All this land—this far, northern land—was part of him.
He felt it, knew it.
And he was keyed up to a sort of grimly happy expectancy when Kabul jumped away from the coiling fogs of the hills, like a thick slab of opaque jade set into the frame of the sugarloaf-shaped mountains and incrusted here and there with rose pink and creamy yellow and crimson where the transplanted damask roses of Isfahan were making a brave fight against the chilly North.
They did not linger at Kabul, though the servants clamored for the warmth, not to mention the gossip and opium, of the bazaars.
Ishkashim was a shimmering maze of flat, white roofs; and they pulled into Balkh, silvery as lepers with the dust of the road, traded their horses for lean racing camels, which had a profusion of blue ribbons plaited into their bridles as a protection against the djinns and ghouls of the desert, filled their saddle bags with slabs of grayish, wheaten bread and little hard, golden apricots, and were off again, crossing the Great River at the shock of dawn, the princess at the head of the cavalcade, by Hector's side.
On!
North—then West!
Toward Tamerlanistan!
And, in the dusty, whirling wake of their camels' padded feet drifted whisper, gossip, babble, information; not as scientifically transmitted as the information which zums along the copper telegraph wir
