‘It cannot happen,’ she said.
‘Please,’ he said.
For a long moment neither of them spoke. Then she stood up and went to the doorway of the yurt. He thought she was about to leave. But instead she turned down the flap of the tent and came back.
CXVI
KHUTELUN REMOVED HER boots and heavy felt trousers. She unfastened her coat and let it fall open.
He held his breath. His mouth was as dry as it had been at any time during their crossing of the desert. If this is to be my last night on earth, he thought, then I do not care any more. This is enough. His desire overwhelmed even the agonies of the cangue, the terrible pain in his shoulder, the dread of dying.
The silk undershirt she wore beneath her del reached just below her waist. She lifted it over her head. Her skin was burnished like bronze, the muscles beneath her flesh taut as bowstring from a lifetime standing in the stirrups of a horse. Like all the Uighur women she had no hair anywhere on her body. There were fresh, white scars along her right thigh and her right shinbone. He remembered how she had gone down under the wolf pack the day of the hunt and he guessed these were the results of it.
She knelt down, straddling his legs. He groaned aloud with frustration. He could not touch her, could not even kiss her because of the cangue. She sat that way for a long time, her knees on either side of him, her eyes locked on his.
She lifted his ragged and blood-stained silk undershirt and he felt her fingers stroke the skin of his flanks. She had a small frown of concentration on her face, as if she wished to commit every contour of his body to her memory. Then she bowed her head and kissed his chest, small soft kisses, tugging gently at his skin with her teeth.
She took his face in her hands. ‘Is this what you threw your life away for?’
‘You are all I care about now.’
‘You will be disappointed. When it is over you will wonder why you risked so much. The joining of a stallion and mare is as commonplace as the wind and the rain.’
‘You know it is so much more than that. We are the same spirit, you and I.’
She shucked his felt trousers down around his hips. ‘My stallion,’ she murmured. At last she wet her fingers with her mouth, slowly, one at a time, and stroked him, gently. He gasped aloud.
‘I would stay here on these steppes for you,’ he murmured. ‘There is nothing for me to go back to.’
He felt her body pressed against him. She bowed her head beneath the wooden yoke and put her face against his chest. He thought his shoulders would break with the strain.
‘You remember the cave paintings in the desert?’ she whispered.
‘I remember.’
‘Even if we had a thousand nights and we joined in all the different ways like the lord Shiva and his wife, eventually you would grow tired of me and you would want to return to your own land.’
‘You are wrong, Khutelun. When you are old and toothless I would still sit by your side.’
‘Those are just words.’
‘When I said I would ride for you, they were not words. I said I would do anything to win you: they were not words. I jumped from the cliff into the water and I did not know if I should live or die. You had my word that I would stake my life for you and I kept it.’
She wrapped her legs around the small of his back; he felt her belly and her groin pressed against him and he groaned aloud. She kissed his shoulder, leaving the moisture of her mouth on his skin. He could not see her face. The dimensions of their lovemaking were prescribed for him by the sound of her soft breaths, the whip of the wind outside the yurt, the shadows thrown by the fire, the corona of her hair.
His hands clenched into fists.
‘How is it with your Christian women?’
‘Never like this. Never.’
‘I must believe you, if that is what you say. For myself, I have never done this.’ She leaned backwards, her hands on the carpets, raising her body and arching her torso. He tried to join with her, but the weight of the cangue prevented him.
‘Was this the moment with me for which you risked so much?’
‘It was for every moment I have till the end of my life.’
She moved down on him almost imperceptibly. He gasped aloud. ‘Dear God and all his saints . . .’ he breathed.
When she had taken all of him she wrapped her arms tightly around him. He could feel her breath on his neck, the indescribable softness of her breast against his chest. She stayed that way, barely moving, for what seemed like an eternity.
‘Please,’ he whispered.
Very gently, very slowly, she rose on to her knees, and he waited for her to move down on him again. But without warning she slipped away and their coupling was over before it had begun.
‘What are you doing?’ he gasped.
She held her face close to his, her fingers closed around him, stroking him.
‘Khutelun!’
She brushed the braids from her face. ‘I cannot take your seed. Do you wish me to carry your child when you are gone?’ Her fingers moved faster and faster. He groaned, and his body shuddered with unbearable pleasure and wordless grief. ‘This is all the gods will allow,’ she whispered. She replaced his clothes and got to her feet. There was blood streaked along her thighs. ‘You see. I can bleed a little for you, as you bled for me.’
She kissed him one last time. ‘I want you to burn for me forever,’ she whispered. She dressed quickly, and was gone. In her place came the darkness, and with it the despair of a life without a true ending, an empty hand reaching towards a fathomless sky.
CXVII
HIS GUARD WAS no more than a boy. He sat in the doorway of the yurt, holding his rusted sword in both hands. He studied Josseran with a look of sullen malevolence, trying to appear older and braver and more belligerent than he really was. Josseran pretended to sleep, watching him from under lidded eyes, biding his time.
Some time during the long night he heard the boy’s deep even breathing and saw his head fall on to his chest. This was his moment.
He tried to rise to his haunches but the weight of the cangue had cramped the muscles in his thighs and there was no feeling in his legs. The wound in his shoulder had stiffened too and when he tried to move it was as if someone had thrust a red-hot brand into the joint.
It was long minutes before he was finally able to stretch out his legs and as the circulation returned it felt like needles piercing his flesh. Finally the pain eased. He flexed his leg muscles, testing them again. Once again he tried to get to his feet, but he lost his balance, rocking back on his heels and falling against the bamboo frame of the yurt. He thought the noise would wake the young sentry but the boy snuffled in his sleep like a hog and did not stir.
Josseran staggered to his feet at his third attempt.
He stood motionless for a long time, until the pounding of the blood in his ears had subsided and he was once more sure of his balance. His knee throbbed with pain. He limped across the floor of the yurt in a lop-sided run.
At the last moment the boy woke. His eyes blinked open and he stared up at Josseran, his youthful face framed in the moonlight. Josseran dropped to his knees, at the same time forcing the cangue around in an arc, so that the edge of the great wooden board caught the boy on the side of the temple. There was a terrible crack and he slumped sideways on to the ground. His limbs twitched several times and he was still.
For all his desperation, Josseran hoped he had not killed him.
The effort of swinging the cangue had sent his neck muscles into spasm once more. He felt as if his arm had been ripped off. God’s bones! Somehow he staggered upright again. He pushed through the felt entrance flap into the darkness. It was bitingly cold and the ground was frozen hard with frost. He had on just a silk undershirt and felt trousers, not enough to keep him alive on the freezing steppe until morning. But there was nothing he could do about that. It was a choice between freezing or being trampled by Qaidu’s horses. Neither prospect held great appeal. At lea
st, he told himself, I can die on my own terms.
He ran blindly into the night, away from the camp. But within minutes he was shivering so badly that he stumbled and fell, the weight of the wooden collar jarring his neck and spine as he hit the ground.
He could not breathe for the pain.
Finally he forced himself back to his feet. He was clear of the camp now. He had wondered at the single guard they had placed at the entrance to the yurt and now he understood the reason for it. Where was there to run to? He had traded a swift Tatar execution for a slow and frozen death in the tundra. In this thin shirt he would not live the hour.
All around him was the dark steppe: no shelter, no food and no allies. He fell back to his knees, trembling with cold, his neck and shoulder racked with agony. He heard the Tatar horses on the plain, stamping their hooves in their hobbles. They had smelled his foreign scent on the wind.
He collapsed in the frozen mud, too cold and too exhausted to continue.
He was beaten.
He felt the thunder of horse’s hooves on the hard ground but he no longer had the strength to rise. He saw the blade of a sword flash in the moonlight. He twisted his head, made out the wiry frame of a Tatar horseman standing over him, the vapour of his breath on the wind, the smell of his horse.
Just let it be quick.
CXVIII
THE CANGUE SPLIT under a single downward stroke. The Tatar kicked out savagely, splintering the cangue along its length and breaking the hinge. Josseran shrugged off the terrible device, sobbing with relief. He tried to get to his feet but there was no strength left in him. He lay shivering on the frozen ground, the cold seeping into him like death.
‘I thought you were never coming,’ she said.
Khutelun?
She threw some furs at him. ‘Put these on before you freeze. There is some koumiss and dried mutton in the saddlebag of the horse. Your people are two days’ ride from here. Perhaps seven for you.’
He did not move.
‘Quickly! Before the whole tribe is awake.’ She grabbed him by his shirt, forcing him upright, and pulled the coat around his shoulders. He grunted with pain as she forced his left arm into the del. Then she hauled him to his feet and dragged him towards the horse.
‘You must hurry!’
He could feel a warm wetness on his chest, knew the shoulder wound had opened yet again. His neck muscles were rigid from the cangue, so that he could barely move his head. He was no longer certain if he had strength left for this. His knee buckled and almost gave way under him.
‘Keep the north star behind you,’ Khutelun said. ‘At daylight you will reach a broad valley. You will see a mountain in the shape of a woman lying on her back. Follow that valley and it will take you to Kashgar. Your friends are there.’
‘You are not coming with me?’
‘Why would I do that?’
She helped him into the saddle, placed the reins in his right hand.
‘I will not see you again,’ she said.
‘Do not be so sure of that.’
‘If you ever come back to these valleys again my father will kill you. Go home now, Joss-ran. Forget about me, forget you were ever here.’
‘Come with me,’ he repeated.
‘Twice now I have saved your life. What else do you want from me? Now quickly, you must hurry!’ She grabbed his hair and pulled his face towards her to kiss him. ‘I would have liked to have borne you sons,’ she said and then she slapped the pony’s rump. It spurred away into the blackness, towards the steppes and the dark massif of the mountains to the south.
Qaidu stood at the doorway of his yurt, Khutelun beside him. Nothing moved in that black and terrible cold.
‘He made his escape?’ Qaidu asked her.
‘He has a horse and provisions and furs. And he is a man of many resources.’
‘Indeed,’ Qaidu murmured. ‘What about the guard?’
‘He has recovered, though I fear he will bear the scar for the rest of his life as testament to his carelessness.’
‘I should punish him, or some will suspect I had a hand in this.’
The vapours of their breath drifted on the wind.
‘I shall curse the day he ever found his way to the Fergana Valley,’ he said.
The silence was uneasy testament to his daughter’s feelings.
‘If he had been a Person and not a barbarian, you would have married him?’
‘He was a man.’
‘I concede he had courage,’ Qaidu grunted. ‘But then one may find courage in a horse also.’
‘I had a dream last night,’ Khutelun said.
‘What was in your dream?’
‘I dreamed that I saw him again.’
‘It is impossible.’
‘It was my dream.’
Qaidu shook his head. It would not do. He could not have her moon-eyed for a barbarian. ‘You did the best thing for the clan,’ he said. ‘Now you must forget this ever happened.’
As if she ever could.
CXIX
LATE SUMMER IN Kashgar and the streets were filled with dust and flies, black swarms that crawled over the sheep’s heads and fatty lungs for sale in the street. Tajiks with beards like fine wire and slant-eyed Kirghiz cracked sunflower seeds between their teeth as they swaggered through the bazaars, or lolled on wooden divans in the chai-khanas, sipping green tea spiced with cinnamon from cracked china pots.
The market stalls groaned under the weight of the late harvest: peaches, watermelons and figs, melons, grapes and pomegranates. The alleyways were ankle deep in melon rind. But with the fruits of summer came the harbingers of winter. Donkey carts clattered through the dusty streets, loaded with bundles of twigs and logs, fuel for the fires.
There was snow already in the foothills below the Roof of the World.
Josseran opened his eyes. He was aware of a pulsing ache in his shoulder, a searing pain in his skull. His mouth was gummy and dry. As he came awake his nostrils twitched at the aromas filtering into the room: fresh-baked flat bread, charcoal, roasting meats; all the familiar smells of the bazaar.
‘So,’ a voice said, ‘you are alive.’
A face swam into his vision. William. He tried to speak but no sound came. William raised his head and brought a cup of water to his lips. It was ice cold and tasted to Josseran as delicious as wine.
‘Where . . . am I?’
‘You are not in heaven, if that is what you were expecting.’
‘When I saw you . . . I knew assuredly it was not heaven.’ He was lying on a thick bed of carpets. It was a khang, a raised brick platform heated from below by a fire, and soothingly warm on his back.
‘Where am I?’
‘We are in the fort at Kashgar. You were brought here three days ago by Tajik tribesmen. They found you half-delirious and wandering in the mountains on a Tatar horse. You have two wounds to your head and an arrow wound in your shoulder that was greatly inflamed. However, it is now mending, no thanks to these Tatars. They wanted to send in their filthy shamans to practise their sorcery on you but I dissuaded them. I said prayers for your benighted soul and I bled you. I believe my physic and God’s grace has made you well again.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Do not thank me. Now I am no longer in your debt.’ William stood up. ‘You should give thanks to God for your deliverance. I thought not to see you again.’
‘That would have disturbed you very greatly?’
William leaned closer. ‘What happened in those mountains, Templar?’
‘When my captors saw the paizah and learned I was a Christian ambassador with the sanction of Khubilai, they released me. They have great regard for the lives of envoys in these parts.’
‘Then where is the paizah?’
‘I must have dropped it.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Bandits. They attacked us hoping for profit, nothing more.’
‘I thought I saw the witch among them.’ William said.
Josseran shook his head. ‘You were mistaken,’ he said and turned his face to the window. ‘Sartaq and his Tatars have treated you well?’
‘He has not cut my throat and boiled my innards for his supper and for that I give thanks to God.’
‘I feared you had moved on to Khotan or Osh.’
‘After the ambush Sartaq ordered us to return to the fort. Since then we have remained here, behind these walls, but I have no idea why. Perhaps it was to await your safe return. Since these people cannot speak the language of civilized men and only gibber like monkeys, it is impossible for me to know. Sartaq wishes to speak with you, by the way, as soon as you are recovered.’
‘I am tired. I will see him tomorrow. For now I just need to sleep.’
‘Then I shall leave you.’ William paused at the door. ‘When they brought you here you were in a delirium. You babbled like a child.’
‘What did I say?’
‘It was something about your father,’ he said. He went out, the heavy door shutting behind him.
It was not until the next day, when Josseran was recovered enough to receive a visit from Sartaq, that he learned the real reason the Tatars had returned to the fort. After the ambush Sartaq had sent a message to Bukhara, asking the regent of the Chaghadai khanate, Organa, to reinforce his escort. While he waited at Kashgar for a response, he received a message on the yam that Organa had been deposed by Ariq Böke’s ally, Alghu, and was given orders from Khubilai himself to remain where he was until the situation was resolved.’
‘So who laid the ambush, Barbarian? Whose soldiers were they?’ When Josseran hesitated, he answered for himself: ‘Qaidu sent them.’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened to the others who were taken with you?’
‘They were executed.’
‘Did they die well?’
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