Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian
things: he looked worried, and his face was dark. But after a moment he forced a smile and said, ‘That funny little man, as you call him, is the Khan. He has probably killed more men than you have ever spoken to in your life, merely in guarding his own lands: what he could do if he went on the loose, I hesitate to think. I wouldn’t call him a funny little man if I were you.’
Sullivan and Ross walked on to where the Professor stood: they drew him aside out of earshot, and Sullivan said, ‘I am afraid we have bad news. We cannot go on by the road we planned, and we cannot go back. The Kazaks have cut the roads to the Gobi, and they have defeated the Khan’s men north of the Takla Makan. He is very short of men just now, until he can get his scattered horde together, but he will give us a dozen men for a month to take us south of the Takla Makan to the Kirghiz country. We will be safe there. It is a quicker road than the one we proposed before, but it will give you no archaeology at all – it will be hard riding all the way.’
‘I am all for speed at this juncture,’ said the Professor, ‘and I feel that I would rather get the jade home than make any number of diggings, however exciting they might be. But will it be necessary to deprive this worthy man of so many of his followers?’
‘If you want to carry your head home as well as your jade,’ said Ross, ‘you will thank your stars that the Khan has made the offer. I wish that he could let us have ten times as many. Ever since this clumsy lubber Sullivan killed the Altai Khan’s son there has been a blood-feud between us and them, and they’ll be after us like a pack of wolves.’
‘Yes. That is the case,’ said Sullivan, shaking his head. ‘And that is not the only danger. The old Khan does not know exactly what has happened in the north, and there is the possibility – the very faint possibility, mind – that the Kazaks might come down through the middle of the Takla Makan and cut our road before we can get through.’ He drew a rough oval in the sand. ‘Here are we,’ he said, pointing to the narrow end of the egg, ‘and we have got to hurry along the southern edge. If they should come down thus’ – he drew a line through the middle of the egg – ‘and hit this southern edge by the Kunlun mountains before we have passed the point where they reach our path, why, then things might be very bad.’
‘Yes,’ said the Professor, gravely. ‘I quite see that.’
‘But,’ said Ross, ‘although they might be very bad, they would not be hopeless. There are some places where it is possible to get up through the Kunlun into Tibet – but we hardly need worry our heads about that. The chances of the Kazaks coming down through the desert are really very slight. Our chief aim must be to get along as fast as ever we can, and I think we should talk from our saddles, rather than wandering about like lambs waiting for the butcher.’
They stripped the column down to its bare necessities. Bale after bale they left standing in the sand, food, books and the Professor’s rubber bath: they changed all the camel-loads that could not be left behind on to horses, and by the light of the crescent moon alone they rode hard for the south. Yet fast though they went, the Mongols were not satisfied: they pushed on and on until Derrick slept in his saddle, and Li Han had to have his feet tied under his horse’s belly to keep him on. Twice young Hulagu made wide sweeping detours through stony patches of the desert, keeping the horses trotting throughout the night, although they were so tired that they could hardly stand: but in spite of all their care, on the third day they saw dust on the horizon behind them, and by noon through the binoculars they could see that below the dust rode a troop of Kazaks. It was that same evening that on the southern sky there appeared a long, low cloud that never moved. It was the Kunlun mountains, and as the sun set they could see the snow of the distant peaks glow red.
Day after day they travelled swiftly to the south, keeping to the edge of the desert for the rare wells and the grass for their horses; and day after day the Kazaks followed them. It was hard on the men, but it was harder on the horses: they carried very little corn, and the grass the horses could find was not enough to keep even those hardy beasts going at that killing pace. The mares that they brought with them for their milk dried up, and then one horse after another dropped behind. Fortunately they had many spare horses, in the Tartar fashion, and they hoped that under the mountains they would find better pasture.
When they first appeared, the Kazaks were more numerous than the flying expedition, but Hulagu had hopes of reducing their numbers: not only had they fewer spare horses, being so far from home, but they did not know the springs so well, and every night, once it was certain that they were discovered, the Kokonor men fired the grass so that there would be none for the pursuers, for during the first ten days of their flight the wind was in their faces, and the fire, when it spread, ran back towards the Kazaks.
Hulagu was right. In time the Kazaks dwindled in number to such a degree that the expedition was no longer hopelessly outnumbered, and after they had made sure of that by repeated counts, they slowed their pace to a speed that would not kill their horses – a speed that they could keep up for a month on end. The Kazaks did the same: by pressing hard they could now have caught up with the expedition, but they hung back, waiting like wolves for some disaster, some well that would fail, or for some one of the hundred mischances that could befall to happen and deliver their prey to them unarmed.
The column no longer rode in a compact line: there were the baggage horses in the centre, with the poorest riders; then a rear-guard of the Kokonor Mongols, with either Ross or Sullivan; and far in front three or four of the best horses. Chingiz and Derrick were usually sent out in front, being the lightest of the party, and the least likely to tire their horses; and all day as they rode they scanned the horizon to the north and west.
Every day as they rode south the Kunlun range rose higher in the sky, a vast series of mountains like a wall, rising abruptly from the plain: from less than half-way up they were covered with snow, and innumerable higher, more snowy peaks showed behind them. Behind that monstrous wall was Tibet, but it seemed impossible that any man should get up there, or live if he ever succeeded in his climb.
At last they began to turn right-handed to the west. The sun set in their eyes now, and now they were in the more fertile tract of country that led between the desert and the great rampart of mountains that floated above the clouds on their left, a long, thin stretch of country that would lead them to safety in the Kirghiz land.
They were in the foothills now, high, rolling, down-like slopes with grass that gave their horses heart and strength, and they were so near the mountains that they filled half the sky, towering up and up so that they had to lean back to see the tops. The days went by, so many of them that Derrick lost count of the days of the week, and they came at last to the place called Tchirek Chagu. Several of the Mongols had been here, for it was a meeting-place for those who had come down through the desert to the southern trail, and here sometimes in the earlier part of the year a few Tibetans would come down and trade. They rode with redoubled caution here, looking out far ahead; but when it was passed even Ross, who was the most cautious in saying hopeful words, said that he thought there was no longer any danger from the north. Several times they thought of turning to deal with the danger from the east, but whenever they stopped, the Kazaks stopped too. It would need several days to bring them to action, so the expedition went on, more slowly now, and almost at their ease.
They were riding along the most spectacular part of the southern trail, with the edge of the Takla Makan in sight on their right, and on their left the mountain wall rising sheer and black in the noblest precipice in the world, when one of the Mongols who had been there before pointed out the Gingbadze pass and the lamasery.
It seemed impossible that the small downward nick in the towering heights should be a pass, but as Derrick followed the pointing finger he could make out a minute square object just under it.
‘That,’ said the Mongol, ‘is the lamasery of Gingbadze, and the lamas who lived there made those steps that lead up to the pass.’ Derrick looked harder still, and he made out a thin line running up the precipice, a continuous line of steps cut out of the living rock.
‘So that is Gingbadze,’ said the Professor. ‘I have often heard of it, but I never expected to see it.’
‘Why did they cut the steps, sir?’ asked Derrick.
‘For