The Horse Road (5 page)

Then, memory jolted through me: the leopard's swift attack, Mother and Gryphon's injuries, the army. The army! Even now, as I had sprawled
sleeping, it might be on the move, spilling out of the hills and swirling like a torrent of spring flood water across the plain towards the pastures. The boots and hooves of that army, its rolling wheels of chariot and wagon, would be crushing the tall grass flat, breaking the stems of lupins and leaving the purple flowers to wilt and die.

And Mother! Last night, when we had reached the yurts, riding into the throbbing heartbeat of the shaman's drum, the singing and feasting, and the fierce barking of guard dogs, Mother had slipped from Grasshopper outside Berta's yurt. Then her knees had buckled under her, like the legs of a newborn foal, and she had staggered and fallen. Berta and Batu had carried her inside and laid her on a cot, then Berta had poured water into the copper kettle standing over the fire, and thrown in handfuls of dried herbs, and finally roused my mother enough to sip the pungent brew.

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.