Huddled on the communal bed, nestled with the entire Darum family and the single Chinese, Boldbator woke as if struck by lightning.
He crawled out from the snoring cat-pile of family members. Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, was awake and rolling up his sleeping mat, which he placed in his great steamer trunk. He had slept apart from the others.
"Command me," said Boldbator.
"I crave tea," Chiun said blandly.
Boldbator blinked. "A woman could do that for you," he protested.
"But I have asked you," said the Master of Sinanju, locking the trunk. "Tea. And none of your Mongolian tsai with yak butter and salt. Lurn jiin would be excellent, for we have a long journey before us."
Boldbator set the brass pot to boiling. He made the tea in silence. The scent aroused the others. They climbed off the heated kang that kept them alive in the insufferable cold, stretching and blinking like contented cats.
Cold mutton filled their bellies. The Chinese looked as if he had not slept at all. He lighted a cigarette from the stove.
"What will you require for the journey?" asked Boldbator, pouring the tea into a delicate porcelain cup the Master held in both hands. He sat by the stove. He wore a green del with a white sash. The skirted coat fitted him perfectly.
"All the Mongols you can muster," Chiun replied at length.
Boldbator's hard eyes sought the sons of Darum. "You, you, and you-are you with me?"
"Aye," they said without hesitation.
"And I too," said Darum. "I tire of winter inactivity. My blood runs sluggish from stove heat and dung-smoke. I yearn for free air."
"So be it," Boldbator said sharply. "We are five. Are five Mongols enough for you, O Master?"
The Master of Sinanju shook his aged head. "I will need fifty times five for what I contemplate. For I expect trouble from the Chinese."
"The Chinese do not give trouble, to horse Mongols," Boldbator boasted. "They are troubled by horse Mongols!"
And the ger reverberated with laughter once more.
Within an hour, they were a dozen-all the men who could ride from the four clustered yurts. The women waved them off with stoic pride.
The Master of Sinanju rode Boldbator's fine cream horse.
He had exchanged his sandals for felt boots, completing the traditional costume of a Mongol horseman.
"You honor us," said Darum.
"I wish to pass unrecognized for who I am," Chiun said simply.
"What do we seek in the Gobi wastes?"
"A broken dragon."
"I have trekked the length and breadth of Mongolia," Boldbator said, "and I have heard no tales of any dragon, broken or otherwise."
"It is there," Chiun said simply.
"If one dwells in the Gobi," Boldbator vowed, "we will find it."
They rode all day, the Chinese on a pony, the Master of Sinanju's trunk balanced on a spitting, complaining double-humped camel. It was no weather for camels, but even a stubborn dromedary knew better than to refuse a Mongol.
They rode north, over the relentlessly flat steppe. At each cluster of yurts and every Outpost town they encountered, Boldbator shouted greetings at the top of his mighty lungs.
"Ho, Mongols! I am Boldbator, ally of the Master of Sinanju. We seek the treasure of Temujin. Who will ride with us?"
At Baiyinnar, the first town they reached, they collected thirty Mongols. Only five joined the caravan at the next ail. But by the noon hour, the unsentimental winter sun looked down on over a hundred Mongols riding proud. At each stop, Boldbator bartered for white horsetails.
In the end, nine white horsetails hung from a makeshift standard top. Only then did Boldbator carry it high and proud.
The Master of Sinanju, riding beside him, nodded his appreciation to see the honored standard of Genghis Khan blowing in the north wind after so many barren centuries.
"Who will ride behind this standard?" Boldbator cried when they reached the next town.
And this time, no Mongol off riding age refused him.
But in every town there are unfriendly eyes and ears, and soon the word had spread throughout Inner Mongolia that the Master of Sinanju had returned to the land of Temujin, and that he had gathered behind him a mighty army.
Word reached Beijing about the time they came to the undulant edge of the Gobi, marked by a patchwork of straw designed to keep the dunes from eating into the steppe. Beyond this crisscross bulwark, the dunes rose high and purple in the dying sunlight.
The Master of Sinanju called for the caravan to come to a halt. The sun was low in the sky now, bronzing the dunes, which as the horses kneaded them with their tireless hooves, made whispering sounds of welcome-or warning.
The Master of Sinanju cast his eyes to true north. Then he spat words at his servant, Zhang Zingzong, who went to fetch a teak box from the camel-borne traveling trunk.
Boldbator watched in silent interest as a silver skull was removed from the box. The Master off Sinanju brought its hollow side to his face and stared into its bone emptiness.
Boldbator leaned closer in his saddle. His chin lifted. He could see that the Master of Sinanju stared through the sockets.
"We go on," Chiun said at last, handing the skull back to the waiting Zhang Zingzong with a careless toss.
Boldbator looked back upon his ranks of Mongols. His heart swelled with pride.
"We ride!" he proclaimed.
And the horde moved on, their hooves on the gravelly sand like the constant drone of invisible insects.
They rode another hour. They would have ridden all night, since darkness had fallen upon them, and missed the dragon, but for the Chinese rider, Zhang.
He rode as if every bone was arthritic, and was the butt of constant joking among the Mongols-banter that was not lost on him even if he did not understand the language.
Hunched over the pommel of his saddle, he shivered in mute misery, a constant cigarette bobbling off his loose lips.
They were riding at a steady mechanical pace that kept the horses fresh when Zhang Zingzong's pony gave a sudden whinny and stumbled.