‘We shouldn’t have got stuck in the first place. We shouldn’t have been born in a time when this happens. There’s no warmth in shouldn’t haves.’
‘True enough.’ Ayto aimed a kick at the splintered wreck. ‘Poor old girl. Come on, let’s get set up before it gets any colder.’
38
The travellers came to a wall. It was only sod and earth, about the height of a man, with ditches before and behind. But it straggled off across the landscape, heading vaguely for low hills. Its meaning was clear.
Avatak stared. After all their experiences it seemed absurd to find their way blocked by a work of mere humans. ‘This wall is stupid. You could jump over it! And if I were an invading army I would just go around it, to one side or another.’
‘But this is what Cathay does,’ said Uzzia. ‘Builds walls. There has always been a tension between the nomads of the steppe and the desert, and Cathay with its farms and cities. And over history Cathay has always built walls to control the passage of the nomads, if not to exclude them altogether. Dwarfing even your great Wall, scholar, in length at least.’
Pyxeas, on the back of the mule, snorted. ‘But not matching ours in fitness for purpose. Ask Genghis Khan about that.’
They followed the wall south until they came to a shabby wooden gate. Two soldiers watched as they approached. Wearing the Mongols’ leather armour they were scruffy, dirty, and one had dried soup dribbled down his chest plate. But they had weapons, they were soldiers, and they were manning the wall.
Uzzia went forward to negotiate with the guards. She tried one dialect after another. Their responses were hostile rasps.
She came back to her party. ‘Basically their orders are not to let anybody else into Cathay, not ever again. Because Cathay is full, and there is famine and plague. Orders of the Khan. They speak about incursions all along the frontier. The Khan is sending troops to the north and west to keep down his own wilder cousins. It sounds like it’s a sink of madness out there, where one side builds up a wall only for the other to smash it down again. What this means is that it’s going to be expensive to get past these fellows. Your saving the world is costing me a lot of money, scholar.’
‘Then let me deal with it,’ Pyxeas snapped, impatient. ‘Help me down, Avatak.’ The scholar rummaged in the packs until he pulled out the wreck of his oracle — just the frame, broken open, the little sun and moon snapped off. Now Pyxeas prised at the back of the gadget’s face until a panel popped open, and a small golden plaque fell out into the old man’s hand. Pyxeas handed the ruined oracle back to Avatak. ‘Put this away.’
Then, limping, he approached the guards, who watched him curiously. ‘Here! You fellows at the gate! My name is Pyxeas, scholar of Northland, and no doubt you will recognise this.’ He held up the plaque.
He had spoken in his own tongue. The guards obviously understood not a word. But they stared at the golden plaque, took it, read words inscribed there, their lips moving. They handed the plaque back. They both bowed, murmuring what sounded like apologies, and stood back, opening the barrier as they went.
Uzzia was astonished. ‘How did you do that? Give me that.’ She took the golden disc and studied it.
‘That is my paiza, which is the Cathay word for it; the Mongols call it a gerega. The words are written in Mongol and Cathay scripts. It is a right of passage, a guarantee of safety, given me by the great Khan himself. Not the present incumbent — a predecessor. My colleagues in Daidu requested this, and one of them carried it to Northland for me, some years ago. Are you surprised that I possess such a thing, trader? Are you surprised that I, a Northlander scholar, am held in such esteem, even though I have never visited Cathay before? I tell you they are eager to meet me there, just as I am eager to see them. I suggest we get on with the journey. What do you say?’
She handed back the paiza. ‘Lead the way.’
Once past the wall they came to a substantial community, a sprawling town dominated by another monastery cut into a cliff. In the end they stayed a couple of nights.
The paiza won them food and lodging, in a shabby mud-and-straw hut. The people of the lower town, and, once, one of the monks, brought them food and drink, rather stringy mutton, bitter fruit. Uzzia, urged by Pyxeas, tried to pay, for it was clear these people had little enough of their own. But the townsfolk were evidently terrified by the authority of the Khan and would have none of it.
It was a relief for Avatak to let the saddle-soreness seep out of his thighs. But he found it impossible to sleep indoors, in a box of mud. Something in him was drawn back to the huge emptiness of the desert, and perhaps always would be. So he crept out of the house, to a small kitchen garden at the back, and laid out his roll under the stars.
The second night Uzzia came out to find him there. She crouched over him, her smile shadowed. ‘You’ve got an invitation.’
‘From who?’
‘From the woman in the house next door. Or rather, her husband. I know you’ve noticed her — she’s noticed you.’
Avatak knew who she meant. The woman, a good few years older than him, was taller, stockier than most in this country. She had a strong face with a sly grin, and broad hips, and a bust that was heavy, if not firm. She filled her robes well as she went about her chores.
‘I know how that type appeals to young men like you. An older woman, evidently fertile, knows her way around a bed — seems to draw the seed out of you just by looking at you.’
‘What does she want with me?’
‘What do you think?’
‘But you said, the husband-’
‘It is their way, in this country,’ she said. ‘To invite travellers into the beds of the women. This is a small place and isolated; there are probably people here who will live and die never travelling as far as the next village. This is their way to make babies who are not the cousins of everybody else. Do you see?’
‘Oh.’
‘You would be doing them a favour. You will be asked to leave a token, a present, to prove that the deed has been done.’ She sighed. ‘I remember when you would be asked for a flower, a bit of cheap jewellery. Now they ask for food, which changes the whole nature of the transaction, doesn’t it? But these are harder times. Well. We have the food, or can buy it. What do you say?’
He thought about the woman, and felt a warm pressure in his loins. But he thought of his betrothed, and his lover, in far countries. And he glanced up at the cold, unmoving stars.
‘What’s wrong? Are you missing your betrothed?’
‘Not that.’ He lacked the language to express how he felt. ‘The desert.’
‘Hmm. I’ve seen this before. All right. But better to lose your soul between the thighs of a woman than to the emptiness out there. I will say you’re ill, so nobody’s feelings are hurt. May I give her the food anyway?’
‘If you wish.’
‘Of course in my arms she would explode like a Northlander emptor. But I cannot give her a baby, and, for this one night, that is my deepest regret. Goodnight, Coldlander.’ She bent, kissed his forehead, and passed into the night.
So they moved on, leaving behind fearful guards and wombs not impregnated, and with a fresh horse, new blankets and saddles, and their surly mule trotting behind.
They headed ever east, into the Mongol empire.
Avatak’s feet, and his arse when he rode the horse, noted the better surface of the trail here, a straight and narrow track that arrowed to the east. But Pyxeas bewailed its condition. ‘This is one of the Khan’s post roads. He united his empire, and all of Asia, with roads straight and fast and true so that messengers could cross a continent as fast as a thought crackles through your small head, Coldlander. Look at it now! Covered in dust from this desiccating farmland all around, and with the trees cut down — mighty trees they were, purposefully planted along the route so a rider could never lose his way no matter what the weather — cut down for some peasant’s firewood, no doubt!’