He didn’t know which possibility was the most unsettling.
They’d made good progress since the storm, considering they’d taken time to spread things to dry at every break. They’d traveled till after sundown.
Hans lay on his back, staring at the stars. At an intellectual level he knew that the star man, Baver, had come from one of them, but at an emotional level it was hard to accept. Star Folk should be—wonderful: wise, hand-
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some, fearless, in all ways impressive. Baver couldn’t even start a fire, not even with dry weeds, and hadn’t tried to learn. He let others do for him.
Actually none of the star folk had impressed him. The things they had impressed him, but not the people. But the others, Matts and Nikko, were at least not foolish and bumbling. He supposed they were able enough at Star Folk things.
His sharp young ears listened now for breathing. Only Nils was near enough, less than an armspan away.
“Nils!” he whispered.
“Ja-ha?”
Hans spoke in their own language. “You said the storm-being was formed from spirit stuff. And commanded. Who formed and commanded it?”
Nils’s chuckle was hardly a breath. “I met them once, at the end of spring. They were looking at me through a— The spirit world is beside ours but separate. These others are in our world, far east of here. That much I am sure of. They know how to look through the spirit world to see places where they are not. Though perhaps not clearly, and seemingly without knowing where they look. That’s as much as I know of them. It is they I go to find.”
Hans shivered in his robe. “Sending the storm as they did, they are not friendly.”
“True.”
“Do they know where we are right now?” Hans was thinking that something else might come upon them while they slept.
“It seems improbable. The storm-being had been searching for days.”
“Why do you go to find them?”
“I’ll know when I get there.”
“Will you fight them?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then I will fight them with you!”
“I’ll be glad to have you with me.”
“Do you suppose Achikh will fight too? He does well
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at drill. I can think of warriors who’d be hard pressed to beat him.”
“I agree. And if he is still with us, he might.”
Hans said nothing more for a minute or longer. Then: “What do you think about before you fall asleep?”
“Often I fall asleep at once. Other times I lie still and leave.”
“Leave?” Hans felt alarm at that.
“My body is still here, but I leave. I cease to be in this world. I enter another,”
There was another minute’s lapse. “What is it like?”
“It is very peaceful. Now, though, I am simply going to sleep. You may wish to also.”
Baver lay listening, but the two Neovikings said no more. Leave! Enter another world! And they were going to find the one—the someones—whom Nils imagined sent the storm! Nils was crazy!
But despite himself, Baver half believed, and was afraid. For his sanity if nothing else.
TWELVE
“My dear Songtsan, intriguing and conspiring to rule the Mongols is a waste of time. I have the procedure for you: Allow me to take a hundred thousand soldiers to the frontier, sixty thousand of them cavalry, and invade. Crush all resistance, then conscript as many as you want of the survivors.”
The general who spoke was as tall as the emperor, who himself was tall. He was also thirty kilos heavier. His silk robe, which nearly reached his knees, was indigo, the color reserved for the royal family, and heavily brocaded with the figures of men fighting. A scarlet sash gathered it about his thick waist, and held a curved sword with a blade nearly a meter long. Beneath the robe’s hem, yellow silk pantaloons were Housed into knee-length boots, their toes upcurved strongly, their glossy, golden brown leather inset with lacquered images of wildlife: pheasants, deer, a tiger . . . His horned helmet was hammered steel concealed beneath gold plate; its rim coiled silk, scarlet and indigo. Its sky-blue silk skirt, which protected his bull neck from the sun, was embroidered with tiny eagles and falcons; vines and flowers added color.