Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1) by Andre Norton & Susan Shwartz

Author:Andre Norton & Susan Shwartz [Norton, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldbuilders Press
Published: 2016-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Day after day, they traversed a land in which no tree, stream, rock, nor hill appeared to separate one day’s travel from another. Then, one morning, the sight of ten rocks crumbling, perhaps once the site of some ancient outpost, came as a surprise. The sight of this ruin, its stonework tumbled, was a major event—for Silver Snow, that was. The Hsiung-nu simply shrugged as they rode on.

“The sky,” growled one close enough for her to hear, “is all the roof that the Hsiung-nu need.”

She herself was concerned. If such ruin existed this close to the Wall (for they had turned slightly south and could still sight that barrier now and then), would the Middle Kingdom not grow overly dependent upon the Hsiung-nu for protection? She had not believed what Li Ling had told her: that smug officials at court were wont to assure the Emperor: that the Wall was more a defense for the barbarians against the Middle Kingdom.

Certainly it was folly for Ch’in to rely always upon the Wall to keep out invasion, to rely too much upon the goodwill of such horsemen. Was that a vain thing, too? I myself am a weapon in my nation’s hands, Silver Snow told herself when the wind lashed tears from her eyes to freeze on the edges of the scarf against her cheeks.

The air grew cold and dry, then colder and dryer yet. Snow covered the dead grasses. Some days, the sky itself turned pale, and the sun gleamed in it like silver cash, providing light but no warmth. To Silver Snow’s astonishment, despite the cold and the wind, the tough, stocky horses, each bearing its owner’s mark, became more and more shaggy, even thrived, while the camels strode on through the waste, sublimely indifferent to everything save their burdens, their handlers, and their sullen dispositions.

At first, the days’ journeys tired Silver Snow so sorely that at night all she wanted to do was creep into her fur blankets and sleep, perhaps without even bothering to eat. There was so much that no one at court understood about the Hsiung-nu, so much that she had not fully comprehended from her father’s stories, now made clear! Their hatred of walls and restraint, their curious dress, with its shorter tunics and trousers rather than proper robes, even their diet, heavy in meat and fats, were not signs of savagery but simply ways they embraced in order to live in this land. Here, under the vast bowl of the sky, which resounded, day after day, with windsongs more poignant and memorable than those of any voice or bamboo flute, those ways made sense. They possessed a particular rhythm, even a grace, that Silver Snow knew that she would one day come to appreciate.

Gradually, however, the result of the training she had had in her father’s house was regained. Used to the sweet smells of the Inner Courts, at first she found the pungency of the Hsiung-nu’s dung fires to be eye-watering and intolerable.

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