“We did not expect to confound you, Benjamin,” Feronantus explained. “We only hoped to become invisible to the dull-eyed so that our passage would not be remembered or hindered.”
“It is a good strategy,” the trader nodded. “When you did not arrive at the caravanserai as immediately as we had planned, I suspected your mission had waylaid you. When the survivors of your encounter with the jaghun started to limp through, I knew you would not dare to meet me there. Fortunately, knowing your companion,” he glanced at Cnan, “I suspected you might be able to find this place.
He slapped Raphael on the shoulder. “Oh, but I have been enjoying the wild tales that have preceded you. I have heard a number of stories about Western devils rising out of darkness, spitting fire, and walking across water.”
Raphael laughed. “I suspect the last may be overly embellished.”
“It was not my place to dissuade these people of the errors in their stories. I am but a humble trader,” Benjamin said. “I would not dream of interfering with the fabrication of local legends.”
“What of Graymane?” Feronantus asked. “The one called Alchiq.”
“An elusive ghost, that one.” Benjamin’s face lost some of its levity. “As I came east, I made inquiries and heard very little. The few who spoke of him tended to whisper their rumors, as if they were worried he might hear them. Though I cannot imagine how, as everyone agreed that he was hurrying east, leaving a trail of dead horses in his wake. He asked many questions too as he rode-too many, in my opinion. He heard few satisfactory answers, which have led others to wonder about the cause of his ferocious curiosity.”
“How many days ahead of us?” Feronantus asked.
“Enough.”
“Aye,” Feronantus sighed. He raised his eyes toward the impressive spire of the rock. “We will rest and resupply tonight; tomorrow, we will acquire fresh horses and ride on. Friend Benjamin, I would ask a boon of you. We had hoped to utilize your expertise on our journey, sheltering ourselves in the midst of your caravan, but I fear your need to stop and trade will only hinder our pace. Events, I am afraid to admit, have left us bereft of not only one of our numbers but also of time. We must get to the Khagan before Alchiq can reach and warn him. If we cannot beat him there, we must hope that his warning is delayed or otherwise ignored. Otherwise…”
“Yes,” Benjamin mused, resting a finger on his lips. “I see your predicament. My caravan can offer you more invisibility than you already possess, but it will, alas, move at a rate that will not be to your liking. If I were to abandon my cargo to one of my caravan masters, he would, most likely, rob me blind and leave my camels in Samarkand.” He shook his head. “Hardly a suitable end to a trade caravan that has gone back and forth along the Silk Road for nearly three generations.”
Feronantus said nothing, and Cnan leaned forward to scratch her horse along its mane. She-and the rest of the company-had become accustomed to their leader’s long silences. It was rarely due to an extended bout of thinking on Feronantus’s part, but more for the sake of others in the conversation. Feronantus had already considered, rejected, and postulated several possible solutions, and in his mind he had already settled on the most suitable answer. He was simply waiting for the rest of them to come to the same conclusion.
Cnan found her own readiness to follow Feronantus’s conclusions without convoluted mental peregrinations of her own both comforting and unsettling. She was allowing herself to become complacent with the company, letting them do her thinking for her.
“No decision need be made immediately,” Benjamin said. “Come. Let us eat and rest. We have much to discuss before the morning.” He beckoned to the company as he strode toward his camp.
Cnan grinned. Benjamin was a very adroit trader. He had neatly avoided Feronantus’s trap.
Raphael had never seen a land as flat and inhospitable as the steppe. Scoured clean by the wind, the landscape east of the river where they had fought Alchiq’s jaghun had been brutal in its emptiness, as if this were a land abandoned by God. There were animals and plants that thrived on the endless plain, enough that a desperate party could sustain itself, but such a life was spent being cold, miserable, and constantly hungry.
According to Cnan, it was only going to get worse until they reached the Mongolian Plateau on the other side of several mountain ranges.
Raphael doubted the rest of the company were familiar with Herodotus and Pliny, ancient historians who had tried to make sense of the myriad of travelers’ tales that described the distant edges of the known world. Alexander had used Herodotus’s Histories as his map of the East, and the Macedonian conqueror redrew all of the known maps by the time of his death. Pliny, hundreds of years later, tried to make further sense of the tangled histories of the peoples encompassed by Alexander’s reach, but he never traveled to all of the places that he wrote about.
It struck him Raphael as both strange and marvelous that he, a bastard born in the Levant and raised in Al-Andalus, was seeing more of the world than either Herodotus or Pliny. Both had written of a land called Hyperborea, where the north wind lived in a vast cave. They repeated stories of one-eyed giants and gryphons, forever at war with one another, though it was difficult to see what was worth fighting about on these barren steppes.
As the company settled itself following a simple feast (one that was mouth-wateringly delicious in comparison with their diet of salted meat and dried berries over the last few weeks), Raphael took it upon himself to investigate the rock. Perhaps, he reasoned, I might find some gryphon feathers.
The rock was a mystery, a prominent landmark in a land that had none. It was shaped like a sundial’s gnomon, oriented east to west with the higher end in the east. It cast a significant shadow, and were they staying a day or two more, Raphael would have wanted to scale it. He was intrigued by the allure of the view from its pointed peak. How far could he see from the prow of this rocky ship? Who else had been up there, and had they left any markings for later travelers to decipher?
Boreas may have smoothed the sharp edges of the rock, but there were still narrow channels cut in the limestone as if from water (leading Raphael to speculate that the weather had been vastly different in this region once) as well as pockets and divots filled with twigs and down from generations of nesting birds. Much like an oasis in the desert, the rock offered shelter and solace, providing a place where men and animals could pretend the surrounding land was not intolerably harsh.
Benjamin’s camp was situated on the southern side, and Raphael hiked around the thicker end of the rock, mainly to see the other side. It was the same as the other, though at this time of year, the shadows were longer. He clambered across the rough scree and laid his hands on the rock directly, marveling at how cool the stone was to the touch. Letting his right hand rest on the rock, he walked east, idly wondering if he could circumnavigate the rock before nightfall. He chided himself on such frivolous thinking. As the day cooled, there might be beasts that would come out of hiding to hunt, and he was out of earshot of the camp.
He paused, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword as he caught sight of movement ahead of him. He relaxed as he recognized Cnan’s shape, but his curiosity was immediately piqued as he wondered what she was doing. Her posture suggested she was looking for something.