“What will we do if they see us?” Baver asked.
“Keep riding. If there are only a few, they may not attack us. And they may decide we are not worth a day’s ride, or half a day’s, to get help.”
Achikh pulled ahead of them then, pausing near the top of every hill to dismount, crawl to the crest, and see what lay on the other side. When they were well past the basin, they swung due east toward the mountains. It was necessary then to cross the narrow valley that,
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northwestward, opened into it. Achikh lay longer than usual, observing, before remounting and leading them on. There were patches of pinewoods on the slope they rode down, and they avoided talking; Kalmul warriors might be within hearing, unseen among trees.
The mountains were conspicuously nearer by sunset. Forests clothed their foothills and lower slopes, dark blue-gray with distance. Their higher shoulders were lighter gray—alpine tundra—while the farther, higher ridges and peaks showed dark gray stone, with crescents and patches and stringers of last winter’s snow. Belukha reared to the north, head and shoulders above the others.
They rode till twilight, then camped beside a brook in the cover of trees. They made no fire, pitched no tent.
The moon, a sickle, rose somewhat after midnight, and they rose with it. Before they left, Achikh had them take their axes from the packhorses and lash them to saddle rings. “Why?” Baver asked.
‘We may be chased.”
“But—the axes add weight! They’ll slow our horses!”
“If we’re chased closely, well lose our packhorses. And to be in the forest in winter without axes . . . We’d be better off caught.”
It seemed to Baver they’d be better off to carry their bedrolls then, but he said no more about it. They left, breakfasting on airag, passing the bag around as they rode. By sunup the foothills were noticeably nearer. By afternoon the hills they rode over were steeper and more broken, their east slopes more forest than not. After a short while they came to a valley with a small stream that ran southwest among groves of poplars, pine, and aspen. Achikh turned them upstream, riding the hillcrest.
They’d continued a few kilometers when Achikh saw the leather tents of a travel camp, hidden from them till then by trees. He hissed a warning, and motioned them back from the crest.
“Do you think they saw you?” Baver murmured.
The big shoulders shrugged. “If I was, then there’s no
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one there except a slave or two keeping camp. Otherwise we would have heard them. I saw four tents, but there may be more.”
“Four tents? How many people would that mean?”
“More than twelve; perhaps as many as twenty. It’s usual to sleep four or five in each, as we do.”
They rode on then, seldom stopping but never hurrying, the Buriat and the two Northmen watching and listening constantly. Baver too was mostly alert, woolgathering only occasionally.
Near sunset, as they approached the crest of a hill, a band of Kalmuls crossed it the better part of a kilometer to their right. Both parties saw each other at the same time, and the Kalmuls started toward them at once, galloping, whooping warcries. Achikh thumped his heels against his horse s ribs and sent it running over the crest, the others following, angling down the other side.
As they’d crossed the crest, Achikh, Nils and Hans had looked back. More than a dozen Kalmuls were in noisy pursuit. Several others, slaves, had stayed behind with the Kalmuls’ pack animals, which were loaded with wild game; it was a hunting party. They’d glimpsed antlers of elk and moose, then saw no more of them, for there was open forest on this side of the ridge, and they had entered among the trees.
In the openings, the humps and holes of pocket gophers were numerous. Rocks stuck up from the ground, and there were fallen trees to jump over. It seemed to Baver that his horse, at a full gallop, was in imminent danger of going down, pitching him headlong.
It was impossible now to see their pursuers, to know whether or not they were gaining, but Baver had no doubt they were. On him at least. For he was falling behind the others, even behind Nils, whose weight must surely slow his horse. He knew the others would be kicking and urging their horses to as much speed as they could get from them. He, on the other hand, was holding on desperately, not urging at all, doing his best not to fall off? He’d ridden thousands of kilometers since he’d