By the time they reached Aksu, they had lost one of the camels and had been forced to improvise a kind of cart on runners to hold all the crates, chests, and barrels the camel had carried; their six ponies, tough and hardy, had to struggle in the face of the relentless fury of winter, while the two remaining camels trudged on, their shaggy coats becoming matted and the pads on their feet cracking from the constant freezing temperatures; Zangi-Ragozh wrapped their feet in straw and rags, which stopped the worst of the chapping but failed to prevent sores from cold entirely. The weather continued to deteriorate, remaining blustery and chilly, the sun moving higher in the sky, but bestowing little heat, still veiled by invisible clouds. Cutting winds and vast eddies of blown snow made travel dangerous and laggard as Zangi-Ragozh and Ro-shei pressed on to the West; they encountered only three groups of travelers, and one of them was a company of Turkish merchants returning from the West with as much bad news from Persia and the Syrian plains as Zangi-Ragozh could give on China. At Aksu they had waited three weeks before setting out again, and when they did, it took them two weeks past the Vernal Equinox to reach Kashgar: the Takla Makan desert lay behind them; ahead was the rising mass of the Pamir Mountains.
"Where are you coming from? Where are you bound?" demanded the guard at Kashgar in bad Persian.
"We come from China and are bound for Constantine's City," said Zangi-Ragozh in much better, but slightly old-fashioned Persian.
"Are you begging?"
"We are merchants, not beggars," said Zangi-Ragozh.
The guard laughed, a high, delirious sound. "They are much the same thing, in these times."
"Except that the beggars have died," said Zangi-Ragozh somberly.
"That they have." The guard glanced at the few tents some distance from the town walls. "There are fewer of them every day."
"The same is true for all of the living," said Zangi-Ragozh.
"Do you have any food?" the guard asked abruptly, as if recalled to his purpose.
"For our animals," said Zangi-Ragozh. "We have been living off whatever we can find."
"Including men?" The question cracked like breaking ice.
Zangi-Ragozh stared at the guard, his compelling eyes fixed on the other man's. "No," he said at last. "We have not fed on men."
"Are there more of you?" The guard was attempting to reestablish his authority, and floundering.
"There are just the two of us, our six ponies, and two camels. We had a third camel, but it got a fever from an injured foot and died." Zangi-Ragozh studied the guard, noticing that the man had scabs on his face and his cheeks were hollow. "What is the condition of your town?"
"What is the condition of any town in these times? The old and the young are dying, and those strong enough to endure hunger are suffering." The guard laughed again, a grating sound like a rake over pebbles. "We can't bury the dead; the ground is frozen and most of the men are too weak for hard labor in the cold. So we stack them beyond the camel-middens, as if they were Towers of Silence, such as they have in Persia; only the lammergeiers will benefit, if they haven't all died." He laughed again, this time with an underlying note of mania. "If any of us remain in the summer, and the ground is warm enough, we will have to make a large, general grave for those who-"
Zangi-Ragozh made a sign to Ro-shei, and they moved back from the gates. "If the town has so much to deal with, we will move on."
"There is snow in the mountains, yellow snow, and it is still deep. We have seen few caravans coming from the West, as you must know." The guard looked at the ponies. "If you wish to remain here, you have to contribute to our welfare. We will let you sleep in a bed in exchange for a pony."
"We need all our ponies," said Zangi-Ragozh, his voice firm and soothing at once.
"Do you? Surely you could do with one less." The guard's stance became pugnacious. "My companions and I have need of one pony, at least, no matter how skinny it may be."
Zangi-Ragozh could see no other men at the gate, and his sense of alarm sharpened. "How many companions do you have."
"Enough," said the guard, making it a threat.
"I think it would be best if we moved on," said Zangi-Ragozh, reaching for his spear, just in case.
"No! You must not!" The guard lifted his bow and fumbled an arrow to the string, drawing hardly far enough to send the arrow across the distance between them. "We are starving! You must leave us something to eat."
"I have nothing I can spare," said Zangi-Ragozh, uncomfortably aware it was true.
"A pony. You can spare a pony!" The guard took a step toward him.
Zangi-Ragozh motioned to Ro-shei to move back. "I regret that I cannot give you what you ask."
"You can, you can!" the guard insisted. "Just one pony. We are all going to die, anyway." He pointed accusingly at the two foreigners. "You are keeping what you have for yourselves!"
"That is a great misfortune for you," said Zangi-Ragozh. "If I could alleviate your suffering, I would."
The guard's expression grew crafty. "But you can. If we have a pony, we can-"
"Live to starve another day," said Zangi-Ragozh, pulling his pony around and tugging on the leads of those carrying crates and chests. "Ro-shei! The camels!" He was able to get his ponies to a trot, and they were quickly beyond range of the two arrows fired ineffectively in his direction.
"I have them moving," Ro-shei assured him.
"Then hurry. They may send riders after us!" Zangi-Ragozh glanced back once and saw three men on emaciated ponies attempting to follow them; one of the riders carried a lance, the other two had mauls. It did not take long for Zangi-Ragozh and Ro-shei to outrun them; they slowed as soon as they could, wanting to spare their animals.
"Was that as dire as it appeared?" Ro-shei asked as they pressed on past the walls of Kashgar.
"It may have been much worse," said Zangi-Ragozh, thinking back to his days in the Temple of Imhotep, the battlefields of Dacia, the mal aria in Athens, the worst days of the Roman Circus. "The guard was suffering from lice, which usually means fever, especially if the people are weakened by hunger. He might have been able to attack if he had felt less ill. As it is, I wish I did not find so much relief in his sickness." He turned in his saddle and stared back in the direction of the town. "I wonder if the Desert Cats made it this far."
"If they did, I do not like to think what may have happened to them," said Ro-shei, then waited a long moment. "We are low on food for the animals. Have you thought of what we are to do?"
"Not yet; I had hoped we would have time here to recover our strength and rest before climbing into the Pamir Mountains," said Zangi-Ragozh, turning his back on Kashgar. "As it is, I must find us food of some sort, and shelter so the animals can rest; our travels have taken a toll on them."
"Do you think the guard would have killed us for the ponies?" Ro-shei had an edge in his question as if he had already made up his mind.
"I think he tried, in any case, and his three comrades," said Zangi-Ragozh. "If it had been possible, I believe he would have done all in his power to take our ponies, and our camels, for his cooking pots. The other three would help him for a share of the spoils."
"Then we may find as bad along the way," said Ro-shei.
Zangi-Ragozh sighed and squinted into the wind. "At least the snow has stopped falling."
"For now," said Ro-shei. He pointed to the irregular furrows in the muddy snow that marked the road. "If this freezes tonight, it will be midmorning before the ice thaws."
"You're right," said Zangi-Ragozh quietly. "I think it may well be that this year may be harder than the last. The famine is under way already, and with the sun lacking in strength, next year might be worse than this one." He pointed to the road ahead of them. "There are no merchants on the road because there is nothing left to trade-a very bad sign."
"Those who travel may well find that there is more danger than snow and scarcity; there may be demands made that no one can meet and still manage to live," Ro-shei observed.
Zangi-Ragozh agreed with a gesture. "I doubt many traders could get from one of the Silk Roads to the other just now without losing much of what they carry to robbers, and worse."
"What could be worse than robbers?" Ro-shei asked.
"Killers, for one," said Zangi-Ragozh distantly. "Desperate men do desperate things."
Ro-shei realized what Zangi-Ragozh was implying. "A risk indeed: you mean that more than ponies might end up in the cooking pot."
"It is a possibility," Zangi-Ragozh said levelly.
They went some little distance in silence; then, "I wonder what sort of meal we would make?" Ro-shei mused aloud.
"Insufficient, I imagine," said Zangi-Ragozh.
"Worse than useless, I would assume," said Ro-shei. "A five-hundred-year-old ghoul, and a two-thousand-five-hundred-year-old vampire! They might as well try to eat mummies."
"It would not surprise me to learn that such had been tried," Zangi-Ragozh said, emptiness of spirit sparing him pain for the time being; he carefully blocked out the compassion that usually accompanied such insights.
"With that to consider-that everyone is at the limits of their strength and wits-where are we bound?" Ro-shei asked, his face set in austere lines.
"For Osarkand. We should be able to reach it in three or four days, providing there is nothing blocking the road, or any other hazard before us." Zangi-Ragozh looked back at their ponies and camels, shaking his head once. "There are four bags of grain left, and enough chopped feed to last another month, if we are careful."
"And if we have no more encounters with thieves or other miscreants."
The night was clear; the moon in its third quarter rose in the night and shed a frosty light over the snow-clad crags. Ro-shei took advantage of the illumination to go hunting and came back after nearly a quarter of the night had passed with a hare, which he dressed and devoured before the first hint of sunlight limned the eastern horizon. As he disposed of the skin and guts, he heard a high, wailing howl.
"Wolves," said Zangi-Ragozh unnecessarily.
"A good distance away," said Ro-shei.
"Still, it's just as well that we will be traveling on shortly. The packs are as treacherous as armed men, and as persistent." Zangi-Ragozh stopped long enough to string his bow and make sure his quiver was firmly buckled to his saddle. "At least these iron foot-loops make it easier for us to aim while riding, and that improves our chance of successful hunting."
"As you have said, it is one of the advantages of them." Ro-shei tossed the bones of the hare far down the slope, into darkness.
For most of the day they climbed along the deep river canyon, following the muddy track that was the middle fork of the Silk Road. They spent the night at a goat-farm where the family described the death of their oldest uncle not three days ago and tried to choose which of their remaining herd would be sacrificed to the honor of their dead. Zangi-Ragozh offered the family a little jade statue of the Four Celestials; after a brief refusal, they accepted the statue and promised to give it to their gods, along with the prayers that the power of their gods would be restored.
"The sun has been bled of his vigor, and the earth is deprived of his potency to make her fertile; it is through our offering that the sun-and thus the earth-will be revived, and all the gods of place will once again provide their protection," said the new head of the household. "We have given him kids and two milking goats, but they have not been enough. We have buried sacred images in the ground, but it will not grow anything more than weeds. We have left grain and small amounts of food at the shrines of the smaller gods, but nothing has worked."
"That is unfortunate," said Zangi-Ragozh, seeing the despondency in the householder's cadaverous face. He opened his chest of trade-goods he had brought into the house and poked among the cloth-wrapped objects until he found what he sought. He held out a wooden figure of a water buffalo; he looked through the rest of the items and added a cinnabar horse to the gifts. "This may be useful in your offering: what do you think?"
"If it helps the gods, yes; we will thank you for your aid," said the householder.
"If any of these help the gods," Zangi-Ragozh seconded, and put the two objects on the table before the hearth. He made no mention of the risk of avalanches and landslides rain could bring to the snowy mountains, but only said, "Our travel to Osarkand should be less difficult with the rain." He indicated Ro-shei. "We will leave at first light, to make the most of the day."
The householder pointed to his barn, which was immediately outside his house. "The straw in the barn is a little musty, but it will make a good enough bed." He touched his steepled fingers with his forehead. "May the gods give you a good passage to Osarkand."
"That is very gracious of you, Shamal-pe-Uzmar," said Zangi-Ragozh, rising and heading off for the barn and a night in the straw.
Ro-shei, following close behind him, asked, "Shall you or I remain awake?" in Imperial Latin. He stopped next to the cart and laid his hand protectively on the largest crate in its bed.
"I will," said Zangi-Ragozh.
"You seem wary." Ro-shei went back to close the rough door behind them as they stepped into the barn, which smelled of goats and ponies and camels. "You anticipate some mischief on their part?"
"Oh, yes; I think they may steal our animals' food if we sleep, or perhaps something worse," said Zangi-Ragozh.
"Then we should depart before the family rises," said Ro-shei, resting his hand on the down-turning quillons of his Roman dagger.
By morning they were a good distance from the goat-farm, having left well before dawn. They kept on steadily, avoiding the worst of the mud, and taking great care when passing along a steep or narrow part of the road. Throughout the morning they continued to climb, the river falling away beneath them until it was little more than a frothy stripe at the bottom of the canyon.
Osarkand was tucked into a fold of the mountain, on the leeward side of the rocky flank, which afforded enough protection that there was some small amount of neglected grass growing in the sheltered meadow behind the town, which was protected by high, stone walls and a stout gate of thick planks.
"Do you notice there are no animals grazing, although there is grass?" Ro-shei pointed out as they came around the bend in the road; they stopped to survey any activity around the town; after a half day of observation while their animals did their best to graze on the desiccated grasses at the edge of the remaining swaths of snow, they realized that there was nothing to be seen: no sign of any life, either human or animal. They moved a bit closer to the little town, into the shelter of an overhanging boulder the size of a large building. "You see? No animals. Not even fresh dung."
"They might be in the barns, to stay out of the rain," Zangi-Ragozh said, dubiety coloring his voice.
"So they might, but there is also no smoke from the chimneys, and that is-"
"A bad sign," Zangi-Ragozh finished for him. "Taken with the rest, yes, it is a bad sign."
"What do you want to do?" Ro-shei asked.
"The road goes through the village, and we have no other passage up this canyon."
"There is no road on the other side," Ro-shei reminded him.
"That was my point, old friend," said Zangi-Ragozh with a hard stare toward the little town. "I will go closer. This is most odd."
"Do you think it is a trap?"
"It may be; it may be, but it may also be something else," said Zangi-Ragozh without elaborating. He studied town walls for a short while, then handed the lead he held to Ro-shei. "I should not be long. If I do not return before sundown, retreat to the deserted way-station and wait there. If I am not back in three days, look for the Amber Trail, and take it into India. If I am able, I will look for you in my ancestral home."
"In the Carpathians? The old castle?" Ro-shei asked, all emotion leached from his demeanor.
"Yes. If I am not there in a year, search out Olivia and remain with her as long as she will have you. She will know if I am still walking the earth." He cocked his head as if listening to a soft, distant conversation. "She, at least, still survives."
Ro-shei had seen Zangi-Ragozh perform that listening before, and it no longer perplexed him as it once had. "Hearing with the blood?"
"Yes," said Zangi-Ragozh. "It is the nature of the Blood Bond."
Ro-shei stood aside so that Zangi-Ragozh could pass. "You'll give the usual signal?"
"I will. Watch the gate. It is where I will come to give the signal if the town is safe to enter. If I signal from anywhere else, assume there is danger and go back."
"I will," said Ro-shei, and watched Zangi-Ragozh as he began his climb up the slope, a darker shadow moving through the shadows cast by the mountains.
Zangi-Ragozh approached Osarkand on what he assumed were goat tracks. He ignored the discomfort from the constant film of running water coming from the melting snows above and put all his attention on the cluster of buildings and the vacant pasture. He did his best to concentrate on everything-the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feelings the place evoked in him. He reached the rear of the pasture and climbed over the wall. Then he saw the remains of a goat lying near the base of the wall, and he knew that Osarkand was empty. Still, he remained cautious, for there were other hunters than humans who might be waiting inside the walls; he stopped beside the picked and pulled skeleton and examined the marks on the bones. "Bear," he muttered, "and some kind of bird of prey; an eagle, perhaps-or lammergeier, if they came through the winter." He stayed in the shelter of the wall and walked toward the barns, pausing frequently to listen for any hint of activity in the town. When he reached the first barn, he found a small window to peer in before attempting the door. Satisfied that the barn was empty, he went to ease the door open and found himself staring at a row of empty mangers. He made an inspection of the place and discovered under a heap of old straw, a last sack of old grain. Mice had been at it, but there was enough left that could be salvaged; he took it with him as he went to the next barn, which was larger and emptier than the first. Here there was clear evidence that bears had ransacked the place, for the double row of mangers were broken, and the wood was marked by gouges from long, curved claws.
The sun was starting to slide below the horizon by the time Zangi-Ragozh opened the gate and waved his short, improvised torch in a circle first to the left and then to the right. That done, he braced the gate open and went to light the butter-lamps in the house he had chosen to occupy for the next two days. He had a fire going in the hearth when he heard Ro-shei and their ponies and camels come down the narrow stone street. "In here!" he called out.
"I was beginning to fret," Ro-shei said as he opened the door.
"There are barns behind the houses; take the smallest one-it is the least disturbed." He picked up the half sack of grain. "This was left behind. I reclaimed it from a family of mice and cleaned out most of their droppings. The ponies will need it more than the camels."
"I will; what will you do?"
"Try to secure this house so that you and I can rest. I will try to find a bolt for the gate, for what protection that can provide. You may have the night to sleep-I will take the day." Zangi-Ragozh lowered his head and pointed to a straw-filled mattress on a low pallet. "I will make that usable for you: I will sleep on a chest of my native earth."
"The smaller chest is almost empty," Ro-shei reminded him as he started back for the door.
Zangi-Ragozh thought a moment. "Once we reach the plains of Kushan, if we travel by night and rest during the height of the day, my supply of earth will last longer. At least the sun is not at full strength, or I would have to spend most of the daylight hours resting in whatever dark I could find."
"Then it is fortunate that this calamity has not strengthened the sun," said Ro-shei.
"It is," Zangi-Ragozh said quietly.
Ro-shei went to lead their animals to the smaller barn, where he busied himself unloading them, stowing the cart, stacking their burdens along the wall, except for the chest of clothing and the larger chest of Zangi-Ragozh's native earth, both of which he placed near the door, anticipating carrying them to the house Zangi-Ragozh had selected for their use.
It was dark by the time Ro-shei came back to the house, his chores taken care of; he was moving more slowly than usual, as if the long climb was telling upon him at last. He had washed his hands and face and unclubbed his sandy hair and was using his Byzantine comb as he entered the house, which was now neat and warm. His mababa he carried over his arm, it being too cumbersome for wearing anywhere but in the open or in the saddle. "This is very pleasant," he said to Zangi-Ragozh. "A fire in the furnace, lamps lit, and a good bed ready."
"It should suffice for two or three days, until our ponies and camels have eaten all the grass in the pasture-what little there is of it." Zangi-Ragozh had just finished sorting through a small stack of sectioned wood. "We will have to replenish this supply tomorrow."
"Neither you nor I need heat," Ro-shei remarked.
"We both like it," Zangi-Ragozh said, and put another branch into the stone furnace. "Our clothes and gear should dry out."
"So they should," Ro-shei conceded. "Very well; I will plan to look for wood." He finished combing his hair and clubbed it up again.
"As will I." Zangi-Ragozh went to secure a plank-shutter over the window. "We can keep the house warm until we leave." He pointed to a broken jug that had been left behind, set on the single shelf near the furnace.
"What do you think happened?" Ro-shei asked, curious to know how Zangi-Ragozh had reached that conclusion.
"Everyone fled, or so it appears to me," said Zangi-Ragozh. "You can tell by what little they left behind: there are large items, like that bed and the furnace, and useless items, like this broken jug. I have found a few raw bear-skins; they are half-rotten and not much use, and in the grainery, there was a tub of washed rice; it may have been meant for fermentation, but it is wasted now. The counting-house has a few tally-sticks left. In my search, I discovered nothing that might provide us comfort beyond what you see here. The town packed up what it had and has gone elsewhere. They were not driven out-there is no sign of haste or fighting. There is no evidence of grain illness-the few remaining beds show no sign of sickness, and there are no mass graves outside the walls, as there would be with a deadly fever."
"Then why did they leave?" That was the greater puzzle to Ro-shei. "The walls are sound enough, and the houses look to be sturdy."
Zangi-Ragozh shook his head. "I have been about the town, and I think perhaps their animals were being affected by the weather and inadequate food. Between that sort of trouble, and the sharp decline in merchants passing along the Silk Road, I reckon that the people could no longer sustain themselves here, and so they went to find better pastures."
"May they have good fortune," said Ro-shei, a hint of bitterness in his wish.
"May they, indeed," Zangi-Ragozh said sincerely.
"Do you think they went east, or west?" Ro-shei pursued his piqued interest; he was somewhat surprised that it mattered to him.
"I would guess they went east; that direction is downhill and away from the snow. They may have gone on the Amber Trail, if they reached the desert," said Zangi-Ragozh. "We might have encountered them had we arrived at Kashgar a week earlier."
"Kashgar," said Ro-shei significantly. "Would they have gone into the town, do you think?"
"For their sake, I hope they did not." Zangi-Ragozh answered Ro-shei.
"And I," he said, and held out his mababa, so that Zangi-Ragozh could position it near the furnace to dry. "I will be glad of a chance to sleep."
"It is the result of being hungry, this exhaustion."
"Yes," said Ro-shei as he took off his sen-cha, which he folded and put on the shelf. Next he removed his boots, and last of all, his leather britches. When all these were folded and put on the shelf, he went to stretch out on the bed, pulling two skins around him. "Wake me before dawn."
"I will," Zangi-Ragozh promised, and pulled on his mababa before going out into the cold of the night. He returned in the last quarter of the night, a small pig hanging from thongs. He woke Ro-shei and hefted the pig into view. "I took my portion. The rest is yours."
"And welcome it is," said Ro-shei.
"I have a little wood, as well; enough to keep the house warm until nightfall. I left it by the door outside." He seemed a bit distracted, and he regarded the pig for a short while. "I thought at first that was a shoat, but now I doubt it. The pig is at least a year old. Hardship kept it small." Zangi-Ragozh sat on the chest that contained his native earth. "I saw a temple of sorts near the highest part of the wall, with the remains of five newborn kids on the altar." He fell silent again, watching Ro-shei cut up the little pig.
Ro-shei turned away as he began to cut up the undersized sow. "Pigs and birds are not sufficient for you. They suit me well, but you need more than blood to-"
"I am aware of it," said Zangi-Ragozh, and went to bring in the wood from outside the door before stretching out on his chest of native earth.
Text of a letter from Chu Sung-Neong, Undersecretary of the Prefecture of Holin-Gol, to the Regional Army Commander, General Dan Gieh-Gon, carried by courier; never delivered.
To the most well-reputed and honorable Regional Army Commander General Dan Gieh-Gon, this greeting from Chu Sung-Neong, the Undersecretary of the Prefecture of Holin-Gol, with the authorization of Magistrate Ngo Hai-Ming, the Magistrate of Holin-Gol, acting Prefect of the city and supervisor of the local garrison.
Most worthy General Dan, I am enjoined to implore you to come to Holin-Gol with your troops to deal with the present insurrection that has proven too insistent for the garrison here to control. Four times in the last three fortnights we have had rice riots in the city, and there have been uprisings in the countryside as well. These mutinies have been the result of wide-spread starvation, now made worse by Swine Fever, which has spread through the city and has done what starvation has begun. I have enclosed a record of the deaths within Holin-Gol for the last six fortnights, along with the reasons for the deaths; you will notice that six officials are among their number, as well as more than fifty foreigners. In vain the Prefecture has striven to enforce order, and all times but once has failed badly to accomplish what was attempted. I fear that without more soldiers and the action of many more troops than are quartered here, we may find the city and its vicinity collapsed into anarchy as starvation grows more widespread and the farmers have difficulty bringing crops to harvest.
We have rice enough for two more distributions within the city, but then I dread what may come afterward if we have no support from the Army. Surely you would not deny this entreaty from an official who speaks for all the officials of Holin-Gol when he asks you to come with all the soldiers you can spare to contain the violence that has marked this most wretched time. If you fail us, I cannot think what greater misfortunes we may yet have to endure. For the sake of us all, come as quickly as you are able.
Chu Sung-Neong
Undersecretary of the Prefecture of Holin-Gol
(his chop)