Tyranny of Steel

Chagadai sat on horseback as he gazed upon the great plains of the Caucasus mountains with a hint of greed in his eyes. Over the past few years, the Golden Horde had suffered from intense infighting, and now, after years of warfare, he had risen to the position of Khan.

The collapse of the Catholic Church had overreaching consequences beyond the continent of Europe. In order to combat the rising threat of the Kingdom of Austria, and later the German Empire. The Papacy had used its wealth to import mass quantities of saltpeter from India through their trade routes with the Golden Horde.

In exchange for the critical component of gunpowder, the church traded gold, silver, and muskets. Which by now the Golden Horde had learned to replicate. However, when the Papacy fell, and the Kingdoms of Europe submitted to the Reich, this lucrative trade vanished. Blaming the previous Khan for this disaster, various factions rose to power and assassinated the man in his sleep. From there, it was all out warfare within the Golden Horde.

From the Russian perspective, this was a good thing. It allowed the Rus States to once and for all free themselves from the influence of the Mongols, but from the perspective of the Golden Horde, this was just another disaster caused by the rise of Berengar. With Europe firmly under the boot of the Reich. Chagadai knew he had no chance of victory, thus he shifted his focus southward.

The Byzantine Empire was in a state of chaos. Vetranis had become massively unpopular, as had his eldest son, Quintus. The peace they had bought with the Catholic Church came at a massive price, and though it wasn't paid in full, enough gold and silver had been transferred to the papacy to thoroughly cripple their economy.

However, that was not the worst of it. By agreeing to cede all of Egypt, including the Kaiser's pass to the Papacy, the Byzantines had strained their relations with Germany, whose Kaiser seemed disinterested in helping them recover from their imminent economic collapse.

With their armies defeated in the crusade for the Holy Land, and little money to rebuild them, the lands of the Byzantine Empire were ripe for the taking. Thus, Chagadai stared off the edge of the cliff which his horse stood upon, and gazed upon the lands of the Kingdom of Georgia with an avaricious expression on his face.

An army of one hundred thousand horsemen rode behind him and down the cliff side. Each man was equipped with a matchlock carbine and a saber. Their goal was simple: conquer the Kingdom of Georgia and invade the Byzantine Empire.

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After looking upon the land he intended to conquer, Chagadai snapped the reins of his horse, and rode down the mountainside, passing by his troops and taking the foremost position at the head of the column where he met up with his younger sister, a woman by the name of Khorijin.

The Turko-Mongolian princess was no older than eighteen and still made use of a traditional bow and arrow rather than the newer firearms. Despite her young age, she was her brother's most trusted advisor. It was her instincts that convinced Chagadai to march his horde south.

Khorijin was a Tengrist shaman, and thus as part of her duties she conversed with the spirits of this world. Often she would seek them out in the wild for advice, which she lived her life by. It was these spirits who had informed her that the weakest of her brother's potential opponents would be the Byzantine Empire and their Georgian puppets.

Despite this reality, Khorijin seemed displeased. Though she had a look of concern on her face, she was far from displeasing to look at. The Turko-mongolian beauty had long jet-black hair which flowed down the left side of her heart-shaped head. The right side of her hair contained a set of side-braids which showed off the barbarous side of her nature.

Though the Turko-mongolian princess had a slender build, she also had curves in the right places. Even then, her excellent body could not easily be observed beneath the thick lamellar armor that she wore. The fur-lined cloak which she adorned over her armor was doing her no favors either.

Despite her beautiful appearance, no man within the army dared to look at her with lust. To do so would anger the spirits, or so she had told them. However, at the moment, she was concerned with none of this, and could only sigh as she voiced her worries to her elder brother.

"As I said earlier, dearest brother, if you fail to conquer Georgia and the Byzantium within a single year, a great calamity will befall our people, and you will be the last of the Khans. I implore you to head north and subjugate the Rus once more. Though they have overthrown the yoke of your predecessors, the winds are in your favor, and victory is certain, despite the difficulties you will endure in the process."

Chagadai merely spat on the ground when he heard his sister's worries and dismissed them once more. The spirits had said that the Byzantines were the weakest, and thus they would be the first among his conquests. He was quick to voice these beliefs as he rejected his sister's notions.

"You said out of all our neighbors, the Byzantines and their Georgian puppets are the weakest. A year will be plenty to subject them to our conquest. After all, I have no intention of going south into the Levant. All I need is the Caucasus, and Anatolia. From there, I will make my way west into Persia."

Khorijin gripped her hands with anxiety in her deep, dark eyes. Though she didn't say what she was thinking, she feared what the spirits had told her. If her brother failed to achieve peace within a year, a double-headed eagle would swoop down from the western sky and devour her people.

The spirits did not speak directly, their words were more like parables. It was up to her to decipher their meaning. Despite this reality, she had never been wrong. Khorijin was an educated woman, and she knew about the current geo-political situation, at least as best as she could manage in her position as a nomadic shaman. There was only one way to interpret a double-headed eagle, and that was the Germans.

Though she had not personally witnessed the wars that Germany had waged across the world, she had heard rumors from those who traded with the Golden Horde about their invincibility. It was because of this that she had dissuaded her brother from marching on the Reich. After all, the Golden Horde had its fair share of grudges against the Kaiser.

Of course, after taking down the Catholic Kingdoms as if they were a mere ant colony. Even the nomadic horsemen of the Golden Horde learned to fear the Reich, and its vast military might. Khorijin was deeply afraid of Germany for two reasons: the threat they posed to her people, and the warning the spirits had given her when she became a princess.

"Beware the golden eyed man, he will devour you..."

She had never told her brother about this warning, nor did she know who the golden eyed man was until recently. As Khorijin thought about this foreboding message from the spirits, she reached into one of her saddlebags and pulled out a hardcover book. The words were written in German and spelled the following.

"The Holy Bible."

However, this bible was different from all others in the world. Its cover was a painting of Saint Berengar the Blessed. This was a recent version of the holy book that included Berengar's golden eye, which supposedly contained the light of God. Khorijin had recently acquired this book as a gift from a missionary who had recently made his way to their encampment.

The man was giving bibles away for free while preaching of the gospel as well as the achievements of Saint Berengar the Blessed, which had practically become their own book of the Reformist bible. Naturally, as a curious woman, the turko-mongolian princess had decided to take one for study.

Though she could not read the words, she often spent her time staring at the handsome man painted on the cover, and knew in her heart he was the one that the spirits had spoken of. Knowing that the Golden-eyed man was the Kaiser of the German Empire, and that the Germans were the double-headed eagle that the spirits had spoken of. The turko-mongolian beauty sighed heavily before revealing her thoughts to her elder brother.

"Dearest brother, if you fail to achieve your goals within a year, I will be forced to flee to the east. I will not standby and watch the Germans slaughter our people. Nor will I allow myself to be taken captive. I will do what I can to ensure that you are victorious, but my abilities are limited."

Chagadai did not pay the slightest bit of attention to his sister's ramblings. He was confident in his heart that he would emerge victorious and instead snapped his reins once more before propelling his mount forward. Causing the young woman to watch his back with a sense of dread about what was soon to come.