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"Please," Fang Yu said, her hand going to Remo's bare arm.
Noticing the contact, Kula grunted. "What one hears of the prowess of
Westerners must be untrue. Of course, she is Chinese. No Mongol woman would
have you."
Remo and Fang Yu ignored the crude remark.
"Please Remo," Fang Yu implored. "Do not be stubborn now. Our lives are in
danger."
Remo relented with a mute nodding of his head. He accepted a stack of padded
clothes that resembled a rolled-up sleeping bag.
He went behind a stall and changed. He returned looking like an overgrown
child who had been bundled up by a parent.
"That better," Fang Yu said.
"I'm not wearing this hat," Remo muttered, raising a cap with long floppy
earflaps.
"Your ears will fall off," Kula said curtly.
"So my ears fall off," Remo said, looking around for a place to dump the cap.
Kula shrugged. "They are your ears," he said.
Remo stuffed the hat in a pocket, just in case.
The Mongol led a snow-white horse out of a stable bay.
"This is a good horse," Kula grunted, throwing a silverfiligreed wood saddle
over the horse's back. "You will ride him. He is good for a new rider."
"If you say so," Remo said dubiously. The horse shook its long head
nervously.
When Kula had finished tying the saddle, Remo climbed onto the horse. His felt
boots found the iron stirrups. The high pommel and flared back of the saddle
made him ride high, as if on a camel's hump. He hoped it wouldn't tip over.
The others saddled up and led their horses outside.
Kula the Mongol looked back. "Why you wait?" he grunted.
"How do you start this thing?" Remo asked sheepishly.
"You never see cowboy movies?" Fang Yu demanded.
"Refresh my memory."
"Shake reins."
Remo found the reins and gave them a shake. Desultorily the horse ambled on.
Outside the stable, the others mounted their steeds, and together the three
clopped up the street.
"This isn't so bad," Remo said as he got used to the muscular rhythms of his
horse. "What's his name?"
"Mongol horses do not have names," Kula spat.
"Shhh," Fang Yu hissed. A trio of PLA solders wearing drab greatcoats
sauntered around a corner.
"Cover for me," Remo said. He pulled his cap out and hastily donned it. He
snapped the earflaps together under his chin and pretended to discover a loose
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bit of silver filigree on his saddle. This kept his face averted from the
soldiers.
The PLA soldiers cast wary eyes in Kula's direction. He returned their
suspicious glares with a bold, challenging look.
The soldiers trudged on through the gathering snow.
They cantered beyond the city limits, where clusters of felt-covered circular
tents dotted the flat white plains. Kula steered them clear of these, saying,
"Mongol gers. Outsiders call them yurts. Many gers make an ail."
"How you people, keep from freezing to death in this cold?" Remo asked.
"You will see," Kula grunted. "For we will pass the night in a ger if we are
lucky enough to find one this night."
"And if we don't?" Remo asked.
Kula shrugged fatalistically. "Then our dead flesh will feed the wolves of the
steppes."
Remo looked to Fang Yu. The Chinese woman looked stolidly ahead, controlling
her fear. Remo felt no fear. Instead, he felt apart and alone in the great
endless steppe.
They had cleared the outer perimeter of yurts when suddenly Remo felt his
horse sink under him. His feet touched the ground on either side of the
saddle. Hastily he stepped free, one foot tangled in an iron stirrup.
"What the hell is going on?" Remo yelled as he jerked his foot free of the
remaining stirrup. Just in time, because with a whinnying and a kicking of his
legs, the horse rolled onto his back and started to squirm in the dirt like a
dog scratching his back.
Which, as Remo found his feet, was exactly what the horse was doing. It rolled
and fling its mighty legs at the falling snow, struggling with its ungainly
weight.
Kula and Fang Yu brought their mounts around and watched. Fang Yu covered her
mouth with one mittened hand. Her eyes squeezed tight with repressed humor.
Kula, less conscientious, roared deep throaty laughter.
Feeling foolish, Remo growled, "How do you get a horse to stop doing that?"
"You do not," Kula rambled. "A Mongol would not let a horse do this in the
first place."
"I'm no Mongol."
"That is evident," Kula said with dry impassivity. But there was humor in his
twinkling eyes.
Remo turned to Fang Yu. "How about you? Any helpful hints?"
Fang Yu tittered into her hand and looked away.
Finally the horse clambered up to its feet. It waited patiently, flicking snow
off its tail.
Remo approached carefully, touching the saddle. It was still cinched tight, so
he remounted.
They got under way again.
Several hundred yards further along, the familiar sinking sensation returned.
This time Remo threw himself clear. He hit the steppe and jumped back
angrily.
"What is your problem?" he yelled at the squirming horse.
The laughter of the others burned his ears. Remo reached out and grabbed the
bit.
"This is getting old fast!" Remo said tightly. And with a quick heave, he
pulled the horse to his feet.
To his surprise, the pony responded. Remo mounted again. He nudged the horse's
flanks with his heels. It stepped smartly.
"You are learning," Kula said soberly.
"I'm a quick study," Remo said smugly.
"But so is the pony," Kula added.
A little further along, they came to a tussock of yellow grass. Remo's horse
paused and, lowering its head, sank its teeth into a tuft.
Angrily Remo pulled up on the reins. The horse snorted, but straightened its
muscular neck. He tried again. Remo pulled him back. After several minutes of
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pulling and nudging its flanks, the horse gave up on the tempting grass.
Remo urged him along, and soon caught up with the others, who had not waited
this time.
As he drew alongside the other horses, Kula nodded in silent approval.
"Mongol horse or not," Remo said, "I'm calling him Smitty."
They rode on for hours. The darkness was relieved only by the moon. Clouds
obscured it. And still they rode. Remo had gotten tired of his earflaps
slapping his neck with each bouncing step of his horse and discovered they
could be snapped at the top. This left his ears exposed to the cold dry air,
but it also enabled him to hear sounds the others could not.
Distantly a wolf bayed. The wind made constant background sound. With nothing
to inhibit its sweep down from the cold north, it blew cold and constant, like
a wall pushing a million slim glittering blades before it.
The world was a barren desolation in every direction.
It seemed to Remo that if the Master of Sinanju was anywhere on the steppe,
finding him would be more luck that anything else.
He felt very sad, and lonely. Lonelier than he'd felt in a long time. He
angled his steed closer to Fang Yu, but other than a sidelong glance cast in
his direction, he got nothing from her, not warmth, not comfort, and barely
recognition.
"I smell blood," Remo said after a long silence broken only by their mounts'
restless snorting.
"Ai yah!" barked Kula. "A Westerner whose nose is keener than a horse's! If
there was blood in the air, the horses would know it first. My horse is not
nervous. Nor is yours."
"To the northeast," Remo said stubbornly. He pointed in the direction from
which the smell came.
"It is the smell of dung fires we seek, not blood," Kula said with finality.
"I'm looking for a man," Remo persisted. "And where he goes, blood sometimes
spills." He noticed he was talking like a Mongol. He hoped that was all that
would rub off.
Kula looked to Fang Yu. Fang Yu shrugged. Her look said all Westerners are
mad.
"Look, I know what I'm talking about," Remo snapped.
"If you are so certain of your nose, foreigner," Kula said, "why do you not
ride in the direction it tells you?"
"Good idea," said Remo, forking his mount away with a rightward twist of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]