Goosebumps flowed over Hans. He was remembering the small, hairy, manlike thing he’d eaten, and the dream he’d had afterward, and wondered if he’d eaten a yeti child. And the yetis were servants of the emperor!
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At Chen’s request, they were given a loaf each of bread. Then they started back the way they’d come.
“How far is it from here to the emperor’s house?” Hans asked.
“One would have to ride all night to get there before noon. But surely you don’t plan to follow them?”
“How else can I be of use to Nils? You needn’t come though. He’s not your clansman. Only give me instructions.”
“Your horses are travel-worn, and clearly not well fed. And this”—he slapped the neck of his own spoiled village horse—”this fellow isn’t used to travel. They can’t keep up with the soldiers; not unless the soldiers take their time.”
“Maybe they will take their time,” Hans answered stubbornly.
“What will you do if you catch up to them?”
“I will follow at a little distance, and wait for an opportunity. I can’t abandon him. He is more than my clansman; he is the Yngling of my people! Without him we’d be feuding clans fighting one another, or maybe dead in Poland.”
Chen answered nothing, but his expression was troubled. It wasn’t much later that they passed the cart road to Lü-Gu, but Chen did not turn off there. Neither of them said anything, but Hans was glad he wouldn’t be traveling alone. There was too much he didn’t know; he needed the blacksmith’s advice at least.
With a possible long ride ahead of them, Hans instituted a regimen to make as much speed as possible without killing the horses. He was still not a grown man, but he was in charge, which was quite in contrast with the way of Chen’s people. The smith didn’t question it though, or resent it. It seemed to him that this youth, like Nils and like the Mongols, was different from others. Thus Hans had them ride in shifts of about a quarter hour each. Chen rode first his own horse, then rested it by riding one of Hans’s. Because he had not run for many years, and did not walk a lot, he would ride every
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shift. Hans, on the other hand, would run every other shift, so that his own horse could travel unburdened at least one shift in three.
Where the forage was especially good on the roadside, they might pause for a few minutes, especially where there was a stream, or water in the ditch. They’d take the bits from the horses’ mouths then, letting them graze and drink more easily. At such times the two men gnawed their loaves, and occasionally fed the horses a handful of oats from a small bag Chen had brought.
When they came to the junction with the Imperial Highway, and the military post located there, Chen turned them right. It never occurred to them that the column might have stopped there, might be there now, eating while the yetis rested and grooms prepared fresh horses for the adjutant and his men.
The highway to Miyun was much better than the other roads they’d ridden that day. It had been a highway of the ancients, and mostly followed near the edge of a rich valley extensively cleared for farming. Here and there a mountain torrent had washed it out, but the army had built it back with stone blocks from the Great Wall, re-bridging with heavy timbers.
For a while Hans continued to trot every other shift, but he’d run little for weeks, mostly riding, and began to tire. So he turned to riding two shifts out of three, and let the horses walk every other shift, an ambling gait. Finally he was so leg weary, he didn’t trot at all, but rode the trotting shifts and walked only the walking shifts. And even that seemed almost beyond him. Grimly he vowed he’d never allow his legs to get so weak again. Even if he had two remounts, he’d run part of the time, as the elders said they should.
For hours they rode past the greatest concentration of farms Hans had ever imagined. He wondered how long it would be before dawn. Until the last two years, his people had been forest people, and he’d never learned to tell time by the stars. It would be best, he thought, if