Imperial Fire

XXVIII

Pomegranate groves and fields of cotton surrounded Khotan, a walled town on the eastern frontier of the Karakhanid empire. It was an important Silk Road trading centre, famed for the quality of its silks and for the green and white jadestone gathered by prospectors in the two rivers that watered the oasis. After settling into the caravanserai, the expedition went into town — Hauk and his Vikings in search of precious nephrite jade, Aiken and Hero to visit an important madrasah. Cities didn’t hold much allure for Wayland and he remained behind. He tended to agree with the Turkmen who said that men who built walls to protect themselves didn’t realise that they were creating prisons.

Raucous cries at evening drew him into the courtyard. Hauk swayed past on horseback, drunk on wine.

‘Feast your eyes on this,’ he said in a slurred voice, holding out a chunk of pale mineral.

‘It looks like a shiny lump of rock.’

Hauk took a long pull from a bottle and hiccupped. ‘That’s all you know.’ He slapped the stone. ‘It’s white jade. Not any old white jade. It’s mutton-fat jade. Only the Chinese emperor is allowed to wear it. Forget the carpets we had to leave behind in Samarkand.’ He slapped the stone again, almost unseating himself. ‘This, my friend, will make me rich if I don’t make another purchase between here and China.’

‘Let me take a look,’ said Shennu, appearing out of the dusk. The Sogdian hefted the lump, held it against the light and rapped it with a pebble. Wayland knew what he was going to say before he said it.

‘You’ve been cheated. It’s serpentine from Afghanistan.’

‘What!’ Hauk bellowed. He snatched at the stone, toppled into the dust and staggered to his feet. ‘Come on, men. We’re going back to the bazaar. I’ll cut the thieving bastard’s liver out.’

Vallon blocked his path. ‘Close the gates,’ he ordered.

Hauk fumbled for his sword. ‘Out of my way.’

Vallon stood his ground and one of Hauk’s more sober lieutenants led the Viking struggling and swearing to his quarters. Wayland hadn’t seen this side of Hauk before and it fed his forebodings. He returned to his cell and was meditating on this and other matters when someone tapped on the door.

‘It’s me. Wulfstan.’

Wayland let him in and fumbled a lamp alight. Wulfstan held what looked like a bolt of whitish cloth in his hands.

‘You’ll never guess what this is,’ he said.

Wayland stroked the textile. It felt cold, heavy and inert. ‘Some kind of coarse silk?’

‘Salamander skin, born in fire and immune to flame.’

‘Hauk showed me his jade. A fool’s born every moment.’

‘All right, it’s not salamander skin. That was just the merchant’s patter. Shennu says it’s a textile spun from rock fibres. The Greeks call it asbestos, meaning “pure” or “unquenchable”. Something like that. It’s used to make royal burial shrouds.’ Wulfstan picked up the lamp and held its flame to the fabric. The material didn’t burn or melt or smoulder. When he took the flame away, it left only a sooty halo. Wulfstan brushed the lampblack away.

‘You see? Flame doesn’t harm it. The hotter the fire, the brighter the fabric.’

‘Are you planning to wear it for your funeral?’

‘Don’t talk soft. I was thinking it might provide protection against Greek Fire. You know what a fickle friend that can be.’

Wayland suppressed a yawn. ‘You made a better bargain than Hauk struck.’

Wulfstan stowed the material under one arm. ‘I didn’t call on you just to show my salamander skin. Hero told me that you mean to quit. That ain’t no surprise. I’ve seen you moping ever since we left Bukhara.’

‘Leave, not quit. I nearly went my own path at Kashgar, where a turning leads south to Afghanistan.’

‘Don’t take it. If the general’s too proud to admit it, I ain’t. We need you.’

‘I suspect Hero put you up to this.’

‘No, he didn’t. It’s the talk of the caravan.’

Wayland lay on his pallet after Wulfstan had left. He didn’t latch the entrance and a breeze slapped the door against its hinges. Zuleyka appeared in the gap, her gown rippling against her body. She beckoned.

‘Come away now. We must leave soon.’

Wayland jerked awake to find the doorway dark and empty.

Next day he explored Khotan. The Muslim Karakhanids had captured it less than a century before and were building mosques on the levelled foundations of Buddhist temples and monasteries. It was still a frontier town, though. Walking down one of the wider streets, Wayland gave way to a mob of Tibetans swinging along like pirates on shore leave — big, black-haired ruffians wearing boat-shaped felt boots and homespun red or black gowns hanging in pleats below the waist, baggy right sleeves dangling loose to leave unwashed arms and chests exposed. Crudely forged swords jostled at their hips and chunky coral and turquoise necklaces chinked against silver amulets containing charms certified by lamas. The Tibetans examined the blue-eyed stranger with unabashed curiosity and went on their way with earth-shaking tread.

In the next street he passed a depot where a Chinese overseer with hands tucked into the sleeves of his gown looked on while a gang of pigtailed menials in short black jackets and baggy trousers gathered at the ankles stacked loads for a caravan. Neither master nor workmen paid him a second glance.

Negotiating a bazaar, Wayland passed through the rancid butchers’ quarter, fanning away flies when something glimpsed to his left swung him round. There on the pestilential counter, legs trussed and fledgling wings brailed, lay a young eagle.

‘What on earth…?’

‘You want to buy?’

‘Where did you get it?’

The butcher pointed towards the Kun Lun range. ‘Shepherds took it from its nest in the mountains.’ He scooped it up. ‘Good price.’

When he set it back down, it fell over before squatting right way up, propped on its elbows with its legs stuck out, head sunk on its balled-up feet. Wayland’s lips curled. ‘Why would anyone buy an eagle in that condition?’

‘For soup.’

‘You eat eagles?’

Like many citizens of Khotan, the vendor was afflicted by goitre. ‘Oh yes, sir. Berkut meat makes men strong.’

Wayland exhaled a fluffing breath and studied the creature. It was close to death, its mouth agape, indifferent to the flies walking over its slitted eyes.

‘What have you been feeding it on?’

‘Bread.’

‘Dear God.’

‘Excuse me?’

Wayland stifled his anger. ‘When did the shepherds take it?’

The butcher raised his shoulders. ‘One week perhaps.’

‘How long have you had it?’

‘Fresh this morning.’

Wayland swung away. ‘It will be dead before the day is out.’

‘For you, one solidus.’

Wayland halted despite himself. The butcher cocked his head like a bird about to spear a worm.

‘Nobody in their right mind would pay that much for carrion.’

‘You belong to the Greek caravan. I hear you spend gold coins as if they were horn buttons.’ The butcher held up a finger as if bestowing a benediction. ‘One solidus.’

‘To hell with you.’

‘Not so fast, my friend. Let us talk. Let us bargain. We’re gentlemen.’

Wayland stabbed a finger at the eagle. ‘I’ll give you a dirham just to save it from the cooking pot.’

The butcher clapped his hands at an attentive urchin. ‘Chai for our honoured client. Or perhaps the gentleman would prefer wine. Please, sir. Step this way.’

Wayland entered the caravanserai cradling the sickly foundling, two live cockerels dangling around his neck. Lucas spotted him and hurried over.

‘A young eagle, by heaven.’

‘Find Hero and ask him for some eye balm.’

Wayland barged into his quarters and dumped the eagle on the ground. Even for a tenth of the asking price — cockerels included — the bird was worthless. What galled him was the knowledge that if the bird had been healthy, Sultan Suleyman’s falconers would have paid as much as they would have laid out for a prize stallion. The berkut was the largest race of golden eagle, capable of killing gazelles, foxes and even wolves. Under Wayland’s quizzing, the butcher had told him that no one in the Khotan oasis practised falconry.

Wayland’s dog glanced at him, requesting permission to investigate the eaglet. It sniffed the soiled plumage, wrinkled its nose and backed off.

‘I know,’ Wayland said.

Lucas crashed in with Hero’s potions and watched while Wayland swabbed the eagle’s eyes.

‘That doesn’t look like a well bird,’ he said.

‘Cut one of the cockerel’s throats and collect the blood. Fetch fresh water.’

Zuleyka entered. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Step out of my light. No, stay. I might need your help.’

‘Here,’ Lucas said, offering Wayland a bowl of warm blood.

‘Grip her by the shoulders. Not too tight.’

Lucas clasped the eagle’s wing butts. ‘How do you know it’s a “she”?’

‘Because she is,’ Wayland said.

He took from his bag of hawking furniture a thin gut tube and a horn funnel.

‘Hold her beak open,’ he told Zuleyka.

‘She might bite me.’

‘She’s only a baby.’

Zuleyka prised the mouth apart. The eagle gave a pathetic mew and seemed to collapse from within.

‘I think it’s dead,’ Lucas whispered.

Wayland inserted the tube above the eagle’s pallid tongue, eased it down into its crop and fitted the funnel to the free end. He half-filled it with diluted blood, jiggled the tube and registered the level of the liquid sink.

‘If you ask me, you’re wasting your time,’ Lucas said.

‘You waste yours. I’ll waste mine.’

Drop by drop Wayland emptied the funnel. He swayed back and scrubbed his brow with his forearm. ‘Find a basket.’

Zuleyka left and the dog followed her.

Wayland slumped on a stool and looked at his purchase. The kindest thing would be to wring its neck.

‘Anything else I can do?’ Lucas said.

‘No. Thank you for your assistance.’

‘Call if you need me.’

‘Yes,’ Wayland said. ‘There is something you can do. You can end this nonsense with Vallon.’

Lucas cramped up. ‘I tried. I requested an audience a few nights ago and he wouldn’t admit me.’

‘You’re not an ambassador seeking admission to a foreign court. You’re his son. Just say the words or let me say them for you.’

‘Aah,’ Lucas groaned. ‘It’s not as easy as you think. Imagine yourself in Vallon’s place. What sort of reception would you give to a son you gave up for dead ten years ago?’

They were strung on each other’s stares when Zuleyka returned with a fleece-lined wicker basket. Wayland placed the eaglet in the cradle and levelled his gaze at Lucas.

‘The eagle will be dead by dawn. Life is fleeting. We have only one chance to cast our shadows against the sun. The previous expedition was wiped out between here and the next oasis. When I’m gone, nobody else will know who you are.’

‘You gone?’

Zuleyka stamped a foot. ‘He tells you to go.’

She crouched before Wayland and took his hand.

Wayland snatched it away. ‘I’ve told you. I’m not interested. I have a wife and children.’

Zuleyka rubbed her face against his hands. He jumped up.

‘Get away from me.’

She flounced out, stopping at the door to crook two fingers at him in some kind of spell or malediction.

‘Not you,’ Wayland said to the dog.

It slunk after Zuleyka with a hang-dog look, leaving Wayland alone with the dying eagle.

During the night the fledgling produced a horrible squelching sound as it vented the noxious matter that had been clogging its gut. Wayland pushed up on one elbow and stared through the dark before sinking back. He’d already wasted too much time on the bird.

He woke by dawn, lit a lamp and stole over to the eagle. It lay in a heap, an inanimate bundle of flesh and feather. He steeled himself to handle the corpse.

At his touch the eaglet opened its eyes and blinked. Kewp, it said. It wobbled upright. Kewp, it repeated in a more insistent tone. Kewp.

Wayland ran to the door. The poplars surrounding the caravanserai were just beginning to brush the sky. ‘Lucas!’

He was holding the eagle on his lap when Lucas burst in. Wayland smiled like a proud father. ‘Baby wants her breakfast.’

Another feed of the nourishing liquor only sharpened its appetite and lent strength to its voice. ‘Cut up a chicken breast. Chop it fine.’

By the time the sun had cleared the walls, the eagle had gorged and lay asleep on Wayland’s lap with its crop distended to the size of an apple. His dog slunk in, looking guilty.

‘Are you going to train her?’ Lucas asked.

Wayland placed the eaglet in its cradle. ‘I don’t know. She’s been taken too young. Now her cries tug at your heartstrings, but in a month her squalling will drive you mad. By then she won’t be a helpless infant. She’ll be full-grown and dangerous, with no respect for her handler or anyone else. I knew a Seljuk falconer who reared a goshawk from a ball of fluff. Six months later that hawk — a quarter of the size of a full-grown berkut — plucked out one of his eyes and laid his face open from brow to jaw.’

Lucas rubbed his hands. ‘What are you going to call her?’

‘I’m no good at names. Wait. What about Freya, the Norse goddess?’

‘Freya sounds good.’

When Lucas left, Wayland studied the fledgling properly for the first time. He guessed she was about six weeks old, an infant with a gawky out-at-elbows look, her flight feathers still in blood and her head downy. But already she weighed more than any other bird of prey he’d trained. Her smoky hazel eyes, billhook beak and saffron feet armed with black talons hinted at her latent powers. Her hind claws were already as long and thick as his little finger. When fully grown, each extended foot would be wider than a hand’s span and powerful enough to drive through a deer’s skull.

He left Khotan with the eaglet travelling loose in a basket placed in front of his saddle. She wolfed down her rations and grew daily, metamorphosing from avian toad into Jove’s winged avenger in the space of a fortnight. By then she was hard-penned, only a few traces of down on her head, her plumage an autumnal blend of greys, tans, cinnamon, plum brown and burnt ochre. Wayland had worried that her traumatic experiences would have left hunger traces on her flight feathers — thin lines marking arrested development and points of weakness. Instead, her feathers grew straight and sound. She began to exercise her wings and peer about with the curiosity of a youngster exploring the world and its wonders.

She’d outgrown her basket by then and he jessed her legs and carried her unleashed on his gloved fist. A morning of supporting her with his arm crooked left it so numb that he could hardly move it. At Keriya, the next oasis, he weighed the eagle on a corn merchant’s balance. She tilted the scales at eleven catties, equivalent to fourteen English pounds — and she hadn’t stopped growing. Wayland commissioned a carpenter to make a T-perch four feet high, its base footed in a leather socket stitched to his saddle.

He rode forth on the next stage with the eagle clutching her perch, wings spread in an eight-foot span, her eyes fastening on everything that flowed into her vision. The troopers liked to see her at the head of the column, imagining that she was the flesh-and-blood equivalent of the standards carried by their military forebears, the Roman legions of old.

One of the Sogdians added an intriguing twist. ‘This isn’t the first time the Roman eagle has travelled the Silk Road,’ he told Wayland. ‘Long ago a Roman army fought a battle with a race called the Parthians at Carrhae in Afghanistan. The Parthians defeated the legions and sold the survivors. Many of them were transported east, even as far as China, where they founded a colony that retained their language and customs for centuries. One of my ancestors encountered them on his first journey to China. They’re only a memory now, but you can still find Roman armour on sale in bazaars.’

‘How do you Sogdians preserve such long memories, Shennu?’

‘From the day we can understand speech, our elders teach us our history. What happened here? Who can you trust in this oasis? Who to avoid? Which wells supply water fit only for camels and which wells provide water sweet enough for men? What time of day does the river freeze in the mountains, lowering the level and making it safe to cross? It’s a father’s duty to pass on such knowledge. I remember my grandfather telling me about the first Chinese traveller to reach Afghanistan. His name was Zhang Qian and he made the journey a thousand years ago, but to hear my grandfather tell the tale, you’d have thought the two of them travelled together. By the way, I’m Yexi. My cousin is riding with the general.’

Later that day the eagle launched into her first clumsy flight. Buoyed up by a gust of wind, she let go of her perch and flapped away south into sand country, feet dangling and scuffing the ground in an attempt to land. She hadn’t learned how to stop. A hundred-foot-high dune blocked her path. She tried to clear it, ran out of strength and tumbled tail over beak not far below the top. Wayland jumped off his horse and climbed after her.

The eagle had scrabbled up to the crest and stood looking about as if she owned the wilderness. Wayland picked her up and laid his cheek against her head, breathing in her scent, wondering not for the first time why a creature with such a carnal appetite exhaled the odour of spring gorse.

‘That’s enough liberty for now,’ he said. ‘From now on you wear a leash and hood and only fly at my bidding.’ He rested a while, the sweat on his forehead drying in a hot headwind that blew a yellow mist from the tops of the sandhills. To the south the haze that had hidden the Kun Lun range for weeks drew aside, exposing a panorama of icy peaks.

Lucas flogged up. ‘I thought you’d lost her.’

‘She has a long way to go before she finds independence. My task is to teach her to hunt before casting her loose.’

‘You intend letting her go?’

Wayland didn’t answer.

‘What are you looking at?’

Wayland had stood, peering at a flock of vultures spiralling about half a mile to the south. One of them dropped out of the formation and fell on cupped wings. Another followed. Three more joined the carousel from different directions and more dots were converging.

Lucas followed his gaze. ‘Probably a camel or wild ass.’

‘A dead camel doesn’t attract fifty vultures. That’s a scene of slaughter.’

They laboured over four dunes before running down to a gravel terrace cut by an arid stream bed. Wayland followed the course, guided by the vortex of carrion birds and the occasional whiff of putrid flesh. Around the next bend twenty vultures trundled into clumsy flight.

‘Christ,’ Lucas said.

Twelve bloated and blackened bodies lay strewn over the stony bench on one side of the watercourse. Their murderers had decapitated some of them and the heads lay at hideous angles, glaucous eyes staring sightless at the sun and a droning fog of flies hovering over the carnage. Two wolves were feasting on the decomposing corpses. One of them fled when Wayland shouted. The other, riddled with mange, chopped its teeth at him and continued tugging at a baby clasped in the arms of its dead mother until Lucas ran at it with drawn sword. It abandoned its prey and crabbed humpbacked into the dunes.

Lucas smothered his nose against the stench. ‘Who were they?’

Wayland squinted around. ‘Tibetan traders or pilgrims to judge from their costume.’

‘Who killed them?’

‘Bandits. Perhaps the same gang who wiped out the last Greek expedition.’

‘We’d better warn Vallon.’

‘You go. I’ll try to make sense of these tracks.’

Wayland quartered the ground, reading the clues. Lucas had dropped from sight when the dog came pattering up. ‘Faithless hound,’ Wayland said. He bent its head towards a faint impression. ‘One member of the party escaped. Seek.’

With a yelp the dog ran down the stream bed, pausing to pick up scent and looking back at Wayland for encouragement.

‘You’re on the right track. Keep going,’

Quarter of a mile down the gulley the dog flung itself round and froze, its muzzle pointing towards a hole in the bank. A wolf’s den. Wayland slid into the stream bed and squatted before the entrance.

‘You can come out. The bandits have gone. I won’t hurt you.’

Nothing stirred.

‘I know you’re in there. It’s a lot cooler inside than out. I’m burning up. Put me out of my torment.’

The dog pranced around the hole, barking. Wayland called it off and slung a goatskin waterbottle through the entrance. ‘You have to come out some time.’

He was holding the eagle on his left fist, his dog panting by his side when two hands gripped each side of the entrance and a dust-smothered head emerged. Wayland dragged the survivor clear and stood him upright. His eyes were deranged by shock and tears had carved channels through his dust mask.

‘Let’s get you back.’

A voice called and Wayland turned to see a squad of troopers crest the nearest dune. Lucas plunged down, lost his balance and tumbled the last thirty feet.

Wayland rolled his eyes. ‘Do you always have to be so impetuous?’

Lucas shook his head and blinked. ‘Who is he?’

‘Take his other arm and we’ll find out when we return to the caravan.’

A night under Hero’s care restored the survivor. Washed, watered, fed and rested, he turned out to be a young Tibetan with features Greek sculptors would have loved to carve in marble. Raven-black hair hung down to his shoulders. His name was Yonden and he told his story in a ruined caravanserai while rats scuttled and chittered in the shadows.

At the age of sixteen, he’d entered a Buddhist monastery in the south of Tibet, within sight of a mountain range called the Himalayas. Two years before, an elderly monk had professed a wish to make a last pilgrimage to a shrine in a Buddhist cave complex called Dunyuang, on the northern branch of the Silk Road. The abbot had chosen Yonden to accompany the monk as his servant and secretary. They’d been two years on the journey, seeking alms and hospitality in return for prayers, horoscopes and medicines. When they reached Dunyuang, the monk told Yonden that he’d reached his last destination on earth and wouldn’t be returning to Tibet. He gave himself up to prayer and fasting and within a week his spirit left him so peacefully that the closest observer couldn’t have decided the moment when his soul slipped from his human shell into divine nothingness.

Shennu translated, conveying Yonden’s conflicted emotions — his grief at his master’s death, his awe at the manner in which the monk had sloughed off his mortal mantle, his resentment that the holy man had left him penniless to make the journey back to the Tibetan monastery.

‘It was a test and I failed it,’ Yonden said. ‘Without my spiritual guardian, I fell into bad habits. I gambled and succumbed to temptations of the flesh.’

‘Tell us more about them,’ Wulfstan said, savaging a mutton shank. ‘I’m partial to tales of sin and redemption.’ He looked around the company. ‘What?’

‘Excuse me,’ Vallon said. ‘I have to discuss tomorrow’s stage with the centurions.’

‘I had nothing but the clothes on my back when I reached Keriya,’ Yonden continued. ‘Not even that. For my last meal I’d scraped the tallow off my boots and boiled it for soup. At the cheapest lodging I could find I met a party of Tibetan traders returning to the Chang Thang after exchanging yak tails and medicinal herbs for copper and iron. Three gold prospectors had joined them and offered to guide us. They led us with the sole intention of slaughtering every soul in a place where no one would see their crime.’ Yonden put his hands together and bowed at Wayland. ‘If this gentleman hadn’t found me, their evil would have gone unnoticed on earth.’

Wulfstan prodded Shennu. ‘I want to hear more about his sinning.’

‘What will you do now?’ Wayland asked.

‘Thanks to you, I can return to my monastery and seek the true path.’

Wayland stood and pulled his gown over his shoulders. Even in summer, the Taklamakan nights were cold.

‘Don’t you want to hear the end of Yonden’s story?’ Hero said.

‘It hasn’t ended yet.’

Wayland made a hood for Freya out of antelope hide, stitching the seams together through their thickness, then soaking the leather and moulding it to shape on a wooden block he carved himself. The hood fitted well, shutting out alarming sights. Not that Freya was fearful of the world. She’d been wrenched from the wild so young that she regarded the strange environment into which she’d been plunged as natural. Unlike every other hawk that Wayland had trained, she didn’t need manning to make her tame. After being scooped out of an eyrie, stuffed into a sack and displayed on a butcher’s stall, there was little left to frighten her.

That made her the easiest bird Wayland had ever trained and the most dangerous. Long after she would have been driven away by her parents, she quivered her wings at Wayland and piped for food like a baby. At the same time she’d learned to guard her territory. This encompassed a narrow circle around her perch. If anyone but Wayland trespassed within a dozen feet, she puffed up, raised her hackles and dared the intruder to advance closer. No one did.

Another thing. She hated dogs, Wayland’s included. At the sight of it, her plumage flattened like mail and then distended until she appeared twice her actual size. One day Wayland’s hound strayed into her territory. Freya flew at him and raked his shoulder, hooking one hind talon under the skin. The dog would have killed her if Wayland hadn’t grabbed its muzzle and ripped the talon out. From that day on, dog and eagle regarded each other with cautious hatred.

Having seen how dangerous Freya could be, Wayland shouldn’t have let his guard slip. He was feeding her on a hare’s hind leg, riding alongside Lucas and exchanging idle conversation, when he judged that the eagle had eaten enough and pulled the meat away.

He didn’t see her foot flash out, didn’t register anything until four talons locked on his right hand with a force that seemed to pump all the blood in his body through his head. The shock dashed Freya’s food from his hand. The eagle, conditioned to think that her rations came directly from Wayland, paid no attention to the meat and tightened her grip.

He didn’t panic or struggle. Hands manacled, eyes watering, he waited until the homicidal light in Freya’s eyes dimmed and she relaxed her hold and stepped back onto his gauntlet. Kewp, she said, and scratched the underside of her neck with the delicacy of a dowager.

Lucas stared at him. ‘Your face has gone as pale as clay.’

Wayland groaned and flexed his hand. Freya’s talons hadn’t even punctured flesh, but they’d left deep blue-black indentations and his hand was puffing up.

By evening it was swollen to twice its normal size and he was nursing it while he sat around a campfire, paying little attention to the conversation until Hero put a question to Shennu.

‘On our journey to the northlands, we found a letter written by a man who called himself Prester John, ruler of a Christian kingdom somewhere in the East. Have you heard the legend?’

Shennu inhaled the smoke from a shrub he’d picked in the desert. ‘I know the name, know the story and have heard of men who followed it to their deaths.’

‘It doesn’t exist, then.’

Shennu blew smoke at the stars. ‘I can’t say. There are strange realms hidden in the mountains to the south and west. Everyone has heard of Shambhala, a Buddhist paradise whose inhabitants live forever unless they leave their kingdom. My grandfather told me that the path to it is easy to follow at first, but the closer you approach, the more uncertain the way until at last you find yourself in an icy valley with no way forward and no possibility of returning.’

Vallon, silent until then, looked up. ‘I told you ten years ago that Prester John’s letter was a hoax. We’ve travelled further than almost any man who’s lived and none of us has seen the unicorns and dragons and Cyclops the priest king describes.’

Shennu raised a hand for silence. ‘The young lama has more to say.’ The Sogdian listened, nodding and clarifying before translating.

‘This is a story I’ve never heard before. Yonden says that many generations ago, a Christian hermit sought enlightenment in a Buddhist monastery deep within the Himalayas.’

‘A Nestorian, no doubt,’ Vallon said. ‘We’ve seen their communities all along the Silk Road. Heresy breeds like rats.’

‘Hush,’ Hero said. ‘I want to hear more.’

Shennu’s questioning ended with Yonden sketching the sign of the cross. Wayland and Hero exchanged stares, then pulled closer.

‘Has Yonden ever met a Christian?’ Hero asked.

‘You’re the first he’s encountered. He says that when his grandfather was a young man, he went south with a salt caravan and crossed the Himalayas into the land called Nepal. That country lies between Tibet and India. Dorje — that was the grandfather’s name — passed through a valley where the lamas venerated a Christian priest who had studied in their temple many years before.’

‘How long?’

‘Before we Sogdians began recording our history. Before the Buddha’s teachings reached Tibet.’

‘What was the priest’s name?’

‘Oussu. Yonden’s grandfather told him that he’d seen thankas — holy paintings — of Oussu in the temple. The hermit had also left scrolls written in his own language. The lama told Dorje that not long after Oussu left to return to his own land, a party of pilgrims or disciples arrived in the valley seeking their master’s works. Since then, no Christian has enquired about Oussu until you.’

Wayland had forgotten his throbbing hand. ‘Ask Yonden to describe the valley.’

If the Tibetan had described an Eden with palaces of gold and rivers cobbled with jewels, Wayland would have dismissed the tale as myth.

‘A bleak place at the uppermost limit of settlement. So poor that its inhabitants have to overwinter in lower settlements, leaving only their lamas in the temple.’

‘How long would it take us to reach it?’ Hero asked.

‘Three months,’ Shennu said.

Hero hissed in disappointment. ‘Too far out of our way.’

‘Three days would be too far,’ Vallon said. ‘Even if it was Prester John’s kingdom, it doesn’t lie on our march. Our mission is to reach China by the most direct route.’

The fire had died to coals, the embers writhing and squeaking. ‘Never mind,’ Hero said. ‘My vision is now so impaired that I couldn’t make a worthwhile investigation.’

Wayland reached out and touched Hero’s shoulder. ‘I could be your eyes.’

Hero blinked at him.

‘If my path takes me close enough, I’ll visit Oussu’s temple.’

‘What do you mean?’ Vallon said, frozen in the act of rising.

Wayland looked up. ‘I’m going home.’

A flake of incandescent ash separated from the coals and wafted up like a glowing leaf. Vallon sank down.

‘Everyone leave us.’

Sitting alone before the general, Wayland found himself trembling.

‘Why?’ Vallon said.

‘You know why. You don’t need me and we keep crabbing against each other.’

‘You can’t go,’ Vallon said.

‘You can’t stop me.’

‘If it’s my harsh words that have driven you from my side, then I withdraw them and ask for your understanding. I need you, Wayland. And you know how high you stand in my affections.’

Wayland’s throat constricted. ‘I didn’t reach my decision lightly.’

Vallon kneaded his brows. ‘You’ll never return home on your own.’

‘The wilderness and I are old friends.’

‘I expect the gypsy girl’s behind this.’

Wayland shook his head. ‘She’s one of the reasons I’m going.’

Vallon rose like an old man and tugged his cape over his shoulders. ‘I can’t spare any men to accompany you.’

Wayland stood, too. ‘Of course not.’ He watched Vallon walk off.

He was settling back, drained by his decision, when Vallon came back.

‘I’m not letting you traipse through the wilderness on your own. You can take three men and two spare horses.’ Vallon overrode Wayland’s protests. ‘Leave before first light to avoid upsetting my men. God protect you. I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.’

Wayland tried to smile. ‘Yes, we will. If not here, in the hereafter.’

Vallon paused, a black flapping shape in the night. ‘I’ll look for you in the hereafter, then.’