As the Mongol juggernaut moves north the grasslands become sparse and wither away. The earth becomes bone dry and rocks burn under our bare feet. The Mongols raid and lay waste to nearby villages. They steal two hundred head of camel and thousands of leak-proof barrels and leather casks. At the lake at Dolon Nor every barrel and cask is filled to the brim. The Mongol juggernaut splits up. Most of the caravan, Genghis Khan and the seventy thousand horseback warriors, journey to the west, to battle and conquer other lands. One hundred slave-drivers and a thousand Jurchen slaves trudge with the camels up to the north. You and I are amongst those bound for Karakarhoum.
‘Are we in Mongolia yet?’ I ask you.
‘After we cross the desert we will be in Mongolia,’ you say.
‘What desert?’
‘The Gobi, you fool.’
The Wilderness of Stone
The Gobi is a furnace of burning rocks, dry and monotonous and flat. We journey for a day without seeing a plant or a tree. We journey for a day and encounter nothing more than the scattered, sun-bleached bones of perished animals. The sun above the Gobi is swollen, brighter and fiercer than the ordinary sun. The Gobi sun blazes as though it wants to incinerate every living creature from the earth.
The scorching winds are strong enough to knock you from your feet and make walking near impossible. But walk is all we do. We shroud our faces against the sand gusting from the western dunes with strips torn from our robes, and our eyes are gritty and red. The horseback Mongols are as stupefied by the heat as those on foot. The creaking of axles and wheels, snorting camels and our dragging feet are the only sounds. At dawn and noon and dusk we are allowed a few swallows of water from a leather flask. Ossified inside and out, we dream of water. We dream of an overcast sky. We dream of the shade of a single tree.
At night in the Gobi the temperature plummets and we shudder with cold. We Jurchens don’t have slave girls and coats of animal skins to keep us warm like the Mongols do, so we huddle together on the scorpion-scuttling earth, skin against parchment-dry skin. Our tusk-like collar bones and hips knock together as we sleep, and we wake in the morning aching and bruised.
The Puppetmaker
On the second day of staggering through the Gobi, many slaves keel over, and even after Mongol whips have criss-crossed their backs with deep, bleeding welts, don’t stand up. They are left for the razor-sharp beaks and claws of the carrion-eating birds.
Our herd limps on, our robes the colour of dust, our bloodshot eyes dull and wretched with suffering. The one exception is Puppetmaker Xia, who has turned strange in the heat. As we drag our feet as though in heavy iron shackles, Master Xia swings his limbs like one of his own puppets, jerked by strings. His eyes are shining, aberrant and rapt. His rag has slipped loose from a wide grin that looks carved upon his face. The puppetmaker laughs, then says in a spirited voice, ‘My friends, I have an announcement to make!’
We ignore him. Our shadows stretch out behind us, as though longing to break free of us and go back the way we came.
‘Concubine Sparrow is with child!’ Master Xia cries. ‘I saw her this morning. Her belly was swollen and she waddled as expectant women do. I am going to be a father!’
The puppetmaker and bleak reality have parted company, and no one squanders breath on speaking to him. Most of the herd stopped speaking days ago anyway.
‘My sons died in the famine,’ Master Xia continues, ‘and I feared that there would be no heir to continue the Xia family line. But now another Xia is on the way. .’
Puppetmaker Xia witters on and on about his ‘son and heir’ and the herd ignore him. But you grind your teeth in irritation. You can’t suffer fools. You can’t stand delusions and lies. You tug the shroud from your mouth and iron-branded scars, and spit, ‘If you had even half your wits about you, Master Xia, you’d stab Concubine Sparrow’s belly with a knife. For that’s a bastard Mongol child she’s carrying. Not yours.’
The puppetmaker laughs. ‘The child is mine! I know it in my bones. The child’s a Jurchen and mine!’
‘Tiger, shut up. .’ I warn.
But you won’t shut up until you have cured Master Xia of his delusions.
‘Whose seed do you think is planted in her belly?’ you continue. ‘Your impotent old man’s seed? Or the seed of one of the hundreds of Mongols who raped her? Open your eyes, Master Xia!’
The puppetmaker shakes his head. ‘No,’ he moans. ‘No no no no. .’
The herd turns on you. They curse you with their elderly, creaking turtle-mouths. ‘Donkey’s afterbirth!’ ‘Evil mongrel!’ ‘Should have died in Zhongdu!’ You laugh at them. You laugh as though their hatred invigorates you. You spit defiantly, ‘Master Xia must accept the child isn’t his. The child’s a bastard Mongol’s and—’
Puppetmaker Xia leaps at you and his knuckles thud against your skull. You stumble from the blow, and I rush to Master Xia, holding him back as he flails his old man’s arms to attack you again.
‘The child is yours, Master Xia,’ I say anxiously. ‘We believe you! The child is yours! Tiger here was just making trouble. Ignore him.’
Blasting sour breath in my face, the puppetmaker shouts, ‘I’ll kill you, Tiger Boy! I swear to God, I’ll kill you dead!’
His words strike fear into my heart. But you laugh and say, ‘Go on then, Master Xia. Kill me. It won’t make that child yours.’
Puppetmaker Xia roars and lunges for you again, and Ogre, who had been dozing in the saddle, snoring out of his axe-battered nose as his mare plods at the herd’s rear, wakes up. He lashes his whip and we all move apart. Not even the puppetmaker is mad enough to defy Ogre and his hook-ended lance.
Our herd staggers on through the furnace of burning rocks. You shroud your face again, your remorseless eyes staring out over the rags. You don’t care about making enemies. You care only about dragging out the truth, consequences be damned.
Night. Descent of darkness and bitter cold. Slaves huddle against the winds howling across the Gobi’s barrenness. Outcasts from the herd, you and I sleep apart from them. And as weak and thirsty as I am, I lie in your arms and go to sleep a contented man.
Daybreak, and you are gone. Disappeared into thin air. I look around and see you a few paces away, rubbing at some overnight bruises from the hard, stony ground. Hungry, we go to a slave girl ladling gruel out of a pot, holding out our cupped hands. Soon every slave is up and slurping gruel. Except for one. A lazybones who won’t rise and shine. The slave shudders as Stone-carver Peng kicks his backside. ‘C’mon, wake up, or Ogre will whip you.’ But the man does not stir. Stone-carver Peng bends over for a closer look.
‘Oh, the Lord Buddha have mercy on his soul!’ he cries.
Stone-carver Peng has some tragic news. The slave is Puppetmaker Xia, and he is not sleeping. He has been strangled and he is dead.
The Singing Dunes
Around noon we enter an ocean of sand, the waves not lapping at a distant shore but frozen into luminous peaks and shadowy troughs. No scorpions scuttle in the dunes, and the carrion-eating birds that stalked us all the way from Zhongdu are no longer circling and swooping overhead. Here and there rocks jut out of the sand, like the tombstones of mass graves.