A shiver racked my body, and I felt Failak watching me from the corner of his eyes, but he said nothing. We rode on, breaking out of the valley’s pool of shadow and into the warmth of the rising sun. The track levelled out as we attained the crest of the ridge. And now, ahead of us, lay the long barrows of the dead. They were grassy swells, longer and higher than small houses, with sloping shoulders built of stone and soil heaped over the central burial chambers.
‘For many long years they have been here,’ Failak said softly at my shoulder, drawing rein. ‘But what need have the dead for jewels and weapons, horse harness and knotted carpets? Why should the living be deprived of riches that can be taken without a battle, without a coin? From the Scythian dead, I have obtained some fine treasures, long forgotten by anyone now alive.’
His black horse stamped a foreleg nervously, and the sun gleamed on its bridle inlaid with turquoise stones. We rode on. The chestnut pony’s breath came in anxious snorts, and he shied violently several times, almost unseating me, but when I looked around I could see nothing that might have frightened him. I knew that there were many things in the world that horses could sense when their human riders saw nothing. Now the barrows rose around us, and the teasing wind died into utter silence. Only the fretful breathing of the horses could be heard and the high, far-off whistle of a mountain bird. The silence pressed me down, smaller and smaller, shrinking me until the weight and size of the barrows grew enormous, and I was trapped between them. A cold sweat ran between the bones of my spine.
Failak drew rein at last, and smiled pleasantly at me, and stroked the curls of his oiled beard; I could smell the costly perfume of myrrh in the oil. ‘This barrow is the one that my men were working upon before I rode to Ershi on business,’ he said, gesturing at the largest mound we had yet ridden past, lying in the centre of the line of tombs. ‘It was from here that the golden harness was obtained. Indeed, there might well be more than one harness for why would there be only one horse pulling? A team is more likely, and thus the existence of more than one harness. It is as well for your mare, Swan, that she has a mistress who is clever as well as beautiful.’
He dismounted in one lithe motion, and held out his hand to me but I ignored it and swung off the pony unaided. When we tried to lead the ponies towards the swell of the tomb, they dug their small hard hooves into the thin soil, and stretched their necks out with eyes rolling. My chestnut chewed on his snaffle bit in agitation, the iron grinding against his teeth and foam gathering on the bit rings. Before my eyes, both ponies broke into a sheen of sweat across their chests and necks, although the air was thin and cool. Failak laughed again, soothingly, and spoke to the ponies in his own tongue, yet still they refused to walk forward.
‘I will wait here, and hold them lest they bolt away,’ he said. ‘My men have dug into a tunnel that leads into the centre of the tomb, and you can crawl along it and explore. There is a lamp set just inside the entrance. Here, a flint to light the oil.’ He reached into one boot and pulled out a flint which he held out to me. I stared at him, the hairs standing up along my arms.
‘A-alone?’ I asked. ‘I am to go a-alone?’
‘I will sit and wait,’ he said. ‘And the ponies can graze. There is no rush, Kallisto. Once you have found the harness, if it exists, you can ride again for home and be in time to save your mare. You have until tomorrow night to bring the harness to Arash, you said?’
I nodded mutely. It was like the beginning of a dream as I watched myself, a tiny figure surrounded by the long sleep of the dead ones, stretch out my hand and take the flint from the warlord’s ringed fingers. Then the small figure that was me stumbled around the shoulder of the barrow where the wind sprang up, rushing through the sparse tussocky grass. The figure tripped over a grey stone, and half fell towards the dark mouth of the catacomb tunnel that led into the tomb. Heaps of dry soil, threaded with cracks by wind and sun, marked where Failak’s men had dug their way into the barrow, and the girl in my dream stooped and peered into the darkness. Then she reached into the shadows and felt around for the terracotta dryness of the lamp’s belly, and used the flint to spark a tiny flame that quivered in the cold draught swelling from the tunnel. She looked around, her face rigid, and cast an anguished glance back through the rounded shoulders of the barrows and down the sweep of grassy track falling into the valley, but no one rode there. Nothing moved but the wind, and the shadows of small clouds, and the furry scamper of a marmot. No boy rode upwards on a black and white horse.
Then the girl fell to her knees and crawled forward into the tomb, and was lost from sight while the man on the hill gazed around peacefully, seated on a stone, beside the quivering ponies drenched in sweat.
The tunnel was narrow, lined with stones gathered from the mountain scree above. I inched my way along, holding the lamp with one hand. It was like going into the belly of a snake, that creature beloved of the evil Angra. I craned back once, painfully, over my shoulder, and saw a pinprick of daylight behind me at the entrance, and crawled on. The next time that I looked back, only darkness lay behind. I pressed my face into the darkness ahead, and crawled onwards shielded by the brave flicker of my lamp flame although occasional gusts of air made it leap and gutter. Now I felt the walls widening away on either side, and a yawning pit of darkness opened up. The tiny flame of the lamp threw leaping shadows over the burial chamber lying at the tomb’s centre. I stood up cautiously, but the ceiling of tree trunks was higher than my head. Walls of rocks and soil curved away, and at my feet the soil was trampled and marred with drag marks from the robbers who had been here before me; those men who had found the golden harness. I lifted the lamp higher, spilling oil down my arm, biting back my whimper of fright.
I am alone here, I reminded myself. There is nothing here to harm me. But the ghosts of the nomads hunted across the emptiness, picking up their arrows with poisoned tips of bronze, mounting their excited horses, and narrowed their eyes as they spotted me, their prey, invading their sacred spaces, disturbing their long rest. Those ghosts could ride faster than I could run; there was no place on earth that I might hide from them, though I might travel as far away as my father and brothers had, to the far shining seas that lapped the shores of Greece and Arabia. Still those ghostly hunters would pursue me, seeking vengeance.
I could not move.
I could not breathe.
For an endless time, for a time when there was no time but only darkness and terror, I stood holding my lamp. Than I shuffled one foot forward. ‘Swan.’ I released her name into the darkness; a prayer, a cry, a whisper that licked and curled around the inside of the tomb, that made the ghostly hunters draw rein, and listen intently, like men listening to a change in the sound of the wind.
I shuffled my other foot forward. My toe nudged against an arrowhead, its three-lobed metal points crumbling with rust. My light fluttered over a broken clay jar, a pale oyster shell filled with the dried remains of body paint the colour of ochre, of ox blood.
My other foot moved forward. My lamp flame flattened low, as though a hand had passed over it. Then it wavered upwards again. I took a deep breath.
A deer antler, used to dig the central pit, clattered against a stone as I bumped it. Its points were worn to a jagged dullness. A blue bead rolled away into the darkness.
Something was behind me. I swung around, but saw nothing but leaping shadows. I turned back, and felt a cold breath on my neck. My hair crawled across my scalp.
In the centre of the tomb, the wooden coffin was aligned with the occupant’s head facing east towards the rising sun, and was carved with stags’ horns and with long, sinuous leopards twisting back on themselves, and snarling ferociously.
A clay altar stood beside the coffin, and a grimy bronze mirror lay on the floor nearby. I was in the tomb of a priestess, a woman with tattoos on her face and magic in her fingers, a woman who could toss the bones of sheep and divine the future, who could ride to battle with her tribe and lead them to certain victory. My f
ingers flew to the leather pouch of leopard hair that I wore at my neck, and I prayed for her forgiveness. Yet such a woman, I thought, would have power that reached beyond her death, and would bring great evil to those who desecrated her burial place.
My chest heaved as I sought for air. The tomb closed in around me, the walls shrinking, the air so thick with must and decay that I couldn’t draw it into my lungs.
I stepped closer to the altar. The bones of many horses lay strewn and disordered in a semicircle at its base. Once they had lain side by side, wonderful horses that the warrior priestess would gallop across the grasslands of the afterworld. Now their bones were in disarray for the tomb raiders had thrown them around, stripping away the rich harnesses. The flame of my lamp ran over the bones’ long pale shafts; forelegs and hind, the arc of ribs, the heaviness of skulls, the blank eye sockets. No harness remained, not a bit ring, not a strap of leather, not a single face mask with antlered horns, not a trace of gold inlay, not a stitch of embroidery, not a scrap of bright felt or wool, not the wink of one precious stone. Nothing. It had all been taken.
The lamp wobbled in my grasp.
I spun on my heels, and dashed to the tunnel. Faintly, behind my shoulders, I could hear the war cries of the tribes, echoing against the stones as they set their horses into a flat gallop, their long swords raised in their hands as they swept after me, hunting me now to the ends of the earth, and the end of my days.
I fell to my knees, sobbing, scrabbling at the tunnel. I was a badger when the hounds have sniffed it out, and have entered its lair.
‘Failak!’ I cried as I neared the entrance, the far-off gleam of shining daylight. It was only then that I realised the cave mouth was no longer the ragged oval that it had been when I entered it. Now only a sickle of light marked where I could escape. I dragged myself towards it on my elbows, the lamp spilling more oil down the sleeve of my old linen tunic. A flat stone had been shifted against the entrance, and was obscuring the light.
‘Failak!’ I cried again, and his face appeared in the slender gap, the sun shining in the fine hairs of his dark fur hat and in the gold inlay of one front tooth.
‘No,’ he said smoothly. ‘Alas, no harness. I fear your mare must meet her fate. And you, Kallisto, need be in no hurry now to reach Ershi again. And it has come to my memory what a rich man your father is, a very rich man with a large city house filled with foreign treasures, with a farm in the valley where Persian horses run in the pastures. All year long, the camels and donkeys and ox wagons haul the trade goods into Ershi, goods from Arabia and India and the islands of the Mediterranean, from Greece, from the cold Baltic lands to the north, from the forests of the Caucasus, and the pastures around the mighty Don River. Such a man as your father, I think, has one thing that he treasures above all this and that no trading deal could bring to his door. Am I right?’
He stared at me, his eyes as intent and hungry as they had been on the previous evening when he looked at me across his plate of meat and rice. I was silent with shock.
‘Yes, I am right,’ he said. ‘Above all the treasures in his warehouses and ledgers, your father prizes his only daughter. And if he wishes to see her again, he must pay. He must send me a great sum of wealth! He must atone for the swindle he pulled on me, cheating me when I traded with him, sending me less than the full weight of goods we had agreed upon!’
‘My f-father does not cheat!’ I had hoped to sound brave, even outraged, but my voice shot out in a high squeak. Failak’s lips curled contemptuously.
‘What do you know of trade?’ he sneered. ‘You run around playing at games, a spoiled child whining about the life of one mare. I will have a valley full of mares; your father shall send them in exchange for your life! He shall send camels here, laden with drinking horns of gold, with bales of brocade, with Arabian incense!’
He leaned down until his face was inches away from mine, silhouetted against the slice of light. ‘You will stay here until your father pays your ransom,’ he said. ‘My men have already placed food and water, and extra oil, to the left of the main chamber. No harm shall befall you until the full ransom is paid.’
Then he was gone, before I could even protest, and after a pause the stone shifted with a grating roar, and I heard the voices of other men, Failak’s servants who must have been hidden and waiting amongst the barrows before I even rode up the mountain towards the morning sun.
Then there was silence. No wind. No bird cry. No snort of horse, no voice. I lay in the tunnel, and felt the cold dirt beneath my cheek, while the lamp burned lower and the ghostly nomads crept towards me, their daggers drawn in their calloused fists and their tall, dry horses shining in the gloom like mirages in the desert.
I lay there while the sun’s chariot rolled over the mountains, while Failak returned to his house and called for wine, while Batu hunted wild sheep with the warlord’s men. I lay there while the army of the Middle Kingdom rolled their siege engines closer to Ershi’s walls, while brave horses fell in cavalry attacks, while my mother fought for her life.
But I did not fight for mine. Not now. If my father returned home one day, and the war ended, and the ransom note was delivered to him and the terms fulfilled, still it wouldn’t matter. None of it would matter because Swan would be dead. I had failed to save her, and she was trapped in Ershi still, grinding her grain with her teeth, slowly, peacefully, in the last days left to her.
I lay there on the cold floor, breathing the mouldy thickness, while the sun set in the west, and my lamp’s flame sank into its puddle of oil and began to smoke. At last, I roused myself and dragged myself back into the main tomb, and found the jars of water and the extra oil that Failak’s men had placed there, perhaps last night while I lay in a guestroom beneath the watchtower, tossing between the fine soft sheets.
Using a leather cup, I took water from a jar and drank it; it tasted as musty and cold as the air felt around me. For the first time, I noticed the funeral chariot standing behind the bones of the horses on its high wheels; its wooden sides were carved with flying swans. In my mother’s tribe too, swans were a bird that could connect your spirit to heaven. I stared at the funeral chariot for a long time. Perhaps, if I died here in this place of despair, a white bird would come for me and lift me on its wide wings into the shining air. And perhaps the priestess lying in the coffin would forgive me for having disturbed her rest; perhaps she would understand that I had done this terrible thing for love of a white mare, a mare with wings on her feet.
Failak had said the tombs had belonged to the Scythians, a race lost and scattered now across the mountains and plains of the world. My father had a book scroll, written in ancient times by a man called Herodotus who had travelled through our lands. He had written about the Scythians, I remembered; and I had read his Histories aloud to my family as we sat on the rooftop in the oppressive heat of a summer evening, a lightning storm flickering over the foothills. There was one phrase of Herodotus’ that my mother and I had liked very much. I repeated it now, softly, into the tomb’s stillness, for it was a line about the Scythians: ‘Their country is the back of a horse.’
The words seemed to hang in the air; I felt the ghosts listening. I repeated the phrase more loudly, and my voice echoed back off the stones as though a ghostly chorus was speaking to me. I went rigid with fright, and remained too frightened to make another sound; I tiptoed to the wall of the tomb, as far as I could get from the coffin and the chariot, and slouched against the wall with the stones pressing their roughness into my back. I tried not to think about how far away my father was, or to wonder if my mother was still alive, or to try and guess where Batu had gone. He had been right, I acknowledged now, and I should not have come here. I let my anger at him slip away.
Even though by now it must have been dark with the moon climbing the sky, I was too afraid to close my eyes. Every time my lids began to drift shut, things moved stealthily in the corner of my vision and my ribs clenched around my heart. I pinched the back of my hand,
hard, and straightened my spine against the stones. Staring into the shadows, I dared the ghosts to step into plain view before they seized my spirit. But perhaps I would die before that happened; I would die here alone, and no ransom could ever bring me back.
Chapter 15
Time stood still. Gradually the water in the jar sank lower. Occasionally I ate a handful of dried apricots or some walnuts but I had no appetite. My grief for Swan curdled my stomach, and slowed my heartbeat. Occasionally I refilled the oil in my lamp; its flames rose and fell, illuminating all that there was to see: the funeral chariot, the coffin, the horses’ bones. I removed the golden torc that Berta had given me, and laid it on the altar as a gift, and begged the dead warrior priestess to wear it in her afterlife and to forgive me. Sometimes I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped that when I opened them again I would find I had been trapped in a dark dream and that around me I would see my own familiar room in our house in Ershi. But this never happened.
My mind plodded along, dull and slow, or roused itself into fits of fear and panic, scrabbling inside my skull like a marmot in a snare. When this happened, I would tell myself stories to calm my mind. I told myself about Bucephalus, the great Persian horse that had belonged to Alexander the Great, a conqueror who had ridden through our lands centuries ago. He and Bucephalus had campaigned and fought together through mountains and deserts, through howling blizzards and scorching summers, companions in conquest in many foreign lands. Alexander had a coin minted bearing the head of his horse, his forelock standing straight up and his mane hogged off short. My father had one of these ancient pieces in a chest at home. When Bucephalus had died at the great age of thirty, the grieving Alexander named a city in his honour.
The Horse Road Page 18
