EMBO had secured for himself one of those animals of the Kallmark Tatars, a beast that was neither horse nor mule nor ass. This steed he had caparisoned gaily. Thus mounted, he trotted at Michael's side, discoursing cheerfully.
“A fair day, my cousin, and a goodly steed between my knees—albeit it savors not of bull-stag or cameleopard. Alack, my wooden sword is broken; yet I have got me another weapon which is a favorite among these barbarians.”
Michael, clad in a mail shirt with a Tatar helmet on his head and mace and sword at his belt, glanced down inquiringly. He did not see that Bembo carried any weapon.
“Nay, it is invisible, good my cousin,” chattered the jester. “I learned its use in the Venetian fields and it likes me well because it avails best at a distance from my foe—ha! Are devils loosed on the plain yonder?”
A distant clamor of horns and drums came to their ears. Michael had taken his position among a regiment of Chatagai horse commanded by Mirza Rustem, the grandson of Tamerlane—a strong-bodied youth in rich armor. Directly behind them the standard of the Genghis family was raised, the yak-tail standard of the Mongols.
“The Ottoman attacks,” explained Michael, rising in his short stirrups. “Bayezid has been maneuvering throughout the morning, and now his front ranks advance upon the Horde.”
The plateau of Angora was nearly flat. The field favored neither Tatar nor Turk, except that Tamerlane had his left upon the river. Michael could see the masses of Moslem spearmen that had acted as beaters the day before, and other brilliant groups of irregulars—archers on either flank. Behind these, almost concealed in the dust that floated up from the hard clay, were Mamelukes, closely packed, and beside them the glint of lances of the Sipahis.
Bayezid, taken in flank by the swift move of the Tatar horde, had been compelled to his troops that morning and draw out of Angora, away from his galleys and trenches, to give battle. He had no other course open to him except to retire since Tamerlane refused to advance from the river.
There was no outcry from the Tatars. They waited as they stood. They flooded the yellow plain like bees clustered upon a board. And like an army of locusts was the advancing host of the sultan, fatigued by continuous marching, and tormented by thirst, but high-spirited and conscious of a hundred victories.
Michael's dark face was grave as he scanned their ranks—a hundred thousand souls, hitherto invincible, moving forward in the shape of a half-moon to the sound of their horns, Seljuke shouting to Ottoman, Turkoman to Mameluke. He knew the fighting ability of these veterans and was more than a little surprized at the calm alertness of the Tatars, not knowing that every Mongol shared the reckless spirit of Tamerlane, and would rather fight than eat.
“A thirsty sight,“ murmured Bembo, quaffing heartily of one of his skins of water. The day before, Tamerlane had ordered that each man be supplied with two such skins of water.
Emptying the goat's hide, Bembo dismounted to pluck stones from the ground, surveying each with care and throwing away all that were not round and of a certain size.
Michael looked up as arrows began to fly in dense clouds from the sultan's skirmishers. The front ranks of the Tatars took this punishment without cry or movement. By now the Turkish regiments of mailed horsemen could be plainly seen, moving forward at a trot.
Then the sun glinted on ten thousand arrows loosed at the same moment by the Mongol archers who shot three times while one shaft was in the air. The clamor among the Turks shrilled with shouts of pain and anger. Horses broke from the front lines, and the curtain of dust swelled so that.it covered the scene of the battle from view from the rear where Michael and the Chatagais stood with picked regiments of Iran and the Tatar steppe.
The roar of voices merged with a pandemonium of clashing steel and thud of horses' hoofs. The tumult swelled until they could no longer hear their own voices.
Stationary at first, the brunt of the battle began to move onward toward the waiting masses of Tamerlane's horse, under Mahmoud Khan and the Lame Conqueror himself—the center of the army that was between the foot-soldiers and the cavalry in reserve, where Michael was.
“Bayezid's mongrel skirmishers have been killed off,” he mused, “and his Sipahis are at work.”
Even Bembo looked a trifle downcast. He glanced at the glittering figure of Mirza Rustem seated on a black stallion near them. The grandson of Tamerlane was chewing dates.