Chapter 15 Chapter Three (3)

Day 10: The weather is getting warmer, the clouds are thinner, and the wind is less.We were trudging across an open field, when our guide excitedly pointed to the distance and shouted. "Mountain!" I thought, and my pulse quickened.But instead of mountains he saw, he meant men, men on horses: they were savages!I turned to the girl, who was riding wearily on a horse I was leading. "We'll be there soon," I said, "and we'll find out soon who those are up there." For a few moments, I felt a sudden sense of relief.I walked forward, quickened my pace, and led our group towards three small figures in the distance.

We walked in their direction for half an hour before we realized that we hadn't gotten any closer.As we move, so do they. "They ignored us." I was going to start the fire.But as soon as I ordered to stop, the other three seemed to stop as well.As we go further, they move again. "Are they imitating us? Or is it an illusion caused by the light?" I hesitated.We can't shorten the distance.How long have we been with them?Maybe they'll think we're stalking them? "Stop, there's no need to run after them like this," I said to our men, "let's see if they would like to meet one of us alone." I mounted the girl's horse and headed in the direction of the strangers. past.For a moment they seemed to stand there, watching and waiting.Then they began to back away again, disappearing into the dust and mist, where there was only a flickering light.I tried my best to push my horse forward, but my horse was so weak that it could hardly drag.I had no choice but to give up chasing, got off the horse and waited for my men to catch up and join us.

In order to preserve the strength of the horses, we shortened our daily trips.We spent the afternoon crossing a solid plain, covering only six miles, and the three men on horseback hovered just ahead, just in sight, before we bivouacked.The horses had an hour to gnaw at the dry, yellow grass.Then he was chained to the edge of the tent.As night fell, the stars twinkled in the misty sky.We leaned against the campfire to keep warm, stretched our aching hands and feet, and didn't want to go back to the only remaining tent.Looking to the north, I dare say I can see the bonfire flickering there, but when I want to point it out to the others, it's back to a vast night.

The three voluntarily slept outside and took turns on guard.I am very touched. "Let's talk about it in a day or two," I said, "when the weather gets warmer." We just slept intermittently, the four of us squeezed into the tent that could only accommodate two people, and the girl consciously slept on the outermost side. I got up before dawn and looked north.The rising sun, which gradually turned from light red to lavender, gradually emitted golden light, and the blurred figures in the distance gradually became clear, not three people, but eight, ten, maybe twelve people.

I fashioned a white flag out of a pole and a linen shirt, and rode up to the distant stranger.The wind died down, the weather turned clear, and I rode forward and counted: twelve small figures gathered beside a hill, and the faintest blue mountains were vaguely set off in the distance.I see those people squirming.They formed a single file and climbed the hill like ants.At the top they stopped.A swirl of dust obscured their figures, and a moment later they reappeared: twelve men on horseback against the skyline.I approached them slowly, the white flag fluttering on my shoulders.Although I kept staring at the top of the mountain, they all disappeared in a blink of an eye.

"We have to pretend we don't notice them," I told myself to the gang.We got back on our horses and continued on our way to the mountains.Though the load on the horses was much lighter, it was painful to drive these emaciated animals to their feet without whipping. The girl bleeds, and the blood must come once a month.She couldn't hide it, she had no privacy, not even a decent grove in the place to shelter her.She was uncomfortable and the men were uncomfortable.It was an ancient taboo: a woman's menstrual blood was a sign of bad luck, bad for crops, bad for hunting, bad for horses, but now it was impossible to keep her from touching everyone's food.Because of the shame, she stayed alone all day and didn't join us for dinner.After I ate, I walked into the tent with a bowl of beans and cakes, and she sat there alone.

"You shouldn't be tending me," she said, "and I shouldn't be in the tent, I just don't have anywhere to go." She didn't question her cold reception. "It's okay." I told her.I touched her cheek with my hand and sat down next to her and watched her eat. It was impossible now for the men to sleep in the same tent with her, they all slept outside, where the fire was lit, and they took turns keeping watch.In the morning, at their request, I performed a brief cleansing ceremony with the girl (I was also unclean because I slept with her): I drew a line in the sand with a stick and led her across the The line, then washed her hands, then my own, and then pulled her across the line back to the bivouac. "You'll have to do it again tomorrow," she murmured.During the twelve day trip, we were closer than we had been living under the same roof for the previous five months.

We reach the foot of the mountain.The strange rider came forward slowly and stood at the bottom of the dry river bed, which was the upper reaches of a winding valley.We stop trying to keep up with them.We understand that since they have come to us, they are leading the way for us. There are more and more stones in this place, and our speed is getting slower and slower.We did not worry when we stopped to rest, or did not see strangers in the crooked valley, knowing that they would not hide their faces. In order to climb a ridge, we coaxed the horses, shoved and tugged, and ended up meeting them face to face.Behind the rocks, from their hiding place in the ditch, they slowly turned out, on mottled ponies, a dozen of them, maybe more, in sheepskin clothes and hats, with years on their brown faces The traces left behind, the narrow and long eyes, this is the barbarian who grew up in the local soil.I was so close to them that I could smell them: horse sweat, tobacco, half-tanned leather.A man pointed an old musket at my chest, a man's distance from me, and the breech cocked.My heart stopped beating. "No," I murmured: Out of conscious caution, I dropped the rein leading the horse and raised my empty hands.Slowly I turned away, picked up the rein again, and huddled along among the foothill gravel, leading the horse back to where my companion was waiting at the foot of the hill.

The savages stood tall above us, their silhouettes against the sky.My heart was pounding, the horse was snorting, the wind was whistling, but there was no other sound.We have crossed the borders of the Empire.Don't do it lightly for a moment. I help the girl get off the horse. "Listen carefully," I said, "I'll take you up this slope, and you're going to talk to them. Take your crutches, because the ground is soft and there's no other way up. When you can When you talk to them, you make up your own mind. If you're going to go with them, if they're going to take you to their house, go with them, and if you want to go back with us, you can go with us. Got it? What's the matter with you, I won't force you."

She nodded, looking very nervous. I held her under one arm and helped her up the pebbly hill.The Savage showed no sign of excitement.I counted three long-bore muskets; the rest were shortbows, which I knew so well.When we reached the top, they stepped back a little. "Can you see them?" I asked, panting. She turned her head in that strange, elusive way and said, "Not really." "Blind man: how do you say blind man?" she told me.I said to the savage. "Blind," I said, touching my eyelids.They didn't answer.The gun came out of the horse's ear and pointed at me.The gunman has eyes that glisten with pleasure.The silence was long.

"Talk to them," I told her. "Tell them why we're here. Tell them about you. Tell them the truth." She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, smiling slightly. "Do you really want me to tell them the truth?" "Tell them the truth, otherwise what else can be said?" The smile stayed on her lips.She shook her head and remained silent. "Tell them what you want. Just say it, and while I did my best to bring you here, I very specifically want you to come back to town with me—it's your choice. I squeezed her arm. "You know what I mean? This is what I want." "Why?" The words fell out of her lips extremely gently.She knew it would confuse me, and she confuses me from the start.The gunman approached slowly and almost touched us.She shook her head. "No, I don't want to go back to that place." I go down the hill. "Light the fire, make some tea, and we'll settle down," I said to the men.The stream of voices from the girl above us fell in gentle cascades and reached me intermittently in gusts of wind.She leaned on two crutches, and the riders came down and gathered around her.I can't understand a word. "Great time was missed," I thought, "when she should have taught me to speak her language during those long nights when there was nothing to do! It was too late now." I took two large silver platters out of the bag on my horse's back.I took this thing across the desert.I lifted off a layer of velvet that was wrapped around the outside. "You take this." I ordered.I took her hand and stroked it, letting her feel the soft texture of the silk, the engravings on the plate—the pattern of fish and leaves intertwined.I also brought her a little package, the contents of which I cannot tell.I put it on the ground. "Will they take you all the way?" She nodded. "He said it was the same way until midsummer. He said he still wanted a horse for me to ride." "Tell him we've got a long, hard way to go. Our horses are in bad shape, and he can see that. Ask them if you can buy them a horse. Say we'll pay him silver." She passed the word to the old man while I waited.His companions had all dismounted, but he alone remained seated, with an old-fashioned gun on a strap slung over his back.None of their stirrups, saddles, bridles, and reins are made of metal, but are all made of bone and wood, sewn with gut after being hardened over a fire, and then matched with leather laces.They wear wool or the fur of other animals, and grow up eating animal meat and milk. They are quite unfamiliar with the soft texture of cotton fabrics, and they rarely appreciate the sweetness and moistness of grains and fruits: this is how those expanded empires grew up. The savages who drove from the plains to the mountains.I have never yet met these northern savages on an equal footing in their own land: those I am acquainted with come to our town to trade; Then there were the miserable captives of Colonel Joel.It was so sudden and shameful to meet them in this place today!Perhaps one day my successors will collect their handicrafts: arrowheads, curved knife handles, wooden dishes, etc., which will be displayed in my considerable collection of bird egg fossils and those bibles. next to the transcript.What I'm here to fix is ​​the knot between people's future and their past, to restore with apology a body we've drained dry—I'm a mediator, a lackey of an empire in sheep's clothing. "He said no." I took a small piece of silver out of the bag and handed it to him in my hand. "Tell him that this silver buys a horse." He bent down, took the gleaming piece of silver, took a bite out of it carefully, and hid it in his jacket casually. "He said no. You can't exchange the money for another horse. It was paid for my horse. He didn't want my horse, so he took the money." I almost lost my temper.But what's the point of haggling?She was going, almost gone.This is the last time to see her face to face clearly, to remember her every movement in my heart, to try to understand her true face: I know that from now on, according to my erratic desires, the whole Search your own memory bank to reconstruct everything about her.I touched her cheek and took her hand.It was almost noon on this desolate hillside, and I had none of the vague sexual urges that had drawn me night after night toward her body; A camaraderie, and all that's left is from a blank solitude to a solitary void.I took her hand and squeezed it tightly, but there was no response.I could only see clearly what I could see in front of me: a stocky girl with a wide mouth and bangs falling over her forehead, gazing at the sky over my shoulder.She was a stranger, a passer-by from a strange land, and she was going home now after a brief, not to say pleasant, visit. "Goodbye." I said. "Goodbye," she said.The voice is dull and lifeless, and so am I.I went down the hill, and when I got to the bottom they had taken the crutch out of her hand and put her on a pony. ** By the time people can feel it, spring has come.The air was so soft and pleasant; little green grass sprouts were beginning to emerge from the ground; flocks of desert quail were chasing after us.If we travel now, instead of two weeks ago, the journey will be much faster and the risk of life will not be so great.But from another perspective, if we leave later, can we meet those barbarians by chance?I'm sure that was the day they were busy folding tents and loading wagons with their livestock for their spring migration.It seemed right to take that risk, even though I knew the people I was following were blaming me. (Winter takes us out! I can imagine them complaining. "We sure wouldn't have said yes!" once they realize that instead of going to the savages for some special mission as I implied, they're just escorting a woman, a detachment Barbarian Prisoner, a lowly figure, the Sheriff's Bitch, they must have murmured, hadn't they?) We followed the route we had come as far as possible, and returned according to the directions of the stars that I had carefully calculated.With the wind at our backs, the weather warmer and the horses lightened, we knew where we were and were sure to go faster than we had come.But the first night at camp went awry.I was called to the bonfire by them, and the young soldier sat beside him with his face in his hands and his head downcast.He took off his boots, his feet spread out. "Look at his feet, sir," said the guide. His feet were red and inflamed. "What's going on?" I asked the kid.He held up his foot to show me the heel covered with blood and pus.From the foot wraps I could smell the stench of rotting flesh. "How long has your foot been like this?" I asked.He buried his face. "Why don't you say anything? Didn't I tell you that the soles of your feet must be kept clean, that you have to change the foot wraps to wash your feet every other day, and that you have to apply ointment to the blisters and wrap the wounds with bandages?" I have a reason to warn you! How can you walk with your feet now?" The boy didn't say a word. "He doesn't want to burden everyone," his companion whispered. "He didn't want to drag us all down, but now we're going to cart him all the way back!" I yelled. "Boil water, wash and wrap his feet!" I was right to order this.The next morning the lad was in unbearable pain as they tried to put his boots on.There was only a bandage, and his foot was wrapped tightly in a bag so that he could take a few limping steps.Of course he had to ride most of the way on horseback. We will be relieved when this trip is over.We're getting a little bored with each other. On the fourth day, we fought our way across the dry bed of an ancient lagoon, a few miles southeast, to a well we had dug, surrounded by a cluster of bare poplar branches.We rested there for the day, frying what was left of an oil cake and cooking the last pot of beans to mush.Gather your energy to tackle the last and most difficult part of the journey. I am always alone.The men were talking in low voices, but fell silent as I approached.The exhilaration that had begun before reaching home had been consumed by the arduous journey, not only because its climax had been so disappointing—a negotiation with savages in the desert followed by a retracement—and , the presence of the girl was a gendered incentive for the men to fight secretly, but now that incentive is gone, they get depressed and irritable, and find fault everywhere: they complain that I took them away This reckless and useless journey; loathing the unruly horses; resenting their mate's rotten foot for delaying everyone's journey; complaining even to himself.I was the first to move my own bedding out of the tent and sleep by the campfire under the stars, preferring to freeze outside than suffer the suffocating warmth in the tent with three sullen people.The next night, no one tended the tents, and everyone slept in the wild. By the seventh day, we had trudged into the saline.Another horse died.Tired of the daily monotony of beans and pastry, the men demanded that the horse carcass be eaten.I allowed it, but didn't eat it myself. "I still have to walk the road ahead with the horse," I said.Let them enjoy their own feast, don't let me get in the way here they imagine slitting my throat; ripping out my guts; smashing my bones.Maybe they'll be more polite afterwards. I long for the familiar routine of routine, for the soon-to-be-summer, for the dreamy siestas of the long summer days, the evening conversations with friends under the walnut tree; the tea and lemons brought by the boy servant Juice, pleasant girls in gorgeous clothes strolled in the square in twos and threes, passing in front of us.Because of her isolation from the world these days, her face has become more and more solid in my memory, turning into an opaque and impenetrable barrier, her face seems to be covered with a concealed shell.While pacing in the saline soil, for a moment I was startled by a thought: I might have fallen in love with that girl from the distant lands.But now all I want is to live comfortably in a familiar world, to die in my own bed, to be sent to the graveyard by old friends.At a distance of ten miles from the city gate we could make out the watchtower jutting out of the sky, and we were still on the south side of the lake, from where the ocher wall began to divide the gray desert into the distance. background.I glanced at the people behind me, and they quickened their pace, their faces filled with joy.We haven't showered or changed clothes for three weeks, our bodies smell bad, and our darkened skin is full of chapped wrinkles from the wind and sun.We were exhausted, but we walked like men, and even the boy who was limping with a bandaged foot puffed out his chest.It could have been worse, who knows?It might be better, but it might be worse.Even the horse, stuffed with swamp grass, seemed to have regained its strength. The first shoots of spring are beginning to sprout in the fields.A faint sound of bugles reached our ears, and the mounted procession of concierges lined up from the city gates, their armor gleaming in the sun.And we look like a bunch of ragged scarecrows, if I had told everyone to change into their military outfits for the last stretch of the road.I watched the men on horseback approach us, expecting them to come galloping out of nowhere, firing guns into the air and cheering us.They were businesslike - they weren't welcoming us at all - and it dawned on me that there were no kids running after us: they surrounded us in groups of two, none of whom I knew of.Their eyes were cold, and they didn't answer my questions. They just led us through the open city gate like a group of prisoners.When we got to the square, saw the tents there, and heard the uproar, we realized that a large army was approaching, and a war was going on against the barbarians.