Avatak plucked out the arrow, making Uzzia wince. She said she was lucky; it had not penetrated deep enough for the barbs to dig into her flesh. But she warned him against touching the arrowhead, or the brown stuff smeared on it. She loosened her tunic, and let Avatak dab cleansing unguents on her broken flesh with scraps of cloth. The medicine’s scent made his nose wrinkle. The wound was not deep, did not need stitching, and the blood was already clotted. But there was a patch of discoloration around the wound, not purple like a bruise but an ugly, faintly green colour.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Uzzia said when he described this. She pulled up her tunic. ‘We must get on. The sooner we can put some distance between us and Daidu the better.’

‘Heading south.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why not west? That’s the way we came – the way back home.’

‘But we can’t go back that way.’ She sighed. ‘Look at Pyxeas, Avatak. Do you imagine he could stand another journey like that? Even if it could be made at all, after another year of his longwinter!’

‘South, then. How?’

‘By ship. We’re heading for a port called Quinsai, a few days’ ride from here. There we’ll find a ship. You’ll sail home in comfort.’ She wiped sweat from her brow, though the air was far from warm. ‘You’ll like Quinsai. It’s just like Hantilios.’

So they hurried on.

Beyond the Khan’s hunting grounds the country changed, becoming more dominated by farmland, and Avatak stared out curiously at wide flooded fields where the people waded amid their crops of rice. Towards the end of the day they found a way station, deep in the old heartland of Cathay, a handsome wooden building with dry, comfortable rooms. Avatak thought they would not have stopped at all if Uzzia had had her way. But they had to rest the horses, and they were all exhausted; even before the rebellion Uzzia and Avatak had ridden through a day and night with the Khan. So they stayed the night. They were served country food of rice, meat, freshwater fish and molluscs – delicious, at least compared to the over-elaborate concoctions of the Mongol city to the north. Avatak concluded that the Mongols had poorer tastes than their subjects.

Pyxeas barely ate. He did as he was asked, he looked after his own personal needs. But he seemed to have withdrawn deep within himself, to a place where, perhaps, he felt safe. Uzzia grew weaker. She would not let Avatak look at her wound again. But she was pasty, pale, sweating.

She roused them all at dawn, and drove them on.

Thus was the pattern of their days, until, ill, bedraggled, withdrawn, bewildered, they arrived at Quinsai.