Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  One of the figures in that great circle of riders leaped from the saddle. Even at this distance he knew it was her by the flash of her purple scarf. Qaidu smiled wolfishly at him.

  ‘My daughter,’ he said. ‘I have given orders. No one is to kill until she has fired the first arrow.’

  She left her weapons on her horse, even her quivers, and strode across the plain armed only with her bow.

  ‘She is allowed one arrow,’ Tekudai said. ‘She must kill with a single shot.’

  There were thousands of beasts milling on the plain, wide-eyed with panic. Khutelun strode among them, apparently unafraid, holding just the slender bow.

  A pack of wolves had detached themselves from the howling press of animals and now veered towards her, baying and scampering. She held the bow loosely in her right hand and waited.

  ‘She’ll be killed,’ Josseran murmured.

  He looked around. Beside him, Khutelun’s father and brother watched, their faces like flint. Josseran returned his attention to the drama playing out below him. The wolves were closing on her. He felt an unexpected rush of fear. Why should I care what happens to some Tatar savage? he asked himself. What is it to me?

  But his heart thundered.

  Still she waited, letting the wolves come closer, the bow still at her side.

  She has no nerves at all . . .

  She raised the bow in one fluid movement and took aim. She is too late, he thought. The pack must overtake her now, before she has to time to loose her arrow.

  Suddenly one of the wolves fell, pitching head over tail on the frosted ground, the arrow embedded in its throat. Immediately there was a singing of arrows from the riders behind Khutelun and a dozen more fell in a tangle of legs and bloody fur. But it was not enough to save her. She went down under the rush of the remaining beasts. Her companions rode in, firing one arrow after another into the pack.

  Josseran looked at Qaidu.

  Nothing. No expression at all.

  He held his breath and waited. Khutelun lay face down in the ice.

  Finally, a movement, and she stirred and rose slowly to her feet. One of her fellows held her horse’s rein and she limped towards him. Impossible to tell how badly she was hurt.

  Qaidu grinned. ‘Ah, what a son she would have been! But a fine mother of khans!’

  The killing continued for another hour. Then another singing arrow was fired into the sky, the signal for the slaughter to end. The iron ring of cavalry broke and the remaining animals were allowed to escape to the northern wastes.

  The soldiers set to work, gathering the feast.

  ‘So,’ William murmured at his shoulder. ‘We shall not be eating mutton tonight at least.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anything as like?’

  ‘Savages at the hunt.’

  Khutelun rode up the slope to greet her father. There was blood on the sleeve of her coat and on her trousers, but nothing in the way she held herself indicated that she was wounded. As she came closer he could feel her black eyes watching him out of her sun-coppered face.

  He wondered what damage the wolves had done, what wounds were hidden by her thick robes. How could he be so affected by a savage? She smiled hawkishly at him as she rode past, perhaps reading his thoughts. ‘Father,’ she shouted to Qaidu.

  ‘How are your wounds, daughter?’

  ‘Scratches,’ she said. She swayed a little in the saddle but recovered.

  ‘A satisfactory hunt.’

  ‘Thank you, Father.’

  ‘Congratulate your mingan. Tell them I am pleased.’

  Khutelun grinned again, then she turned her horse to rejoin the soldiers on the killing ground below.

  Josseran turned to Tekudai. ‘Will she be all right?’ he asked him.

  ‘She is a Tatar,’ he grunted, as if that were explanation enough, and said nothing more on the long ride back to the camp.

  But on their return Josseran saw another side to his new friends.

  William and Josseran had been invited to Tekudai’s yurt to drink koumiss and celebrate the hunt. A sudden crack of thunder overhead shook the ground under them. Gerel stampeded for the corner, burrowing under a pile of skins, while Tekudai’s wives and children screamed and cowered, the youngest taking refuge beneath their mother’s skirts.

  Tekudai jumped to his feet, a loop of saliva dangling from his chin. He grabbed William by the shoulders and threw him across the yurt, kicking him out through the flap at the entrance.

  He turned on Josseran. ‘Out! Outside!’

  Josseran stared at him, astonished.

  ‘You have brought the anger of the gods down on all of us!’ Tekudai shouted.

  ‘It is just a storm,’ Josseran shouted over the hiss of the rain.

  ‘Outside!’ Tekudai dragged him to the entrance and pushed him into the rain-slashed mud.

  William stared at the rolling black clouds, his hair stringy with rain. ‘What is wrong with them?’

  Josseran shook his head. He picked William up by the arm and dragged him away, back to their yurt. They huddled together by the small fire, still soaking wet, steam rising from their sodden coats. How to make sense of such people? Scourge of half the world, conquerors of Baghdad and Moscow and Kiev and Bukhara, and here they were, burrowing under their blankets, scared of thunder, like children.

  A strange people indeed.

  XXX

  THERE WAS ONE thing that continued to trouble him, gnawing at him every day, something he had to know. Why should this be of any consequence? he thought. But he had to have an answer.

  It was a morning about a week after the storm; the skies were ice blue, the sun bouncing off the snows at the Roof of the World. He was riding with Tekudai on the hill above the camp. Tekudai carried a noose of rope on the end of a long pole, which he used to catch the horses they would take with them on their upcoming journey through the mountains. It required a great deal of skill and strength to snare the animals this way, for they were allowed to run half-wild across the steppe until they were needed and fought madly against capture. Across the valley other horsemen were performing the same task, their whooping cries and the hammer of horses’ hooves echoing from the valley walls.

  Josseran took a deep breath, knowing this was his opportunity to discover the truth, as unpalatable as it might be. ‘Tekudai, tell me something. When you decide to take a wife – must she be . . .?’ He stumbled for the right word in the Tatar language, but realized he did not know it.

  Tekudai frowned. ‘Must she be – what?’

  Josseran pointed to his groin. ‘What if she does not bleed a little. On the night of the wedding?’

  ‘Are you asking if a wife must have her blood veil intact?’ Tekudai said.

  ‘Yes, that is what I mean.’

  ‘Of course she does not. It would be too shameful. Would you have such a woman as your wife?’

  ‘Such a condition is highly prized in my country.’

  ‘Perhaps that is why you cannot defeat the Saracen!’

  Josseran wanted to slap him off his horse. Just a boy and he was taunting him!

  ‘I have heard,’ Josseran pressed on, ‘that your women lose their maidenhood to their horses.’

  Tekudai reined in his horse and twisted in the saddle. He seemed confused. ‘How else would they lose it?’

  ‘This does not bother you?’

  ‘To have the blood veil is the sign of a woman who has spent little time on horseback. She cannot therefore be a good rider and so she would be a burden to her husband.’

  Josseran stared at him. ‘They lose their maidenhood riding in the saddle.’ He said it slowly, comprehension dawning.

  ‘Yes,’ Tekudai said, ‘of course.’ He stared in bewilderment at this barbarian who needed to be told simple facts three or four times before he understood them. And Juchi had told them he had a quick wit and a lively mind!

  ‘They lose their maidenhood riding in the saddle,’ Josseran said a second time, and then he smiled. ‘Good.
Let’s ride on.’ Then, for no reason comprehensible to his companion, he threw back his head and started to laugh.

  XXXI

  HE DID NOT recognize her at first. She wore a red and purple robe and a loose-fitting cap with a long flap that extended down her neck. A coarse black fringe covered her forehead. She held a tambourine in her right hand and a rag flail in her left. She entered the great pavilion backwards, mumbling a long, low chant. She shuffled into the centre of the great tent, between the two fires, and fell to her knees.

  She reached behind her and one of the women passed her a tobacco pipe. She inhaled deeply.

  ‘Hashish,’ Josseran murmured under his breath. He knew of hashish from the Outremer where certain sects of the Saracens – the Hashishim, the Assassins – used the drug to calm their nerves before an assignment.

  After several deep inhalations Khutelun went to each corner of the yurt in turn, falling to her knees and sprinkling mare’s milk from a small pitcher on to the ground as libation for the spirits. Then she returned to the centre of the pavilion and sprinkled more koumiss on to the fire for the spirits of the hearth. Finally she went outside and made another offering to the Spirit of the Blue Sky.

  When she returned she fell on to the ground and lay there, her limbs in tremor. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

  ‘The Devil has possession of her,’ William hissed. ‘I told you. She is a witch.’

  Like every good Christian Josseran feared the Devil’s works, for the Church had warned him many times of the power of Beelzebub. He felt the blood drain from his face.

  The yurt was dark and heavy with the incense they had sprinkled on the fire and the sweet, cloying smell of the hashish. Josseran looked around at the gathering of Tatars, their faces as pale and frightened as his own. Even Qaidu, sitting there at the head of the fire, was trembling.

  There was a long silence.

  Finally she stirred and rose slowly to her feet. She went to the fire and took out the blackened shank of a sheep. She examined it carefully, studying the charred bone for cracks and fissures.

  ‘She summons the Beast,’ William whispered.

  ‘It is knavery. No more.’

  William fell to his knees, clutching the silver cross at his breast. He held it in front of him and started to loudly intone a prayer of exorcism.

  ‘Get him out of here,’ Qaidu snarled and two of his soldiers grabbed William under the arms and dragged him outside.

  Everyone in the yurt returned their attention to Khutelun.

  ‘What is the judgement of the spirits?’ Qaidu asked her.

  ‘The spirits say it is a good time for the journey,’ she said.

  Qaidu turned to Josseran. ‘You hear that, Barbarian? Tomorrow you leave for Qaraqorum!’

  Josseran hardly heard him. He was still staring at Khutelun, who had fallen back to the ground. Her whole body was shuddering as if she was possessed.

  By the holy balls of Saint Joseph, he thought. I lust for a witch!

  Her scarf whipped like a banner in the wind. Khutelun sat motionless in the saddle, around her the escort of twenty riders who would accompany them on their journey across the Roof of the World. Qaidu and Tekudai were there also, to see them on their way.

  ‘Who is to lead us?’ Josseran said.

  Qaidu nodded in the direction of his daughter. ‘Khutelun will see that you arrive safely at the Centre of the World.’

  Josseran felt William’s pony nudge alongside his own. ‘The witch is to guide us?’ he hissed.

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘Then we are doomed. Demand that they provide us with another guide.’

  ‘We are in no position to demand anything.’

  ‘Do it!’ William snapped.

  Josseran rounded on him. ‘Listen, priest, I bend my knee only to the Grand Master at Acre and to no one else. So do not presume to order me to do anything!’

  William reached for the silver cross at his breast and held it in front of his face. He began to recite the paternoster.

  ‘What is he doing?’ Qaidu asked.

  ‘It is a prayer for a safe passage,’ Josseran lied.

  ‘We have our own way of ensuring a safe journey,’ Qaidu said and he nodded to Khutelun.

  She dismounted and gave a signal to one of the women in the throng around the horses. The woman stepped forward carrying a wooden pail of mare’s milk. Khutelun thrust a wooden dipper into the pail, knelt on the grass and sprinkled some of the milk on to the ground as an offering to the spirits. Then she went to each of the riders in turn and sprinkled milk on to the poll, the stirrups and then the rump of their mounts.

  ‘More witchcraft,’ William muttered.

  They rode out of the camp, heading north. The sun was a cold copper coin, risen now over the Roof of the World; the air was frigid, searing the lungs. Khutelun turned them to the right, the lucky direction, and then they headed east, towards the sun. From here, Josseran knew, they entered a world where few men, not even the Mohammedan traders, had ever journeyed. They were travelling beyond darkness, and fear settled in his belly like lead.

  XXXII

  THEY SET OFF across the plain at a hard gallop. He had almost forgotten how much he had suffered riding from Aleppo. After a few hours, Josseran felt as if his spine had been jarred through the top of his head. He looked over at William and could see that the good friar was suffering far more. The Tatar saddles were very narrow, upswept at front and rear, and made of wood painted in bright colours. They were beautiful to look at but like riding on stone.

  Khutelun rode ahead of him. Her own saddle was covered in rich red velvet, the pommel studded with jewels. There were silver studs at the level of her thighs. He wondered how she could ride in such a device. It must be an agony. Or perhaps the silk of her thighs was as tough as leather. Well, he thought grimly, that is one mystery I will never learn the answer to.

  They rode in the shadow of the snow-capped mountains, through valleys budded with poplars and cypress, fields yet to green after the long winter. Here the people did not live in yurts; they were Kazaks and Uzbeks who lived in square, flat-roofed houses. The houses were made of stone, the cracks in the walls stuffed with straw, the roofs made of branches, grass and dried mud.

  The towering grey and white ramparts ahead of them seemed an impossible barrier: Was there really a way over these walls of rock and ice?

  After two days of hard riding they wound their way into the foothills, through forests of walnut and juniper, into the high pastures, dotted with the black beehive yurts of the Kirghiz shepherds. Some of the herdsmen had already migrated to the high valley pastures with their flocks.

  The sheep grazing on the slopes were not like the sheep of Provence. They had huge, curling horns, some of them the length of a fully grown man. They were, in appearance, more like goats except that they had curious fat tails, like griddle pans made of wool. Josseran saw fearsome cattle with great coats and massive horns that the Tatars called yaks.

  They saw wispy smoke rising through the pines, and stopped at a lonely yurt. There was goat cheese drying outside on bamboo mats. They hobbled their horses, and Khutelun pushed aside the tent flap as if it was her own. They all sat down inside the yurt and the Kirghiz shepherd and his wife brought them goat’s milk and some dried mutton. Then, just as abruptly, Khutelun got them to their feet, and with a few murmured words of thanks, they remounted their horses and rode on.

  The Christian holy man had collapsed. He lay on his back on the grass, mumbling his incantations into the growth of beard on his face. The barbarian knelt beside him, trying to dribble koumiss from his saddlebag into his mouth. Two more ill-suited companions she had never seen.

  ‘What is wrong with him?’ she snapped.

  ‘He is exhausted.’

  ‘We have ridden barely a week.’

  ‘He is not accustomed to it.’

  ‘This Pope of yours selects his ambassadors poorly.’

  ‘He chose him, I suspect, for his piety,
not for his ability on a horse.’

  ‘That much is obvious.’ She fidgeted in the saddle. Her father had honoured her, of course, by making her escort to these ambassadors, but in truth it was an honour she would have forgone. She was afraid of this man of fire and his crow. She had flown into the future in her dreams and there were dark histories written there concerning these two.

  ‘We must ride on.’

  ‘We have been riding all morning,’ Josseran protested.

  ‘If we keep stopping like this we will never get there. This shaman of yours is a weakling.’

  William struggled to sit up. ‘Must we leave now?’ There was resignation rather than protest in his voice.

  Josseran nodded. ‘It appears there is no time to rest.’

  ‘Then God will give us the strength to do what we must.’ He gripped Josseran’s arm and stumbled to his feet. Their ponies had been tethered to a nearby pistachio tree. William’s horse stamped its hooves, still suspicious of the strange smell of this foreigner; and when it felt the slap of William’s hand on its rump it reared in terror, and jerked its rein so hard that it snapped. It galloped away, hammering William into the ground.

  Khutelun shouted a warning and set off in pursuit across the meadow. She caught the frightened horse within thirty rods and Josseran saw her lean nimbly from the saddle to grasp its halter and rein it in.

  When she returned William was still sitting on the ground, pale with shock and clutching at his shoulder. The other Tatars stood around, laughing. They thought it a wonderful joke.

  Khutelun felt only irritation. They would laugh now but later he might do something not quite as amusing. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘There are no bones broken,’ Josseran said.

  ‘He is fortunate. Please remind him again that he should mount only from the left side, as I instructed him. The horse will stand still if approached from the near side.’

  ‘I think he will remember better now.’

  ‘I hope so. He cannot ride, he does not speak like a Person, he has no more strength than a child. One day he will bring us bad luck, Barbarian!’