The Horse Road

by Troon Harrison

  Gryphon slipped his muzzle between the supple oiled straps, and I fastened the cheek piece on the near side with the buckle of bone, and smoothed his forelock between his narrow ears. He snorted softly with excitement as I laid the blanket, which Batu had given me, across his back and smoothed it straight and flat. Then I led him to a rock, and vaulted on, and he bounded across the slope, snatching at the bit and longing to gallop.

  Daylight met us at the mouth of the valley, and we turned away from it and rode with its rising warmth upon our shoulders. Gradually the aches and bruises in my body softened, and Batu and I ate dried dates and flat bread as we rode, and I told him how I had come out of Ershi’s south gate with a cavalry sortie. He flashed me a delighted glance, and laughed aloud. Then we let the horses ease into a steady trot on a loose rein, and Gryphon swept along, his shadow swooping across the grass as fast as the flight of a bird, his hard hooves striking the ground rhythmically, his mane lifting in the breeze. I turned my face to the blue sky and echoed Batu’s laughter.

  We rode through the foothills all day, following the map, and occasionally asking directions from a sheep herder or a merchant caravan. Despite the siege of Ershi, trade was continuing between Samarkand and India, and we passed heavily laden camels and strings of donkeys. By evening, we had left the Golden Valley behind and were heading into the deep shadows of high ridges. We rode until the moon began to climb the sky, and then we stopped at an isolated farm and asked for shelter. Leaving the horses fed and watered in the stable, we entered the one-storey, mud house and sat on the floor while our host brewed tea, and his wife laid the tablecloth upon the faded carpets.

  ‘Do you know of this village?’ Batu asked, showing our host the map. The man studied it for a moment, and then nodded once, sharply. A cloud seemed to pass across his face.

  ‘Do you know this man we seek, a merchant called Failak who might have once come from Kokand?’ Batu persisted.

  Our host nodded again, and a troubled frown creased his forehead beneath his skullcap. He took a long sip of his tea.

  ‘This man Failak came from the south,’ he said. ‘He is not from Kokand.’

  ‘But he does live in this village now, this village on our map?’

  The man took another long sip of tea and seemed to ponder Batu’s question, his deep eyes hooded under his shaggy brows. At last he spoke with a strange reluctance. ‘This man Failak has taken over the village you seek. Or so I have heard. He drove the villagers away or enslaved them, in the spring when the snow melted in the high passes. He and his people came from deep in the Pamir mountains. He wanted the turquoise mine that lies on the edge of the village. Now he controls the mine, and the mountain pass, and all the trade in that area.’

  Alarm shivered through me; when my gaze flew to Batu, I saw it mirrored in his eyes.

  ‘This man Failak is a warlord,’ Batu said softly, and our host nodded.

  ‘His band has taken over the summer pastures around the village, and the tribe that had used them for many generations has been driven eastwards, and been dispersed; their flocks starved without spring grass. This village is a very bad place for you to go seeking anyone, especially this man calling himself Failak, though he is not a Persian but a man of the tribes living in the mountains. You must turn back, and ride home in the morning.’

  At the doorway, three small children stared at me with serious, round faces, smooth as river stones. Their bright eyes took in every detail of my hair and clothing until their mother shooed them away and brought platters of food to set upon the embroidered cloth. Batu and I chewed roasted hare in silence. A warlord, I kept thinking. A warlord! The dark meat stuck in my throat.

  In the morning, in the stable, I smoothed my hand across Gryphon’s shoulders. ‘Will you still come with me?’ I asked Batu in a small voice.

  ‘I have sworn to be your companion in this war, and we will find Failak together by nightfall,’ he replied, leaning his shoulder against Rain, his jaw set in a determined line and his eyes a steady, fierce gleam in the dim light. ‘I am not afraid, Kalli.’

  We rode on whilst our host and his wife, with the three small children pressing against their trousers, stood in their doorway and watched us leave, their faces long and frightened between their black hair and earrings. Gryphon and Rain were fresh after their night confined to a stable, and trotted hour after hour until at last the track grew too steep and narrow and they were forced to walk. The thin air sang in my ears. Beneath us, long ridgelines and rocky scree fell away in vast expanses of grass and stunted junipers. The track was marked now with piles of curved ibex horns and the bleached skulls of mountain rams; in winter, these cairns of bone would mark the way for travellers in the drifting snow. We skirted a canyon, and came at last down the slope from a high pass, and saw a village of one-storey homes clinging to the far side of a valley in a jumble of stone terraces. Blankets, draped over a rope to dry, snapped in gusts of cold wind. The shadows were purple and deep as we rode towards the village, skirting a herd of shaggy yaks. I felt the village’s many windows staring down at us like eyes. My skin crawled.

  A warlord, I thought.

  ‘You must turn back and ride home,’ said the voice of our host.

  Swan, Swan. I am doing this for you.

  I pressed my lips in a tight line and rode on, silent behind Batu, although my knuckles were white on the reins. The leather-clad men, mounted on shaggy ponies, seemed to appear on the wind like snowflakes, riding along on each side of us and to our rear, cutting off our escape. Rough dogs with glinting eyes and open mouths trotted beside the men.

  ‘Ignore them,’ Batu muttered ahead of me, and I stared at Rain’s black and white quarters, and willed myself to keep moving towards the houses of that village, built like a fortress in the side of the mountain.

  The horses waded through a rushing stream, and then Batu reined in, and turned to me. ‘We should walk from here,’ he said, and I nodded; it was a sign of respect to lead one’s horse towards a nobleman and, in the tribes, if you failed to show this respect to a chief, you might lose your horse.

  We walked, my legs stiff and tense, and with our mounted guard drawing closer, flushing us into the village like a hunting party flushing pheasant from the grass. I could hear the dogs panting. Gryphon snorted gustily, uneasily, his ears laid back and eyes rolling. I laid my palm upon his withers, and then clasped the amulet of leopard hair, in its bag of golden leather, lying at the base of my throat, below where the knife had nicked me the previous night.

  We were halted at the edge of the village, where the track led into the first dusty alley, and faces – their cheeks glazed dark with sun and wind – peered out from doorways with sills painted bright blue. ‘We seek the honourable Failak on a matter of business!’ Batu cried clearly, standing very tall, to the man who had halted us, his battleaxe held horizontally to block the street.

  ‘Give me your names, and wait,’ the man commanded. He disappeared up the street with long strides, and our mounted guard closed in around us, eyeing us with suspicion and muttering to each other in their harsh, foreign tongue. I bent my head, staring at the ragged hem of my oldest tunic of brown linen. I remembered the days I’d worn it before, long ago before the war; I had worn it to train Gryphon, a hot-blooded colt, eager to run. Now, beneath the tunic, my jewel casket was a hard, heavy rectangle.

  I turned my thoughts quickly away from it, as though the men guarding us might follow the direction of my thoughts and strip me of my wealth before I ever reached the warlord.

  The hooves of the shaggy horses stamped and shuffled restlessly in my line of vision; at last, the boots of the man with the axe reappeared.

  ‘Give me your weapons,’ he demanded, and a terrible chill slid over me. My eyes flew to Batu’s face; it was set in proud lines, but he unbuckled his dagger from his belt and held it out stiffly, followed by his quiver and bow. After I had done the same, the men took the reins of our horses and led them away to a stable. We walked on, feeling nak
ed, and climbing upwards past the houses’ flat roofs, and women toiling in patches of garden surrounded by stones.

  At the top of the village, we came into a flat space before a high wall, beyond which rose the facade of a three-storey house with wooden beams, and a watchtower reached by a ladder of poles. In the midst of this dusty flat space, a man stood waiting for us, a tall pillar of brilliance. Although I was too shy to steal more than quick glances at him, I saw that he was clad in a brocade tunic of azure blue, trimmed with the costly fur of the black sable and held with a belt encrusted with turquoise stones. His cloak of black sable hung elegantly over his shoulders, and his trousers were stuffed into knee-high boots of four different colours of leather. I noted, in my quick glances, that everything he wore was clean and perfectly cut, and richly embroidered. His hands, clasped loosely before him, were as hard and lean as talons, and rings of turquoise flashed on every finger. His face too was lean and smooth above his oiled beard, and his hair was a cascade of perfectly curled waves. In the streets of Kokand, merchants and artisans, and even wealthy traders, would have made way for him.

  The earring in one of his ears glinted in the setting sun as he considered us intently for a long moment and, although his face remained impassive, his eyes were sharp points of interest. Then a muscle twitched at one corner of his mouth, as though he might smile.

  Perhaps he is not a warlord after all, I thought, but merely a rich trader who prefers not to live in the city. He does not seem like the leader of a bandit horde.

  ‘The honourable lady Kallisto,’ he said at last. ‘What a great and most unexpected pleasure to welcome you here. I know your father; we have traded together in the past. Perfume, I believe it was, that I obtained from him. And coral beads.’

  His voice took me by as much surprise as his appearance already had, for it was mild and soft. A glimmer of hope rose in me and I flashed a glance at Batu but his face remained set in stiff lines. Perhaps all would be well now, I thought, and by tomorrow we could ride home. We must ride home tomorrow! There were only two days left of the seven days that Arash had granted me to bring the treasure and save Swan.

  ‘My guests, you look weary. You shall dine with me, and only later need you state your business. Come.’

  Failak’s sable cloak swung as he turned to a door in the wall; we followed him through it. Inside, on the second floor of the house, I stared in wonder at the furnishings: the tapestries and thick knotted carpets, the couches with satin bolsters, the stools of inlaid wood. A glance out of a window showed me only bleak slopes dotted with yaks, and I heard the cold wind gusting against the wooden poles of the ladder leaning against the watchtower.

  We ate shortly, our host sprawled on a striped divan, and guards posted at the doors. Women carried in dishes of chased silver, heaped with rice and braised lamb in a creamy sauce flavoured with cumin. Over the table’s low surface, Failak watched us with the same intent, expectant look with which he’d considered us outside. It was the expression that a cat wears, waiting for a mouse to venture from its burrow. He wiped his ringed fingers fastidiously clean on a linen cloth, and picked his teeth with the point of a very narrow dagger, its handle encrusted with pearls and turquoise.

  ‘And what is it?’ he asked softly at last. ‘This matter of business?’

  Batu stared at me, his eyes sending me strength, as I struggled to find my voice. ‘It’s about – about a g-golden harness,’ I stuttered. Failak bent his head encouragingly towards me, his gaze impassive now, and sipped wine from his golden drinking horn as I explained how I knew about the harness in Ershi that had been given to Arash’s father after a lion hunt, and then promised to a prince, and finally lost in a drunken wager. ‘Is there – is there another harness?’ I dared to ask.

  Failak ran his hand down the drinking horn’s golden curve, as though he were stroking a pet. ‘I really don’t know if there is another harness,’ he replied. ‘Just after my men found the first one, I was called away on a matter of urgency, and I have only returned home within the last few days. Matters to do with the war, and involving business ventures, detained me. So now I too am anxious as to whether there is a second such golden harness. Shall we ride out and search in the morning?’

  ‘Ride where?’ I asked.

  ‘To the tombs,’ he said. ‘Where else do you think that such an ancient treasure could have come from? There are burial chambers all along the ridge behind us, where the nomadic peoples – who used to pasture here – once buried their dead. You are not afraid of ghosts, are you?’

  And he smiled at me in the lamplight, a slow smooth stretching of his lips like a cat stretching after the mouse has come out of its burrow at last, and been devoured.

  Chapter 14

  ‘You cannot do this!’ Batu insisted, his hands a tight grip on my shoulders as we stood in the hallway outside the room where I had slept.

  ‘I must do it, for Swan. You know it’s my only chance to save her!’

  ‘No, Kalli, we must ride home, right now. You cannot go into the abodes of the ancestors and rob them! The ancestors are our spirit guides, watching over us, sending us wisdom and blessing. To be a tomb raider is a most terrible thing. Great evil will befall you if you do this!’

  I shook myself free of his hands and stepped away. ‘I did not come this far to turn back. In Ershi, we do not worship the ancestors as you worship them in the tribes. I am not afraid,’ I lied, although my legs quivered.

  ‘I am afraid,’ Batu said hoarsely. His high cheeks were blanched pale, and in his eyes there was a grim flatness that I had never seen before. I stared at him, feeling blood drain from my heart.

  ‘I have never heard you admit to fear in all your life.’

  ‘But it’s true,’ he insisted. ‘Listen to me! This house is filled with ghosts. All night I heard them rustling in the darkness. I heard the tramp of booted feet going past my bedroom door, but when I opened it, no one was there. I heard the neighing of horses and the clatter of weapons in the courtyard below, but when I went to the window, the yard was empty, bleached by moonlight. This man Failak lives in a haunted world. He thinks that the power of the turquoise will guard him against the evil eyes, but all the stones in his mine will not be enough to protect him if he is robbing the ancient ones. And so, I am afraid, Kallisto, and you should be afraid too. You should flee this place while you still can.’

  I stared at Batu, my eyes stretched wide. On the wall behind him hung a tapestry worked in crimson wool and showing men mounted on elephants, hunting tigers in the long grass. Against the picture’s brilliance, Batu’s face remained set in hard lines, and his uncombed hair was as ruffled as the wing of a bird in a contrary wind. I laid my hand upon his arm but he shook it off.

  ‘He who does not venture into the lion’s lair will never steal her cubs,’ I quoted, a proverb in the tribes, but Batu’s stony gaze did not change. I sighed. ‘If I do not save Swan, I will walk with her ghost all my life. I must do this, Batu.’

  ‘I will not come to the tombs with you. You will ride alone.’

  A great stone dropped into my stomach, and I staggered against the tapestry at my back; the weight of that stone dragged my shoulders down over my ribs and made my legs shake harder. A silent cry poured from my dry lips. For a long, terrible moment, Batu and I glared at each other, our jaws set in obstinacy and pure fright.

  ‘Have it your way!’ I cried. ‘Stay here. I don’t care!’

  I brushed past him and strode to the stairway; despite the hot tears welling in my eyes, I ran down those packed mud steps two at a time, and did not falter even when Batu called my name, an urgent cry. I was knuckling the last traces of dampness from my eyes as I burst into the courtyard, and found Failak pacing the dusty expanse and staring out over the rooftops of his stolen village.

  He turned at the sound of my footsteps, his sable cloak swinging open over a robe of velvet from Samarkand, embroidered with gilt thread and decorated with imported jet beads. ‘Ah, the honoured lady Kallisto,
’ he said smoothly. ‘And where is your tribal bodyguard this morning?’

  ‘He is n-not interested in c-coming t-to the tombs.’ My tongue almost tied itself into knots, and my eyes darted around the courtyard, unable to meet Failak’s gaze.

  ‘Indeed, it is hard to find loyalty,’ he murmured. ‘But we shall ride to the tombs nonetheless. Perhaps your boy might like a day of hunting instead. I shall arrange it.’

  He turned away, his boots plainer than those he’d worn yesterday, and his trousers covered with leather leggings for riding in, and shouted for men and horses. I remained rooted to the spot, staring over the valley with its grazing yaks and camels scattered along the thread of a cold river. Behind my shoulders, I could feel the ridges of the mountains rising up, looming over me like a great wave about to drown me; I could feel the brooding presence of the burial mounds marching along the watershed. Every fibre in my body strained to run, to flee, to cry for Batu, to gallop away on Gryphon. I gritted my teeth and remained perfectly still, pressing the soles of my boots deeper and deeper into the hard dirt of the warlord’s courtyard. At any moment, I thought, Batu would join me. I waited for his footsteps in the dirt, his hand on my shoulder; I ached for his joyful grin, his fierce whoops of laughter.

  It was not until I was mounted on a shaggy chestnut pony, and riding up the grass track carved into the side of the mountain, that I understood at last that Batu had meant what he said: he was not coming with me.

  ‘Your stallion will be glad of a rest after your long ride from Ershi,’ Failak said as we rode. ‘He was stabled overnight and given grain but now he is out on the pasture, loosely hobbled, and I have set a man to watch over him.’

  I stared down into the valley, hoping to catch a glimpse of gold, a gleaming flash, but we were high up now, and the herds were merely specks below us. My chestnut pony was sure-footed and strong; he went steadily up the steep grassy track, where once the funeral chariots had pulled the dead, their organs removed, their bodies packed with fragrant herbs and stitched back together with horsehair thread. Then they were covered in honey, and wrapped in felt blankets, and bound with woollen ropes. Slowly they had wound their way upwards, laid upon their chariots, accompanied by their grieving kinsmen, their lamenting children, and their fast, slender horses. They had ascended, in their last journey, towards the great heavens filled with blue daylight, and the dark burial pits that would hold their mortal remains while their spirits rode onwards, mounted on their horses, into the afterworld.