The Crusading Wizard

CHAPTER 1

The royal family was enjoying one of the rare hours when they could feel like a family. They sat in the palace garden in a secluded and high-hedged comer of the courtyard, Queen Alisande and her husband the Lord Wizard watching their son and daughter at play in the golden light of late afternoon.

“It is so good for them to be out of doors,” Alisande sighed, “and with us. I could wish I were not a queen, that I could spend hours and hours with my babes if I wished.”

“If you weren’t a queen, you wouldn’t have any choice,” Matt pointed out. “You’d have to spend hours and hours with them, whether you wanted to or not.”

“Oh … not if I were a countess or some such…”

“Well, that’s true,” Matt mused. “On the other hand, this country would be in real trouble if you weren’t its queen.”

“Oh, I am sure some other could rule it as well.” But Alisande glowed at the compliment, then frowned. “Still, the poor babes must be quite sad now and again, with no company but one another.”

“A pet,” Matt said positively. “They need a pet.”

“A pet?” Alisande stared, astounded. “A prince and princess, with an animal?”

“A family dog, to teach them responsibility and consideration.”

“How could a dog teach consideration?”

“Because you have to be careful about its feelings,” Matt explained. “If you pull its tail too hard, it lets you know about it in no uncertain terms—and if you do it too often, it won’t come back to play. It doesn’t care whether the child is a prince or a beggar, you see.”

“Might it not bite?” Alisande said in apprehension.

“It has to be very well-trained,” Matt explained, “and training it helps the children train themselves.”

“A princess?” Alisande shuddered, and turned back to watch the children. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“Oh, I’ve noticed you seem to have a certain fondness for horses,” Matt pointed out, “and you get along quite well with hounds.”

“Well … yes, but that is in the hunt!” Alisande explained. “Assuredly, every prince and princess must learn to ride-but the grooms care for the horses and the houndsmen for the dogs. We do not make pets of our packs, and would scarcely keep a horse within doors!”

“Well, no,” Matt admitted. “I had in mind something smaller—a nice, friendly, clumsy dog, maybe—a poodle or a retriever or something like that.”

Alisande still looked scandalized, but she tried to be reasonable. “How would such a beast teach the children to be responsible?”

“By caring for it,” Matt said. “Make it clear to them that nobody else is going to feed it or take it for a walk, because it’s theirs. Simply having an animal that belongs to them will do wonders for their sense of self-worth, too—and it’s great company if a child feels lonely.”

“Royal children do feel alone quite often.” Alisande lifted her head, gazing into her own past. “They have no playmates but their kin, and those seldom come …” She shook herself. “But to feed and water an animal? That is scarcely becoming to their rank!”

“It is, if nobody else is allowed to touch the royal pup,” Matt pointed out.

Alisande still looked thoughtful, but she said, “A dog is too dirty and awkward a beast to keep within doors. A cat, now, would be another matter.”

“Cats are better than nothing,” Matt allowed, “but they don’t need to be walked, and you can’t train them. so they won’t make you any more responsible than you are already. They won’t come keep you company whenever you want them, either—they have this nasty little habit of only stopping by when they want company.”

“But they are smaller, and more graceful,” Alisande pointed out, “far less likely to break a vase or a pitcher, and far better suited to life within doors.”

“I had in mind a small dog,” Matt said, “maybe a spaniel or a Scots terrier, something that can sit in your lap and be petted.”

“Like a cat?” Alisande smiled. “Then why not have a cat?”

“Well, the dog can jump out of your lap and run to fetch a ball,” Matt said. “It can play games with you.”

“And bring the ball back in its mouth, and slobber all over it as the child picks it up?” Alisande shuddered. “Cats play games, too, by chasing bits of string. They are far less disgusting.”

“Well, I would prefer a dog,” Matt said, “but I’ll settle for a cat. When shall we go find one?”

“Now, hold!” Alisande cried. “I have not said we shall have a pet! Only that if we do, it should be a cat!”

“Okay, so think about it for a few days,” Matt said. “It’s really a good idea, though. Why, I’ve even heard of a king who kept a dog in his lap when he was on the throne!” He didn’t mention that Louis XIV had reigned in a world three hundred years older than Alisande’s.

“We might set a fashion,” Alisande admitted, her gaze on the children. “I shall consider it.”

Kaprin suddenly gave his little sister a shove. She rolled back, squalling, then bounced up with a block in her chubby hand. She threw it with all her three-year-old might and very precocious accuracy; it hit her brother on the nose. He recoiled, hand to the offended member, squalling protest, then started toward her with blood in his eye.

“Children!” Alisande started up.

The nursemaid was there before her, though, separating the two children and chiding them equally. “For shame, Alice! Scold sharply if you will, but do not throw things! And you, Kaprin—you know full well that no gentleman should ever strike a lady!”

“I’m not a gentleman yet,” the six-year-old grumbled.

“That is no excuse.”

“There might be some advantage to a pet, after all,” Alisande allowed.

“Just don’t think it over for too long,” Matt said.

The question was about to be answered for them, but it was an answer that had been growing for sixteen years. It began far to the east, in a northern valley nestled among the hills on the edge of the Gobi Desert. It began in the midst of chaos, but the setting was quite peaceful—for a few minutes.

The Oriental garden seemed magical in the moonlight, air fragrant with the perfume of exotic blossoms and stirred by a breeze, which rustled the leaves of flowering trees grown into fanciful shapes by patient gardeners over dozens of years. Wind chimes filled the night with music. The turquoise lawn seemed deep green in the moonlight, bejeweled with dew. Topiary shrubs in sculpted forms framed an ivory gazebo of ornate screens.

So lovely a garden should have lain tranquil under the moon, its only sound the susurrus of leaves and the tinkling of the brook that ran through it, turning model mill wheels and tugging at miniature boats moored for the night at tiny, fanciful boathouses.

It would be tranquil and still for a few minutes more, granting an illusion of peace and safety. But then, behind the scented trees, flames would roar high into the sky from the burning barracks of the horse-soldiers, and the breeze would blow the screams of horses and people alike through the garden, together with the roar and clangor of battle.

A woman hurried across the lawn, the train of her silken robe trailing across the dew-laden grass, her long sleeves sweeping almost as low. She held a small chest in her arms, and when she reached the brook, knelt down and lowered it into the water.

Lifting the lid, she took one last look at the little face of a six-month-old baby wrapped in a cloth-of-gold blanket, asleep from the drop of opium mixed into her milk.

The woman’s eyes filled with tears. “Lie there, my treasure,” she whispered, “and do not wake until the waters have borne you to safety.”

Steel clashed against steel, much closer than before. She looked up with a gasp, then closed the lid of the little chest and pushed it out into the stream. “O Spirits of Brook and River,” she called, “I beg you, protect my child! Carry her to safety far from these monstrous barbarians! Grant her some guise that will shield her from the cruelty of men!”

The little chest went bobbing away on the current as the woman watched, tears spilling down her cheeks, to dampen her robe.

Then a burst of shouting made her tum, gasping in terror. Three of the barbarians came galloping toward her on their small, hardy ponies, shouting in their uncouth language, sabers flashing in the moonlight.

“No!” she cried, and ran toward the gazebo-but one of the horsemen veered away from the others to come between herself and the slight safety of the screens. She stopped, uncertain, then turned to run to her left, but a horseman galloped wide to catch her by the arm. She screamed, but another horseman caught her other arm. She turned to bite his fingers, but the first struck the back of her head with his sword hilt, and she went limp.

Hauling her over the pommel of his saddle, he grinned at his fellow warriors. “One more for the sacrifice,” he said. “Angra Mainyu will be pleased!”

“I know not why that foreign sorcerer must give such an outlandish name to the Lord of Demons,” his companion replied, returning the grin, “but no matter what we call him, he will drink deeply this night.”

Beneath the waters of the river, though, two spirits answered the mother’s call, swimming up through the river weeds more from curiosity than from kindness. They seemed to be made of seaweed and water lilies themselves, but their upper bodies had arms with hands, and their faces were very much like those of young women.

“I thought these mortal mothers never parted with their children,” said one as she caught the floating trunk with green, chilly fingers.

“There must be terror abroad to make her do so, Sister Shannai,” the second said. She looked back toward shore, saw the barbarians riding away with the mother, saw the graceful form of the palace silhouetted against a sky filled with fire, and wrinkled her nose. “Those barbarians who daily pollute our streams! Well might she go in terror!”

“Then let us deprive the horsemen of this pleasure, at least.” Shannai opened the chest to look in at the baby, and smiled fondly, resting her pale green hand on the child’s head. “Look, Arlassair! How sweetly she sleeps!”

“Sweet indeed.” Arlassair laid her own hand over the child’s heart. “Ah! How brave she will be! I feel it in her! Still, let us see that she does not waken till we have guided her to shore in some place so distant from these barbarians as to be safe.”

“Indeed, let us be sure,” Shannai agreed, and chanted a spell that would ensure the baby sweet dreams until the water spirits wished otherwise. Then she joined her sister in pushing the little chest along the stream.

Laughing like the brook itself, they batted the vessel back and forth between them until they came to a river. Then, still playing, they guided the chest a mile down, inviting a family of otters to join them in their game. Finally, tiring of the sport, they diverted the little trunk into a stream that branched off from the river to feed a still forest pool. There they left it, but as Shannai turned to follow her sister back underwater she called out, “Women of the trees, aid now a sprout! Within this trunk is a seed of a human newly sprung! Its mother has sent it to us to keep it safe from the horsemen who plague the plains! Aid this little fugitive, I pray you, for she is not of our element, and must live upon land!”

Her whim completed, she dove deep, following her sister, and forgetting about the baby on the instant.

All about the little chest, tree trunks bulged. The bulges moved, separated from their trees, and human, feminine forms stepped forth, skins brown and rough as bark, green leaves mantling their heads and shoulders in place of hair, more leaves covering them from breast to thigh—not clothing, but growth.

“What marvel is this?” one asked, stretching out a hand to the little trunk. “ It is not made of wood, that’s sure!”

“It is bound together in slabs made from the huge long teeth of elephants,” another told her, “and its bindings are gold! Does not the moonlight show it prettily, my sisters?”

“It does indeed,” said one adorned with oak leaves. She knelt to pry the lid open. “How pretty is the gem within?”

She folded the lid back to reveal the sleeping baby. The dryads gathered around with cries of delight.

“How lovely!”

“How sweetly she sleeps!”

“How darling a babe!”

“Rarely have I seen a mortal of pleasing shape,” said Oak, “but this one is a treasure.”

“How shall we keep her safe from the barbarians?” asked an elm-spirit.

“Hide her,” suggested Maple.

“All well and good,” Birch answered, “but who shall feed her and tend her?”

“Well asked.” Oak frowned. “And where would we hide her?”

“Among the peasant folk?” Elm suggested.

“No, for the barbarians are likely to plunder them also,” said Birch.

“With a caravan trader?” offered Thorn.

“Will they travel at all, with the barbarians abroad?” asked Oak.

“If they do,” said Thorn, “it will be because they have made some arrangement to guarantee their safety, and that of their goods.”

“Well thought,” said Oak, “for even barbarians want the tea and silk of China. But no caravan will take a baby.”

“Then let her not be a baby,” Elm declared.

The others looked up at her in astonishment.

“You cannot make her grown in an instant,” Birch said, “for her mind will still be an infant’s, no matter her body!”

“Not if she is an animal,” said Elm, “say an otter—or a cat!”

The others stared at her in amazement, then began to smile.

“A cat!” Thorn said. “What caravan would take an otter?”

“But any merchant would wish to protect his goods from mice and crickets,” Oak agreed.

“Is it decided, then?” Elm lifted the baby and cradled her in the crook of an elbow.

“Yes!” “Yes!” “Yes!” “Yes!”

“But let us give her the power to change herself back into a human, when she is old enough to wish it,” Thorn demurred.

“Aye, and to change back to a cat, if humans are once again in danger,” Birch added.

“How clever we are!” Elm exulted. “Together, then, sisters! Lay your hands upon her and recite the spell with me!”

Woody hands covered the little bundle of flesh; voices like the rustling of leaves intoned a spell like the wind in the trees. As they chanted, the baby shrank, its form flowing here, bulging there, until a half-grown cat lay in the crook of Elm’s arm, its fur the color of the cloth-of-gold that had swaddled the baby. The wind-rush of voices died away, then began again in separate words.

“Will she be strong and agile?”

“Yes, for a six-month kitten is quick and sure.”

“Will she have sense enough to live?”

“Yes, for at six months a cat’s mind is far more grown than a woman’s.”

“Will she know how to walk, how to hunt, how to hide?”

“No, and that we must teach her ere we let her go.”

“Well, we cannot teach her sleeping,” Thorn said, and touched the kitten’s forehead. “Small one, awake!”

The kitten yawned hugely, then opened its eyes and looked about in curiosity.

“Do not be afraid, little one,” Elm said, “for we are spirits who have already given you our love.”

“We will guard you as long as you have need,” Birch told the kitten, “and lay a spell upon you that will make all other spirits of grove and hill come to your aid.”

The little cat sat up on Elm’s palm and looked about her with bright-eyed interest, switching her tail. Then she stilled, eyes widening with surprise before she darted a quick glance at the twitching tip.

Smiling, Elm set her down on the ground. The tail twitched again; the kitten dove for it, and was instantly lost in the game of chasing her own tail-tip.

“She must have a name,” Birch said. “Was there nothing writ on the little chest that held her?”

“No” said Thorn, “but I remember a word embroidered on her coverlet, in the strange letters that the Greek priests brought.”

“I saw that, too,” Elm said.” ‘ Balkis,’ was it not?”

“Then let Balkis be her name,” Birch said, and so they called her from that day forth.

“We must teach her,” Oak reminded.

They taught. They scratched her paws in the dirt, and instinct took over; with no more teaching than that, she learned to cover her litter with earth. They showed her a mouse and taught her its scent, then forgot their own dignity long enough to stalk like a cat and pounce. She imitated them and caught a mouse of her own soon after, and they showed her crickets, locusts, june bugs, and all manner of kitten delicacies-but they did not teach her how to fish, indeed taught her not to, for the water-spirits had been her first friends.

When Balkis was nine months old, they cast a spell to keep her from going into heat until her human form was fourteen years of age. When she was ten months, a dryad at the fringe of the grove saw a caravan approaching. She told the others, and the word ran to Oak, who told the kitten, “We would dearly love to keep you by us always, but cruel men are riding through this land every day, and if they should see you in girl-form, they might kill you.”

The kitten had learned their language, and within the cat-sized head the human brain understood the gist of the words. Her eyes widened and she trembled.

“Better far for you to ride with the caravan.” Oak took her to the edge of the grove and pointed. “They will be glad to have a cat if they have none already. But you must make friends with them if you wish them to take you far to the west, where these horrible horsemen ride not.”

Balkis-kitten nodded, but a tear formed at the corner of her eye.

“I know. We will miss you, too, little one,” Oak said, “but your welfare is more important to us than your company. See, the merchants have stopped and are pitching their tents, for they wish the water in our grove for themselves and their horses! Go catch a mouse who seeks to nibble at their goods, and you will endear yourself to them forever! Or at least until they come to the lands of the Rus. Go now, make your way in the world!” She set the kitten down and gave it a push.

Hesitantly, and with many a backward glance, the kitten went to prowl around the caravan. Bravely, Oak and her fellow dryads gave her smiles of encouragement, for after all, she would still be near them for the evening.

● ● ●

The caravan drivers looked up at the sound of a sudden yowl. “What is that, so near our packs?” the master asked, frowning.

“A cat, by the sound of it,” one of the drivers answered.

“Let us be sure,” said the caravan-master. “Omar, go see!”

But Omar had scarcely come to his feet when a small golden cat came trotting from the huge panniers full of goods with a mouse in her mouth. She pranced straight up to Omar and dropped the little body at his feet, then looked up at him expectantly.

Omar stared down. “A mouse! By the stars, she has saved a bolt of cloth at least!”

“Perhaps even a pound of spices,” the master agreed.

“But why does she stare at me so, Master Ivan?” Omar asked, completely at a loss, for he was very young.

“Raised with dogs, were you?” Master Ivan grinned “Why, she seeks her pay, lad! Do you think one small mouse is enough dinner for her?”

“Oh, is that all!” Omar grinned, sitting down, and broke a piece of meat from his roast fowl to hold out to the kitten. She nipped it from his fingers and swallowed it in two bites, then ran back to the panniers.

“Well!” said Omar. “Not a thank you, not a backward glance—only gets what she came for and runs!”

“I’ve done that myself, on occasion,” one of the other drivers said.

“Yes, we’ve all spoken with your wife, Sandar,” a third driver said, and his fellows burst into ribald laughter, the more so because they knew Sandar had no wife. As the laughter was dying, the little yellow cat came trotting back to the campfire and dropped another mouse, this time at Sandar’s feet. She stood looking up expectantly.

“Well caught!” he cried, and tossed her a scrap of meat. She pounced on it, gulped it down, and trotted back to the panniers.

“Why doesn’t she just eat the mice?” the third driver asked.

“Would you, Menchin?” Master Ivan asked. “Especially if there is fowl to be nibbled?”

Another laugh answered him. As it lapsed, the cat came trotting back with a third mouse.

The drivers applauded, and Omar said, “She works as hard as any of us.”

“We should take her along,” Sandar said.

“We should indeed,” Master Ivan agreed, and so it was decided.

As the sun rose the next morning, the drivers finished their breakfasts, drowned their fires, loaded their mules, and drove them onto the road. The little yellow cat clung to the harness-pad on the last mule’s back. As they ambled away, she turned for a last look toward the grove, and the dryads. She gave a plaintive mew of farewell. Only her eyes could pick out the waving forms that were her friends and protectors.

Unseen by the men, the dryads raised hands in blessing as they chanted protective spells, tears trickling from their eyes—and that is why, if you look closely at the trees that grow in a grove about a pond, you will now and then see drops of water clinging to their trunks as dawn draws nigh.

Months later the caravan swayed into Novgorod, a city of timber surrounded by a sharpened-log palisade, the facades of its houses ornamented with fanciful carving, all wrought with no tool but an axe. The kitten looked about her wide-eyed, drinking in the wealth of strange sights and sounds and smells—then recoiled as a pack of dogs charged barking at the caravan. Balkis crouched hissing among the rolls of cloth in the pannier, ears laid flat and heart thumping wildly. What were these strange huge beasts with such loud voices and such huge teeth? She decided to stay with the caravan as long as she could.

As the drivers went to dine in a tavern, Omar held out his hands, clucking softly. Balkis jumped into them, and he tucked her away inside his tunic as he followed his companions into the inn. They called for ale and meat, and Balkis sniffed the air for the rank smell of those huge thunder-voiced beasts. Finding no trace of them, she dared to hop down from Omar’s tunic to scout for fallen morsels under the table.

As she worried a sliver of tough meat, she heard the merchant and his drivers talking with others of their kind, and her wakening human mind in a maturing kitten’s brain understood at least the gist of their words.

“Did you have trouble with Tartars, Ivan?” asked a strange voice.

“They gave us safe-conduct, Michael—for a tax,” Ivan answered, “one bolt of cloth out of every ten, and one pound of each spice out of each twenty.”

Dark mutterings greeted the news.

“Do you trust them?” another voice asked.

“Only so long as they do not ride to conquer Novgorod, Ilya. or any other of our Russian cities,” Ivan answered. “While we were on this journey, their warriors were besieging Tashkent. Their chieftain boasted that their khan has even sent a horde against China, riding into Sinkiang. He assured us that Novgorod’s hour has not come yet.”

“Yet?” a new voice asked darkly.

“Yet,” Ivan confirmed.

The atmosphere was suddenly tense, and Balkis looked up, uneasy and forgetting to swallow.

“When?” Michael asked.

“They gave no hint,” Ivan answered, “but for myself, I will lead no more caravans to the east this year.”

“What profits will you find, then?” Ilya argued.

“I will sell half my silks and spices here in Novgorod, of course,” Ivan said, “then buy beads of amber and furs of sable. With those, and the rest of my silks and spices, I shall lead a caravan south and west, to Warszawa and Krakow in Poland, then farther west to Praha in Bohemia or north to Sachsburg in Bavaria.”

Balkis had no idea where those strange-sounding places were, but she grasped the idea that they were farther from the horsemen of the steppes, and resolved that when Master I van’s mules plodded west, she would be riding them.

It was a long journey through birch forests, and at night she stayed close by the campfire, for the darkness teemed with smells very much like those of the horrid beasts of Novgorod, whom she had learned were called “dogs.” But the woods also teemed with mice and other small rodents, and she was able to lay quite a collection of gifts out for her merchant and drivers every morning. They rewarded her with scraps of many different meats, for they trapped and hunted for their dinners as often as they could; fresh meat was far better than the salt pork they carried with them. Balkis became quite a connoisseur of wildlife. Now and again, though, the traders would camp by a river and sieve the water with nets to catch their dinners. They would lay slivers of fish by Balkis, but at one sniff, something within her revolted against it, and she contented herself with mice, which were, after all, quite tasty, if one happened to be a cat at the moment. There were certainly enough of them.

There were bandits in those woods, and twice the drivers had to fight them off with staff and steel. Balkis burrowed in between bolts of silk when that happened, but stuck her head out and watched with wide eyes as axes swung against swords and men fell with arrows sticking in them. One of the drivers was killed and several others wounded, but the bandits fled as soon as they realized the merchant and his men were no easy targets. After all, what were cloth, spices, and furs against one’s own life?

All in all, Balkis was quite relieved when they came out of the forest into broad plains, which were far nicer, for there were fewer of the doglike smells, but a host of mice coming to gnaw their way through the panniers to the spices within. There were also fewer streams. Somehow Balkis knew that it was wrong for a cat to dislike fish, but there it was, she couldn’t stand the thought of eating one of the scaly aliens, and that was that. She did enjoy watching them, though, as they flashed golden and silver beneath the surface of the water. Now and again she dangled her paw in to play, but they never seemed gamesome when she was about.

At last they came to Warszawa, a city like Novgorod in many ways but unlike it in many others. A good number of the buildings were fashioned of brick or stone, for example, and fewer people wore fur or heavy woolen cloth. There were many who spoke a strange guttural language, moreover. Listening under the tables, Balkis learned that those people were called “Allustrians.”

Master Ivan sold half of his remaining silks and spices, and with the gold he gained, bought so much more of Polish goods that he had to add three more mules to his string. In the taverns the talk was again of buying and selling, and there were a great number of worried questions about the barbarians. Master Ivan was in great demand, and so were his drivers. The other merchants did not seem happy to hear that the barbarians intended to ride west eventually, and there was much speculation as to how close they would venture. Would they come to Warszawa, or even to Sachsburg? No one knew, of course, but everyone guessed the worst, and a sense of doom thickened the atmosphere. All in all, Balkis was relieved when the mules ambled out of the city, and quite happy to be back on the plains again.

The land sloped upward gradually, until Balkis found herself looking at huge wooded hills ahead of her. They climbed into those hills, and she was greatly surprised to see the hillside shorn away into slabs of rock, cliffs adorned with ivy and creepers, slanting down to a broad river below. They were into wooded country again, and the rank smells of dogs-but worse filled the night once more—but so did the calming calls of tree-spirits, whom the foolish men seemed unable to hear.

“What creature is that, who fairly glows with the traces of fairy magic?”

“It is only a cat, sister. Go back to sleep.”

“Sleep! When her every breath bears the perfume of distant dryads?”

“It does indeed. Fear not, little one. No wolf shall come near you. We shall protect you.”

And Balkis dozed through the nights, secure in the love and protection of the magical spirits.

Only dozed—she was quick to waken at the slightest sound of gnawing, and quicker to pounce. The forest spirits certainly felt no need to protect the mice who gnawed out dens beneath their own roots.

At last the forest gave way to river-meadow, and there, with steeple and tower gleaming above the waters in the morning sunshine, stood the city of Sachsburg.

Balkis looked about her with great interest as the caravan trailed through the gate and into the town. There was as much building with stone and brick as in Warszawa, but houses and inns were faced with stucco between the beams that held them up. The streets were cobbled, and though dogs ran barking after the mules as before, there was also the scent of many, many cats, some with a musky overtone that Balkis found exciting, though she could not say why. Still, some wariness within her held her aloof; she did not go out at night to find other felines. Somehow she knew they were not really her own kind. She stayed instead with her drivers and her merchant, and listened under the table.

“A toast to journey’s end!” cried Master Ivan.

“Journey’s end!” cried the drivers. Wooden tankards clacked against one another, and men drank deeply.

“How long shall we stay in Sachsburg?” Omar asked. “A month, I think,” Master Ivan said. “It shall take me some time to discover what Allustrian goods to buy, after all, and we can use the rest.”

“With our wages in our pockets? Be sure we can!” Sandar said, grinning.

The other men all roared approval, and Master Ivan grinned through his beard—but when they had quieted a bit, he said, “Remember your wives, my lads.”

“I shall buy mine a necklace and needles,” Omar avowed, “and some skeins of Flemish wool.”

“Then home to Novgorod?” asked Menchin.

Master Ivan nodded. “First to Krakow, I think-but then home, yes.”

Amidst their feet, Balkis thought of the horse-riding barbarians, and decided that when they left for home, they would leave without her.

Accordingly, a month later, she perched atop a pannier as the caravan left the city, but as it plunged into the forest again, she hopped down and dashed away among the trees. She watched the last mule sway away down the track with Omar beside it on horseback, and felt a pang of longing, a sudden surge of loneliness.

Then a barky hand touched her with a feather-light caress.