Imperial Fire

Tibet
XXIX

Only Hero was up to see Wayland leave in the deep dead dark.

‘Won’t you reconsider? Leaving Vallon has wounded him as grievously as if he’d lost a son.’

‘Sons make their own way in the world.’ Wayland leaned from his saddle. Above him on the crosspiece the hooded eagle sat perched like an idol. ‘Take this,’ he said, handing over a letter.

Hero balanced it in his hands, as a man would who knew words carried weight. ‘Is it your last will and testament?’

‘Quite the opposite. It raises the dead to life.’

‘It’s not like you to talk in riddles.’

‘Read it when I’ve gone and all will become clear. I trust you’ll observe the conditions set out at the end.’

Toghan and two other Turkmen leading the spare mounts rode up with Yonden. Hero made a last effort to dissuade Wayland.

‘Winter will trap you on the wrong side of the mountains. I can’t bear the thought of you dying far from your friends in some howling wilderness.’

Wayland massaged Hero’s shoulder. ‘So long as you live, I’ll never travel alone.’ He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. ‘God bless you, Hero of Syracuse, the best companion a man could have.’

Hero ran in his wake. ‘What about Zuleyka?’

Wayland tossed a hand. ‘She’s someone else’s problem now.’

Three days’ riding brought them to the first of five passes that led to the Chang Thang, Tibet’s great northern plateau. Behind them and far below, a section of the Taklamakan glowed like a bed of coals through swathes of black dust. Westward the sun was settling into a gash of mountains, a golden thread separating the peaks from the falling night.

Labouring over the third pass, nauseous in the thin air, Wayland squinted back and spotted a lone rider following their trail.

‘I’ll catch you up,’ he told his companions.

Watching the approaching rider, his dog began to wag its tail, uncertainly at first. Then as the rider drew near, it threw its head back and yodelled its delight.

‘I might have known it,’ Wayland muttered.

It was nearly dark when Zuleyka reached him, grinning like a naughty child. Wayland’s expression was bleak.

‘You want to go home,’ she said. ‘So do I. I know you won’t send me back.’

Wayland considered. ‘Only because it would cost me a fortnight’s travelling.’ He turned his horse. ‘I can’t stop you following me, but don’t look to me for help if you weaken.’ He glanced back in sudden dismay. ‘You don’t have anything but the clothes on your back. Where do you think you’ll sleep?’

She regarded him as if he were a dolt — one she held in kindly affection. ‘With you, of course.’

Once they breached the mountains, their path took them across a soda plain, the snow-white surface combed into furrows. The riders made masks to protect their eyes from the dazzle and rode cowed into silence by the huge distances and overwhelming sky. Here and there they came upon patches of scraggy grass that collapsed into powder under the horses’ hooves.

They descended an escarpment into country rolling away in low undulations that followed one after the other like the ocean swell. The endless vista was monotonous yet exerted an irresistible fascination. Pinned in the middle of horizons, Wayland felt he was remote from everything, at the limits of his own being, while at the same time occupying the centre of the universe. He tried to describe the sensation to Yonden and the young monk put his hands together and stared into distance.

‘Emptiness concentrates the soul. By the time you leave Tibet, you’ll be a different man from the one who entered it.’

The terrain changed imperceptibly, softening into high steppeland broken by grey ridges marked with cairns like fossilised gnomes. The waymarks were the only sign that any human had passed this way. In three weeks’ travelling, they hadn’t met another living soul.

For all its apparent sterility the plateau abounded with wildlife. Marmots whistled outside their burrows. Herds of kulans galloped away, pausing on the ridges to look back at the interlopers. Wild sheep with spiral horns filed over the mountain slopes. Wayland tried without success to stalk the antelopes that roamed the steppe. Hardly a day passed when he didn’t see a wolf pack — dingy yellowish predators that sometimes trailed the riders in the hope of finding discarded scraps. One morning, having staked out a waterhole, Wayland shot a kulan, tracked the wounded beast and despatched it three or four miles from where he’d launched his arrow. Unable to carry the carcass, he rode back for help. By the time he returned, a pack of wolves had demolished the prey and were contesting for the hooves and hide.

It was the drong or wild yaks that fascinated Wayland most — enormous creatures, as large as the aurochs he’d encountered in Rus, but looking even more massive with their curtained black pelts.

Yonden advised him to give them a wide berth, saying that they were the most dangerous beast on the Chang Thang.

‘Their coat is so thick that it can take fifty arrows to penetrate a vital organ.’

‘Some Tibetans must kill them,’ Wayland said. ‘I’ve seen their horns decorating cairns.’

Yonden observed the Buddhist reverence for all living things to the extent that he removed lice from his body and sent the parasites on their way with blessings. He pulled himself closer to the fire.

‘I’ll tell you how hunters kill them. They dig a hole in a pasture where the yaks graze and lie in it until a drong comes within range. Then they shoot arrows as fast as they can. The drong attacks but can’t reach the hunters, who let fly more arrows. Back comes the drong, bellowing with rage, gouging the ground with his horns. The hunters need brave hearts to continue their assault, and even if they deliver a mortal wound, sometimes with his dying effort the drong collapses over their hiding place, entombing them under his bulk.’

Wayland tested Yonden’s claims, riding as close to the yaks as he judged prudent. Unless he approached downwind, when they picked up his scent half a mile away and galloped off, they seemed pretty stupid — short-sighted and dull of hearing. Approaching them upwind, he found that they didn’t respond to the threat with a headlong charge. They rushed forward a short distance, tasselled tail held erect, relying on their bulk to intimidate. Hold your ground and they would back off; advance and they would make another high-tailed, ground-pawing feint. Wayland decided that Yonden had exaggerated their danger. Stay out of their way and they would stay out of yours.

‘Let’s hunt one,’ Toghan said, gnawing on the thighbone of a hare Wayland had shot that morning.

Wayland looked across the fire. ‘Am I such a poor provider? Does your belly shrink to your backbone?’

Toghan whinnied with laughter. ‘Listen to him.’ He hitched himself forward. ‘You’re a great hunter. No, it’s not for food that I’d kill those giants. Hunting one with bow and arrow would make exciting sport.’

Wayland paused in his chewing. ‘I’m not going to kill such a grand beast and leave most of it to rot.’

Toghan shrugged and produced a zither. ‘Now I will sing.’

‘If you must.’

Toghan plucked the strings. ‘I’ll continue with the epic of Oghuz, the founder of the Seljuk empire, blessed be his memory.’

‘Toghan, you’ve been droning on about Oghuz since we left the desert. Don’t you know any other songs?’

Toghan ignored him. ‘We have reached the time when the Seljuks cross the Oxus and the emperor of Ghazni declares war on them, ordering his soldiers to cut off every Seljuk boy’s thumb so they can’t draw a bow.’ Toghan shut his eyes and produced a nasal wailing that drove the dog whimpering from the fireside. The Seljuk’s compatriots listened attentively, beating time and occasionally ululating in triumph. When he’d finished, wolves howled on the horizons.

Toghan’s countrymen muttered their approval. The minstrel grinned. ‘Now I’ll sing a song of my own composition describing how my ancestors — ’

Zuleyka rose in a swirl and snatched the instrument. Backlit by stars, she launched into a ballad, not a word of which Wayland understood, but delivered with such sweet melancholy that his heart overflowed.

Toghan had fallen asleep, snores rattling through his throat. Zuleyka placed the zither beside him, stepped past Wayland and brushed his hair.

Wildfire seemed to dart over his scalp. He rose and checked that the eagle was securely tethered, ordered his dog to stay alert for wolves and followed Zuleyka into their shared tent. After a month sleeping next to her, he’d decided he was immune to her attractions. The rigours of the journey would have made anyone celibate. After a day riding at high altitude, watching your companions empty loose bowels, dropping exhausted and filthy into bed under blankets infested by bugs and lice, scratching the parasites that gorged on your flesh… The thought of conjoining with someone as dirty and verminous as you was repellent.

Tonight, though, he lay sleepless in the dark, aware that Zuleyka was also awake. He cleared his throat, adjusted his position and thought of Syth. That only increased his confusion. He rolled on to his other side.

‘You seem restless,’ Zuleyka whispered.

‘Something’s bothering the horses. I’d better check.’

He crawled out. A full moon and fields of stars lit the plateau almost as bright as day. The horses fretted against their tethers. The dog quested in an anxious fashion and rubbed its head against Wayland’s legs.

‘It’s not wolves,’ Toghan said from his bedroll by the fire. ‘It must be the moon.’

Back in his tent, Wayland decided the Seljuk was right. Lunatic fancies flitted through his mind. An energy welled in him, demanding release. He became painfully aware of Zuleyka lying just a tiny way apart from him, yet linked by a current.

‘You feel it too,’ she said.

He rolled over and pressed his lips to hers, his hand tugging at her breeches. She arched up and he pulled them down.

‘Not so fast.’

Clamped to her mouth, Wayland felt as if he were being sucked into a soft tunnel. His hand caressed Zuleyka’s breasts. She clasped his neck tighter. His hand slid down her belly.

The earth wobbled and Zuleyka moaned.

The ground rocked beneath them. Wayland splayed his hands to steady himself. Horses whinnied and the Turkmen cried out in alarm. Zuleyka screamed.

‘What’s happening?’

‘It’s an earthquake.’

They clung to each other while the rocks beneath them seemed to dissolve. Wayland prised himself loose and staggered out to see a horse snap its tether and gallop away. The natural order had been reversed. The turning stars were fixed in their orbits, while the solid ground slopped like mud.

It was daylight before the aftershocks stopped and evening before he returned to the camp with the runaway horse. Zuleyka met him under a sky coloured with soft pigeon tints.

‘You take the tent,’ he told her. ‘From now on, I’ll sleep under the stars.’

Freya was now more than three months old, of an age when a wild eagle would have learned to hunt for itself. Wayland hadn’t neglected her education. Each afternoon before the party made camp he fed her on his fist, trying to strike the fine balance between satisfying her appetite and keeping her obedient. After being footed by her, he always let her eat her full ration and never picked her up without offering her a titbit or tiring. She greeted him each morning with affectionate cries. To the dog and anyone who trespassed into her territory, she remained aggressive.

He cut her weight back by feeding her washed meat for five days. Hunger made her more vocal and freer with her feet. Although adult in stature, she hadn’t grown out of her fledgling bad manners. Only the winds of freedom would refine her nature.

He began her training by making her jump from her perch to his fist for food. That went well enough and after three days he set her down on a rock and called her off, increasing the distance daily until she would fly two hundred yards without hesitation. Half a dozen flaps and she would set her wings. Watching her huge span fill his vision as she glided the last few feet was a rather unnerving experience. Once she misjudged her aim and landed with one foot on his shoulder and the other on his head, drawing so much blood that he couldn’t comb his hair for days.

Next he made her to the lure, throwing her off his fist at a stuffed hareskin baited with meat dragged on a cord behind Toghan’s horse. Freya learned fast and in four days she would bob her head in search of the lure the instant Wayland struck her hood and chase it for half a mile.

‘Fly her at game,’ Toghan pleaded.

Wayland palped Freya’s chest and wing muscles. ‘She isn’t fit enough. Feel. She’s as soft as dough.’

The only way to build up her muscles was to let her fly free and far. He gave her her liberty next morning, feeding her half her rations before placing her untethered on her perch. They were on a plain with the nearest horizon twenty miles away, mountains a month’s ride off floating in the sky like islands. She launched off around noon, flapping heavily to a boulder and calling for food.

‘You’ll have to work for it,’ Wayland said. Her querulous cries faded behind him. She was still seated on her perch after he’d ridden a mile. It was mid-afternoon when she caught up, making a clumsy pass at him before settling on the ground. Wayland dismounted, held up his gloved fist and she ran towards him like a drunken hobgoblin before thrashing up to claim her reward.

He repeated the exercise over the next three days and on the last flight she flogged after him for half a mile before alighting on his fist. Good progress, but she still hadn’t taken to the upper air and learned to command her element. Wayland wasn’t surprised. Until they were confident in their ability to kill, few trained hawks flew for the pleasure of it. Wayland had flown falcons that would wait on a thousand feet above his head if they expected quarry to be served. Cast the same birds loose without the prospect of prey and they would sit hunched on a branch for hours while high above them their wild kin played on thermals.

He rode next morning into a gusting headwind, cloud racks scudding across shattered ridges. Not a good day to fly an apprentice eagle. His determination to stick to his regime wavered and it wasn’t until the wind abated that he removed Freya’s leash. She tested the breeze, hopping off her perch and floating before dropping back and clasping the familiar pole. The lull was brief. A blast of wind caught her and blew her away like a giant leaf. Wayland galloped after her, swinging his lure until she disappeared. He searched all afternoon before giving up.

The wind had strengthened to a gale, driving grit into Wayland’s face and making his horse walk crabbed. He caught up with his companions and Toghan rode over, shouting to make himself heard. ‘I told you not to risk it.’

At sunset the wind dropped and the sky ran with colours of such depth and clarity that a soothsayer would have interpreted the patterns as portents of war or disaster, the rise of an empire or its fall. Not a breath of air stirred when Wayland looked up and saw an eagle hanging above him at an immense height, the last of the sun striking bronze from its plumage and the first star twinkling above.

‘That can’t be her,’ Toghan said.

Wayland watched the eagle and dismounted. ‘Hold my horse.’

He walked out into the wilderness and swung a lure, whistling and calling. The eagle swung away until Wayland could barely keep it in sight. The sun sank. Shadows veiled the earth.

Wayland was about to give up when the speck in the sky vanished. He squinted and picked up a mote dropping through the atmosphere. It swung up in a pothook, unfurling into eagle shape as it reached the top of its arc, contracting again as it closed its wings for another plunge. In this fashion it fell in three giant steps before descending into the shadow of night.

‘Lost her,’ Wayland said.

Toghan whistled. ‘Listen.’

The sound started as a flutter, reminding Wayland of the noise made by a leaf clinging to a wind-swept branch. It increased to the roar of a storm surging through a forest. He ran into the dark with upheld hand.

‘Freya!’

Silence and then a drawn-out hiss. Wayland raised his gloved hand and waited with pounding heart.

Thump.

One instant Freya was lost and the next she was on Wayland’s glove, grown from infant to adult in a day. She glared into the gathering night, adjusted her stance and lowered her head to eat. She didn’t utter a sound, and when Wayland placed her on her perch, she gave a sort of chortle, rotated her neck to settle her crop and tucked her head under one wing. Wayland swelled with pride.

‘You pretend you love that bird more than you love me.’

Turning, Wayland made out Zuleyka. She was slapping her hip and stamping the ground.

‘There’s no pretence. Freya means more to me than you do, yet when I thought she’d gone I felt relief. One less thing to worry about. I chose to bring the eagle with me. I didn’t choose you for company. I’ll be happy to see the back of you.’

She flew at him, mouthing imprecations. Toghan wrested her away. There was a moment of silence and then her voice carried through the dark.

‘I love you, Wayland the English with the shining hair. What I love I own.’

A slap rang out.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Wayland told Toghan.

‘That was her hitting me,’ the Seljuk said.

It was time to enter Freya to quarry. Feeding her half-rations for a couple of days brought her into the condition the Turkmen called yarak — a frantic urge to kill, manifested by her raised crest, loose plumage and maniacal stare. When Wayland sucked through his lips to imitate a rabbit’s squeak, her feet convulsed so tight on his glove that he groaned.

He had to manage the flight so that she had every chance of success, and that meant selecting the right quarry. At this stage of her development, the wild sheep and antelopes were beyond her, the marmots and pikas not challenge enough. That left hares, which abounded on the steppe. Thicker-coated than their distant English cousins, they were every bit as fast and wily.

Wayland left the party and rode through a promising expanse of grassland, holding Freya hooded on his fist and keeping his dog to heel. He hadn’t gone far when he spotted a hare lolloping about half a bowshot away. As he approached, the hare flattened itself to the ground. He ordered the dog to lie down, unhooded Freya and homed in. He was no more than forty yards away when the hare bolted. Almost in the same instant Freya reacted.

It was farcical, Freya’s actions outrunning thought. She gripped Wayland’s glove, imagining she’d already bound to her prey, at the same time flapping her wings. Wayland was left with a heavy, crazy bundle sagging from his fist, making his horse jibe while the hare made good its escape.

The next flight wasn’t much better. This time Freya managed to disengage, only to fly into the ground, skidding to an undignified halt twenty yards in front of Wayland. He didn’t pick her up until she’d composed herself. He’d learned that birds of prey understood humiliation and took it out on those who had witnessed it. Turkmen falconers had told him that a thwarted eagle would sometimes attack men or even horses.

It was evening next day when he spotted a hare’s ears pricked up on a gravel flat with no cover for miles. Wayland unhooded Freya. By now she knew the action heralded a hunt and her gaze darted in search of prey.

The hare had vanished. Freya glared around. Wayland hoisted her above his head. ‘You’re looking the wrong way.’

He didn’t know which moved first. The weight on his arm lifted and the hare bounded away. Freya was off, rowing through the air with movements that seemed lethargic compared to the hare’s efforts. Yet without apparent effort she caught up, extended her talons and braced back for the impact.

When Wayland made in, she was clutching a hank of grass, looking around with a baffled expression.

‘That’s life,’ Wayland said, offering her food.

Freya learned fast from her failures. Next day she wasn’t sticky-footed and weighed up her chances before deciding whether to attack. Even so she missed. This time, though, she returned to the fist and stared around in search of fresh quarry.

Wayland’s arm was sagging under her weight when three hares erupted under his feet, each hare streaking off on a different path. Freya beat after one, gaining some height before sweeping down to bind to her quarry.

Hunter and hunted were small in the distance when they converged. One speck leaped and the other disappeared. The hare had anticipated Freya’s attack and evaded it by flinging itself into the air.

A flurry of wings showed that Freya hadn’t given up. Wayland stood in his stirrups and watched the eagle close the gap.

The hare ran in a circle and was less than a furlong from Wayland when Freya smashed into it, predator and prey rolling over in a cloud of dust. Wayland galloped up to lend assistance, but by the time he reached the spot the hare was dead. Freya mantled at him and he waited until she’d calmed down and broken into her prey before making in to her. He extended his glove, holding fresh meat at Freya’s feet. She pulled at it and as soon as he made to withdraw it she released her grip on the hare and stepped onto his fist.

He rewarded her well and let two days pass before flying her again. They’d reached stonier terrain broken by gulleys and Wayland’s search for hares drew a blank. Since Freya’s vision was sharper than his, he unhooded her and transferred her to the T-perch. They hadn’t gone more than a mile when she began to bob her head at something away to the left. She was undecided, half spreading her wings and then scissoring them shut.

‘What is it?’ Wayland said. He guessed it wasn’t a hare and was about to take hold of Freya’s jesses when she took off, powering thirty feet into the air before setting course.

Quarter of a mile away a russet shape broke cover and streaked off. A fox. Freya closed on it. Wayland rode after the chase with mingled excitement and apprehension. Tibetan foxes were big animals, twice Freya’s weight. This one made for a sheer ridge riven with fissures. It bounded up a steep rock face and was nearly at the top when Freya took it side on. Eagle and fox tumbled down and Wayland knew Freya hadn’t secured a killing grip. When he reached them, they were caught in a deadlock, Freya holding her quarry by shoulder and rump, leaning back on her tail to avoid the fox’s jaws. Wayland despatched it with a knife and looked at the panting and dishevelled eagle.

‘You won’t tackle one of them again in a hurry.’

Two days later she caught her second fox. This time Wayland was close enough to see her slow down during her final approach and then, as the fox turned at bay, shoot forward, seizing its mask with one foot and grabbing its back with the other. When Wayland made in, he found she’d killed the fox by breaking its neck.

‘You’re almost ready to take your place in the wild.’