Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) (24 page)

Johanna kept North Wind behind her on the trail and picketed near them every night. He was better than a muezzin at sounding the call if someone smelling unfamiliar approached their camp, but she noticed that he ate less than he was used to, and drank every bucket of water dry.

They were all drinking as much water as they could find. It never seemed enough. One morning Johanna noticed that the others’ voices were beginning to sound high and thin and somehow from a distance, even if they were standing right in front of her. Wu Li had written of this phenomenon in his book, but it was one thing to read of it happening to other people, and another and very disconcerting thing to experience in person.

Then, one day, she looked off the trail and beheld a sheep such as she had never seen before. He was very fat and bore a pair of enormous, curling horns that she recognized as the precursors of bowls she had seen in Kashgar. He baa’ed at her and bounded away, but they saw more and more of them as they climbed higher. That night they dined on fresh meat for the first time since they entered the mountains. Later that evening they also paid an extortionate amount to the herder to whom the sheep had belonged, who appeared, indignant and wrathful, at the very moment they were cracking the last of the bones for the marrow.

“Excellent timing,” Jaufre murmured, and Johanna noticed he added a little to the requested sum. He saw her looking and grinned. “I admire professionalism in any endeavor.”

And then the next morning Johanna woke to light, or at least more light than she had become accustomed to over the past month. The trail had begun to level out, and the tall evergreens gave reluctant way to dells of greensward, and then to pasture. They were able to ride again, and Jaufre unhitched Hari’s donkey from the lead camel and Hari rode once more with his face upturned to the sun.

“Is this heaven, old man?” Jaufre said.

He smiled without opening his eyes. “It is very nearly nirvana itself, young master.” proving that even holy men were subject to the ill humors of the trail.

Spirits rose up and down the line of camels, and soon Félicien had his lute out and was singing a bawdy song about a brute of a husband with a beautiful young wife and a handsome young lover, and the old hag down the village who spoiled everyone’s fun. He sang it a second time in Mongol and a third time in Persian, and again in Frankish. He was out of breath and his voice didn’t reach far but by the end they could hear snatches of chorus coming at them from up and down the line of camels.

Finally there came one evening when they camped at the edge of a fine, blessedly level pastureland that seemed to extend beyond the horizon, the rough trails and mountain ridges and the dark claustrophobia of the encroaching evergreens only a threatening green wall at their back. Tall mountains lined the horizon on every side with sharp, menacing peaks clad in white, but next to their campsite there was a clear lake fed by a bubbling stream, and even the fact that their fires burned small and sullen and threw off no heat whatsoever was not enough to stem the party’s returning vitality. They had fresh meat again that night, and were ready when the sheep’s owner materialized very nearly right out of the grass at their feet, rending his beard and crying out for redress. He got it, and a mug of lukewarm tea well sweetened with honey to send him on his way rejoicing.

Fatima and Azar joined them at their fire, Azar bringing his tambour and Fatima her finger cymbals. No one was in very good voice but they could gasp out the lyrics. It was sort of like poetry, Shasha said later, if poetry was chanted out to the rhythm of a drum and the clash of cymbals.

The sheik and his son joined them, too, solemn but attentive, light from the diminutive fire casting long shadows on their faces. A waxing moon rose above the horizon. Fatima and Azar disappeared arm in arm, whispering and giggling. Firas sat next to Shasha, dignified and silent, while she mended a large tear in one of Jaufre’s tunics by the dim light of the campfire.

The sheik stirred. “Jaufre of Cambaluc, I would renew my offer to buy your horse.”

“You do me too much honor, Sheik Mohammed,” Jaufre said. “I am desolated to have to repeat my refusal.”

From his picket nearby, North Wind whickered.

“Five thousand bezants,” the sheik said, which was quite an advance on his last offer, and had the added advantage of being currency they wouldn’t have to change when they arrived at last at the shores of the Middle Sea. They could tell by his expression he didn’t see how they could refuse it.

Firas bent forward to look around Shasha, courteous and perfectly polite. “I believe you heard the young sir’s answer, effendi.”

The sheik was silenced, and seemed to sigh. He said something to his son in a low voice none of them caught and rose to his feet. “Then I must bid you goodnight.” He sketched a small nod that was almost a bow in their general direction, and strode off. With his elaborate headdress and his sweeping skirts, he always looked like he was leading a parade.

His son paused for a moment, his eyes on Johanna, as happened far too often for Jaufre’s taste, and for Shasha’s too, for that matter. “You will not reconsider?”

“I cannot, even if I would, sir,” Johanna said, patiently for her. “If I sold him to your father I would be cheating him, because North Wind will not stay where I am not.”

His dark eyes held hers for a long moment. “It is as you wish,” he said, and turned to follow his father.

“It is as it is,” Johanna said. “They’ll have two foals out of the Wind, why do they keep asking for him as well?”

“Who wouldn’t?” Félicien said cheerfully, and got to his feet. “I’m for bed. How long to cross this plateau, Johanna?”

“Twelve days, my father said,” Johanna said.

“A quarter the distance, and it’s flat,” the goliard said with immense satisfaction.

Jaufre was still staring at the place where the sheik had sat. Johanna nudged him. “What is it?”

“I don’t like his insistence on buying North Wind,” he said, his mouth a hard line.

“He is very persistent,” Johanna said, stretching her arms and yawning.

“It’s more than that,” Jaufre said.

Unexpectedly, Firas said, “I agree with you, young sir. We should keep a close watch on the horse.”

Johanna laughed in mid-yawn. “I’d pay good money for a chance to watch someone try to steal North Wind.”

She got up. Shasha assembled her mending and rose to her feet. “I, too, am uneasy,” she said.

Firas looked at Jaufre. “You take the first watch, and then wake me.”

Jaufre nodded.

“Thank you both for taking such good care of my horse,” Johanna said with a mock bow. “Whether he needs it or not.”

AFTER SO LONG TOILING
up and up and farther up again, the rolling grassland was a positive luxury. The season was well into fall but the weather held and sunny day succeeded sunny day, although the sky seemed oddly leeched of color. There was fodder to spare for the pack and the riding animals, and plenty of water from snow trickling down from the high mountains, which reared up, jagged and forbidding, all around them.

“The roof of the world,” Johanna said.

Jaufre, a practical man, stretched his hand up as if to touch it. “It’s as if we are traveling beneath a clear dome.”

They moved quickly now, all alone on this vast expanse of tall grasses, for it was late for them to be making this journey. They knew they were one good storm away from wading through snow piled as high as a camel’s hump, and there was still a steep trail to descend on the other side of the high plain before they reached an altitude where the wind did not bite into one like a sharp knife.

By using every moment of daylight available to them, they made the top of the pass just after dark on the eleventh day, and everyone was too tired to do much more than wash down a handful of dried fruits and nuts and roll themselves into their blankets. They didn’t even bother pitching the yurts, sleeping instead beneath that pale, open sky.

Sometime before dawn something woke Jaufre. The camp was silent but for the occasional grunts and groans of the livestock. There was no smell of woodsmoke so he was awake even before the cooks. Wide awake, and fully alert. Tense, even, although he could not immediately identify any reason why.

He raised his head. Johanna, Shasha, Félicien and Hari were all sleeping quietly.

Firas was missing, his bedroll tossed to one side, barely visible in the bleached light only now beginning to illuminate the eastern horizon.

Moving quietly, Jaufre got to his feet. He felt for his father’s sword and strapped it to his back. He walked a short distance away to relieve himself, washed his face and hands in a pool of water just beginning to form a skin of ice, and went to check on North Wind. The great white beast was sleeping, strapped in a thick felt blanket. Jaufre felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. As tired as she must have been last night, Johanna had still first attended to North Wind. He ran his hand down North Wind’s neck, and noticed that the big horse had lost some weight during their journey up and over the Roof of the World. The sooner they got back to sea level and a more civilized speed of travel, the better for them all. Jaufre was looking forward to the baths in Kerman.

There was a whisper of sound and something struck the back of his head very hard. The last thing he heard was an outraged whinny from North Wind.

He woke for the second time that morning from a ferocious headache that seemed to center right in the middle of his forehead. He blinked dazedly at the sky.

“Jaufre?” Shasha’s voice was welcome but very loud. He winced.

“Can you sit up?”

He didn’t know if he could. Hands tugged at him. Oh well, if he must. He sat up and vomited immediately, although there was very little in his stomach given that he had not broken his fast that morning. “What happened?” he said, blinking. Shasha’s face blurred into two Shashas and then one again.

“Can you stand?”

He thought about it while listening to try to see what was going on beyond his currently lamentable range of vision. “If I have help.”

She took one arm and someone else took his other arm. He recognized him. Félicien. Good. He was on his feet again. Also good, although his balance seemed to be questioning the vertical in a way it never had before. “Where is Firas?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s happening?”

“Look.”

“What?”

Shasha’s voice had never sounded so grim. “Look.”

He blinked again. His vision cleared finally. He immediately wished it hadn’t.

There was a hand, an arm, a leg, neatly severed from their bodies. He heard cries, cut off abruptly. Hard-faced men with bloodied swords stood in a circle around a group of people. He recognized Fatima’s voice. She was screaming out Azar’s name.

In the center of the circle Johanna stood alone, facing Gokudo. In one hand he held his naginata. He had Jaufre’s father’s sword strapped to his back and Johanna’s purse now fastened to his belt. “As we agreed,” he said to the sheik. “The horse is yours. The girl is mine,” He grabbed Johanna’s arm.

“No, she is not!” she said, and yanked free.

He grabbed her again and this time she screamed as loudly as she could. “North Wind! To me! North Wind!”

North Wind answered her loudly and there was the sound of trampling hooves and men’s curses, but the sheik had evidently enough men to restrain even North Wind.

The sheik’s son said, “Father.”

The sheik made a motion with his hand. “A bargain is a bargain, my son.” His son was silenced. His eyes met Jaufre’s.

You die first, Jaufre thought.

Farhad reddened and dropped his eyes.

Gokudo began to drag Johanna away, a mistake, because she got her feet under her and tripped him. He almost fell and she was three steps away and moving fast when he caught her again. She fastened her teeth in his arm, and he gasped involuntarily. His face congested with fury and he hit her, brutally hard, knocking her teeth loose from his arm. She took immediately advantage of her mouth being free again. “North Wind! North Wind! To me!”