The Year of Rice and Salt

That night he slept poorly, his stomach full and gassy with onions. At dawn he made his way south, following the big river. All the villages and settlements were empty. Any people he saw were dead on the ground. It was disturbing, but there was nothing to be done. He too was in some kind of posthumous existence, a very hungry ghost indeed. Living on from one found bite to the next, with no name or fellows, he began to close in on himself, as during the hardest campaigns on the steppes, becoming more and more an animal, his mind shrinking in like the horns of a touched snail. For many watches at a time he thought little but the Heart Sutra. Form is emptiness, emptiness form. Not for nothing had he been named Sun Wu kong, Awake to Emptiness, in an earlier incarnation. Monkey in the void.

He came to a village that looked untouched, skirted its edge. In an empty stable he found an unstrung bow and a quiver of arrows, all very primitive and poorly made. Something moved in the pasturage outside, and he went out and whistled up a small black mare. He caught her with onions, and quickly taught her to take him.

He rode her across a stone bridge over the big river, and slowly crossed the grain of the land southwards, up and down, up and down. All the villages continued empty, their food rotted or scavenged by animals, but now he had the mare's milk and blood to sustain him, so the matter was not so urgent.

It was autumn here, and he began to live like the bears, eating berries and honey, and rabbits shot with the ridiculous bow. Possibly it had been concocted by a child; he couldn't believe anyone older would make such a thing. It was a single bend of wood, probably ash, partly carved but still misshapen; no arrowrest, no nocking point, its pull like that of a prayer flag line. His old bow had been a laminate of horn, maplewood and tendon glue covered by blue leather, with a sweet pull and release, and enough power to pierce body armour from over a li away. Gone now, gone altogether beyond, lost with all the rest of his few possessions, and when he shot these twig arrows with this branch bow and missed, he would shake his head and wonder if it was even worth tracking the arrow down. It was no wonder these people had died.

In one small village, five buildings clustered above a stream ford, the headman's house proved to have a locked larder, still stocked with dried fishcakes that were spiced with something Bold did not recognize, which made his stomach queasy. But with the strange food in him he felt his spirits rise. In a stable he found sidebags for the mare, and stuffed them with more dried food. He rode on, paying more attention than he had been to the land he was passing through.

White barked trees hold up black branches, Pine and cypress still verdant on the ridge. A red bird and a blue bird sit near each other In the same tree. Now anything is possible.

Anything but return to his previous life. Not that he harboured any resentment of Temur; Bold would have done the same in his place. Plague was plague, and could not be treated lightly. And this plague was obviously worse than most, having killed everyone in the region. Among the Mongols plague usually killed a few babies, maybe made some adults sick. You killed rats or mice on sight, and if babies got feverish and developed the bumps, their mothers took them out to live or die by the rivers. Indian cities were said to have a worse time with it, people dying in great crowds. But never anything like this. It was possible something else had killed them.

Travelling through empty land.

Clouds hazy, moon waning and chill. Sky, frost coloured, cold to look at.

Wind piercing. Sudden terror.

A thousand trees roar in the sparse woodland: A lonely monkey cries on a barren hill.

But the terror washed through him and then away, like freshets of rain, leaving a mind as empty as the land itself. It was very still. Gone, gone, altogether gone.

For a time he thought he would ride through and out of the region of plague, and find people again. But then he came over a jagged range of black hills, and saw a big town spread below, bigger than any he had ever seen, its rooftops covering a whole valley bottom. But deserted. No smoke, no noise, no movement. In the centre of the city another giant stone temple stood open to the sky. Seeing it, the terror poured into him again, and he rode into the forest to escape the sight of so many people gone like the autumn leaves.

He knew roughly where he was, of course. South of here, he would eventually come into the Ottoman Turks' holdings in the Balkans. He would be able to speak with them, he would be back in the world, but out of Temur's empire. Something then would start up for him, some way to live.

So he rode south. But still only skeletons occupied the villages. He grew hungrier and hungrier. He drove the mare harder, while drinking more of her blood.