"Fulk, fall back!"
Ivan shouted at the top of his lungs.
But Fulk, standing at the very front, was like a raging bull, charging forward with his shield raised and his head down. The Frankish baron from the distant foothills of the Pyrenees was encased in heavy armor from head to toe.
Yet the battlefield changed in an instant, and the full suits of armor also made their awareness of the outside world exceptionally sluggish.
"It's over!"
Ivan felt a touch of despair. Nothing had gone wrong when they attacked a mighty city like Isfahan—were they really going to stumble in the obscure little city of Huwayzeh?
Subutai, watching the battle below the city, frowned. "Noyan Jochi! Thousand Commander Ivan's vanguard is in trouble."
Jochi beneath the golden standard immediately ordered, "Send someone to ask Shaman Kuokochu to intervene. Thousand Commander Ivan is a warrior. He should not die such a stifling death."
Another person might have thought Ivan's death would conveniently allow them to absorb his troops, but Jochi was different. He valued this fierce Hu general, who excelled at training soldiers and managing tribes. As for his origins, they mattered little.
Among the nineteen trusted followers who swore the oath at the Banjun River under his father Khan, there had even been Khitans and Hui. Now that he was about to establish his own Ulus in the Western Lands, he would surely need many Hu people serving under him in the future.
Once Jochi's order was passed on, "Shaman Kuokochu," clad in a wolfskin cloak and wearing a bronze mask, slowly emerged from a camp beneath a massive white tent.
Shaman Kuokochu had once been the most trusted mage of the Tatar Khan and the most powerful cleric of the Eternal Blue Sky faith across the entire Tatar