The Journeyer

I remembered the bleached bones and skulls I had seen lying about the Pai-Mir, the remains of animal herds and karwan trains that had encountered other avalanches. There would not be even that much trace left here. None of the Ba-Tang Bho we had excused from the march—little Odcho and Ryang, for instance—if they journeyed here to visit the place where their city’s population was last seen, would ever find the skull of a father or brother to fashion into a sentimental keepsake like a drinking bowl or a festa drum. Maybe some Yi farmer tilling this valley in some far distant century would turn up with his digging stick a fragment of one of the less deeply buried corpses. But, until then … .

It occurred to me that, of all the men and women who had been so frantically ru

It would take some while for the valley to accommodate itself to its changed topography. I could tell that because, even while I groped about and coughed and sneezed in the cloud of dry dust, I found that I was sloshing about in muddy water that had not been there before. The Jin-sha River was nuzzling and probing at the barrier that had so abruptly impeded its flow, and was having to spread out sideways beyond what had formerly been its banks. Evidently, in my trudging about in the dimness, I had veered over to the left, to the eastward. Not wanting to walk any deeper into the gathering water, I turned right and, my boots alternately sucking and slipping in the new mud, went to rejoin the others. When a human shape loomed up before me in the murk, I called to him in the Mongol language, and that was an almost fatal mistake.

I never had a chance to inquire how he had survived the catastrophe —whether he was one of those who had gone ru

He may have believed himself to be the only Yi left alive, and may have been startled to encounter another human form in the dust cloud, but I gave him the advantage when I spoke in Mongol. I did not know what he was, but he knew instantly that I was an enemy—one of the enemy that had just swept away his army and his companions in arms and probably close friends, even brothers of his. With the instinctive action of an angered hornet, he made a swipe at me with his sword. Had it not been for the new mud in which we stood, I should have perished at that moment. I could not have consciously dodged the sudden blow, but my involuntary flinch made me slip in the mud, and I fell down as the sword went whish! where I had been.

I still did not know who or what had attacked me—one thing went through my mind: “Expect me when you least expect me”—but there was no mistaking the attack. I rolled away from his feet and grabbed for the only weapon I carried, my belt knife, and tried to stand, but got only to one knee before he lunged again. We were both still only indistinct figures in the dust, and his footing was as slippery as mine, so his second swing also missed me. That blow brought him close enough to me that I made a dart with my knife point, but it fell short when I slid again in the mud.

Let me say something about close combat. I had earlier, in Khanbalik, seen the imposing map of the Minister of War, with its little flags and yak tails marking the positions of armies. At other times, I have watched high officers plotting out battle tactics and following the progress of them, using a tabletop and colored blocks of different sizes. Such exercises make battle look neat and tidy and perhaps, to a remote officer or an observer not involved, even predictable in the outcome. Back home in Venice, I had seen pictures and tapestries depicting famous Venetian victories on land and sea—over here Our fleet or cavalry, over yonder Theirs, the combatants always facing each other squarely and loosing arrows or aiming lances with precision and assuredness and even a calm look of equanimity. A viewer of such pictures would take a battle to be a thing as orderly and trim and methodical as a Game of Squares, or Shahi, played on a flat board in a well-lighted, comfortable room.

I doubt that any battle has ever been like that, and I know that close combat ca

I will not try to describe our struggle, blow by blow. I do not remember the sequence. All I recall is that it was a time of grunting, panting, squirming, thrashing desperation—a very long time, it seemed —with me trying to get close enough to him to stab with my knife, and he trying to keep enough distance to swing his sword. We were both body-armored in leather, but differently, so that we each had an advantage over the other. My cuirass was of supple hides, allowing me freedom to move and dodge. His was of cuirbouilli so stiff that it stood out around him like a barrel; it hampered his agility, but made an effective barrier against my short, wide-bladed knife. When at last, more by chance than skill, I struck at his chest and the blade went in, I realized that it had penetrated the cuirass, and was stuck there, but could only lightly have pricked his rib cage. So in that moment he had me at his mercy, my knife wedged in his leather, I clinging to its handle, while he was free to wield his sword.

He took that moment to laugh derisively, triumphantly before he struck, and that was his mistake. My knife was the one I had long ago been given by a Romm girl whose name meant Blade. I squeezed its haft in the proper way, and I felt the wide blades jar apart, and I knew the i