The barbarians stand outlined against the sky above us. There is the beating of my heart, the heaving of the horses, the moan of the wind, and no other sound. We have crossed the limits of the Empire. It is not a moment to take lightly.
I help the girl from her horse. "Listen carefully," I say. "I will take you up the slope and you can speak to them. Bring your sticks, the ground is loose, there is no other way up. When you have spoken you can decide what you want to do. If you want to go with them, if they will see you back to your family, go with them. If you decide to come back with us, you can come back with us. Do you understand? I am not forcing you."
She nods. She is very nervous.
With an arm around her I help her up the pebbly slope. The barbarians do not stir. I count three of the long-barrelled muskets; otherwise they bear the short bows I am familiar with. As we reach the crest they back away slightly.
"Can you see them?" I say, panting.
She turns her head in that odd unmotivated way. "Not well," she says.
"Blind: what is the word for blind?"
She tells me. I address the barbarians. "Blind," I say, touching my eyelids. They make no response. The gun resting between the pony's ears still points at me. Its owner's eyes glint merrily. The silence lengthens.
"Speak to them," I tell her. "Tell them why we are here. Tell them your story. Tell them the truth."
She looks sideways at me and gives a little smile. "You really want me to tell them the truth?"
"Tell them the truth. What else is there to tell?"
The smile does not leave her lips. She shakes her head, keeps her silence.
"Tell them what you like. Only, now that I have brought you back, as far as I can, I wish to ask you very clearly to return to the town with me. Of your own choice." I grip her arm. "Do you understand me? That is what I want."
"Why?" The word falls with deathly softness from her lips. She knows that it confounds me, has confounded me from the beginning. The man with the gun advances slowly until he is almost upon us. She shakes her head. "No. I do not want to go back to that place."
I scramble down the slope. "Light a fire, brew tea, we will stop here," I tell the men. From above the soft cascade of the girl's speech reaches me broken by the gusting of the wind. She leans on her two sticks, the horsemen dismounting and clustering around her. I cannot make out a word. "What a waste," I think: "she could have spent those long empty evenings teaching me her tongue! Too late now."
From my saddlebag I bring out the two silver platters I have carried across the desert. I take the bolt of silk out of its wrapping. "I would like you to have these," I say. I guide her hand so that she can feel the softness of the silk, the chasing on the platters, fishes and leaves interlaced. I have also brought her little bundle. What it contains I do not know. I lay it on the ground. "Will they take you all the way?"
She nods. "He says by mid-summer. He says he wants a horse too. For me."
"Tell him we have a long hard road before us. Our horses are in a bad way, as he can see for himself. Ask if we cannot buy horses from them instead. Say we will pay in silver."
She interprets to the old man while I wait. His companions have dismounted but he still sits his horse, the enormous old gun on its strap over his back. Stirrups, saddle, bridle, reins: no metal, but bone and fire-hardened wood sewn with gut, lashed with thongs. Bodies clothed in wool and the hides of animals and nourished from infancy on meat and milk, foreign to the suave touch of cotton, the virtues of the placid grains and fruits: these are the people being pushed off the plains into the mountains by the spread of Empire. I have never before met northerners on their own ground on equal terms: the barbarians I am familiar with are those who visit the oasis to barter, and the few who make their camp along the river, and Joll's miserable captives. What an occasion and what a shame too to be here today! One day my successors will be making collections of the artifacts of these people, arrowheads, carved knife-handles, wooden dishes, to display beside my birds' eggs and calligraphic riddles. And here I am patching up relations between the men of the future and the men of the past, returning, with apologies, a body we have sucked dry-a go-between, a jackal of Empire in sheep's clothing!
"He says no."
I take one of the little silver bars from my bag and hold it up to him. "Say this is for one horse."
He leans down, takes the glittering bar, and carefully bites it; then it disappears into his coat.
"He says no. The silver is for the horse he does not take. He does not take my horse, he takes the silver instead."
I almost lose my temper; but what good will haggling do? She is going, she is almost gone. This is the last time to look on her clearly face to face, to scrutinize the motions of my heart, to try to understand who she really is: hereafter, I know, I will begin to re-form her out of my repertoire of memories according to my questionable desires. I touch her cheek, take her hand. On this bleak hillside in mid-morning I can find no trace in myself of that stupefied eroticism that used to draw me night after night to her body or even of the comradely affection of the road. There is only a blankness, and desolation that there has to be such blankness. When I tighten my grip on her hand there is no answer. I see only too clearly what I see: a stocky girl with a broad mouth and hair cut in a fringe across her forehead staring over my shoulder into the sky; a stranger; a visitor from strange parts now on her way home after a less than happy visit. "Goodbye," I say. "Goodbye," she says. There is no more life in her voice than in mine. I begin to climb down the slope; by the time I reach the bottom they have taken the sticks from her and are helping her on to a pony.
As far as one can ever be sure, spring has come. The air is balmy, the green tips of new grass-shoots are beginning to push out here and there, flurries of desert-quail chase before us. If we had left the oasis now rather than two weeks ago we would have travelled faster and not have risked our lives. On the other hand, would we have been lucky enough to find the barbarians? This very day, I am sure, they are folding their tents, packing their carts, bringing their flocks under the whip for the spring migrations. I was not wrong to take the risk, though I know the men blame me. ("Bringing us out here in winter!" I imagine them saying. "We should never have agreed!" And what must they think now that they realize they were not part of an embassy to the barbarians as I hinted but simply an escort for a woman, a leftover barbarian prisoner, a person of no account, the Magistrate's slut?)
We try to retrace our old route as closely as possible, relying on the star-sightings I have been careful to plot. The wind is behind us, the weather is warmer, the horses' loads are lighter, we know where we are, there is no reason why we should not travel fast. But at the first night's stop there is a setback. I am called to the campfire where one of the young soldiers sits dejectedly with his face in his hands. His boots are off, his footcloths unwrapped.
"Look at his foot, sir," says our guide.