Toqa-Timur POV

Bilyar from two hundred meters on the south side looked different from Suvar. Not in the basic design, earthwork bank, palisade on top, towers, but in the scale of it and in how the garrison was handling the walls.

The earthwork was taller here. Toqa had been looking at it for days and he knew the slope by now, the packed earth rising from the ditch to the palisade base.

The ditch in front of it was wider, cut clean, with steep sides.

The men on Bilyar’s walkways were watching the perimeter the way his steppe riders watched the terrain, constantly, without stopping.

When a perimeter rider came closer than two hundred and fifty meters, someone on the walkway shouted and two archers shifted without any visible exchange of orders.

Toqa had no fire projectors. They were at Bulgar, on field duty. Batu’s reply to his relay had been what he’d expected to hold the perimeter and the maintain pressure.

He didn’t argue it.

He had six thousand riders and no way to threaten the gate from outside arrow range. What he could do today was test whether the western gate’s defenses were better or worse than the south.

He called the jaghun commander forward.

"Get three hundred riders to assault the western wall."

He ordered cleanly. "Test their garrison but stay outside the ditch. Don’t force a costly engagement."

The commander acknowledged it and went.

Arqa POV

The probe force moved northwest along the perimeter toward the western gate, and Arqa had been in the second rank every probe and every advance in this siege, and he intended to stay there.

He wasn’t slow, and he wasn’t behind anyone out of inability. He just understood that the second rank was a safer position than the first rank and had arguably similar merits.

He’d been in the second rank at other engagements too, and he’d watched the men in front of him take what he didn’t take, and he’d kept breathing that way.

He watched the western wall as the probe moved in. At three hundred meters the gate was visible, double-leaf timber, heavy, barred. The towers on each side were closer together than the spacing on the south wall.

He’d noticed that on the first day of the siege, closer towers meant the gate front was covered from both directions at once, fewer places a probe could use.

The first volley came from the walkway at one hundred and fifty meters. Five or six archers, not a massed release, aimed at the probe’s front rank.

A horse two positions ahead and one rank forward took a shaft through the side of the neck, high up. The animal made a cry that started high and cut off fast, its legs going out from under it all at once, dropping straight down without any intermediate stumble.

The rider went over its neck and hit the ground on his forearms. He got to his hands and knees and started pushing himself up, and then a second shaft from the walkway came down through his upper back and he sat down in the spring grass and did not move again. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The riders behind the fallen horse broke around both of them and kept going.

Arqa fired his own shafts into the walkway, keeping himself useful without closing faster than the men in front of him were closing.

A walkway defender above and left of the gate took a hit through the shoulder and grabbed the palisade rail with both hands, sliding down along it until he was on one knee. He was still up there, still holding on, but he wasn’t drawing a bow anymore.

At eighty meters, while he was watching the gate and the ditch, Arqa saw the postern door open.

It was set into the earthwork’s base east of the main gate. If it was their daily scouting he’d have seen it, but during the probe and with the enemy volleys raining down it passed unnoticed.

Now it was all he was looking at.

Riders were coming through in groups of three, passing through the doorway and turning east along the earthwork’s base before the next group followed. Organized, fast, twenty of them were out and turning before the probe’s right flank had understood what was happening.

When someone in the right finally called a warning, there were close to thirty already formed up with their bows drawn.

The sortie’s first volley went into the probe’s right flank at forty meters. At that range the archers could hit whatever they aimed at.

A rider at the outer right took a shaft through the chest. Arqa saw him fold forward over his horse’s neck, slowly at first like he was just leaning, and then he went sideways off the saddle, one foot catching in the stirrup before it came loose, and he went down.

His horse ran on for twenty strides before it slowed and stopped, head low, not understanding.

Another rider in the right flank took one through the thigh and made a noise that carried across the formation, a sharp single cry, not long, and then he was locking his hands in his horse’s mane and his face had gone the color of old felt.

The probe force was moving right.

The sortie was using the earthwork as a wall behind them so the probe couldn’t get to their left flank. There was no flanking them without going through the city wall itself.

Arqa was in the center-left and the sortie was focused on the right flank, so he kept firing into their center, kept his position and tried to see what they were doing.

Three more volleys from the sortie hit the right flank before Arqa understood what he was watching.

Another horse went down, full collapse front to back, the rider thrown over the neck, landing hard on his hands in the grass. Men near him rode around where he was without slowing. He was already trying to get up when the next volley came in and his body crashed against the dirt.

The sortie’s rear group turned south and held for a count of two. Arqa could see it, they stopped firing, they were listening.

Then whatever they heard was enough and the withdrawal command went through the formation, and they went back through the postern door in the order they’d come out, front group first, rear group covering.

The main siege riders to the south had started moving when the skirmish opened. Four hundred meters, closing at a canter. The sortie had heard them coming and decided the margin was gone.

The door closed.

The probe returned.

Fifteen riders didn’t come with it. Twenty-three of the ones who did were carrying wounds from the exchange.

Toqa-Timur POV

The jaghun commander gave the count in the flat voice of a man reporting facts.

"Fifteen dead. Twenty-three wounded and riding. Eleven horses."

Toqa let the numbers settle and asked his one question.

"Did any of them scatter when the army started to close from the south?"

"They didn’t, all went back through the wall before we were inside their range."

Toqa looked at the closed postern from afar.

A planned action with a set timing, executed in formation, and pulled back before the risk changed.

Bilyar had veterans that knew how to fight a Mongol siege, and they had made their preparations accordingly.

The siege continued and the city resisted, and the probe had cost fifteen dead and twenty-three wounded against a few walkway archers who’d taken a shaft through the shoulder and might not draw a bow for a month.

The result of that exchange was not going to change through conventional pressure.

Their six thousand riders could continue the siege until the walls rotted and the garrison starved.

They could not go over that ditch and up that earthwork slope without something that could break the gate first.

Toqa sent the jaghun commander to organize relief for the wounded.

He sat on his horse and looked at the western wall, at the undamaged palisade above the closed postern, and understood the problem in front of him clearly enough.

He didn’t have a solution for it yet.