Vallon 02 - Imperial Fire

by Robert Lyndon

  ‘I had nothing but the clothes on my back when I reached Keriya,’ Yonden continued. ‘Not even that. For my last meal I’d scraped the tallow off my boots and boiled it for soup. At the cheapest lodging I could find I met a party of Tibetan traders returning to the Chang Thang after exchanging yak tails and medicinal herbs for copper and iron. Three gold prospectors had joined them and offered to guide us. They led us with the sole intention of slaughtering every soul in a place where no one would see their crime.’ Yonden put his hands together and bowed at Wayland. ‘If this gentleman hadn’t found me, their evil would have gone unnoticed on earth.’

  Wulfstan prodded Shennu. ‘I want to hear more about his sinning.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ Wayland asked.

  ‘Thanks to you, I can return to my monastery and seek the true path.’

  Wayland stood and pulled his gown over his shoulders. Even in summer, the Taklamakan nights were cold.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear the end of Yonden’s story?’ Hero said.

  ‘It hasn’t ended yet.’

  Wayland made a hood for Freya out of antelope hide, stitching the seams together through their thickness, then soaking the leather and moulding it to shape on a wooden block he carved himself. The hood fitted well, shutting out alarming sights. Not that Freya was fearful of the world. She’d been wrenched from the wild so young that she regarded the strange environment into which she’d been plunged as natural. Unlike every other hawk that Wayland had trained, she didn’t need manning to make her tame. After being scooped out of an eyrie, stuffed into a sack and displayed on a butcher’s stall, there was little left to frighten her.

  That made her the easiest bird Wayland had ever trained and the most dangerous. Long after she would have been driven away by her parents, she quivered her wings at Wayland and piped for food like a baby. At the same time she’d learned to guard her territory. This encompassed a narrow circle around her perch. If anyone but Wayland trespassed within a dozen feet, she puffed up, raised her hackles and dared the intruder to advance closer. No one did.

  Another thing. She hated dogs, Wayland’s included. At the sight of it, her plumage flattened like mail and then distended until she appeared twice her actual size. One day Wayland’s hound strayed into her territory. Freya flew at him and raked his shoulder, hooking one hind talon under the skin. The dog would have killed her if Wayland hadn’t grabbed its muzzle and ripped the talon out. From that day on, dog and eagle regarded each other with cautious hatred.

  Having seen how dangerous Freya could be, Wayland shouldn’t have let his guard slip. He was feeding her on a hare’s hind leg, riding alongside Lucas and exchanging idle conversation, when he judged that the eagle had eaten enough and pulled the meat away.

  He didn’t see her foot flash out, didn’t register anything until four talons locked on his right hand with a force that seemed to pump all the blood in his body through his head. The shock dashed Freya’s food from his hand. The eagle, conditioned to think that her rations came directly from Wayland, paid no attention to the meat and tightened her grip.

  He didn’t panic or struggle. Hands manacled, eyes watering, he waited until the homicidal light in Freya’s eyes dimmed and she relaxed her hold and stepped back onto his gauntlet. Kewp, she said, and scratched the underside of her neck with the delicacy of a dowager.

  Lucas stared at him. ‘Your face has gone as pale as clay.’

  Wayland groaned and flexed his hand. Freya’s talons hadn’t even punctured flesh, but they’d left deep blue-black indentations and his hand was puffing up.

  By evening it was swollen to twice its normal size and he was nursing it while he sat around a campfire, paying little attention to the conversation until Hero put a question to Shennu.

  ‘On our journey to the northlands, we found a letter written by a man who called himself Prester John, ruler of a Christian kingdom somewhere in the East. Have you heard the legend?’

  Shennu inhaled the smoke from a shrub he’d picked in the desert. ‘I know the name, know the story and have heard of men who followed it to their deaths.’

  ‘It doesn’t exist, then.’

  Shennu blew smoke at the stars. ‘I can’t say. There are strange realms hidden in the mountains to the south and west. Everyone has heard of Shambhala, a Buddhist paradise whose inhabitants live forever unless they leave their kingdom. My grandfather told me that the path to it is easy to follow at first, but the closer you approach, the more uncertain the way until at last you find yourself in an icy valley with no way forward and no possibility of returning.’

  Vallon, silent until then, looked up. ‘I told you ten years ago that Prester John’s letter was a hoax. We’ve travelled further than almost any man who’s lived and none of us has seen the unicorns and dragons and Cyclops the priest king describes.’

  Shennu raised a hand for silence. ‘The young lama has more to say.’ The Sogdian listened, nodding and clarifying before translating.

  ‘This is a story I’ve never heard before. Yonden says that many generations ago, a Christian hermit sought enlightenment in a Buddhist monastery deep within the Himalayas.’

  ‘A Nestorian, no doubt,’ Vallon said. ‘We’ve seen their communities all along the Silk Road. Heresy breeds like rats.’

  ‘Hush,’ Hero said. ‘I want to hear more.’

  Shennu’s questioning ended with Yonden sketching the sign of the cross. Wayland and Hero exchanged stares, then pulled closer.

  ‘Has Yonden ever met a Christian?’ Hero asked.

  ‘You’re the first he’s encountered. He says that when his grandfather was a young man, he went south with a salt caravan and crossed the Himalayas into the land called Nepal. That country lies between Tibet and India. Dorje – that was the grandfather’s name – passed through a valley where the lamas venerated a Christian priest who had studied in their temple many years before.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Before we Sogdians began recording our history. Before the Buddha’s teachings reached Tibet.’

  ‘What was the priest’s name?’

  ‘Oussu. Yonden’s grandfather told him that he’d seen thankas – holy paintings – of Oussu in the temple. The hermit had also left scrolls written in his own language. The lama told Dorje that not long after Oussu left to return to his own land, a party of pilgrims or disciples arrived in the valley seeking their master’s works. Since then, no Christian has enquired about Oussu until you.’

  Wayland had forgotten his throbbing hand. ‘Ask Yonden to describe the valley.’

  If the Tibetan had described an Eden with palaces of gold and rivers cobbled with jewels, Wayland would have dismissed the tale as myth.

  ‘A bleak place at the uppermost limit of settlement. So poor that its inhabitants have to overwinter in lower settlements, leaving only their lamas in the temple.’

  ‘How long would it take us to reach it?’ Hero asked.

  ‘Three months,’ Shennu said.

  Hero hissed in disappointment. ‘Too far out of our way.’

  ‘Three days would be too far,’ Vallon said. ‘Even if it was Prester John’s kingdom, it doesn’t lie on our march. Our mission is to reach China by the most direct route.’

  The fire had died to coals, the embers writhing and squeaking. ‘Never mind,’ Hero said. ‘My vision is now so impaired that I couldn’t make a worthwhile investigation.’

  Wayland reached out and touched Hero’s shoulder. ‘I could be your eyes.’

  Hero blinked at him.

  ‘If my path takes me close enough, I’ll visit Oussu’s temple.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Vallon said, frozen in the act of rising.

  Wayland looked up. ‘I’m going home.’

  A flake of incandescent ash separated from the coals and wafted up like a glowing leaf. Vallon sank down.

  ‘Everyone leave us.’

  Sitting alone before the general, Wayland found himself trembling.

  ‘Why?’ Vallon sai
d.

  ‘You know why. You don’t need me and we keep crabbing against each other.’

  ‘You can’t go,’ Vallon said.

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  ‘If it’s my harsh words that have driven you from my side, then I withdraw them and ask for your understanding. I need you, Wayland. And you know how high you stand in my affections.’

  Wayland’s throat constricted. ‘I didn’t reach my decision lightly.’

  Vallon kneaded his brows. ‘You’ll never return home on your own.’

  ‘The wilderness and I are old friends.’

  ‘I expect the gypsy girl’s behind this.’

  Wayland shook his head. ‘She’s one of the reasons I’m going.’

  Vallon rose like an old man and tugged his cape over his shoulders. ‘I can’t spare any men to accompany you.’

  Wayland stood, too. ‘Of course not.’ He watched Vallon walk off.

  He was settling back, drained by his decision, when Vallon came back.

  ‘I’m not letting you traipse through the wilderness on your own. You can take three men and two spare horses.’ Vallon overrode Wayland’s protests. ‘Leave before first light to avoid upsetting my men. God protect you. I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.’

  Wayland tried to smile. ‘Yes, we will. If not here, in the hereafter.’

  Vallon paused, a black flapping shape in the night. ‘I’ll look for you in the hereafter, then.’

  Tibet

  XXIX

  Only Hero was up to see Wayland leave in the deep dead dark.

  ‘Won’t you reconsider? Leaving Vallon has wounded him as grievously as if he’d lost a son.’

  ‘Sons make their own way in the world.’ Wayland leaned from his saddle. Above him on the crosspiece the hooded eagle sat perched like an idol. ‘Take this,’ he said, handing over a letter.

  Hero balanced it in his hands, as a man would who knew words carried weight. ‘Is it your last will and testament?’

  ‘Quite the opposite. It raises the dead to life.’

  ‘It’s not like you to talk in riddles.’

  ‘Read it when I’ve gone and all will become clear. I trust you’ll observe the conditions set out at the end.’

  Toghan and two other Turkmen leading the spare mounts rode up with Yonden. Hero made a last effort to dissuade Wayland.

  ‘Winter will trap you on the wrong side of the mountains. I can’t bear the thought of you dying far from your friends in some howling wilderness.’

  Wayland massaged Hero’s shoulder. ‘So long as you live, I’ll never travel alone.’ He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. ‘God bless you, Hero of Syracuse, the best companion a man could have.’

  Hero ran in his wake. ‘What about Zuleyka?’

  Wayland tossed a hand. ‘She’s someone else’s problem now.’

  Three days’ riding brought them to the first of five passes that led to the Chang Thang, Tibet’s great northern plateau. Behind them and far below, a section of the Taklamakan glowed like a bed of coals through swathes of black dust. Westward the sun was settling into a gash of mountains, a golden thread separating the peaks from the falling night.

  Labouring over the third pass, nauseous in the thin air, Wayland squinted back and spotted a lone rider following their trail.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ he told his companions.

  Watching the approaching rider, his dog began to wag its tail, uncertainly at first. Then as the rider drew near, it threw its head back and yodelled its delight.

  ‘I might have known it,’ Wayland muttered.

  It was nearly dark when Zuleyka reached him, grinning like a naughty child. Wayland’s expression was bleak.

  ‘You want to go home,’ she said. ‘So do I. I know you won’t send me back.’

  Wayland considered. ‘Only because it would cost me a fortnight’s travelling.’ He turned his horse. ‘I can’t stop you following me, but don’t look to me for help if you weaken.’ He glanced back in sudden dismay. ‘You don’t have anything but the clothes on your back. Where do you think you’ll sleep?’

  She regarded him as if he were a dolt – one she held in kindly affection. ‘With you, of course.’

  Once they breached the mountains, their path took them across a soda plain, the snow-white surface combed into furrows. The riders made masks to protect their eyes from the dazzle and rode cowed into silence by the huge distances and overwhelming sky. Here and there they came upon patches of scraggy grass that collapsed into powder under the horses’ hooves.

  They descended an escarpment into country rolling away in low undulations that followed one after the other like the ocean swell. The endless vista was monotonous yet exerted an irresistible fascination. Pinned in the middle of horizons, Wayland felt he was remote from everything, at the limits of his own being, while at the same time occupying the centre of the universe. He tried to describe the sensation to Yonden and the young monk put his hands together and stared into distance.

  ‘Emptiness concentrates the soul. By the time you leave Tibet, you’ll be a different man from the one who entered it.’

  The terrain changed imperceptibly, softening into high steppeland broken by grey ridges marked with cairns like fossilised gnomes. The waymarks were the only sign that any human had passed this way. In three weeks’ travelling, they hadn’t met another living soul.

  For all its apparent sterility the plateau abounded with wildlife. Marmots whistled outside their burrows. Herds of kulans galloped away, pausing on the ridges to look back at the interlopers. Wild sheep with spiral horns filed over the mountain slopes. Wayland tried without success to stalk the antelopes that roamed the steppe. Hardly a day passed when he didn’t see a wolf pack – dingy yellowish predators that sometimes trailed the riders in the hope of finding discarded scraps. One morning, having staked out a waterhole, Wayland shot a kulan, tracked the wounded beast and despatched it three or four miles from where he’d launched his arrow. Unable to carry the carcass, he rode back for help. By the time he returned, a pack of wolves had demolished the prey and were contesting for the hooves and hide.

  It was the drong or wild yaks that fascinated Wayland most – enormous creatures, as large as the aurochs he’d encountered in Rus, but looking even more massive with their curtained black pelts.

  Yonden advised him to give them a wide berth, saying that they were the most dangerous beast on the Chang Thang.

  ‘Their coat is so thick that it can take fifty arrows to penetrate a vital organ.’

  ‘Some Tibetans must kill them,’ Wayland said. ‘I’ve seen their horns decorating cairns.’

  Yonden observed the Buddhist reverence for all living things to the extent that he removed lice from his body and sent the parasites on their way with blessings. He pulled himself closer to the fire.

  ‘I’ll tell you how hunters kill them. They dig a hole in a pasture where the yaks graze and lie in it until a drong comes within range. Then they shoot arrows as fast as they can. The drong attacks but can’t reach the hunters, who let fly more arrows. Back comes the drong, bellowing with rage, gouging the ground with his horns. The hunters need brave hearts to continue their assault, and even if they deliver a mortal wound, sometimes with his dying effort the drong collapses over their hiding place, entombing them under his bulk.’

  Wayland tested Yonden’s claims, riding as close to the yaks as he judged prudent. Unless he approached downwind, when they picked up his scent half a mile away and galloped off, they seemed pretty stupid – short-sighted and dull of hearing. Approaching them upwind, he found that they didn’t respond to the threat with a headlong charge. They rushed forward a short distance, tasselled tail held erect, relying on their bulk to intimidate. Hold your ground and they would back off; advance and they would make another high-tailed, ground-pawing feint. Wayland decided that Yonden had exaggerated their danger. Stay out of their way and they would stay out of yours.

  ‘Let’s hunt one,’ Toghan said, gnawin
g on the thighbone of a hare Wayland had shot that morning.

  Wayland looked across the fire. ‘Am I such a poor provider? Does your belly shrink to your backbone?’

  Toghan whinnied with laughter. ‘Listen to him.’ He hitched himself forward. ‘You’re a great hunter. No, it’s not for food that I’d kill those giants. Hunting one with bow and arrow would make exciting sport.’

  Wayland paused in his chewing. ‘I’m not going to kill such a grand beast and leave most of it to rot.’

  Toghan shrugged and produced a zither. ‘Now I will sing.’

  ‘If you must.’

  Toghan plucked the strings. ‘I’ll continue with the epic of Oghuz, the founder of the Seljuk empire, blessed be his memory.’

  ‘Toghan, you’ve been droning on about Oghuz since we left the desert. Don’t you know any other songs?’

  Toghan ignored him. ‘We have reached the time when the Seljuks cross the Oxus and the emperor of Ghazni declares war on them, ordering his soldiers to cut off every Seljuk boy’s thumb so they can’t draw a bow.’ Toghan shut his eyes and produced a nasal wailing that drove the dog whimpering from the fireside. The Seljuk’s compatriots listened attentively, beating time and occasionally ululating in triumph. When he’d finished, wolves howled on the horizons.

  Toghan’s countrymen muttered their approval. The minstrel grinned. ‘Now I’ll sing a song of my own composition describing how my ancestors —’

  Zuleyka rose in a swirl and snatched the instrument. Backlit by stars, she launched into a ballad, not a word of which Wayland understood, but delivered with such sweet melancholy that his heart overflowed.

  Toghan had fallen asleep, snores rattling through his throat. Zuleyka placed the zither beside him, stepped past Wayland and brushed his hair.

  Wildfire seemed to dart over his scalp. He rose and checked that the eagle was securely tethered, ordered his dog to stay alert for wolves and followed Zuleyka into their shared tent. After a month sleeping next to her, he’d decided he was immune to her attractions. The rigours of the journey would have made anyone celibate. After a day riding at high altitude, watching your companions empty loose bowels, dropping exhausted and filthy into bed under blankets infested by bugs and lice, scratching the parasites that gorged on your flesh… The thought of conjoining with someone as dirty and verminous as you was repellent.