Kula snorted. "My horse cannot take a train."
"We ride to nearest city, which is Sayn Shanda," Fang Yu pressed, "then Kula take train to Ulan Bator, which is riding distance from Karakorum. Remo and I find other Mongol guide in Sayn Shanda. We go apart."
"If I have to leave my steed," Kula retorted, "I would not go. How could I join my people without a horse?"
"And what about my Korean?" Remo asked.
"Your Korean is going north," Fang Yu said. "Only city north of here is Sayn Shanda. He must go there. Else he die on steppe. This makes sense to you?"
"Some," Remo admitted.
"Then we go, all of us."
"Agreed," said Kula. "But first we eat. Then we sleep. Then we ride."
"Where do we sleep?" Remo asked, looking around the ger.
Kula spanked the stove-warmed platform.
"On kang," he said. "Mongol bed. Keep us warm at night."
"All of us?" Remo said. "Together?"
"Mongol tradition. Americans have no such tradition?" Kula demanded.
"Sure," Remo said. "It was called bundling and they stopped doing it around the time of the First Continental Congress."
"You will have to be tied with belt," Kula told Remo. "To protect Mongol woman from your lust."
The old woman smiled shyly in Remo's direction. "Well," he whispered to Fang Yu, "at least you and I will be together."
Fang Yu said nothing. Her gaze was distant.
Chapter 24
The New Golden Horde rode unchallenged into the snowdusted pastureland that was all that remained of ancient Karakorum.
The Mongols fell silent as they approached the ancient capital of the empire of the Khagan-the Khan of Khans. Not a Mongol spoke. They seemed not to breathe. The cadence of their ponies caused their earflaps to bounce like beating wings.
Before them lay a plain dotted by the clusters of gers. Black-spotted sheep and grunting yak ranged freely. Gaudy ger doors were flung open at their approach. No words were spoken and no replies given. The Mongol herdsmen took to their horses and joined the pilgrimage in silence. The women and children watched them go, weeping, although none could say what emotion caused the tears to come.
The sun hung low as they came to the place where Karakorum had once stood. They recognized it by the multitudinous white spire-tipped domes of the Erdeni Dzu lamasery that showed against low alpine hills.
The Master of Sinanju nodded to Boldbator. The Mongol lifted a hand to call a halt to the march.
Horses came to a stop, pawing the snow to expose tussocks of coarse brown nibbling grass.
Boldbator drew up alongside the Master of Sinanju.
"Speak your desire, O Master of Sinanju," he said quietly.
"Have your horse Mongols make camp, Boldbator Khan," said the Master of Sinanju.
Wheeling, Boldbator Khan lifted his voice.
"We camp here!" he shouted. "Let the word go to the last straggler. This night we sleep with the ghosts of our mightiest ancestors!"
And the answering cry shook the very heavens, it seemed to Boldbator Khan.
"And what of us?" asked Boldbator of the Master of Sinanju, whose sere visage, although buffeted by the freshening wind, refused to flinch.
"The skull of the dragon told me a riddle," intoned Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, "and that riddle said that the man who overthrows the tortoise that moves naught but through time shall find the eggs of the tortoise if he digs far enough. We three shall ride to the tortoise."
Boldbator cast contemptuous eyes toward Zhang Zingzong, who understood nothing of their conversation.
"Him too?" spat Boldbator. "Why should a soft Chinese bear witness to the glory of the Lord Genghis Khan, the Heaven-Sent?"
"This man is a hero in his own land," Chiun said simply.
Boldbator snorted. "This food-grower? He can barely ride."
"He once stood up to the iron horses of the Chinese oppressors," intoned Chiun. "And the horses backed down."
"We have swept through the iron cavalry of the Chinese like locusts through wheat. I beheld no heroics from this man."
Chiun shrugged. "For a Chinese, it was feat enough. Besides, it was he who brought the silver skull from the Great Wall to me. I have promised him half of the treasure."
Boldbator spat.
"If it is the wish of the Master of Sinanju to do this thing," he growled, "I have no stomach to tell him otherwise."
"Well-spoken. Let us ride."
Chiun nodded for Zhang Zingzong to follow.
Their horses moved slowly, not because they were fatigued-although they were hardly fresh-but because they sensed that they neared their ultimate goal.
The tortoise was a great stone thing that sat in the center of the plain, brooding and inert, its gray stone shell a patchwork of Mongol designs. Its worn ancient head lifted skyward as if straining with its last ebbing strength.
"It has stood there thus for generations, to mark the spot where the Great Khans once ruled," Boldbator said reverently.
"Moving not," added the Master of Sinanju, "except through the years. Come."
They rode up to it, dismounting. The walled lamasery lay within sight, like an abandoned fortress.
Zhang Zingzong came off his steed like a man who had been nearly frozen. He slapped his sides with his padded arms. Digging into a pocket, he extracted a lighter and a crushed pack of Blue Swallow cigarettes. He was getting low again, he saw.