For several days after he’d lost Hans and Baver, Nils traveled in the same direction the road had been going, but at some distance away. His wound gave him no trouble. The trance he’d sat in, in the ger at Urga, had been a healing trance taught him by his wife, Ilse, whom the Neovikings called the German witch. Healing had progressed considerably in the hours before he’d left.
He might have returned to the road to ride by night, but the days were too hot for sleeping on the ground, in either shelter tent or sun.
After several days, the country became desert, and both Nils and his horses suffered from dehydration. So presuming there’d be water there for travelers and their animals, he returned to the road. But when evening came, he left the road to sleep, and let his hobbled horses nibble on what little growth of grass and shrubs there was. He didn’t picket them; they’d have starved there, constrained to a rope’s length.
Meanwhile marmots had become nonexistent, and the big Northman ate only the occasional small lizard he could catch. His only option was to tap a vein on one of the horses and drink the blood, but he needed their strength more than he did his own. His belly complained, but he ignored it.
Beside the road there were dug wells, one or more a day, marked by the low trees that grew near them, their roots tapping ground water. Each well had a windlass, a large leather pail with a weighted rim to raise the water, and a horse trough to pour it in. It was obvious that someone maintained them.
On this third day back on the road, he saw a low streamer of dust well ahead: travelers. He left the road to watch them pass from a distance. There were perhaps two score horsemen, and a long train of strange, tall, ungainly animals piled high with packs. They were the first travelers Nils had seen, or sensed, since he’d left the road to avoid his friends.
Finally there were hills again. The grass thickened and stood taller, though still there were no springs along the road. The wells continued. There were marmots again, too, and Nils filled his belly.
A day later, in late afternoon, he came to the first shallow draws where the Mongolian Plateau began to break toward the Chinese lowlands. With a barbarian’s sense of nature, he knew that ahead would be low mountains, probably rugged, whose crests would be lower, or mostly lower, than the plateau he’d been crossing.
The highway began to drop, entering a broad rounded lobe, offshoot of a canyon. Now and men he saw a pine sapling, or several, with their tops above the grass. As he rode down it, he saw to his left, about a kilometer away, a small stand of well-grown pines in a side draw of the lobe. Immediately below the stand, near the mouth of the draw, stood a grove of leafy trees suggesting water there.
Nils turned his mount off the road, his remount and packhorse trailing behind, and rode to the trees. The leafy grove had a seep at its upper end, and Nils scooped a shallow basin, using the mud and stones to form a small berm on the downslope side. He filled his waterbag there, then let his horses drink, and after removing saddles and packs, and the bits from their mouths, hobbled them to let them graze.
Finally he built a small fire and set a marmot to roast. After eating, he bedded down beneath the pines and slept till sunup. It seemed like a good day to lay up and let his horses rest and graze. Meanwhile he loafed, napped, and meditated. Later he hiked out into the grassland to find and shoot another marmot.
That afternoon he heard a distant raven croak, the first he’d heard for weeks. Remembering Svartvinge as both friend and spy, he reached out and melded with the bird, gently enough that it wouldn’t realize. It had seen his horses and was coming to investigate. Also, something had imprinted it to watch for him.
Smoothly he withdrew his mind, and grabbing his weapons, crept beneath a thick bank of prostrate juniper, where he lay still.
An occasional harsh gr-r-rawk told him the bird had arrived overhead and was circling, surveying. Not only were there the horses to be seen, but the shelter tent. After a bit he heard it call again, once, twice, seemingly from a nearby tree, because the call was from the same place. Two years earlier, Nils had freely left his body and moved about, to spy on places which he couldn’t get to physically. He’d have done it now, too, but the ability was gone. Had been for most of that time since Ilse had left. And knowing that the bird’s attention was on finding him, he did not meld with it again to see through its eyes; that would risk detection.
Instead he melded with one of the horses, and nudged it to look toward the woods. Seemingly the raven was hidden by treetops; at least he couldn’t see it. So he waited, holding the horse’s attention on the lower end of the woods. After two or three minutes he saw the bird rise above the trees, climbing easily into the afternoon sky to fly away southeastward. Horses and tent had attracted its suspicion, but it seemed to Nils that having failed to spot him, the raven had concluded that no human was there. Svartvinge would have concluded differently, but this bird was no elemental.
Nils napped some more then, under the junipers, and that evening set out by dusk for the road. After that he rode only by night, to avoid the ravens, and hid by day. Woods became increasingly frequent, and cover was no problem.
He saw as well by night as by day, for light played no part in his vision. Thus one night about midnight, he saw a great defensive wall in the distance ahead. It seemed to him it wasn’t manned, but nonetheless, at the next point where the terrain was reasonable, he turned aside and rode northeastward, crosscountry. He didn’t think about it and decide, he simply did it, as he did most things.
Riding crosscountry slowed him. There were steep pitches and rough terrain. The country was more forest than open and unlike their rider, the horses couldn’t see well in the night. But he didn’t second guess himself.