crest between volleys. Every archer below exposed himself while drawing.
Still, Siban's riders were skilled enough to exploit whatever openings appeared.
On the eastern ridgeline, one archer jerked sideways out of formation. His bow spun from a useless hand. A shaft had punched through his arm near the shoulder. At that range, the limb simply stopped functioning. The bow struck stone below the crest and bounced down the slope.
The archer beside him didn't even glance at the gap.
He drew. Released. Drew again.
A shaft from below crossed over Argun and buried itself in the channel wall a meter above his head. Stone chips burst outward. One struck his ear with a sharp sting.
He held position.
The shot had never truly threatened him. Men who reacted to every incoming shaft spent entire engagements shifting uselessly from place to place.
The mass below had locked completely.
The forward riders couldn't advance. The channel floor ahead had become impassable to horses with dead animals, trapped men, broken footing, panic.
But the riders farther back still pressed forward from the entrance, unaware of the full obstruction ahead. Pressure continued building inside the narrowing space.
Thousands of kilograms of horse and rider compressed together in a confined channel, firing upward at enemies they couldn't reach.
The ground beneath them kept accumulating the results of the arrow fall.
Argun held his line and stayed out of the crush.
Olkhon POV
The man to Olkhon's left had taken a shaft through the thigh during the first minute of fighting.
He hadn't said a word about it.
The arrow had entered through the outside of the leg and stopped before exiting. The shaft pressed visibly against the inside of the man's riding coat. The leg no longer bent, but he still kept both feet in the stirrups. His bow stayed steady in his hands.
Draw. Release. Draw again.
Olkhon watched him continue shooting and understood the reason. As long as the man remained mounted, he still contributed to the line.
Olkhon rode in the second rank of the compact formation at the western base.
Sixty-one riders had started there against the force pressing from the entrance's western edge. He had stopped trying to count the enemy almost immediately. The fighting was too close and the pace too fast. Most shots traveled nearly flat over distances of fifteen meters or less. At that range, arrows struck before the bowstring had finished vibrating.
A rider across from him took a shaft through the face.
The impact snapped the man's head violently to the right. For one strange moment he remained upright in the saddle, staring sideways at nothing.
Then gravity caught him and he slid off the horse's left side.
The horse moved east two slow steps and stopped beside the body.
Olkhon shot the archer responsible before the man could nock another arrow.
He didn't pause to confirm the kill. The next target mattered more.
The formation was shrinking.
He could feel it without counting. The riders beside him pressed closer than before. Every time a man went down, the survivors closed the gap automatically. Gaps killed formations under this kind of pressure.
The line had begun with sixty-one riders.
The spacing around him said the number had dropped well below that.
Chaidu remained at the center.
A cut along his chin had bled heavily since early in the engagement. Dark blood stained his jaw and neck, but he ignored it completely. He stayed mounted. Still directing the line. His arm pointed left, then right, sending riders toward weak points before they could open.
He never touched the wound.
The ground around the compact formation showed what prolonged close-range exchange always created, bodies, dead horses, broken equipment. The accumulation spread outward from the edges of the knot in uneven layers. None of it had been there when the fighting started.
The line still held.
Batu POV
From the eastern slope, Batu tracked the battle through numbers and position.
The quivers on both ridgelines were running low. The release rate remained disciplined, but it couldn't continue indefinitely. The archers carried only what they had brought personally, along with the reserve bundles the supply riders had hauled up the slopes before the engagement began.
That supply was finite.
The arrow fire into the channel was working, but it wasn't ending the fight cleanly.
The outcome now depended on position and remaining numbers. On that measure, the advantage favored one side clearly.
Inside the passage, Siban's riders had stalled completely. The initial assault had relied on momentum, several hundred horses driving south through the channel at speed. Now the leading ranks couldn't advance through the wreckage the arrow volleys had created. Riders behind continued pushing into men with nowhere left to move.
The entire force had become trapped inside the narrowing passage.
South of the narrows, the situation was different.
Siban's forward drive had followed the retreating riders through the cut and collided with the depth position in open ground. There the exchange rates had stabilized closer to even. Torghul's improvised sections still held the line. The assault hadn't broken through.
But open terrain always extracted a price.
A shaft from the passage below struck rock two meters to Batu's left after climbing the full height of the slope.
He didn't move.
The shot had never been close enough to threaten his position.
He turned his attention toward the western base.
Chaidu's contingent had contracted to perhaps forty riders now. Possibly fewer. A tight defensive knot locked in continuous close-range exchange against an enemy force that still hadn't broken through and still hadn't stopped trying. The bodies around the formation marked how long the fighting there had lasted.
Batu studied the position for several moments.
Then he started down the eastern slope.
He watched his footing carefully during the descent. The ridgeline volleys continued overhead. The sound rising from the channel had become almost physical, thousands of men and horses compressed into one confined space, one force trapped inside terrain chosen by the other.
He reached the eastern base.
Dust had drifted eastward. The air near the hillside tasted dry and bitter. Through the haze he could still make out the movement of horses and men inside the channel.
A rider waited nearby.
Batu looked at him.
"The signal."
The rider moved immediately along the eastern wall at a pace visible from below, carrying the withdrawal signal toward the trapped riders inside the channel. Toward Siban himself.
The arrow fall continued uninterrupted.
The signal could not stop a battle instantly. Momentum carried engagements forward long after decisions had been made. Orders had to fight their way through noise, confusion, distance, and the narrowed focus of men still trying to survive the next few seconds.
Still, the signal continued moving toward the entrance.
Whether it reached Siban before the battle destroyed itself entirely was the only uncertainty left.