And then. I had a waking dream. A vision.
(On April Fool’s Day 2014 in Santa Monica.)
(On April Fool’s Day 2014 in Santa Monica.)
In the dream I wake up in full stride on horseback. The horse I am mounted upon is a large battle charger arrayed in light armor. I have on some assortment of light medieval armor myself. I feel sweat pouring from underneath a leather jerkin and metal helmet.
I have long, greasy blond braids swinging behind. A thick, grimy reddish-tinged beard. And fiery emerald eyes. I am perhaps twenty years of age.
Young--extremely fit and strong--at any rate.
I am hot. I am burning up in fact. Heated from the exertion of riding hard under armor. And heated with boiling battle rage. With blood lust fury, and, a curious exhilaration of—
Young--extremely fit and strong--at any rate.
I am hot. I am burning up in fact. Heated from the exertion of riding hard under armor. And heated with boiling battle rage. With blood lust fury, and, a curious exhilaration of—
Ah yes. The exceeding joy of the hunt.
And there they are. The fleet prey.
They are magnificent riders! You have to give them that. They ride like a stiff alpine breeze through a meadow of wildflowers. Turning swiftly left— then right—in perfect unison. Like a murmuration of starlings.
With one curious and deadly difference. Just as they suddenly come about as one, they also pivot upon their saddles as a unit and take aim—
A sudden burst of arrows is released!
Damn, that’s magnificent! They shoot arrows at us with their small compound bows while riding backwards on their small trick ponies!
Wow! Now that’s a fine circus trick!
And, I’ll be damned!
They are as skillful at this backwards archery on horseback as any marksman standing on solid ground too!
Bravo!!
How magnificent they are! Just look at them go! The little yellow bastards!
You have to admire their skill and tenacity!
What beautiful, disciplined cavalry riders they are.
But. We have them on the run.
No doubt about it. We have them—
Mstislav Mstislavich the Daring
As it was undergoing fragmentation, Kievan Rus' faced the unexpected eruption of an irresistible foreign foe coming from the mysterious regions of the Far East. "For our sins", writes the Rus' chronicler of the time, "unknown nations arrived. No one knew their origin or whence they came, or what religion they practiced. That is known only to God, and perhaps to wise men learned in books".[6]
The princes of Rus' first heard of the coming Mongol warriors from the nomadic Cumans. Previously known for pillaging settlers on the frontier, the nomads now preferred peaceful relations, warning their neighbors: "These terrible strangers have taken our country, and tomorrow they will take yours if you do not come and help us". In response to this call, Mstislav the Bold and Mstislav Romanovich the Old joined forces and set out eastward to meet the foe, only to be routed on April 1, 1223 at the Battle of the Kalka River.
In 1223, Mstislav joined a coalition of perhaps 18 princes, which, along with Polovtsian allies, pursued the Mongols from the Dnieper River for nine days and joined battle with them at Kalka River. While three princes were captured and later killed at the battle site, and six more were killed in headlong pursuit back to the Dnieper River, Mstislav is the only prince specifically named among the nine or so who escaped. He managed to
escape by cutting loose the boats on the Dnieper River so he could not be pursued.[4]
Feigned retreat[edit]
The Mongols very commonly practiced the feigned retreat, perhaps the most difficult battlefield tactic to execute. This is because a feigned rout amongst untrained troops can often turn into a real rout if an enemy presses into it.[20] Pretending disarray and defeat in the heat of the battle, the Mongols would suddenly appear panicked and turn and run, only to pivot when the enemy was drawn out, destroying them at their leisure. As this tactic became better known to the enemy, the Mongols would extend their feigned retreats for days or weeks, to falsely convince the chasers that they were defeated, only to charge back once the enemy again had its guard down or withdrew to join its main formation.
Or so. I thought. Until it was too late.
I really didn’t see it coming. It was just a slight flicker of motion from the right and above. But then and there it took me.
April 1, 1223, late afternoon at the Battle of the Kalka River?
In the fierce heat of blind battle rage. Boiling blood-lust fury. And the joyful, willful pursuit of the enemy! In the fit prime of hot-blooded youth—
Damn we were stupid. They lured us like the greenhorned fools that we were into a trap. Thinking we had them running for dear life. Their certain end in our sights. They strung us out along the river banks. And picked us off like straggling otters.
Snap!
It was quick. The lethal, well-aimed Mongol arrow pierced my neck somewhere near C1-C2, just below the A-O joint, severing my spinal chord
immediately. I had only a split-second to catch a glimpse of the rain of arrows from above and to the right. And then I was falling—
Falling fal ling faaa l l l l i ng for ever
in perfectly si l ent
slooo ooo ow mo t i o n
slooo ooo ow mo t i o n
Then WHAMMO!!
I hit the ground
Hit upon my right shoulder that is
With the full force of a
Best guess—
A hundred-and-thirty-three pound man
Wearing eighty-six pounds of medieval armor
Falling from the withers of a destrier stallion
(14-16 hands)
At the speed of a battle charger
In full stride
(30-40 mph)
And then. The spinning began.
Wooo oooo e e… .. …..
Round and round and round we go—
Where my head lands?
When my head stops rolling?
Who knows?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now, that was quite a vivid dream. Probably quite typical of the kind of dreams we all have when we’ve just been told that our colon cancer has returned after a few years in hiding… Right?
Sure, pal. You say so.
But, me. Whoever the hell I am!? Well, your narrator here. Yours truly—
I don’t have lucid dreams quite like this doozy every day. So. Initially, I kind of took it as a sign. As a message of some sort.
As a kind of Riddle of the Sphinx-thing to be solved. To be solved in time. Not right away, mind you.
Some kind of transmission from the void, or, the unconscious self… the subterranean realm, the underworld, the—
Chthonic dieties… Persephone, Hecate… or, Orpheus… perhaps?
Who knows, sure.
What modern science would call: an indecipherable mystery.
Like the origins of life itself. An unsolvable puzzle, right?
But one thing I was suddenly… always suddenly—but not necessarily unexpectedly—sure of… was this
That anonymous, faceless tumor—now residing in the right lobe of my liver. Whom I have been referring (humorously) to as—
El Senor Cancer.
He was not Spanish after all. Oh no.
I renamed the bloody bastard!
Soon after I woke up from the dream ride….
Or was it before?
Damn. I can never be too sure of the order of—
Oh. Never mind!
From now on. We shall refer to him—the hellish neoplasm, that is— by his proper name, dear readers
GENGHIS KHAN!!
