Iron Winter

55

The travellers left Daido almost as lightly equipped as when they had arrived. They used some of Uzzia’s money, Mongol scrip acquired by selling her own gems and gifts from the court, to purchase a small cart and three horses. Even Pyxeas had sensed trouble coming; he had already packed up the essentials of his work with Bolghai in a trunk, along with personal effects.

Before noon on the day of the rebellion they were already out of the city and heading down along the road they had just travelled, south towards the Khan’s hunting grounds once more. Uzzia drove the cart behind two of the horses, with Pyxeas and their gear. Avatak rode the spare horse. He wondered what would become of the mule, and wished he had had time to say goodbye.

Only when they were well clear of the city would Uzzia permit a stop so Avatak could treat her wounded shoulder. Pyxeas remained in the cart, sipping sullenly on a skin of wine. He had barely spoken since the death of Bolghai; he seemed in deep shock.

Avatak plucked out the arrow, making Uzzia wince. She said she was lucky; it had not penetrated deep enough for the barbs to dig into her flesh. But she warned him against touching the arrowhead, or the brown stuff smeared on it. She loosened her tunic, and let Avatak dab cleansing unguents on her broken flesh with scraps of cloth. The medicine’s scent made his nose wrinkle. The wound was not deep, did not need stitching, and the blood was already clotted. But there was a patch of discoloration around the wound, not purple like a bruise but an ugly, faintly green colour.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Uzzia said when he described this. She pulled up her tunic. ‘We must get on. The sooner we can put some distance between us and Daidu the better.’

‘Heading south.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why not west? That’s the way we came — the way back home.’

‘But we can’t go back that way.’ She sighed. ‘Look at Pyxeas, Avatak. Do you imagine he could stand another journey like that? Even if it could be made at all, after another year of his longwinter!’

‘South, then. How?’

‘By ship. We’re heading for a port called Quinsai, a few days’ ride from here. There we’ll find a ship. You’ll sail home in comfort.’ She wiped sweat from her brow, though the air was far from warm. ‘You’ll like Quinsai. It’s just like Hantilios.’

So they hurried on.

Beyond the Khan’s hunting grounds the country changed, becoming more dominated by farmland, and Avatak stared out curiously at wide flooded fields where the people waded amid their crops of rice. Towards the end of the day they found a way station, deep in the old heartland of Cathay, a handsome wooden building with dry, comfortable rooms. Avatak thought they would not have stopped at all if Uzzia had had her way. But they had to rest the horses, and they were all exhausted; even before the rebellion Uzzia and Avatak had ridden through a day and night with the Khan. So they stayed the night. They were served country food of rice, meat, freshwater fish and molluscs — delicious, at least compared to the over-elaborate concoctions of the Mongol city to the north. Avatak concluded that the Mongols had poorer tastes than their subjects.

Pyxeas barely ate. He did as he was asked, he looked after his own personal needs. But he seemed to have withdrawn deep within himself, to a place where, perhaps, he felt safe. Uzzia grew weaker. She would not let Avatak look at her wound again. But she was pasty, pale, sweating.

She roused them all at dawn, and drove them on.

Thus was the pattern of their days, until, ill, bedraggled, withdrawn, bewildered, they arrived at Quinsai.

They found rooms on the outskirts of the city, for an exorbitant rent, and they got a lousy price when they tried to sell their horses. Avatak concluded that despite their haste the rumours about the Khan’s fate had reached this city, and things were falling apart. Uzzia disappeared to find a ship. Pyxeas withdrew to his bed in the rented room.

Avatak cautiously explored Quinsai.

Yes, it was like Hantilios, as Uzzia had promised, but so overwhelmingly larger in scale it made comparisons with that city seem specious. Like Hantilios, Quinsai was built on a lagoon strewn with islands. Canals ran everywhere, crowded with waterborne traffic and crossed by many bridges. These canals were straight and clean, with none of the fetid stink of Hantilios. A freshwater lake embraced one side of the city, and a river to the other side kept the canals clean of stale water.

The city itself was an artificial landscape of wide squares, and broad, straight streets paved with baked brick, and magnificent houses, most of them built of wood. There were pavilions, temples, palaces. Every day the great squares were full of market stalls where you could buy foodstuffs, clothing, heaps of shoes and bales of silk and wool, racks of jewellery — and full of crowds, Cathay and Mongols and many others, Persian, Muslim, Carthaginian, Rus, even Northlanders, and exotic folk Avatak had never seen before, perhaps from further east. And full, too, of entertainers, jugglers and magicians and acrobats. Avatak heard a rumour of a man who had trained a fish to wear a hat and perform various tricks, but never saw him.

Far though he walked in his brief time in Quinsai, Avatak knew he did not get a sense of its true scale. He suspected that a western city like Hantilios could be lost without trace here.

‘Of course it is beautiful,’ Pyxeas whispered when Avatak described all this in the evening. ‘A beautiful and ancient city built by a beautiful and ancient people. This is how Cathay was, before the Mongols came along to build their temples to vulgarity and greed, like Daidu. And of course it is crowded. We are a good way south of Daidu — that much further south of the eventual march of the ice. This place will not be spared — nowhere will be spared — but comparatively, Quinsai may prosper, and so people will flock here like migrating birds. But this is an occupied city despite its beauty, as you can tell from the number of soldiers on the streets — Mongols all, I’ll wager.’ And he fell silent again, retreating inward to his own inner mesh of calculation.

He was right, of course, and the soldiers became more obvious when night drew in. Towards midnight great drums were beaten to signal the curfew, a pulsing rhythm that crossed the city air.

And every night, too, part of Quinsai burned. The buildings were of wood, and dry as tinder after years of drought. Avatak heard rumours that some fires started because people recklessly built bonfires to battle the cold of the spring, and perhaps there was some rioting over a shortfall of the city dole. But the city was organised; engines would rush through the street, and pumps would pour water into the latest conflagration, even as the rebuilding began in last night’s disaster area.

Avatak was bemused by Quinsai, the crowding people, the endless carnival, the whirlwind of buying and selling, the nightly blazes and frenetic rebuilding. An insane city, a city at the end of the world. He was relieved when, on the third day, Uzzia said she had found a ship.

‘Here are the details.’ She pushed a slip of paper across the table to him. ‘Berth, all the way to Carthage, if the gods spare her, and the pirates. Remember, the ship won’t wait. I’ll leave it to you to get the old man ready.’ She stood up, leaning for a moment with her fingertips on the table; she looked very pale, her brow slick with its customary sweat.

‘Are you going out again?’

‘That’s my business,’ she snapped. ‘Just don’t miss the ship.’ She went to the door and gathered her cloak. ‘And finish the journey. For, you know, it might be a journey no one else will be able to make, not for many generations. That’s something to tell your grandchildren, isn’t it?’

She did not return that night, despite the curfew.

The next day he waited almost until noon. Still she did not come back. When he went into her room, he found her sparse luggage gone — all save the quilted coat, with its sewn-in treasure.

He donned the coat, and began to get Pyxeas ready for the sea voyage.