‘Lucky those robbers didn’t try to get your jacket off you.’

‘That’s been tried in the past, by lads more interested in what’s inside my clothes than the clothes themselves. They end up with slit throats.’

‘I have a feeling that whatever Rina paid you back in Hantilios to keep us alive wasn’t enough.’

She laughed. ‘Well, that’s probably true. Unless of course old Pyxeas does after all end up saving the world, in which case it will all have been worth it.’

Avatak slept away much of his time in Lop. He did some exploring, but he felt bewildered to be in yet another town, his ears filled by yet another set of unknown and unknowable languages.

At last he saw Mongol warriors, in the town.

They were burly men in armour of buffalo hide, layers of fur, and, some of them, elaborate cloaks woven with gold and silk. They wore their hair oddly, with the scalp shaven, and only a fine mask of beard around the mouth and chin. Most of them carried at least one weapon, an axe, a sword, perhaps a small bow – unimpressive, but Uzzia said it was their use of the bow, their arrows shot from the back of a galloping horse with deadly accuracy, that made them formidable above all else. They were nomad horsemen and war-fighters and they were tremendously rich, all these things at once. Avatak thought he could see the story of their success in the way they dressed, in warrior garb adorned with gold and jewels, the way they walked as others cowered out of their way. Avatak didn’t speak to any of them.

He visited taverns, and drank weak beer, and made conversation with locals and travellers in broken Greek and Northlander. The travellers told tales of tremendous fires to the north, as if all the forests in Asia were burning off, and of streams of nestspills all heading south. When he spoke of this to Pyxeas, the scholar looked mournful, and spoke of friends in Albia, their ancient forest, which must be turning to ash too. Lying awake at night, Avatak sometimes imagined he smelled the smoke of the world fires, and that he heard the whisper from a million throats: ‘South. Go south . . .’

He made his twice-daily pilgrimage to see the mule in its stable. He brushed its coarse coat, and rubbed liniment into its injured hoof. The mule submitted to these attentions in sullen silence, save for the occasional fart.

The seven days over, once again they bundled up their luggage and loaded the mule. Now they had a horse too, a compact, strong-looking pony purchased by Uzzia. They left the city of Lop with gratitude for its hospitality, but without looking back.

Within two days they were in a desert.