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Nils at once undertook to learn Achikh’s language, and within a week was speaking quite a lot of it. Hans too made rapid progress: It was as if his tongue was designed for wrapping around foreign sounds. And then there was the boy s memory, and the oral tradition of the Neovikings; he’d been conditioned from childhood to store and collate spoken words—poems—and recite them accurately.
Meanwhile, lessons in Anglic had ended; where they were going, it would likely be unknown.
After a few days, Baver too undertook to learn Achikh’s language. It gave him something to do in the hours on horseback. He had no particular talent for languages. He’d learned the Neoviking tongue aboard the Phaeacia, with the language tutor strapped to his head, absorbing and drilling the vocabulary and grammar inputs that Nikko had provided. To learn a language in this stupid way was slow and exasperating for him.
But he learned, refusing to seem stupid to the others. Besides, as they learned more, they used it more. In time, it seemed to him, all they’d be speaking was Mongol, and he’d be left out if he failed to learn it.
Marmot and an occasional small bird, poorly cooked over an open fire, continued to pall on him. Achikh’s packhorse was a lactating mare, so at first they had a bit of mare’s milk to supplement the marmot. Both sour and very rich, it didn’t sit well on Baver’s stomach. The mare soon dried up though.
Now and again they met travelers, or saw someone tending cattle. Achikh’s modest Turkic was a different dialect, but it served to dicker for a bag of airag—fermented mare’s milk—or curds. His exchange was silver coins, split as necessary for change, the last of his European loot. Baver wondered if they ate vegetables or fruit at all in this dry and treeless land.
Once they stopped at a cluster of large round tents made of what seemed to be compacted hair, and whitewashed to reflect the heat. Achikh called them ger; Baver had no idea what the occupants called them. Achikh’s
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pack mare was a powerful animal much larger than the local ponies, and ready to be bred. He traded it for a lactating mare, which gave them their own source of airag, and her foal, which they could trade elsewhere. Afterward they were invited to eat, and ate all they could hold; it seemed they were expected to. Baver drank more than he could handle, vomiting till he thought his eyes would fall out. The next day was beastly for him.
Another time they encountered a band of armed and mounted men—everyone was armed and mounted in this country—who demanded their horses. Achikh was prepared to fight, but Nils, open hands spread before his shoulders, rode up to their leader till they were thigh to thigh, then grabbed him suddenly by the right arm with one large hand. The man was not too dark to pale, nor too tough to grimace with pain. At the same moment, Nils drew the man’s sword with his other hand and held it to the owner’s belly.
Achikh spoke sternly and at length to them—told them the giant was a great shaman sent by God. Then Nils let go the leader, and reaching to his own face, removed his eyes, holding them out to the man. The brigand stared, first at the emptied sockets that seemed to look at him, then at the glass eyes, and backed off with a cry as if they were scorpions. Quickly he wheeled his horse, yammering loud, high-pitched commands, and the whole band galloped off.
Nils still held the man’s sword. Smiling, he reseated his eyes, dismounted, and stuck the sword in the ground. Achikh, staring, hadn’t yet moved. He had nothing to say for quite awhile, but when at last he spoke, it was as if nothing had happened.
Baver suspected the story would survive forever among the local tribesmen.
ELEVEN
The weather, already hot and parched, grew hotter. Some waterholes were dry, and water became a problem. When they went afoot to rest the horses, they walked instead of running, that they wouldn’t sweat as much, and this slowed them. Achikh suggested they steal some horses so that everyone would have a remount, but Nils declined. They were making decent progress, and if they stole horses, they could easily pay with, their lives.