It was Baver who spoke next. “What—what did you commune about, those nights in the cabin?”
“We simply communed. Experienced each other. Now his beingness has dispersed back among his people, and through him, all of the raven folk know mankind more deeply than before. While I—I know ravens now as few ever have. I know what it is to circle high, and to feel afar the beingness of other ravens. While he learned to screen his mind from whatever, or whoever, created him.
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Thus it, or they, could only observe what he saw and the sounds he heard, not what he sensed inwardly.
“When I first met Fong, I felt the same power behind him. I know no more about it.”
He fell silent then, but Hans had more questions. “Is Fong like Svartvinge? Created and sent by that power?”
“Fong was sent by the emperor, but he is a natural man, not created by the power. More I cannot say. I do not know.”
He spoke no more to them after that, but returned to his trance. Achikh discovered that guards had been set around the place; they told him that Kaidu had ordered them there. They were to let no one enter the ger, or approach it closely. Yes, they said, if any of the occupants left, they would be free to reenter, and their cook would be allowed in, and Kaidu himself of course, if he chose, but no others.
After a bit, Achikh and Baver left together, got their horses and rode off northward, downstream along the Tola. Achikh had never previously spoken to Baver as a personal friend. Now he pointed out places he’d known as a boy and youth, when Kokchü’s clan had camped nearby. With Achikh’s agreement, Baver recorded it all. The cubes in the grip of his recorder would last for years, as would the power tap.
They were back at the ger in time for supper. Hans told them that Nils hadn’t moved. The swelling in his face had gone down. The discoloration had turned to purple-black, and thence to a shading of greens, yellows, ana purple. It seemed to Baver that that was an unusually rapid progression, but he wasn’t sure. His personal experience with bruises had been limited, and restricted largely to childhood.
After supper, Achikh and Hans went out together to drill with swords, leaving Baver behind. Nils, who’d eaten nothing, said nothing, nor showed any sign of awareness of his surroundings. He simply sat there, legs folded,
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back straight. Baver fell asleep before the others returned.
It was Hans who woke first in the morning, with half-light showing dimly beneath the door and through the smoke hole. Enough that he could see Nils was gone.
Hans needed to go to the latrine, and assumed that that was where Nils had gone. But outside he saw no sign of him. It was raining, an unusual rain. Not the typical summer shower, this was more like an autumn rain that can fall for hours, or even from one day to the next. He ducked back in, leaving the door wide for added light. Nils’s things were gone!—-saddle, sleeping robe, weapons . . .
“Wake up!” he called. “Nils has disappeared!”
At the urgency in his voice, the others rolled out of their robes and got up. “He is at the latrine,” Achikh grunted. “That’s all.”
“No! He’s not! I looked! And see?” He pointed to where Nils’s gear had been.
Achikh went frowning to the door and peered out. Nearby, guards were still on post, squatting glumly in the rain. No, they said, they hadn’t seen the giant. They thought he was still inside.
Trotting, Achikh hurried to Kaidu’s ger, where the chiefs doorguard, after a brief conversation, let him in. Kaidu, alarmed and angry at what Achikh told him, sent for the commander of the arban assigned to guard the Northman. While they waited, Kaidu told Achikh what the healing woman had said: that the Northman’s wound had gone nearly through the belly wall. That it might burst open and the guts bulge through if he did anything strenuous.
It turned out that the evening watch had seen the giant leave with his sleeping robe draped over him. He was carrying things under it, but what was impossible to see. Yes, it had seemed strange, but he was a foreigner. Who could tell why foreigners did the things they did?