“Don’t touch her,” the monk warned. “She has anthrax. I have seen it before.”
Huang Fa peered at the coming storm. He’d never heard of one so immense. It came like the night, a grim shade. The dust rose higher than the tallest cloud, blotting out the sun. The storm did not ride on a great gust of wind. Indeed, the wind felt sullen, still, almost dead. The storm only crept toward them.
“Cover your nose,” Huang Fa said. “The dust will clog your throat. When it hits, don’t dare to stop moving. If you lie down, the dust might bury you.”
The monk, a thin young man, looked terrified.
“Can we run from it?” the monk asked. “It moves slowly.”
“We cannot run faster than the storm,” Huang Fa said. “Even if we could, it would catch us when we tired. The only shelter is ahead of us—at the caravan.”
The monk peered back down the trail, glanced at a mound of rocks not five hundred yards off. It might provide some shelter from the coming wind, but not much.
“Let us hurry, then,” the monk urged.
Huang Fa patted his horse, quickly untied her.
“Leave her,” the monk whispered. “She will only slow us, and she does not have long to live. Besides, if we reach the caravan, she might sicken the other animals.”
“I can’t leave her,” Huang Fa said. She was his future. The silver might be a dowry, but the mare was worth far more. “She might get better. Even anthrax does not always kill.”
The monk shrugged, leaving the decision to him.
Huang Fa pulled at the mare’s rope, but she would not follow. He wrapped an arm around her neck. “Come, Bojing,” he whispered, “please . . .”
The mare stood, ears leaning forward. She knew what he wanted. She staggered a step, but then just stood.
“It is a curse,” Huang Fa wailed, wringing his hands.
The monk tried to calm him. “Sometimes a storm is just a storm,” he said. “Sometimes a sickness is just a sickness. I think, these things are beyond the powers of even a famed sorcerer like Battarsaikhan.”
Huang Fa hung his head, thinking furiously. He remembered the dragon’s tooth. The sorcerer had thrown it hundreds of li.
Huang Fa covered his head with a straw hat from his pack, wrapped a rag across his face, then strode toward the storm.
“Try to remember where we saw the lights of the caravan last,” the monk suggested. “We should make straight for it.”
Huang Fa gazed toward the horizon but could not be sure of the direction. He followed the monk. Grimly, the curtain of red dust rolled toward them until it swallowed them whole.
#
All through the morning, Huang Fa and the monk pushed through the dust storm. The gritty dust stung Huang Fa’s eyes, and he kept them narrowed to slits. Even then, his eyes soon streamed from tears.
The dust filled his sinuses, until sludge ran from his nose, and when he tried to breathe from his mouth, mud clogged his throat and left him gasping. He’d never imagined such a hell.
The dust was incredibly fine, and it coated everything, gritting up his skin, filling every orifice.
It was all that he could do to keep plodding, placing one foot in front of another. Time and again, the monk would reach back and grab Huang Fa, who was trying to pull the mare. She grew more headstrong as her sickness worsened.
The only thing that kept Huang Fa moving was the thought of Yan at the end of his trail.
The tracks of the caravan would normally have been easy to follow, but dust was rapidly settling over everything, creating a red carpet that filled hoof prints. Dust infiltrated his lungs, so that they felt heavy, as if he carried stones in them.
They had not gone far into the cloud when the mare simply stopped.
“What’s wrong?” the monk called. Huang Fa looked but could not see the monk, until the fellow suddenly materialized out of the dust not ten feet ahead.
“Bojing!” Huang Fa cried.
The monk tugged at the rope and cursed, but it did no good. Bojing merely stood, coughing and wheezing. Huang Fa leaned his head against her chest, to listen to her lungs, and Bojing seemed to take that as a sign. She dropped to her front knees, and then lay down to die.
Huang Fa did not want to leave her in such misery. He put his coat over her face, hoping that it would keep the dust from her lungs. Then he knelt beside her for several long minutes, just stroking her.
“Leave her,” the monk begged. “Don’t touch her. The anthrax might spread to you!”
“I can’t leave her,” Huang Fa shouted.
He realized now that it was hopeless. He only wanted to comfort the precious beast as it died. “I’m sorry, my princess,” Huang Fa whispered again and again as he stroked her gritty hide.
Between the dusty air and the anthrax, she died within an hour.
When she was gone, Huang Fa removed her saddle packs, filled with what was left of his treasure, and stumbled on.
He closed his eyes against the storm and let the monk guide him.
The world seemed darker, and when Huang Fa looked up, he wondered if he had lost track of time, for it seemed that night was falling. Then he realized his mistake: he’d stood at the edge of the storm and marveled at how terrible it was, but standing upon the brink of it was nothing compared to what he saw now: the wind that had seemed gentle, subdued, was beginning to gust stronger, and as it did, the dust belted them in waves. The haze that had hidden the sun an hour earlier now thickened and threatened to blot it out entirely.
Surely I am cursed, Huang Fa thought. I wanted so badly to save my mare. Now the sorcerer has ripped her from my grasp. Battarsaikhan is fierce indeed!
So he staggered forward blindly, led by the monk, whose ability to negotiate through the storm felt nothing less than mystical.
