"It is a matter of years," he told him, "and the road leads through deserts greater than all Europe and over mountains so high and icy that birds are frozen in the crossing.

And a word in your ear, my lord.

The Ilkhan permits few to cross his eastern marches.

Beware of treason, I say.

Your companions are the blood-thirstiest of the royal guards." But from the Genoese he obtained a plan of the first stages of the road, and one morning in autumn he set out from the Tartar city, his squire from the Boulonnais by his side, and at his back a wild motley of horsemen, wearing cuirasses of red leather stamped with the blue wolf of Houlagou's house.
October fell chill and early in those uplands, and on the fourth day they came into a sprinkling of snow.