Ju-hai pulled up abreast of Shou-chi, who was heavier of face and frame and half a head shorter. “Younger Brother, ride up yonder—” He pointed. “Get a good look while the light is right. I’m going up to the next crest. You keep an eye on me, just in case I see something I don’t like.”
“Trouble?”
“Too much silver in the party.”
Shou-chi dipped his bow from its case and strung it. Unless a bandit wore rather good armor, a shaft from that Mongol bow would stick out from his back half an arrow’s length.
Ju-hai, riding forward, paused for a word with each teamster. With the train a good mile behind him, he reined in, well short of the crest. From this elevation he got a better view of the verdant flats where farmers would be planting winter wheat or harvesting maize, kao-liang, barley. Dismounting, he picked his way through the brush. Looking back, he saw that his brother had dismounted. Ju-hai drew his sword and mirrored the low sun. Drawing his blade, Shou-chi twisted and tinned the steel until it bounced an answering flash.
The everlasting wind blew loess dust, the fertile yellow topsoil of the valley bottom. Despite the golden haze, Ju-hai could see the walled city six miles square, and girdled by green suburbs reaching to the Wei River, a dozen miles north of Ch’ang-an.
He could just distinguish the tiles and gilded eaves of towering pagodas, tall temples, and the dome of a mosque.
The road ahead looked good. Nearing the crest, he squatted in the brush and looked down toward the camping spot he knew from early childhood, when the Old Man drove his own wagon and took his turn tramping in the dust. There were no flights of birds to indicate disturbances in the wooded area around the campsite. This suggested that there was no freshly dropped horse dung nor lurkers whose scraps of food would attract birds. Ju-hai signaled the leading wagon. As it came abreast, he waved and halted the party. After a few words from their new wagon boss, a dozen archers ran ahead to crouch in the brush. When they were posted and had strung their bows, he rode recklessly over the crest and downgrade, a fool barging headlong into trouble.
This apparent folly drew no one from cover. He circled the campsite and found no traces of recent activity. The shadows were now long and the sun half below the horizon when the final cart came over the crest and down into the camping area. Dusk was closing in before the animals were watered and picketed in the circle of wagons. One third of a watch later, the moon rose. Fires blazed; wood smoke and cookery scented the air.
Presently, the shaman limped toward Ju-hai.
“Your leg, it is not well yet?” Ju-hai asked.
“Yes, it is not well.”
“You are not eating with my wagon comrades?”
“Yes, I do not eat with your helpers.” There was a jingle of metal, coin probably, to keep Ju-hai’s gift of silver from feeling lonesome. “I have parched com, parched beans, dried mutton. Tomorrow, I ride in another wagon.”
Not waiting for further talk, he went to sit well apart from the fires, with his back against a high wheel of Chen Lao-yeh’s second wagon.
Ju-hai sat with his brother and the Kwan donkey drivers. There were questions about the shaman. Ju-hai reported, “He eats his own food. He rides in one man’s wagon, then he rides in another man’s wagon. One man’s silver jingles in his pouch. I don’t know whether it jingles against the silver of one other man, or of many other men.”
“Or women, Elder Brother?”
“Or women, Younger Brother.”
The entire party knew that Lan-yin had ridden in one of the Chen wagons. Whether she had come along to shop or to keep Chen Lao-yeh from squandering too much silver on the expensive sing-song girls of the great city was a question not worth debating. Her husband remained bland and serene as ever.
Ju-hai plied his chopsticks; his bowl contained rice, pickled leeks, bean curd in millet spirits, and scrawny little apples dried after having been preserved in syrup. He said nothing, having many thoughts. The towering snowcap of Tai Pai Shan no longer elevated his soul. He was not homesick; having become accustomed to Hsi-feng, he was lonesome.
When the villagers neared Ch’ang-an in late afternoon of the following day, the train passed through the Ming De Gate, and up Red Bird Street, which divided the city into eastern and western halves. Some of the carters swung left, following Ju-hai; others, turning right, went toward the Chun Ming Gate and the eastern market. As Chen Lao-yeh’s first wagon led off in that direction, Yatu, the taciturn shaman, crawled from the vehicle which had carried him since sunrise and hobbled in the opposite direction. He overtook Ju-hai’s wagons as they swung left, making for the inns which faced the southern wall of the market area.
Ju-hai said, “Have evening rice with us and give a hand watching the animals and wagons.”
Yatu gestured to include Kansu Province, Koko Nor and much of the Gobi. “Among the yurts, outside—”
“Yes, there are friends you have not seen for a long time. But the city gates will be closed before we eat. Find your friends tomorrow.”
The travelers’ quarters of House of Auspicious Rest were L-shaped. Wagon park and space for animals occupied the other two sides of the enclosure. In each room was a kang, a long bench of brick through which ran air ducts from the central fire that warmed each solid bed during cold weather. The food, Ju-hai knew from previous experience, consisted of watery mutton broth, millet porridge, and sometimes coarse maize bread.
Accordingly, Ju-hai reminded Yatu that he had spoken of Maqsoud’s place. The Mongol led off to the restaurant. In the center of each low table was a fire pot charged with glowing charcoal over which was an iron grid. Diners got strips of mutton and leathery wheat cakes from Maqsoud, a beak-nosed Uighur. The air was smoky from grease dripping to the fires, and it was enlivened by the savor of bread heating on the griddle and of the spicy sauces into which grilled meat was dipped before the diner wrapped it in the split-half of a wheat cake.
All this fragrance blended with the bouquet of sheep-skin jackets, manure-enriched boots, and the reek of travelers.
When they were back in the courtyard of the inn, Ju-hai decided that dry manure and waste fodder would be more comfortable than the kang which he’d share with a half dozen road companions.
In the morning, Yatu said, “I go home now. When you have nothing to do, see me and I tell you what the spirits say about this town. Anyone can tell you where my yurt is.”
Chapter IX
When Chen Lao-yeh and Lan-yin emerged from the bathhouse and made for the red and gilt sedan chairs which had been waiting, they were dressed as they never were in Kwan Village. Each wore clothes hoarded for this day.
He wore a turquoise silk tunic, an embroidered girdle with an embroidered purse, a sedate jacket, and a cap with an ambiguous button. Chen, though not in any detail impersonating a scholar, had the manner and bearing of a “literate countryman”; he did indeed look literate, but without the appearance of a countryman.
His glance surveyed Lan-yin, from brocaded shoes to pearl-trimmed satin hood, sedate yet with a touch of style deriving from the way she carried herself. Her trim figure and her just-right makeup, seen through a flirtation veil, made her seem no more than half her actual age. If she weren’t such a quarrelsome bitch, he would be fond of her.
The more Chen cogitated, the more acceptable it was that she had made a point of accompanying him, to be sure that he’d not overlook things less trivial than he might suppose them to be. In addition to presence, Lan-yin had keen wits. Like her husband, she made no pretense of being something which she was not. She simply did not appear to be one who lived the rural life.
She could pass almost anywhere as the concubine of a moderately well-off merchant, was Chen’s summing up as he got into his chair and the bearers set out for the home of a certain Colonel Tsao, whose failing fortunes and gathering years had pushed him back into active duty.
Problems