Dubiously, Raphael tried again, expecting the taste to be as foul as the smell. The liquid was thicker than he expected, though not unpleasant, and it tasted like… “Almonds,” he noted. “Where did you get it?”
“The Mongols. Each of them had a skin, as well as…” Yasper shuddered.
“What?”
“Under their saddles.” Yasper made a face and indicated Raphael should either drink again or give back the skin. “Meat, wrapped in oiled rags.”
“Raw?”
Yasper took a huge pull from the skin and nodded as he wiped his mouth. “It was,” he said, and Raphael noted there was a note of admiration mixed in with the revulsion in his voice, “the most tender meat I have ever seen. But…” He handed the skin back to Raphael.
“We are not that hungry,” Raphael said. He tried the drink again, noting that the back of his throat tingled as he swallowed.
“Not yet,” Yasper agreed. He leaned toward Raphael, lowering his voice. “But this”—he indicated the skin—“this is pretty good. Not strong enough, in my opinion.”
“Can you make it stronger?” Raphael asked.
“Probably. But I will need assistance. And some supplies.”
Raphael glanced over at Istvan, who was riding ahead and to the right of the main party. Far enough away to be out of range of simple conversation but close enough that they were aware of his presence. “We already have one member of our company who wanders off, looking for supplies. I do not think another will be tolerated.”
Yasper snorted. “Nothing as illicit as what he seeks. I can find what I need in any good-sized settlement. Provided we travel near one.”
“I hesitate to offer any hope in that matter, my friend. We are far from any settlement I would call friendly.”
Yasper took the offered skin. “I agree, and in reflecting on the matter, I have begun to wonder about this journey of ours.”
“Begun?” Raphael responded.
Yasper quirked his lips. “If, as you say, we are far from friendly lands, and as I judge, we are but a fraction of the way to our destination, what is our plan for the supplies and aid that we might require?” He drank from the skin of Mongolian liquor. “We are accustomed to long marches and sleeping under the stars, but after this morning’s…loss, a man’s mood darkens. It becomes more difficult with each passing hour to sustain his…enthusiasm. A man begins to think of a warm fire and a bed—a roof overhead, even. If only for one night.”
“Every soldier dreams of the night when he can put aside his armor and sleep without care,” Raphael said. “It is a familiar part of our burden to be denied such comforts—or any comforts.” He returned the skin bag. His words were slurring. “As you say, we have all marched to war before; these hopes and disappointments are not new.”
“True,” Yasper said. “But in the past, I have always found solace with hope of our destination, of knowing that we will—someday—reach a shining goal. If my destination is a place I have never visited, there is usually someone in my party who has, and I can persuade them to tell me tales of that place so that it becomes more real to me.”
“None of us has visited this destination,” Raphael pointed out. “We knew that when we accepted Feronantus’s call to join the company.”
Yasper laughed. “I’m not a member of your Order, remember. I volunteered.” He took one more swig from the skin and offered it back to Raphael, who held up his hand in denial, then relented and accepted another swallow. “But,” he said, all levity gone from his voice, “it has occurred to me since we buried Taran that you and the others are good soldiers. You will follow Feronantus wherever he may lead you, and that is all you need to know. But me? I fear not the repercussions of curiosity, nor of insubordination, and so I do wonder if that man knows where he is going. Where he is taking us all.”
Raphael recalled the look on Percival’s face in the woods, the serenity of knowing, and he mentally noted how cleverly Yasper had maneuvered their conversation. He knew the alchemist to be an intelligent and inquisitive man. The strange and esoteric matters that he strove to comprehend and master with his experiments were much more arcane and mystic than simply crafting smoke pots and figuring out how to distill this Mongolian liquor into something stronger. Of all the company, the Dutchman was probably as fluent in as many languages as he was himself, and he didn’t doubt the man could read and write all of them as well—even, very possibly, Arabic. If he knew the Greek physical sciences, then it followed he knew their rhetoric and philosophy as well. The man was no fool, as much as his countenance and his jangling pots and potions suggested otherwise.
Raphael nodded. “‘It is an ill plan that cannot be changed.’”
“I raise my drink to the wisdom of Publilius Syrus,” Yasper said.