“Last night you seemed surprised to see me,” I told my light-o’-love. “I thought you were pretending for propriety’s sake, but you really were surprised. You hadn’t given me a sign—I imagined it. You didn’t want to be seen when you crept out in the dark. You were making for the gate, and you intended to open it to your companions waiting outside.”
“Yes, but that was before I lay in your arms. Truly I’m a woman of the Karaunas, but I only obeyed the orders of our Khan. And after we had become lovers, I sent word by the beggar that you were to be spared.”
“You intended to stay with me?”
“I would follow you to the world’s end!”
“You are very beautiful, Araxie. Your back shines in the sun, and I wish we could stop and make love. But I must go into the village and close the gate behind me.”
“Those villagers know me and will kill me. So check your speed a little just before you dash through and let me slide off.”
I did not answer. I was watching the race and anticipating its finish. Our shouts had aroused the villagers, who had come in from their fields for noonday rest and repast, and at present were gathering about the gate of the earthen wall. They paid taxes and obeisance to a district governor. He might himself be a Tatar—at least he was remotely subject to Kublai Khan, a Mongolian Tatar—but the prosperity of the land stemmed from its commerce, and he would raze any village that took sides with the bandits. We had gained a little on our pursuers and they were nearly out of arrow cast. Except for some unforeseen disaster we could dash through the gate in time for the waiting villagers to swing it shut behind us and drop the bar.
There would probably be time enough for me to check my speed a little and let Araxie slide off. She would be flayed and bruised and perhaps break a bone, but she would live to remember our love-making.
“Let me go!” she cried.
“Not yet.”
“Remember our embrace under the moon!”
“I’ll never forget as long as I live.”
“Let me go! Their arrows can’t fly this far.”
“Why, I think you’re right, but we’ll wait a moment more.”
In the moment that we waited, one of the horses of our fleet band stepped in a gopher hole. I heard the sharp crack of his leg bone breaking, then saw him shatter down. I caught only a glimpse of his fallen rider, then lost sight of him in the dust. He was Daniel the Jew.
“You’re waiting too long,” my companion wailed. “The villagers will kill me.”
“No, you’ll be safe from them.”
“You’ll gain the gate in a moment more. Check your horse as you let me off, or I may break my neck.”
“The fall won’t hurt you, I promise.”
“But you’re riding as hard as before! Let me off now—quick—before too late. Remember what’s between us! I’m your woman and your seed is in my womb!”
“That I know, and it pains me to part with you. Still, I’ll let you off.”
But before I did so, I drove my dagger blade deep between her beauteous breasts.[14]
CHAPTER 3
LORD OF THE RUINS
It is a long, desolate, and weary road from Kerman northward, and its only mercy on us was of a perverse sort. Because we had met the Karaunas, we traveled light.
Of the five merchants other than Polos who escaped alive, only two were going our way to Meshed. They, like us, were as naked of stuffs as a new-hatched jackdaw of feathers, having saved only their gold and jewels carried in saddle pouches. One of the pair gladly fell in with our notion not to lay in any more until we had crossed the desert, whereby we would need transport only for food and water for ourselves and the beasts and a few belongings. The other merchant yearned for the riches of Kerman—saddles, bridles, and harness fit for kings, embroidered pillows and quilts for favorites’ beds, and casts of falcons—but Nicolo told him that the most he could take would be a quart or two of turquoises; otherwise we would leave him to eat his goods on the road.
It would be a dreadful road to be left on. For three days’ march it was only a dusty track through desolation. We were used to gazing far and wide without seeing a human habitation; now we often looked in vain for a living leaf. It was a land accursed. The only water was green and poisonous. Riding through it on a half-crazed horse, I feared God as I never had in snow or storm, and beheld the Devil just behind my shoulder.
My heart leaped at only the sight of the moon, old and sick though she was above the waste, for she told me that this was still part and parcel of our dear world, and my tears nigh flowed from being made to think of Miranda, Mustapha, and all the rest I had lost. Perhaps God’s purpose in fashioning this desert was to remind us how little worlds were worth without people and their fellow living things.
On the first night, the sun-baked ground turned quickly cold, its heat sucked out by the moistureless air as the warmth of a man’s body is by the kiss of death. But on the second night, a hot wind blew across the sands as though to stop our mouths with dust and shrivel us to mummies. And in the gray and gruesome midnight, the merchant whom we knew as Lazarus, some sort of Syrian, the one who had yearned for the fleshpots of Kerman, rose from his bed with a dreadful cry and ran off from the camp and vanished in the murk.
We followed his footprints as demons followed ours. After we had gone a quarter of a mile, walking instead of wildly running like our quarry, we doubted whether we would find him alive. Presently we heard a noise that must be of his making, although dreadful to believe it the issue from a human throat. With harrowed souls we pushed on to behold him lying crumpled at the foot of a cliff with his head twisted about on his neck. No doubt he had stared behind him as he ran—at God only knew what pursuer—and such was his posture as he fell. He lay on his belly and side, but his face was turned to ours as we came down to him, and his pale eyes stared into ours.
We searched his belongings for some clue to his kith and kin, but we could find none, nor discover his place of habitation, nor even what God he worshiped. Then we remembered that this stretch of sunburned hell lay within the kingdom of Kerman. Its king paid tribute to a distant emperor but ruled with a haughty hand. One of his laws read that if any foreign merchant died in his domain, all of his goods above the cost of a winding sheet must go to the royal coffers.
So, sitting in the dark, Nicolo, Maffeo, our last companion, and I reckoned the worth of Lazarus’s horse, saddle, and camels, added thereto the price of his turquoises and the count of his gold, and divided the total into four shares. He was far richer than we had thought, and the windfall more than recouped the loss of our goods to the bandits. Then we wrapped his body in the cloths of his pavilion and buried it in a deep grave in the sand. There we left him, so lonely that I wean he wished for a desert wolf to updig his bones and gnaw them.
There were no wolves here, not even vultures in the way of birds, no lizards on the stone. Late in the afternoon of the third day we saw a black-and-white bird that seemed of unearthly beauty, and at sundown a long narrow strip of sparse, sear vegetation marking the course of an underground canal. It stretched farther than we could see and had holes dug here and there for travelers’ use. It had been built by slaves in the days of Nebuchadrezzar.
Here we rested and refreshed ourselves and our beasts for two days.
The desert was a little less absolute in the next four marches, we seeing some creeping things and most marvelously running things, the last being wild asses. Then we came to the good city of Ku-banan, whose name means “The Hill of the Wild Pistachios.” Here we laid in medicines and iron and steel works of surpassing quality, including mirrors that would reflect a face as perfectly as a deep, moss-grown well. It was pleasant to see people doing something besides traveling, and we were sorry to leave them when, after a fortnight’s trading, again we pressed on.