Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [99]
Chapter 15
The Buryat village loomed between the trees, a small cluster of low octagonal wooden houses, a strange russified species of nomadic yurts. The tall spruces, their palmate branches weighed down by the snow, shielded the pointed roofs covered with more snow. The nearest roof showed traces of dried grass—I suspected that in the summer this grass was alive and green, a sure sign the yurt hadn’t been moved in many years. The rest of the village similarly retained the illusion of nomadic mobility but with walls that had sunk into the ground and grown roots.
At first, I thought the yellow glow came from some sort of lanterns left outside, but as we pulled closer, I saw that the doors stood open and light emitted from the inside of these yurt-houses. Smoke rose from the tops of most, and the air smelled like wood smoke. My hair and furs and the Trubkozub hat I wore low on my forehead became saturated with the smell instantly. I noted with irritation that I would likely smell like a campfire for weeks to come.
Volzhenko rubbed the horses dry, as the Chinese furriers and I danced from one foot to the other and clapped our mittens together. Only when he was satisfied with the horses’ condition and content they were unlikely to catch some insidious form of consumption, did he let us move to the nearest yurt, which was bigger than the rest, and boasted an especially thick and straight pillar of smoke coming from the hole in its roof. I guessed it was inhabited by . . . I realized then that I had no idea what Buryats had for authority, but assumed it wouldn’t be a superior officer or an emperor, two authorities I was familiar with.
Volzhenko knocked on the wooden wall, close to the doorway opening. Inside, I could see the central room covered with a bright carpet. A hole in the carpet allowed a view of a fire pit dug in what seemed to be bare dirt. Over the fire in the hole there was an iron rack, where a copper kettle bubbled away.
Volzhenko grinned and winked at me. “That would be tea,” he said.
“Who lives here?” I whispered.
“The shaman,” he said. “When we cross over the Baikal, you’ll see more Buddhist Buryats closer to Mongolia, but here they were christened but reverted to their pagan ways.” He shrugged. “What can you do?”
“Accumulate experiences,” I answered with more acidity than I felt.
The man who came to the door looked short in stature but wide in girth, and his tanned placid face seemed a mere background for his very bright and very black eyes that looked at us with great curiosity. He looked past Volzhenko and myself to Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi, grinned, and said something in the language I didn’t understand. Judging by the enthusiastic response from Kuan Yu, it was some form of Chinese, although it sounded different from his usual speech.
Volzhenko tired of waiting, and pushed past the small round man into the yurt. I hesitated, not wanting to be impolite, but the small shaman caught himself and ushered us all inside. My eyes watered from the smoke—most of it managed to escape through the hole in the roof, but enough of it lingered inside to cause some discomfort.
“Sit down,” he said to me in good Russian. “Have some tea with me.”
I sat down and looked around to distract myself from the unpleasant thought of larded tea. The walls of the yurt rose and cupped above us, in a surprisingly smooth and elegant curve that reminded me of the sweep of the St. Isaac’s Cathedral dome.
The yurt was clean and spacious; one corner of it was separated from the rest of the central area by a partition made of green bamboo, pounded flat and woven into a curtain. Along the walls, there were sable pelts tied together in multi-pawed bunches, and small statues interspersed with tall lacquered baskets. There were dried herbs and mushrooms hanging along the walls, and, most mysteriously, despite the wide open door, the interior of the yurt was warm and cozy enough for its owner to wear nothing but a thick quilted robe. All his