May There Be a Road (Ss) (2001)

by L'amour, Louis

  “I must go to the house of Yakub,” Tohkta said. “Tola Beg can come. If help is needed, he can return for you.” The Khan paused a moment, then nodded.

  The house of Yakub was the largest in the oasis, and Tola Beg led the way on foot. Wind rustled among the tamarisks as they skirted an irrigation ditch. Beside Tohkta the old yak hunter moved, silent as a djinn. Tohkta, who had stalked wild sheep upon the highest peaks, was hard put to keep pace with the old man.

  Outside the nearby Ya-men, which was the government house, stood vehicles that smelled of greasy smoke and petrol. Tohkta had seen them before, in Khotan. There were soldiers there also, reflected light gleaming from their gun barrels. They were fine rifles that filled Tohkta’s mind with envy.

  “The old wolf was right,” Tola Beg breathed in his ear, “the town stinks of danger.”

  The town was different, very different. The fires in the foundry were out and the alley of the bazaar was dirty and neglected. Everywhere there were horses and trucks and soldiers and supplies. Even in the violent days after the murder of the old governor, when the fighting between the Nationalists and the Moslem generals was at its worst, there hadn’t been this many armed men in Charklik. “The forces of history are at work here,”

  Tola Beg mumbled. “And that is something to avoid.”

  They moved on through the darkness and then drew up.

  Tohkta crouched in the shadows, listening. Before him was the wall of the compound of Kushla’s father. Soon he would see her. His heart pounded with excitement.

  Creeping like wild dogs to a sheepfold, they came into the yard. Here, too, they heard the language of the Han Chinese, and one voice that made Tohkta’s hair prickle on his scalp .. . a voice with the harsh tone of command. Neither of them spoke Mandarin, for Sinkiang is a land of many tongues, Chinese the least of them, but both knew its sound.

  The house of Yakub, yet filled with Han soldiers. Tola Beg tugged at his arm. They must steal away while they had the chance.

  But where then was Yakub? And where was Kushia?

  “We must go. They have taken it for their own use,”

  Tola Beg whispered in his ear.

  Tohkta moved back into the darkness, his thoughts racing over possible alternatives. Then it came to him, and he knew where they would be if they were alive and still in Charklik.

  It was an ancient Buddhist temple, fallen to ruins, rebuilt, and ruined again. Sometimes Yakub had used it for a storehouse, and Kushla loved the ancient trees around it. There was shelter there, and a good spring nearby. They made their way through the dark town and approached with caution.

  “Look!” Tola Beg caught his arm. “The spotted horse… it is the old one the girl loved. At least they left her that.”

  Why not? The horse was almost as old as Kushla herself, who would be eighteen this year. Leaving Tola Beg, he moved swiftly, glancing each way, then listening. Like a wraith, Tohkta slipped past the yak hide that hung over the door.

  In the vague light from the charcoal brazier he saw her, and on the instant he entered she looked up. She stood swiftly, poised like a young deer, ready for flight. And then she looked into his eyes and hame into his arms without shame.

  Yakub got to his feet He was in rags. The one room of the temple that still possessed a roof held only a few sacks and some bedding. Yakub had been a proud and wealthy man, but was so no longer.

  “Go, Tohkta! Go, quickly! If you are found here From his shirt, Tohkta drew the sack of gold.

  “The marriage price,” he said. “I claim my bride.”

  How lovely she was! Her dark eyes glowed, her figure under the thin garments was so lithe and eager.

  The years he had waited had brought her to womanhood, and to a loveliness he could scarcely believe. He tried to say all this.

  “If you think I am beautiful after all that has happened, then our parents have chosen well,” she said.

  “Please go!” Yakub seized his elbow. “For the sake of my daughter, take her and go. The gold also. If they find it they will take it, anyway.”

  “What has happened here?”

  “The Red soldiers, the ones that we heard of but who never came, they have come at last. They take everything and say it is for the future. Whose future? What future? I do not understand them, for until they came, we were happy. All we wished was to tend our flocks in peace. Now they are moving into the mountains, more soldiers arrive every day.”

  “Batai Khan awaits us. Come, we will gather your flocks as we go, and you can live among us. I would not have my bride mourning her father on her wedding night.”

  Kushla handed him her bundle and they turned swiftly to the door. Then Kushla caught a cry in her throat, and Tohkta felt rage and despair crowding within him.

  The man who stood in the doorway was small with square shoulders and a neatly perfect uniform.

  Slender, he seemed to have that whiplike strength that resists all exhaustion. His cold eyes inspected Tohkta with careful attention.

  “Greetings.” He stepped into the ruins of the room, and behind him were two soldiers armed with submachine guns. “Greetings to Yakub and his lovely daughter. Greetings to you, hillman. That is what you are, am I correct?” He spoke Tungan, and spoke it well. Tohkta said nothing.

  “Answer me…” He pulled a small automatic from a holster. “Or I will shoot Yakub in the foot.” He flicked the gun’s safety off.

  “Yes,” said Tohkta. “I am from the hills.”

  “Very good. I am Chu Shih.” He said this as if it were a fact that explained itself. “We have been waiting for you. Waiting quite awhile. We knew that this woman was betrothed to a young man from the Kunlun. I could have sent her and her father to a labor camp, but I wanted to meet you. Our destinies are intertwined, you see. Would you like to know how?”

  Tohkta quietly assented. He was listening, listening to Chu Shih and listening for sounds from outside the building. There were more men out there, but how many he didn’t know.

  “You can have the opportunity of serving the people of China. I’m sure you do not care..” but you will. There is a secret track over the mountains to India. It is the track used by Abu Back in the sixteenth century when he fled from Khotan. It is also my gateway to the mountain people. Do you know this track?”

  “It is idle talk..” bazaar talk. There is no track. There are only a few mountain pastures and fewer people. All you will find in the mountains are granite and ice, glaciers and clouds.”

  “If you were to show me the track, which is important to my future plans, I might permit you to keep your bride, and would let her father go free.”

  “Such stories are the talk of fools,”

  Tohkta said. “They are the idle tall of goatherds.”

  To know men, Batai Khan had taught him, is the knowledge of kings. Tohkta looked into the eyes of Chu Shih and saw no mercy, only ruthless ambition.

  To refuse would mean torture and death. Torture he could stand; what he feared was torture for Kushla, or for her father.

  “I do not believe,” Chu Shih said, “that stories of the ancient route are talk. If you wish to go free, you will show me the track. If you do not show me, another will.”

  “I will show you what is there, but it may not be to your liking.”

  This man, Tohkta told himself, must die. I must kill him or return to kill him. If he lives our mountains will never be free. If need be Tohkta’s people could wait for years before they came again to the oasis towns, and by that time, these might be overthrown, or their ideas changed. Young though he was, Tohkta had learned all things change; the Tochari had learned patience from their mountains.

  Chu Shih’s command brought in two more soldiers.

  Tohkta had a moment of sharp panic when he saw them, wanting to plunge at the door and fight his way free, but he fought down the feeling. He must think of Kushla and her father, who might be killed. Escape they must .. . somehow.

  Out upon the street, the bridge of his wishing f
ell into the gorge of despair, for they had Tola Beg also. Two soldiers gripped the arms of the old yak hunter, and there was blood welling from an ugly cut on his cheekbone.

  Turning, the Chinese colonel strode away.

  Kushla and Yakub being pushed ahead, Tola Beg and Tohkta followed surrounded by the six soldiers.

  The Chinese who had searched them were coastal Chinese, unfamiliar with the customs of mountain Tochari. It was the custom in the hills to wear their hair long and their beards also.

  Tohkta’s hair was wound about his head under his sheepskin hat, and into the hair was thrust a thin-bladed knife, as was also the custom.

  Soldiers loitered before the Ya-men, several hundred yards away, but the street led through a narrow avenue of darkness bordered by a double row of tamarisks. In this darkness, Tohkta halted, and when the soldier behind him ran into him, Tohkta turned and drawing his knife, struck upward into the softness of the man’s stomach.

  Tohkta’s hand drew Kushla behind him.

  Yakub, with more courage than Tohkta expected, seized the rifle of the soldier next to him, and then with a rush like a sudden gust of wind, Batai Khan and his riders swept through the tamarisks.

  The horses were among the soldiers and all was confusion, pounding hooves, and flashing blades.

  Several of the soldiers had their rifles slung and Chu Shih was knocked sprawling by the shoulder of the horse of Batai Khan.

  Lifting Kushla to the saddle of a lead horse, Tohkta leaped into his own saddle. A soldier slipped a rifle to his shoulder, but Tohkta rode him down, grasping the man’s weapon as he fell. Then they were away in the darkness and riding hard for freedom and the hills.

  There was shouting and a wild shot, but the attack had been sudden and with broadswords, the ancient Tochari way of fighting. In the darkness the soldiers had no chance against the charging horses and flashing blades. And it was only now that the force at the Ya-men was alerted.

  Tohkta glanced back. Behind them there was confusion and wild shots but no roaring of motors coming to life, yet remembering the eyes of Chu Shih, Tohkta knew pursuit would come soon, and it would be relentless.

  False dawn was cresting the peaks with gold when they reached the Valley of Rain where Yakub’s last herd was held. This was the only one the Chinese had not seized, for, as yet, they had not discovered it. The people of the oasis were secretive about their pastures, as his people were about the mountain tracks.

  Tohkta checked his captured rifle in the vague light. How beautiful it was! How far superior to their ancient guns! Six rifles had been captured, and two men had even taken bandoleers of cartridges. They shared them among the others.

  “We must go,” Batai Khan said. “The flock we drive will cause us to move slowly.”

  Tohkta watched the yaks and fat-tailed sheep bunched for the trail. The Tochari were men of flocks and herds, and could not easily leave behind the wealth of a friend.

  He looked up at the mountain peaks, and in the morning light, streamers of snow were blowing like silver veils from under a phalanx of cloud. Now fear seized at his vitals. They must hurry. If snow blocked the passes, none would escape.

  Hours ago they had left the desert and the threat of pursuit by trucks or cars. Only mounted men or those on foot could follow them now. But the Chinese had horses; Tohkta had seen many of them in town and they would follow, he knew that as well. Whether they liked it or not they were leading Chu Shih into the mountains, just as he had wished.

  Hunched in their saddles against the wind, they pushed on, skirting black chasms, climbing around towering pinnacles, icy crags, and dipping deep into gorges and fording streams, until at last they came to a vast basin three miles above the desert.

  Here they rested into the coming night.

  Far away to the west lay a magnificent range of glacier crested mountains, their gorges choked with ice, splendid in the clear air that followed the snow of the morning and afternoon. Though the setting sun lit the peaks and ridges, close over them hung a towering mass of cloud like the mirror image of the mountains below.

  Long before dawn they were moving again. Batai Khan pushed onward, fearful of the storms that come suddenly at high altitudes where there was no fodder for man or beast. Pushing up beside him, Tohkta noted that the old man’s face was drawn by cold and weariness. Batai Khan was old..” older even than Tola Beg.

  “Batai Khan,” Tohkta asked, “now that we are among our mountains we must fight the soldiers.

  They must not be allowed to return with knowledge of this trail.

  Their leader, most of all, must be killed.” He explained what Chu Shih had wanted.

  “Tohkta,” the old man paused, “you will await them in the pass. You are right and the beasts move slowly; we must have time. These fifty yak and many fat-tailed sheep will mean wealth to your wife’s father and food and comfort for our people. But do not fight so hard that you do not return to us. Let the mountains do their work and if these soldiers come to the Yurungkash we will be waiting for them.”

  “I shall remain with him,” Tola Beg spoke up.

  All those with modern rifles stayed beside Tohkta, eager to test them on their former owners.

  Two others remained, hopeful of obtaining more rifles for themselves. The pass was a natural point for a surprise attack, and so the Tochari set their trap where it would be unexpected, in its narrowing approach.

  Though they had little ammunition, each fired several ranging shots to check the sights of their new weapons. They then concealed themselves, all but two, along the walls of rock before the deep cleft that was the pass. There they waited, waited for their enemies to come.

  And they came, the Chinese soldiers did. But they came slowly because of the great altitude, which bothered horses as well as the men.

  Tohkta watched them from far across the elevated basin, and it began to snow once more. One of the horses slipped and fell, but the soldiers helped it up and came on.

  How many were there? A hundred or more. But they were not dressed or provisioned for the high mountains.

  Tohkta could tell this because, though all were mounted, they had few packhorses, and these seemed to carry only weapons and ammunition.

  At three hundred yards Tohkta and his hidden men opened fire. Instantly there was confusion. A milling of horses and men. For a moment only sporadic fire was returned, then Chu Shih rode into the midst of them on a tall gray horse and suddenly there was order. Soldiers dropped to the ground and sought cover, the bullets striking the rocks around Tohkta and his men were no longer random; it now seemed that the fire was seeking out each of them as separate targets.

  “Be ready!” Tohkta called out as under the covering fire a group of soldiers swarmed forward.

  “Now, run!”

  Tohkta turned and ran himself. Before him, Basru. In spun and fired one last shot before entering the pass. The others followed as rifle fire cracked and whined off the rocks around them. Tohkta had known that they couldn’t stand off a concerted attack, but he also knew that in the thin air of the mountains he and his men could outrun any lowland soldier.

  Chu Shih’s men paused in their rush to fire at the fleeing Tocharis, but their breath came too hard at fourteen thousand feet and their shots went wild.

  At a signal from their leader, soldiers on horseback charged into the pass to pursue the retreating tribesmen, but this was exactly what Tohkta had been planning for.

  Tola Beg and a strong young boy had made their way up the steep walls of the pass and together they had found a precariously balanced boulder that the yak hunter had spotted years before. With their shoulders braced against the cliff behind them and their feet on the huge rock they waited. They waited until they heard the sound of firing stop and the sound of horsemen entering the pass. Then they pushed.

  Nothing happened.

  They eased up and Tola Beg looked at the boy and they pushed together then released and pushed again.

  Suddenly the boulder was ro
cking and Tola Beg pushed hard, pushed with all the strength he had in his old body and with all the strength he had in his mind. Something gave inside of him, something in his back, but he pushed on through the blossoming pain and then the boulder was rolling. It dropped from sight, and Tola Beg could feel its impact further down the mountain, then he heard the roar of other rocks falling with it and the screams of men and horses.

  Tohkta, Ibrahim, and Basru. In turned and threw themselves back into the maelstrom of dust and flying rock that now choked the pass. They had seen little of it, for they had been running for their lives not only from the soldiers but from the landslide that nearly took them as well. It had only been the fast thinking of Ibrahim that had saved them, for as soon as they cleared the pass he had forced the running tribesmen into a corner of the hillside protected from the crashing torrent of rock.

  Now they pushed their way back through the slide, and while Ibrahim mercilessly stripped the dead and wounded soldiers of guns and ammunition, Tohkta and Basru. In poured fire into the oncoming Chinese.

  Their lines wavered and fell back, the impact of this double ambush overcoming even Chu Shih’s leadership. As soon as the soldiers had taken cover Tohkta and his followers fled back through the pass to where the others had brought up the horses.

  Under a sky dense with cloud they started down the rocky slope. The men were excited by their victory, but Tohkta saw the look on the face of Tola Beg and knew that he was in pain. In the trees far below the pass they waited to see what the Han Chinese soldiers would do.

  Chu Shih was taking no chances. After some time had passed there was activity around the mouth of the pass: a scouting party who had, no doubt, worked their way carefully through the rockfall alert for additional trouble. Then they watched as a squad moved into position on the hillside beside the entrance to the pass and set up a position with a machine gun unlimbered from one of the packhorses. Then, the area totally secure, mounted troops began to file out into the area controlled by the gun. Soon they would be ready to continue the pursuit.

  Tohkta and his men filtered silently back into the trees. They had been very successful, counting many enemy dead or wounded, and Tola Beg was their only casualty. The old man had torn something in his back and could barely ride, being in constant pain.