“You think so too?” Batu slapped his thigh. “Then you’d better watch that one beside you—he doesn’t talk much normally, but if he ever suddenly opens his mouth, he might just pour out a lifetime’s worth of words at you all at once. Can you handle that?”
Xi Yu turned his head toward Que Zhi, cleared his throat, and said:
“He says you’re going to pour out a lifetime’s worth of words to me someday—give me a heads-up first, roughly how many characters are we talking, so I can prepare myself.”
Que Zhi didn’t turn around, but amid the rustle of sheep hooves treading through grass, he answered in a low voice:
“Not much. Enough for a lifetime.”
Batu, oblivious to the moment, cut in from behind: “How many characters is that? Nine! I’ll keep count for you today—we’ll add it all up later.”
Xi Yu silently filed that sentence away in his heart.
Batu then went on to ask Que Zhi whether he’d meant “a lifetime” seriously or just as a passing remark—only to have the question shut down with a curt “Watch the road.” But the conversation kept rolling along with the grazing grass.
Batu tucked his staff under his arm and switched to using his fingers to count off the names of grasses on the steppe, introducing them to Xi Yu one by one:
The one with fine leaves is needle grass—sheep love it but it pricks their mouths. The purplish-stemmed one is ice grass—livestock can go longer without water after eating it. The one with tiny yellow flowers is alfalfa—its roots go deep and can bind sandy soil, making it fertile. When herders see alfalfa during migration, they know this pasture can sustain them a while longer.
Xi Yu asked for the name of every unfamiliar clump of grass he saw. When Batu didn’t know, he named it himself.
Batu hopped around, exclaiming that no one just makes up names for grass—what if the sheep don’t recognize it and won’t eat it?
Xi Yu argued back that sheep don’t eat by name anyway.
The two bickered all the way, startling the flock into frightened bleats with their sudden outbursts.
—
In the afternoon, they encountered another flock coming from the west.
The two flocks met head-on along the narrow sheep trail, jamming together in a mass of bleating chaos. Khalbala stood chest-out, squaring off against the other lead sheep—neither yielding, sheep droppings scattering everywhere as they jostled.
Batu greeted the other herder, then shouted a few lines in Shuo. The other herder shouted back, waving his staff as he did—not a fight, just standard herding procedure: when two flocks meet, you sort out the mixed-up sheep, each man taking back his own.
Batu scrambled to pull his sheep out of the other flock.
Xi Yu jumped off his camel to help. He couldn’t tell which sheep were Batu’s, so he just grabbed the nearest legs and pulled. The sheep paid him no mind, squirming in his arms like live fish.
Xi Yu emerged from behind a sheep’s hindquarters, a gray smudge on his chin, still clutching a sheep that refused to let go, and issued orders to Que Zhi: “What are you standing there for—come help! Drag that gray-eared one next to Khalbala over here—it stepped on my foot.”
Que Zhi dragged the sheep away. With one hand holding the sheep’s front legs and the other shielding Xi Yu’s shoulder to pull him aside, he moved swiftly. He glanced down at the smudge on Xi Yu’s chin and wiped it off with his thumb.
Several nearby herders were watching.
Batu pretended to count his sheep—by the third pass, he still hadn’t gotten the number right.
The other herder drove his flock away, and the sheep trail fell quiet. Batu led his camel in a half-circle, still scratching his head, muttering to himself: “No, I need to count again…”
—
At dusk, they pitched camp by a shallow stream.
Batu drove his flock downstream to drink, then spread his felt blanket not too far from them upstream. He pulled a few pieces of dried mutton and a small bag of barley flour from his sheepskin satchel, and miraculously produced a small copper pot, setting it over stones to cook a flour paste.
He added crumbled mutton and wild onions to the paste. When the aroma drifted over, Xi Yu was braiding the ends of his hair—the same lock the sheep had chewed.
He braided for a while until his fingers ached, but the fine ends kept escaping from the plait, curling loosely over his shoulder.
He sniffed the mutton-scented air, tossed the braid behind his head, took his bowl, and sat down beside Batu, asking what he was cooking.
“Flour paste. Barley flour paste—we herders eat it all the time. I’ll give you a bowl, but don’t mind it being rough.”
Batu ladled out a bowl and handed it to him, then glanced at Que Zhi, who was checking the camel saddle nearby, and lowered his voice: “Should I call him?”
“He’ll come over in a bit.”
No sooner had he spoken than Que Zhi walked over. He looked at the pot, looked at the fire, and said: “Fire’s too big.” He set two flatbreads by the pot and placed a small bag of raisins beside the bowls, then turned to leave.
Batu finally seized the chance to call out to him, pointing at his copper pot and saying he’d made flour paste with plenty of mutton.
Que Zhi’s gaze fell on the paste for a moment, then he said something in Shuo that turned Batu’s face pale. His hand froze mid-air above the pot.
“What’s wrong? What did he say?”
Batu’s face fell. “I just put in a few extra scoops of salt, that’s all. He said this pot of paste is too salty, and I have to make it again tomorrow with less salt.”
“Then you’d better listen to him.”
Xi Yu handed his bowl of paste to Que Zhi and said:
“Batu made too much—I can’t finish it all myself. Help me drink half. It’s not salty, really.”
Que Zhi took the bowl and drank a mouthful, making no comment on the seasoning. After finishing half, he handed the bowl back to Xi Yu and sat down on a nearby stone to sort his leather cords.
Batu watched the two of them share the same bowl for the flour paste, drawing several circles in the dirt with his staff. Finally, his mouth got the better of him.
He asked, curious, whether they were just “traveling companions” or something else—out on the trade routes beyond Liangzhou, this was the first time he’d seen a Central Plains person and a Shuo person walking together like this.
Xi Yu finished the paste in his bowl and said: “Traveling companions we met on the road—you’ve joined in too, haven’t you? We’ve got quite a crew now. Next time we run into another herder, maybe we’ll pick up one more.”
Batu tapped his staff on the ground. “Good! Then I’m in too—from now on, you’re my traveling mate.”
He turned back and added: “But honestly, you’re not much better off than us herders—we cuddle sheep at night, you cuddle him at night. Does he really sleep like a rock? Is he cold? Warm?”
Xi Yu set his bowl on the ground, stood up, and went to find his waterskin. After a while, he came back from the stream, waterskin in hand. He admitted: “Not cold to the touch. Just right, actually.”
Batu rested his head on his staff, gazing up at the stars that had yet to fully emerge, and murmured that it must be nice—he wished he had someone to walk with at night too. Then he’d cook them each a bowl of flour paste, with less salt.
He sat up and added one more condition: he’d put mutton in it for all of them.
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