Written on the Wind (The Blackstone Legacy #2)(20)

“I’m going to find a place to stop,” he called over his shoulder.

Temujin didn’t answer. He was either asleep or dead. The frostbite on his feet made it impossible for him to stand anymore, and he lay curled on the flatbed of the sledge.

Dimitri gently slowed the pony and got off the sledge.

“What’s for breakfast?” Temujin asked.

Dimitri smiled, relieved Temujin was alive and still had his sense of humor. The only thing they had eaten for weeks was cedar nuts, and they had plenty of them, but the first order of business was to tend the pony. If the pony died, he and Temujin died too.

After feeding the pony, Dimitri lit a fire to melt snow and get them all water. After that came finding more pine cones and smashing them on a rock to release the seeds. Only then could he eat.

By the time Dimitri returned from scavenging in the forest, Temujin had rolled upright to huddle near the small fire. Their only pot balanced on a few rocks above the flame, and Temujin had managed to refill it with snow.

“My feet are worse,” he said.

Dimitri looked away. Once frostbite set in, there was little that could be done.

When Temujin’s feet first started showing the telltale signs of waxy, yellowed skin, they tried dunking them in a pot of warmed water. It had been a mistake. Immediately after they removed his feet, the water that had absorbed into his skin froze, causing excruciating pain and worsening the frostbite. Now his toes had turned black, and it was spreading.

“I think it’s time for you to leave me here,” Temujin said. “Drive the sledge away and don’t look back.”

“Don’t even think it,” Dimitri said.

Temujin acted like he hadn’t heard. “I can walk into a snowdrift and put an end to it. You have a chance of making it out alive. I don’t.”

Dimitri jostled the pot over the flame, mentally urging the lump of snow to melt faster. The hot water would taste good. There was a time when he drank only the finest tea imported from Ceylon to London, where teamakers infused the leaves with the oil from bergamot orange. It was then packaged and shipped to Saint Petersburg, where his mother served it in Limoges china teacups with cream and lemon.

Now he drank hot water and was grateful for it.

“No one is going to die,” Dimitri said. “I’ll figure something out.”

The skin on the back of his head throbbed. The incision where he’d hidden the diamond had completely sealed over, but it could pay for a doctor. They were only a few days outside of Chita, the last Russian city before they reached Mongolia. There would be a doctor in Chita. They could buy better clothes and nourishing food.

“Try to get some sleep,” he said to Temujin, who burrowed deeper into his coat and curled up on the sledge.

There was no more talk of walking into snowdrifts, so Dimitri went to scavenge for more cedar nuts, praying to God for the courage to lead him through the coming days. He needed to survive. God willing, Temujin would too, but first they needed to reach Chita.



The first sign of civilization on the outskirts of Chita was clusters of men on the lake, fishing through holes in the ice. Soon there were scatterings of wooden homesteads and barns. Dimitri followed the Chitinka River toward the town, where almost ten thousand people made their home.

He no longer feared recognition. Wearing tattered clothes obtained through bartering with live bandits and stripping clothes off of dead ones, he looked nothing like the aristocratic man he’d once been. His face was chapped by the relentless wind, his beard scruffy, his clothes caked with mud. He looked like any other peasant, lugging a bulging sack of cedar nuts over his shoulder.

He used half the nuts to barter for stabling the pony and the sledge. It was done entirely through gestures since the stablemaster spoke a language neither he nor Temujin understood. The people in this city were a conglomeration of Russians, Chinese, Buryats, and Dukhas, but it was anyone’s guess what this stablemaster spoke.

Temujin hobbled to a bench outside the stable and collapsed. “I can’t walk any farther,” he choked out.

“I’ll bring a doctor to you,” Dimitri said with more confidence than he felt.

“How are we going to pay for a doctor?”

Dimitri clapped Temujin on the shoulder. “Let me worry about that.”

He headed down a muddy street toward the town square, where pastel-colored buildings framed an empty fountain. An Orthodox church stood beside a mosque, and signage was in every language imaginable. He made note of a German jeweler where he could sell the diamond, and finally found a doctor whose features indicated he was probably a Buryat but who spoke enough Russian for them to agree on a price to treat Temujin.

“Let me get the money,” Dimitri said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

He walked into a bar on the main street. It was crowded, dirty, and smelled of wet leather, but he made his way to the counter and gestured to the Chinese bartender for a shot of whiskey. After paying for the shot with cedar nuts, he carried it to a shadowy corner and turned his back to the crowd. This was going to look odd, and he didn’t want to attract attention.

The stubby knife Temujin used to skin squirrels was only a few inches long. Dimitri dunked the blade into the whiskey, hoping the old wives’ tale that hard liquor was a disinfectant was true. After holding the blade in the whiskey for several seconds, he took it out, shook off the excess liquid, then drank the whiskey in one searing gulp.