For more than three weeks, Nils, Hans, Baver, and Achikh continued with only two mounts and a packhorse. Thus on the trail, at least two of them were on foot at any given time. Achikh never walked except to rest his horse, which meant that the other three shared one, only one of them riding at a time. And because it too needed rest, every fourth turn the horses were led; then all of them walked. Baver wore a wristwatch, and when he explained it to the others, and volunteered to time the shifts, they accepted. He gave each shift twenty minutes, and was scrupulous about not shorting his own turns at walking.
Nils and Hans trotted when it was their turn to be afoot together, and for the first week after the storm, Baver trotted the shifts when he was afoot with Nils. He was in far the best condition of his life, and pleased at it. But his boots were showing serious wear, and fearful of being barefoot for thousands of kilometers, he ceased to trot, to reduce the stress on them.
Hans had been barefoot the whole trip without ill effects. Nils had begun with the moccasin-like boots the Northmen sometimes wore, a well-worn pair, and when they’d come apart, he too had gone barefoot with no ill effects. But Baver was convinced that if he went barefoot, he’d end up crippled.
Achikh occasionally felt some discomfort at riding while his trail companions walked or ran, but he couldn’t bring himself to give up his own mount. He was a Buriat, and this meant always to ride. Except in dire need, to walk demeaned him in his own eyes; he was unhappy simply to have no remount, which necessitated walking every fourth shift to rest his horse. On the other hand, the others were not truly horsemen. They were foot-goers who rode when chance provided.
Thus he explained it to himself, and thus Nils explained it in Scandinavian to the resentful Baver.
Meanwhile their lessons in Mongol suffered, for when two ran or walked and the other two rode, instruction was difficult. They worked at it mainly between the evening meal and lying down to sleep, an interval that was sometimes brief. Though when Nils rode, it was almost invariably beside Achikh, practicing.
Almost daily, Achikh suggested or even urged that they steal horses, enough for a mount and remount for each of them, partly because of his discomfort at riding while they walked, and partly because their progress was slower now than he liked. Each time, Nils refused: they didn’t need a band of angry herdsmen tracking them, their quivers full of arrows.
Actually, when Nils and Hans were afoot together, they kept up nicely with the trotting horses, which impressed the burly Buriat greatly. But Baver’s walking pace, though typically close to six kilometers per hour, slowed them somewhat. And beyond that, the horses were finally showing signs of wear.
This too worried Baver. In fact he had two main fears. One, he feared that Achikh would get frustrated and leave them, leave them with the one horse that wasn’t his. And two, he feared that all three of the others would abandon him, simply cease to accommodate his own slow pace, leaving him to keep up or be left behind. Thus after a week without trotting, he tried it again for a few turns, but the condition of his boots alarmed him too much to keep it up.
The road stayed north of the more arid southern steppes, but it was late summer now, and creeks and waterholes were commonly hours apart. Not infrequently they kept going till dusk or even night brought them to water. Or to a dry camp, where they made do overnight with what remained in their waterbags. On one such day, with the setting sun throwing their shadows far ahead of them, they passed at a distance a camp of some four dozen large round tents, and a greater number of small tents equivalent to sheds. According to Achikh, the people around there were Kazakhs, or some people whose Turkic dialect was like Kazakh. Not much farther on, they came to a creek upstream of the Kazakh camp, and stopped to make camp themselves.
While Baver prepared to roast their daily marmot catch (he started fires skillfully now), Nils drilled Hans with the sword, a routine they skipped only occasionally, though sometimes shorted. Meanwhile Achikh rode off to the Kazakh camp, not much more than a kilometer away. He would, he said, try to trade their worn-out horses for fresh, perhaps with an extra thrown in because the Orc horses were much taller and more handsome than the local stock, and fleeter when in good condition.
By twilight he was back. The Kazakhs had refused his offer, he said, refused it rudely. The camp was in the charge of the chief’s mother, an ill-tempered, bad-mouthed woman. Most of the Kazakh men were away; only old men and young boys remained there with the women and children. According to the chief’s mother, the warriors had left that morning early, to catch and punish a band of thieves who’d stolen a calf. They were expected back the next day.
Achikh didn’t believe her. He’d noticed that the horse herd was small for so many gert, as if the men had left on some longer, more distant trip with lots of remounts, a trip that might take hard riding. A war or raid, he thought; it was too early in the season for major hunting. Actually, he’d decided, she was wary of possible robbers, and wanted him to think the camp’s protectors were close at hand.
He looked hard at Nils. “This is the best chance we’ll have to steal horses, and I will get some whether you approve or not. When we are mounted, we can ride by night; by daybreak we’ll be far away, and with remounts we won’t need to rest the horses longer than it takes them to drink and eat.”
Nils regarded him calmly. “The moon will rise not long after midnight,” he pointed out.
“I will ride in the moonlight. It doesn’t frighten me.”
Baver sat tense; this was the point of decision, crucial decision. If Achikh insisted and Nils refused, they’d part. And if they parted, the three of them would be left with just a single horse. The Kazakhs might even take out their anger on them for lack of having Achikh in their grasp!
If Nils agreed, on the other hand, they’d have to ride hard, without sleep, and he didn’t know whether he could do that or not. And the Kazakhs might catch them anyway. He couldn’t even plead innocent then, mounted on one of the stolen horses.
“What will they do to us if they catch us?” he asked.
Achikh turned and stared, not used to having Baver speak to him except in the context of language lessons, and answered in Anglic. “They are barbarians; they would probably impale us if they caught us. But they won’t catch us.”
Baver’s guts clenched at the word “impale,” as if the stake had already entered him. And if Achikh considered them barbarians—His head snapped around to look at the northman. “Nils,” he began . . .
But the Northman replied to Achikh even as the word left Baver’s lips. “You will do what you must, and we will see what happens. If you do not come riding back with a band of horses, I’ll see what can be done to rescue you.”
At this answer, Achikh stared for a moment, bemused. “Good. Let us eat. Afterward I’ll try my luck.” He grinned then, the grin startling Baver. “I have always enjoyed horse raids,” he said. “They are so dangerous.”
It had been dark for more than an hour when Achikh left. Baver watched him disappear into the moonless night. The Buriat had argued that it would go much better, much more surely, if he had help. Hans would liked to have gone, Baver thought, but the boy had said nothing, waiting for Nils’s response, and Nils again declined. Baver didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.
“What do you think?” he asked when Achikh was out of sight. “Will he get them?”
“I doubt it. I think he’ll be caught. I think they expect him to do this, and they’ll be ready.”
“Why do you think so?”
The northman shrugged. “That’s simply how it feels to me. I have no evidence to point at.”
“Will they attack us then?”
“Perhaps a few of the older boys may come,” Nils replied. ‘We’ll see.”
We’ll see! Baver collapsed in on himself. The northman had said it as if discussing the possibility of showers. He could imagine a dozen boys, twelve and thirteen years old, coming out on horses with bows and arrows, to surround and skewer them.
He lay down on top of his sleeping bag and closed his eyes. He’d grown used to sleeping among mosquitoes, which at any rate were far fewer here on the dry steppe, and mostly he slept readily when they camped. Tonight, though, he was sure that sleep would be impossible. Still, perhaps if he lay on his back with his eyes open, and focused on a star . . .
He was asleep in minutes.
Achikh had already noted the layout of the Kazakh camp and the location of the horse herd. Earlier it had been more dispersed than he’d cared for, especially for working by himself. Now, by starlight, it seemed more concentrated. It was also closer to camp than he liked. As if wolves had worked here recently: horses will crowd camp at night when wolves are around, for the security it offers.
As he neared, he let his horse move pretty much at its own pace, muttering to it occasionally, tapping its barrel with a hard heel from time to time. Alone he could not simply startle the band and drive them to his own camp; they might go anywhere. He’d have to cut out half a dozen, rope them together and lead them, which meant a relaxed and quiet approach.
In the darkness, he didn’t see the Kazakhs who were waiting, lying low on the backs of their horses, till after one of them raised his catching pole and dropped a noose over Achikh’s head from behind. Then he yanked it tight around the Buriat’s neck and they were on him, two adolescent boys with quick wiry strength, and two older men, no longer quick but strongly muscled. Others had moved up too, arrows nocked, in case Achikh wasn’t alone.
Normally he would have fought till dead or unconscious. But Nils had said he’d see what might be done to rescue him, and he remembered what a powerful wizard the giant Northman was. Thus, after his first violent resistance, Achikh went slack and let them tie him.
The halfmoon was well up when Nils shook Baver awake. “Come. Put on your boots. Something has happened to Achikh. We will go to the Kazakh camp and see if we can help him.”
Baver struggled out of a dream of captivity, sat up and looked around. We will go to the Kazakh camp! Repeating it mentally brought him fully awake. Achikh wasn’t with them; his shelter tent hadn’t even been set up. And there was more than just moonlight to see by now, he realized. The eastern sky was silvering; in another hour or so the sun would rise. Somehow even a little daylight made the Kazakhs seem less dangerous, less deadly. Though deadly enough.
They remained just long enough to eat some of a marmot that had half dried, half smoked on a rack over last evening’s fire. Then they each drank a few swallows of mare’s milk, bought a few days earlier, thickening and souring in a sack made of horse gut. Baver washed his down with tepid creek water, and they left on foot, leaving their hobbled horses behind, not even packing their gear.
After walking the better part of a kilometer, they topped a small rise. From it they could see the tents, dismal-looking humps on the steppe, lined up in rows in the half-light. Each, Baver knew, was made of felt mats tied over a bowl-shaped frame of slender poles, like the other semi-permanent camps they’d visited. There was no sign of activity, surely not outdoors, and no smoke visible from the smokeholes in the roofs. Even to Baver that meant the camp slept. Now, he thought, Nils will decide which tent Achikh is held in. We’ll go to it, and Nils and Hans will slip inside to free him, maybe kill the Kazakhs there. I’ll stand by the door with my pistol, in case anyone comes. He felt grimly pleased with his analysis, and at the same time surprised at it.
But Nils didn’t change to a stealth mode. He led with long strides toward the largest of the tents, then at about thirty meters stopped, and bellowed in Mongol that he wanted to speak with the chief there. Baver was dismayed that the Northman had thrown away their surprise advantage, especially since there was no reason to think that any of the Kazakhs understood Mongol.
Understandable or not, it drew a response, albeit delayed. In less than half a minute, people began emerging from tents, some calling out when they saw the situation. Most wore robes they apparently slept in. Some had belted on weapons. Others carried bows, and a handful or quiverful of arrows. Several came from the largest tent. When fifty or sixty had assembled, Nils strode toward them, Hans beside him and a step back. Willy-nilly, Baver followed. He saw bows half bent in the hands of several women and adolescent boys. The older men held swords, as did a heavy-set woman who stood before the door of the main tent, and toward whom Nils strode. He didn’t stop until he stood within four meters of her. Then he spoke again in Mongol: “You have our friend.”
Baver’s guts had frozen in his belly. There seemed to be nothing but hard hostility among all the Kazakhs he could see there. They were staring at Nils, whom they’d no doubt kill first. The Northman had come shirtless, probably to strengthen the impression he’d hoped to make. The amount of running the giant Neoviking had done lately had refined his powerful musculature to an extreme degree; his muscles were like thick steel cables with the individual wires visible through his skin. Even in the dawnlight he was awesome.
The woman with the sword examined him narrowly, then snapped something in sharp but fluid Turkic, a language Baver found aesthetic in more ordinary circumstances. Several people went into her tent. The rest continued to watch Nils Järnhann, most of them glowering. The Northman stood calm and impassive. If he really could read minds, Baver thought, he’d still have no way of understanding thoughts in Turkic.
In less than a minute, two of the older men came back out, dragging Achilch, who was wearing a wooden yoke perhaps eighty centimeters long, his wrists tied to it with thongs. His ankles were tied too, with cord that might have allowed him little steps of thirty centimeters or so, had the Kazakhs not been dragging him.
The woman snapped angry Turkic at Achikh; he answered in the same language, though haltingly and without anger. Their exchange took the better part of a minute, then Achikh turned his face to Nils and spoke in Anglic.
“She wants to know who you are, and what you want.”
“Tell her I am a shaman of the Northmen, and the man who slew Kazi the Undying. Also tell her I want them to free you, and trade horses with us.”
“These people set little store by shamans, and I doubt she knows of Kazi. They are likelier to kill us all than to free me.”
“Tell her, and we’ll see what happens.”
There was another exchange in Turkic, her own growing louder as she talked. Hands tightened on sword hilts. Bows were half raised. Achikh spoke to Nils again.
“She pretends to be unimpressed, but she has heard of Kazi. She will not talk with you unless you all give up your weapons, both swords and knives.”
Nils looked mildly at her without touching his weapons. “Ask her if she knows where her fighting men are,” he said.
Achikh stared at him for a brief instant, then turned his face to the woman and spoke. Her reply was imperious. “She says they have ridden out to catch and put to death some thieves who stole cattle here.”
“Tell her her men are camped beside a stream that flows from some mountains two long days’ ride north from here. The mountains are not very high, but high enough that there is forest on their backs. They are there to hunt wolves, and do not expect to return for some days. The chief, Shakir, leads them, her eldest living son. He will want her to trade with us.”
He said it in two installments, Achikh interpreting by halves. When he was done, the woman peered long at the Northman without speaking, taking in his size, his obvious great strength, his strange eyes. Finally she spoke briefly, perhaps a dozen words.
“She asks how you can see what you claim to see.”
Nils said nothing, simply reached up a hand to his eyes and removed them. He stepped toward her, the glass semi-orbs on one callused and very large palm. She looked at them, then at his face, and her breath hissed out as she backed away. There was scurrying, but no one shot. Over a subdued hubbub of voices, she barked extended orders in Turkic.
“She told them not to harm you,” Achikh said. “She told them you are not an ordinary shaman, but a shaman from Allah, which is the name they give to Tengri, that is, God.”
She spoke again, this time to Achikh, not looking at Nils now. “She asks you to please put your eyes back in your face,” Achikh interpreted.
Nils did, and the whole crowd seemed to relax. Once more the woman spoke, looking intently at Nils, no longer hostile.
“She says she will trade horses with us, two of theirs for each of ours. She asks how many we have to trade.”
“Tell her we do not wish to take advantage of her generosity, that our people are great runners, and use horses for trade. Tell her it is running that makes us stronger than other people. Nonetheless we will take seven, and leave them the three we came with.” While Achikh translated for her, Nils turned to Hans and Baver. “Hans, run to camp and bring the horses. Ted, go and help him.”
They turned and loped off. As he reached the top of the rise, Baver glanced back at the Kazakh camp, awed at what had happened. Seemingly Nils had been right about the Kazakh warriors. And about her son’s name. How had he known?
The only answer he could think of was that Nils had read it in her mind despite the language difference.