The Horse Road

by Troon Harrison

  Where was Mother now? I spun on my heel and saw that I had been mistaken, that I was not the only person still lying indoors, for on a cot behind me, beneath a rumpled woollen blanket, my mother lay looking somehow flattened and smaller. I tiptoed to her side and stared down at her pale face. Sweat beaded her forehead. Fright tickled the back of my neck for I had never seen Mother look like this; in all of my fourteen summers, she had been swift and strong, tall and straight as a favourite spear. I tiptoed to a cauldron of water and dipped a linen cloth into it, then gently wiped my mother’s forehead, creased into lines beneath her crown of golden braids. Her eyelids fluttered and for a moment hope leaped in my throat, but her eyes didn’t open.

  ‘Let her sleep,’ Berta said softly behind me, her shoulders silhouetted in the yurt doorway. ‘The herbs will help her to rest. She lost much blood last night; I have burned her tunic and trousers, ripped and stained beyond recovery.’

  ‘But how long will she sleep?’ I cried. ‘We must leave this morning, now! We must ride for home!’

  ‘She will not waken before the sun reaches its highest point,’ Berta said. ‘Then you can talk to her about riding for home.’

  Her wide brown face, burnished to a gleam by wind and sun and stinging snow, softened in her kind smile. Gold glinted in a tooth. Spiral earrings caught the light as she moved to me, gathering me against her tunic in a hug that smelled of smoke and horses, the sweetness of grass and flowers, the sour tang of cheese. I pressed my face into her for I had known her all my life and she, the mother of five sons, had always treated me like a daughter.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ she soothed me. ‘Your mother has survived more than this; she will not let any army take away her horses. You will soon be reunited with Swan. You know, don’t you, that amongst the nomad peoples, a white horse is a divine protector? And the goddess who protects birth may appear in the form of a white mare. I do not believe that you and Swan can be separated for she came to your valley in the summer when you were born.’

  Berta smoothed my long curls behind my ears and stroked the curve of my cheek as though I were a young animal.

  ‘Here, I have something for you.’

  Releasing me, Berta stooped over a wooden chest, lifting its painted lid to search through its contents: bedding and clothing, a bronze mirror, a spindle, small pots of chalk and cinnabar body paint. ‘Ah,’ she said with satisfaction as her fingers found what they were searching for; she lifted a small pouch of yellow leather tied with a woven cord of scarlet threads. Turning, she picked something up from her bed: it was a tuft of dappled grey hair – leopard hair!

  ‘It was caught in your mother’s dagger sheath,’ she said as she slipped the hair into the leather pouch. She placed the cord solemnly around my neck.

  ‘Wear this from now on. It holds strong power that will protect you from evil spirits, from the strength of Erlik Khan, ruler of the underworld.’

  Finally, she bent over her chest again and retrieved a woman’s slender torc of pure gold; the neck band was twisted along its length and the two ends were shaped into the heads of leopards with snarling muzzles and tiny eyes inlaid with lapis lazuli. I knew at a glance, because my father dealt in jewellery, that it was very valuable; perfectly executed in every detail by a master goldsmith in some city alleyway where the nomads took their raw metal.

  It was the rivers that brought gold to the nomads, for although the winged gryphons guarded the mountain flanks where the gold lay, the melting snow and spring torrents released it to wash downstream into the traps of sheep fleece that the nomads used. It was said that even an ordinary nomad was richer than the peasant farmers in the valley of Ferghana, though the nomads had only yurts and wagons to live in. And Berta was not an ordinary nomad; she was the wife of an aristocrat whose sleek horses and fattailed sheep fanned out over the rich pastures to which his clan owned the rights of grazing from generation to generation.

  Berta laid the torc around my throat. She placed her hands on my shoulders and gazed at me, a look deep as a pool beneath a willow tree. ‘Now you are protected,’ she said. ‘War is coming, but the power of the leopard walks with you. If you do not come again to the mountains, still all will be well with you and your horses.’

  ‘But I will come again!’ I cried, apprehension quivering through me. ‘When the war is over, Mother and I will come for the festival of the First Moon of Summer, and bring Gryphon to cover your mares!’

  ‘Let us pray to see this moon,’ Berta said, but there was no laughter in her eyes, only the brooding of one who sees a wind lifting black sand over the horizon.

  ‘I will come here again!’ I muttered stubbornly.

  ‘A war is like a door that can only be walked through once, in one direction,’ Berta said. ‘When you have walked through this war that the Middle Kingdom brings, you might find that it has closed upon your childhood years. You are a woman now, Kallisto.

  ‘Your father has betrothed you to the son of the king’s Falconer. You might not have the freedom that your father so generously allows your mother. She has it only because of the great love that he carries for her, even when he is far away, in strange cities and on foreign paths.’

  I nodded; a great weight seemed to settle on to my shoulders. On the subject of my betrothal, my father was obdurate; he said it was a fine match, one for which I should be grateful. It would lift me into the aristocracy of Ershi, into the long arched hallways of the castle on top of the city’s central hill, and secluded behind its battlemented walls of mud brick. He said that Arash, my intended husband, was a handsome, intelligent young man skilled in reciting Persian poetry, in hunting lions from horseback. ‘I will not listen to you fretting about marriage,’ my father had said, glowering over a wine bowl the last time that we spoke of Arash. ‘You scarcely know the young man.’

  And that much was true, for on the rare occasion that we attended the same celebration or dinner, I was too shy to speak and he kept his haughty, aquiline profile turned away from me.

  ‘Can’t you talk to my mother?’ I asked Berta now as she closed the lid of her chest and stirred her fire of sheep dung into a flower of tiny flames. She shook her head.

  ‘Your mother will not go against your father in this matter,’ she said. ‘To secure your future is important to them both; your mother knows too well the dangers of being a woman alone and without status or protection. It was only the mercy of Tabiti, goddess of hearth places, that brought her to your father’s love. And you, even married in Ershi, will still have Swan.’

  Swan! For a moment, her white head filled my eyes; I saw her drifting through the pasture like a feather dropped from high overhead; I saw her long legs sweeping aside the flowers as she trotted to me, to flutter her soft nostrils against my neck. For a moment, a smile quivered on my lips but then I glanced again at the cot where Mother lay, pale and sweating still, and my smile died.

  ‘Mother must wake soon!’ I said urgently to Berta. ‘If she doesn’t awake, how will I know she is healing? And how will I save Swan?’

  Berta didn’t reply, simply shooed me out through the open door into the sun’s dazzle. ‘Come back later,’ she commanded, and I stood forlornly outside the yurt with my tunic flapping in the breeze. Tied to its perch with a leather thong, the eagle belonging to Batu’s father regarded me with yellow eyes, cold as glass beads. Nervously, I moved away from the reach of its sleek wings, folded now, that were wider than a man is tall.

  Around me, the hills rose in protective folds. Sedges and rushes grew along the banks of the river that sparkled downhill over small stones. Sheep and horses grazed peacefully, guarded by shaggy dogs and mounted herdsmen carrying lasso poles. Close to the yurts, a woman on a stool milked a mare whilst a boy struggled to hold her feisty foal. The woman’s baby, tightly swaddled on a cradle board, watched from a patch of shade.

  Gryphon! I thought. My heart clenched when I remembered his courage in saving Tulip from harm, his cry of pain and terror ringing from the rocky walls when the
great cat landed upon his smooth hindquarters. Oh, Gryphon! How could I have lingered in the yurt so late into the morning, worrying about Mother and Swan and my betrothal and war, talking to Berta? There seemed to be suddenly so many things to fear; my hand flew to the yellow pouch of leopard’s fur and closed around its promise of strength as I scanned the hillsides for Gryphon. Where was he? Was he lamed or weakened by his injuries; had he been bleeding? Batu had been tending the herd last night whilst the stars moved around the sky’s great circle, each one a horse wheeling about the tether post of the pole star. Batu had promised that he would tend to Gryphon in the darkness, poulticing the raking claw wounds.

  My heart beat hard, as though I had been running, and the amulet became damp in my sweaty clasp. Finally I glimpsed Gryphon’s flash of gold. He was corralled deep in a patch of flowering wild carrot, in a makeshift pen of poles. I broke into a run, calling his name. He lifted his head and watched me approach, slowing down to wend my way between the other horses grazing nearby. Some reached out with questing noses, inhaling my unfamiliar scent, but others stamped a back hoof warningly and flattened their ears.

  When I climbed in the corral, Gryphon rested his muzzle momentarily against my shoulder, breathing long warm breaths into my hair, before dropping his head again to graze. I saw how the flesh of the wounds was drying, dark red and beginning to crust with scabs. Claw marks ran from his spine to his hock, and from where the edge of his saddle blanket would fall to the base of his tail. One wound ran through his five-pointed brand. All the blood had been washed from him and he seemed more interested in grass than in his injuries, although I noticed how he moved his hind legs stiffly, taking only small steps. I laid my palm flat beside his wounds, with the lightest of touches, and held it there, feeling the slight heat that ran beneath his skin.

  ‘He will be scarred for life; his coat will grow in white,’ Batu said, coming up behind me to lean against the wooden rails.

  ‘I do not want him scarred,’ I whispered brokenly. ‘Before, his coat was perfect.’

  ‘Everyone who saw him spoke of his beauty but from now on they will speak of his beauty and his courage; he is a warrior among horses,’ Batu said. ‘We are riding out soon.’

  I turned then, my palm sliding away from Gryphon.

  The flat scales, each one hand-carved from hoof, each one sewn on to the leather helmet and breastplate that Batu wore, made him shine like a freshly caught fish. His bow was slung over one shoulder, and his wooden quiver, beautifully decorated with bright paintings, hung against his thigh and held his bronze-tipped arrows. The feathers on their shafts were perfectly aligned; perfect in their flight as eagles when they stoop, deadly and with rushing speed, upon their smaller prey.

  ‘You are riding with the warriors?’ I asked, the bottom dropping out of my stomach.

  Batu nodded, a gleam of delight in his keen gaze. At the base of his throat, he wore a twisted torc, heavier than mine but of similar design. The eyes on the heads of the leopards were inlaid with carnelian.

  ‘Take me with you! I can shoot a bow, Batu; you know that my mother has taught me! I can ride as well as any of you; you have seen me win games mounted on Swan! Gryphon is excitable, but very fast, and he is sound despite his wounds!’

  Batu shook his head. ‘Your father would never forgive me, and my father would not allow it,’ he said. ‘And Gryphon’s wounds would break open if he even trotted. You must care for your mother and stay here in safety.’

  ‘But Swan! I must save Swan!’

  ‘I will look for her when we ride through the valley on our way to Ershi. I will make sure she is safe. Now I am going to find Rain, and soon we ride out. Goodbye, Kalli; I will pray that your mother recovers.’

  Briefly, his hand touched mine through the rails but I didn’t move; I stood speechless as he walked away through the horses, light on his feet, calling to the other warriors as they bridled their mounts. I saw him move close to Rain, his black and white gelding foaled in a spring of floods and now trained as a buzkashi horse. I watched the gelding slip his white face – with its one blue eye and one brown eye – down into the leather thongs of Batu’s bridle. Its decorative florets of bronze winked in the light. Gryphon tore at the grass beside me as Batu laid a yellow blanket over Rain’s withers and slid it back a fraction, smoothing the hair beneath. He bent to tighten the blanket’s belly band, then fastened the tail crupper and the breastplate. The red tassels hanging from the breastplate, and from the edges of the blanket, bobbed like flowers in the breeze. Rain was a splendid sight, and Batu’s greatest pride, for the nomads loved horses with bright, unusual markings.

  I laid my hand on the arch of Gryphon’s bent neck as Batu mounted Rain, and pulled his white face up out of the grass. Sunlight gleamed on the curve of Batu’s bow, the scales sewn on his helmet. I laid my face against Gryphon’s side and pressed my cheek into his golden hair, and cried in silence as Batu and Rain moved away amongst the yurts, assembling with the other warriors around an altar platform for their god of war. I squeezed my eyes shut as their shaman’s chanting drifted through the valley, as the sheep bleated and the foals gambolled on their skinny legs. Everything was shining in the sun; everything inside my eyelids was black as the belly of a great storm.

  Gryphon’s side moved against my face; my feet moved of their own accord as I kept step with my grazing stallion. Finally I straightened and opened my eyes. The group of warriors was already far down the valley, cresting a swell of the land, a thin plume of dust rising from it. I waited until the last rider dropped from view, then dragged my heavy legs back to Berta’s yurt and stumbled inside. My mother’s eyes were still closed. I squatted beside her cot, with my back against a loom, but her eyelids didn’t flicker. I held my ear to her face, listening anxiously to her shallow, light breathing.

  Please, my thoughts urged, oh please, Mother, wake up! Be strong again! We must ride after the warriors; we must save our horses!

  My calf muscles began to cramp and I stood up slowly to stretch, then sat cross-legged by the fire. A pan held a broth of mutton, cold now and skimmed over with fat. Berta had given it to me last night but I had been too tired to eat. Now the feast delicacy that she had saved, the sheep’s eyeballs, were pale and puckered. I pushed the pan further away and began listlessly chewing a piece of flat bread that lay on a stone near the fire. The bread formed lumps in my throat.

  Swan shimmered in the shadows of the yurt, a ghost mare, as precious as my own heartbeat. As Berta had reminded me, Swan had been born in the summer of my birth, a foal that made people cry out with surprise and delight; a foal that skittered and drifted across the pastures like down from the breast of a wild swan, light and glimmering. She had matured into a filly with legs so long, so fine, that she seemed all white bone as she ran through the alfalfa, fast and pale as Pegasus in my father’s tales. My mother tied me on to her back; I fell asleep at night to the memory of her hoof beats and woke in the morning light to be carried into her pasture again.

  As we grew older, my mother began to train us in the nomad way; we spent long hours under my mother’s steady gaze, straining to pay attention to her husky commands. Over and over we practised breaking smoothly from walk into trot, from trot into canter, into flowing gallop, into sudden skidding stops. We wheeled through shadows and flowers like two birds changing direction in mid-air. By the time we were seven summers old we could thread amongst poles hammered into the ground as though we were one creature, one long streak of lightning forking between a forest to shoot at last towards the stable door where my mother stood, appraising our progress. My mother taught me to ride without reins, to guide Swan with the pressure of my knees on her pearly sides, to send her one way and then another even at a gallop, shifting beneath me like a sandbank shifting in a spring flood.

  Then I learned to shoot arrows, twisting backwards from the waist, tightening the bowstring against my shoulder, forgetting that I was even mounted on a cantering horse as my eyes focused on the straw targe
t, and my fingers notched the arrow against the bow’s taut curve. Sometimes Mother would throw a silver coin, minted with the faces of Alexander the Great or Eucratides, upon the dust of our training ground. I would gallop past it, time after time, bending lower and lower over my mare’s slippery ribs as I tried to scoop the coin from the ground. On other days, Mother hung rawhide loops from poles and I hurled spears through them as I galloped past. I also learned to hold a lasso pole in my left hand and drop its noose over the heads of other horses running beside Swan. Sometimes we ran relay races far out along the valley, on dusty tracks and through pastureland, and along the edges of vineyards as the grapes ripened in the simmering heat, Mother and the men from her stable, and I.

  At the end of these hard days, we would bathe the horses at a pool, fed from an aqueduct, that stood outside the mud brick walls of our stable. Swan’s sweat and dust would slide from her and she would gleam in the thickening purple dusk, a statue of marble in a great square in the heart of a fabulous city. Then I would bring her a bucket of grain, wheat or barley from our own fields, and inhale its sweet smell and listen to Swan’s teeth grinding as the poplar leaves trembled in the fading light. Once she had finished eating, Swan would press her muzzle to my face before drifting out to the herd, and I would turn and prepare to ride back to the city, my face burned with sun, my legs so tired they shook beneath me, the inside of my thighs chafed and sore.

  My father took great interest in the education of my brothers; they went each day to school with their pedagogues carrying their wax tablets and metal styluses, their extra cloaks in case of cold. Seated behind their wooden desks, they laboured over arithmetic for my father wanted them to be shrewd traders able to check the ledgers and accounts in the warehouses and granaries. Outdoors, my brothers were taught wrestling and gymnastics; back at their desks again, they laboriously wrote out Greek and Latin script and learned to read Homer’s Iliad. But my father left my education to my mother; asking only that I occasionally wear a gown and smile at his dinner guests, and play the stringed lyre pleasantly on winter afternoons, and be able to read. Beyond this lay my mother’s realm. It was in the pastures and stable yard that my mother chose I should learn. Whilst my friend Lila and other girls sat at home working at their looms, I became dirty and dishevelled, stained with grass and dust and horsehair. Gradually, I became a stranger in the city, just as my mother was. She taught me how to choose which mare to breed to which stallion, how to blanket a racing horse in layers of felt so that it gained no weight, when to feed a horse the extra nutrition found in mutton fat. She showed me how to first saddle a green young horse; how to poultice a foot abscess; how to deliver a foal, wet and filled with the promise of joy, into a bed of fresh barley straw.