"They came without warning and all at once, like a summer cloudburst,"
the Hungarian said. "One moment we were at peace, the next the lines of
Tartar horsemen darkened the eastern horizon from the Baltic to the
Adriatic."

Sire Cosmas's Latin was very good, fast and fluent.

Simon stood transfixed as Cosmas described the fall of one Russian city
after another, how the Tartars leveled Riazan, Moscow, and Kiev and
butchered all their people. They would gather all the women, rape them,
and cut their throats. The men they cut in two, impaled on stakes,
roasted, flayed alive, used as archery targets, or suffocated by
pounding dirt down their throats. The details of the atrocities sickened
Simon. On into Poland the Tartars came.

Cosmas's tale of the trumpeter of Krakow, who kept sounding the alarm
from the cathedral tower until Tartar arrows struck him down, brought
tears to Simon's eyes.

Simon found the Hungarian's recital spellbinding. Cosmas had undoubtedly
repeated his account many times, polishing his storytelling skills a
little more with each occasion. It was probably easy and perhaps
profitable for him to remain in western Europe telling and retelling, in
great halls and at dinner tables, his adventures with the Tartars.

_How much is Cardinal Ugolini paying him for this performance?_

The flower of European chivalry engaged the Tartars at Liegnitz in
Poland, Sire Cosmas said, and when the battle was over, thousands of
knights from Hungary, Poland, Germany, Italy, France, England, and as
far away as Spain lay dead and dying on the field and the Tartars were
triumphant. They turned then to meet another mighty Christian army, that
of King Bela of Hungary, at Mohi.

"I fought in that battle," Cosmas declared. "The dog-faced Tartars
bombarded us with terrible weapons that burst into flame and gave off
poisonous smoke, so that men died of breathing it. We advanced against
them and discovered that we were surrounded. Their pitiless volleys of
arrows slowly reduced our numbers all that long day. In the late
afternoon we saw their columns gathering for a charge, but we also saw a
gap in their line. Many of us, myself among them, rushed for that gap,
throwing down our arms and armor so we could escape more quickly. It was
a devilish trick. The Tartar heavy cavalry fell upon those who remained
behind, now few in number, and slaughtered all. The light cavalry rode
along the flanks of those who retreated, shooting them