We were wheeling past again, shouting, shooting. We were much closer now. Too close. Mother! I cried inside my head, the word echoing. Help!
The pike men were on their feet, and I saw a great shaft of iron slicing through the air towards me. I kicked free of the saddle, and threw myself from the appaloosa’s off-side, my supple boots hitting the ground so hard that the shudder ran through my body. The horse shied and I hauled on his reins, running beside him for three paces with my hands gripping my saddle loop. When I leaped astride again, he was still galloping and the pike man was left behind.
A swell of land lifted up before me, scattered with the stumps of walnut trees; the horses dodged amongst them and opened up into a looser pattern so that I was able to work my way across the slope between them. At last I was riding on the very edge of the cavalry. The appaloosa had slowed to a laboured canter but I lashed him on with the reins into a frenzied gallop. I hoped that he would hold true to his pace and direction when I dropped the reins. If he circled back to join the other horses, or if he slowed to a walk, my plan would not work.
I waited for several strides until his hooves touched the down slope on the ridge’s far side, and then I dived backwards from the saddle, one foot hooked in the leather loop on the far side. Ground rushed at me. Sky spun. My body swung loose, my arms trailing. It had been the hardest thing to master, on the training ground with my mother: the looseness, the ability to let every muscle and bone swing slack as the ground rushed up to meet my head, as my hands brushed against protruding roots and the heads of grass.
I was a dead rider now, being carried along by my crazed horse, one foot tangled in the leather. No one would worry about shooting me, or stopping me.
A last volley of arrows hailed down, making the horse snort and renew his efforts. Then we were dropping down off the ridge, my head inches from the rough slope of a sheep pasture. My right hand banged across a stone. The horse’s legs, his great bones stout as tree limbs, rushed past my eyes; my torso twisted and snapped against his ribs. His tail slapped my face with a sting like a whip. I closed my eyes as blood filled my head and everything turned to blackness. Hoof beats replaced the crash of my heart.
When I felt the appaloosa’s stride slowing. I kicked upwards with one foot, thumping him behind the forelegs, and he surged on again. I opened my eyes a crack and saw only a blur of ground rushing past, with green grass and sheep droppings. There were no other horses’ legs in view. The world became quieter until only the horse’s laboured breathing, and his hoof beats, remained.
‘Whoa, slow down, easy!’ I called soothingly to him, and then jerked myself, with one long convulsion of muscle, up towards the saddle again. The horse, unfamiliar with my voice and unused to this manoeuvre, shied violently and I lost my grip and plunged towards the ground, my head snapping on my neck. After this, I waited until the horse slowed of his own accord to a trot, then a walk. Finally, bruised and dizzy, I pulled myself into the saddle long enough to kick my foot from the leather loop and scan my surroundings. A clump of willow trees lay to my right, and I jumped down again and hauled the horse behind me into its shade.
Doubling over my jewel box, I retched into a patch of raspberries. For a long time afterwards, I leaned against the appaloosa’s shoulders, panting and shaking. Beneath my armour and tunic, my skin was slick with sweat and my blood tingled in my arms and legs. Roaring filled my ears. The horse blew, his head hanging, and foam dripped from his mouth. I was too breathless to praise him but I ran my hands down his sturdy legs from shoulder to fetlock, noticing his striped hooves.
When I tied the reins to a tree, and crept to the edge of the willows, I could see down into a shallow valley where dusty stones lay in a dry riverbed. Perhaps this had once been one of Ershi’s water sources, and had been diverted by the enemy. A peasant drove a flock of sheep across the far slope, guarded by huge mastiff dogs with drooling jowls. Further down the valley, an enemy encampment of tents stood in a ring, and when I stepped out of my shelter, I could see that many more tents were pitched over the hillside, pale as mushrooms in the trampled alfalfa. I was on the very edge of the army camp, I decided. If I shed my armour, surely no one would stop a girl riding southwards, for only warriors and nobles would be of interest to the men of the Middle Kingdom. I struggled out of the chain mail, glad to be free of its slithering weight, and feeling anonymous in my rough tunic and trousers. Lifting the linen, I retied the sashes holding the jewel case against my stomach.
The appaloosa snuffled at grass and I uncorked my water bag and dribbled a stream into his wide lips, giving him just enough to wet his tongue. He stared consideringly at me afterwards, as though noticing me for the first time, and when I told him he had been brave, he pressed his heavy face against my chest.
‘You need a name,’ I murmured. ‘I will call you … Mountain, for your size and strength.’
I tipped the flask back and took a swallow of tepid water, then ate a handful of dried fruit, savouring its sweetness. At last, my muscles stopped trembling. Sunshine fell in dapples through the willows, adding more dark and light to the pattern of Mountain’s coat. I tilted my face to the light, and breathed a deep lungful of clear air. I am free, I thought, and for a moment I imagined those finches in Lila’s house, how they would stumble into the air if someone opened their cage door, how they would grow strong as they realised that freedom lay all around them.
I removed the felt and the saddle from Mountain’s back, and then used the felt to rub sweat from his chest, his flanks, and his belly. Then I sat down, holding his reins, while Mountain tore at mouthfuls of grass. The smell of oregano wafted from amongst the crushed stems. Flies buzzed, and birds called, and sometimes, far off, hooves thundered past and men shouted. The afternoon crept by, golden, hot, secretive.
As shadows lengthened, I stared at my saddle, unwilling to abandon it with its shaped cushions, its blue leather covering appliquéd with yellow flowers, its carefully crafted leather loops. Yet no peasant girl in the valley of Ferghana would have owned such a saddle, and it might only attract unwelcome attention. At last, reluctantly, I laid it at the base of a willow, along with Petros’s armour and helmet, the felt blanket, and my bow and quiver. These objects made a small, sad pile against the tree’s craggy bark; who knew whether I might ever be able to return for them?
At dusk, as wolves began to sing under the first faint prick of stars, I rode the appaloosa out from the trees and headed at a trot towards the foothills, making my way by memory, by a feeling in my gut, by the smells of herbs and stones, by the sound of water trickling from a spring or of antelopes grazing. Occasionally we stopped and hid behind trees or the walls of abandoned farms as strangers rode by. We avoided paths and tracks, and headed across country, dodging enemy fires, hunting parties, and supply wagons.
Oh, Batu, I thought as I stared ahead at the great black wall of the Alay Mountains. It has been many long days since we said goodbye, and surely the valley where you killed your first boar lies empty. Where, in all these layers and folds of slope and shadow, are you sleeping tonight?
It was late as I walked the gelding up the lower reaches of the valley; late and chilly, with my body stiff and aching, and the gelding’s head drooping although he ploughed sturdily onwards. We picked a cautious path across a bed of gravel. The gelding lowered his head, the reins slack in my hands, and sucked up a long draught of water from the rushing stream whose chatter filled the dark air. My thoughts drifted as we moved on, the horse’s steady walk lulling me into a doze. My chin nudged my chest and strands of my hair, escaping from their plaits, tickled my cheeks.
Suddenly Mountain shied violently, almost unseating me. Long muscles closed around my chest. Tendons strained against my face, muffling my shout of alarm. I pitched from the snorting horse, and landed hard with the wild thing pressing me down. Stones grated against my shoulder blades.
Leopard! my foggy mind cried in alarm, but then I felt the knife blade held across my throat.
Ch
apter 13
‘Don’t – d-don’t hurt m-me!’ I croaked as the pressure was released over my mouth. My eyes strained to see the attacker who sat on me, pinning me in place, but he was only the silhouette of a wild-haired man against the face of the moon.
‘The starry sky at night –’ my assailant said roughly, in a Turkic tongue.
My mind, slow and dragging with fatigue, reeled in amazement. This was the first half of a phrase that Batu and I had used as a password, for many years, when we played at bandits and warriors in the summer grasslands.
Dry with fear, my tongue stuck in the roof of my mouth. My assailant shook my head, one hand tight in my plaited hair, and I felt the point of the knife pierce my skin. A convulsion of fear twisted through me so that I writhed on the gravel.
‘The starry sky at night –’ he repeated.
‘– is a b-black horse decorated with pearls,’ I replied.
The man grunted in surprise. His grip on my hair eased slightly but the knife was steady at my throat and I could feel the warmth of blood as it trickled across my collar bone. ‘What comes next?’ he demanded.
‘The r-rays of the sun in the afternoon –’
‘– are the tail hairs of a white horse,’ he finished. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’
‘I am the lady Kallisto of the House of Iona in Ershi, and I am searching for a tribesman named Batu, from the clan of the Fierce Eagles.’
The man gave another grunt of surprise, and the pressure of the knife blade eased at last. I lay very still, listening to the slight shift of gravel as footsteps approached. ‘Catch the horse,’ my assailant said over his shoulder, and I heard Mountain snorting. When my assailant stood up at last, a dull pain throbbed along the backs of my legs and in my ribs. ‘Kneel,’ the man said, and I obeyed, and held still while he tied my wrists behind my back with leather thongs. Then he prodded me with the hilt of his dagger. ‘Stand up, and walk.’
The valley closed in around us as we moved higher, its steep sides cloaked in a dense forest, and the rush of water growing louder. I stumbled between the two men, my legs weak as those of a newborn foal. The white, spotted blanket across Mountain’s quarters was a dull gleam behind us. My nostrils twitched, catching at a drift of woodsmoke, and abruptly my assailant shoved me around an outcrop of rock into a narrow ravine that arrowed through the mountain flank to meet the main valley. The mouth of a cave glowed like a bowl in a potter’s kiln, and the flicker of campfire light danced on the rocky ceiling. At our approach, the men seated around the burning logs looked up, their hands moving to the hilts of their daggers, their hawk noses casting shadows over their thick moustaches and uncombed black beards. The boy turning the body of a quail spitted upon a spear gazed at me for a long, calm heartbeat. I saw the flames reflected in the pupils of his black eyes.
‘It is a good thing that you practised the password for so many years,’ he said gravely, his face perfectly still. Then it split open in his wild, delighted, flashing grin, and the firelight licked the high slope of his cheekbones.
‘Batu!’ I fell forward into the cave, my legs giving way, and he leaped to his feet to catch me. I smelled the horses, smoke, and mossy forest scents in his orange tunic of padded Indian cotton. His hair hung down across my face, and it smelled like wind and mountain sunshine. A sob of exhaustion shook me as he kissed my cheek, and undid the thongs that chafed my wrists.
‘Sit by the fire,’ he said in the voice he used for tending injured horses, and he lowered me on to a warm rock as the other men shifted to make room. Batu pulled the spear from the flames, and used his dagger to slice pieces of moist meat from the golden and charred body of the quail; he gouged a stuffing of millet and wild chives from inside its small body cavity, and heaped all the food on a copper plate. The steam rose into my nostrils and I thought that I had never before smelled anything as delicious. My mouth filled with saliva and I moulded the millet into a ball with my fingers and ate it, burning my tongue in my haste. I ate and ate while Batu spitted the body of a second bird and turned it slowly over the logs, waiting until I was ready to talk. At last, I had emptied my plate twice, and he handed me a mug of wild mint tea sweetened with mountain honey.
‘You will be safe now,’ he said reassuringly. I ducked my head, suddenly shy beneath the gaze of so many wild strangers, but the men were paying little attention to me. They moved around the cave; one was sharpening a dagger against a whetstone, the rhythmic rasp blending with the crackle of burning logs. Another man held a guitar and began to play, running a bow across the two strings of horsehair.
‘Who are all these people? What are you d-doing here? Where are the two-year-old mares?’
Batu grinned triumphantly. ‘The mares are with my mother’s herd. I waited four days for you, but then I heard from a farmer in the valley that the enemy had laid siege to Ershi and that no one could escape. I knew, when you didn’t come back, that you were trapped inside. So I drove the mares to my mother’s camp. Then I returned here, thinking you might escape after all. See, I left you a mark in case you found your way here some day when I was not around.’
I followed the line of his gesturing arm and saw, inscribed upon the rock wall of the cave, perhaps with the point of a dagger, the rough drawing of an eagle, a mare, and a stallion. The horses looked as though they were galloping joyfully across the rock, striated with ochre and orange. Their tails flew out behind them.
‘Then,’ Batu continued, ‘I began to meet other men who had not got inside Ershi before it was sealed off; tribesmen, and farmers from the valley. We have formed a raiding band here in the mountains, and we ride out and strike the edges of the enemy encampment swiftly at night, then melt back into the shadows. We destroy their supply lines, and burn their tents; we cut the tracing on the harnesses, and undo the lynchpins in their wagon wheels and throw them into the river!’
Batu’s face gleamed with a mischievous excitement that I knew well. He had looked the same way when we were eight years old and had, on a wager, managed to steal two hound puppies from another tribe’s dog at a summer festival, and play with them for an afternoon before being caught.
‘And Gryphon, is he recovered from his leopard injuries? Where is he?’ I asked eagerly.
‘We have a small band of horses, pasturing on the lower slopes of this valley, and guarded at all times by two men. They are mainly workhorses from the farms, that are more used to threshing grain and pulling ploughs than being ridden. Rain is with them, and Gryphon too. His wounds have knitted back together. I thought that if you came here you might need him. No one else can ride him; he is loyal only to you and none of us can even catch him.’
I smiled. ‘He has never liked strangers. And I do need him.’ I described Swan’s fate, and my urgent mission to bring back the golden harness so that I could save her. Batu’s face darkened with anger as he listened. From one of my leather pouches, I pulled the parchment map and Batu held it open in the firelight, peering at its squiggly lines of ink.
‘You must sleep for a few hours,’ he commanded, ‘and then we will ride for this village. Along the way, you can tell me how you managed to escape from Ershi. Here, use this bedroll.’
I lay on the lumpy mattress stuffed with sedges and Batu threw a sheepskin over me. The firelight played and danced inside my closed eyelids, and the quail meat warmed my belly, and the rock wall of the cave was rough and hard against my spine. I thought of the horses there, galloping for ever on their orange legs, and a smile slackened my mouth. When I opened my eyes a slit, Batu was sitting cross-legged by the fire, scowling as he used marmot fat to oil a bridle’s leather straps. Gryphon’s bridle, I thought, his bridle with the decoration of blue clay beads, gleaming like drops of water in the cave.
‘I have brought another horse for your herd, an appaloosa,’ I said, and Batu’s eyes lit up for, like all the nomads, he loved a colourful horse. I watched him for a little longer, scowling again, rubbing at Gryphon’s bridle, and then my eyes drifted sh
ut in sleep.
It was not yet dawn when Batu roused me, shaking my shoulders. Outside the cave the moon was sliding over the western mountains, and the water of the stream was pale as moth wings as it crashed downhill. Batu and I slipped along a faint track to the horse herd, and muttered the password to the men guarding it.
My heart bounded with excitement. ‘Gryphon, Gryphon!’ I called softly, and gave the special whistle, like a bird’s call, that I used to summon him when he was far out in my mother’s pastures, grazing the alfalfa and shimmering like a flung coin. Now my eyes scanned the slope, flitting across the dark bodies of horses as they rustled through the shrubs and grass. Twigs broke, teeth ground together. The smell of the herd rose around me, and I saw the pale blanket of the appaloosa as he passed by, following a chestnut mare. Something moved behind my shoulder. Warm breath gusted on to my neck. Whiskers tickled me. I felt his presence coiled like a whip, his muscles tensed to spring away, spooked in the strange half-light. Very slowly, I turned around.
‘Gryphon,’ I whispered, and he bent his head, pressing his muzzle into my open hand. My magnificent stallion, flame and smoke. His black legs, long, hard, dry. His golden chest, and his high-set neck. His coat sleek as rare Chinese silk beneath my fingers. I laid my face against him and let his heat soak into my aching muscles. ‘I am so glad to find you,’ I whispered. ‘I am so glad you are safe.’
I ran my hands over his quarters, feeling the lines where the leopard claws had raked him; the skin in those lines was knotted, but cool and firm, and hair was beginning to grow over them. Batu had been right; my stallion would carry white scars in his coat for the rest of his life, in a pattern like a spider’s web netted with morning dew, or like foam upon a fast river. ‘It only makes you more beautiful,’ I comforted him, holding up the bridle.
The Horse Road Page 16
