The Horse Road (23 page)

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.

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 fingers 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.