The Horse Road (26 page)

‘Maybe. But my mother! And our mares!'

‘Hush,' Batu said again. ‘We'll work something out. Go to sleep for an hour.'

I lay on my back and let stars fill my eyes; after the tomb's blank darkness, they were as beautiful as the notes of a song. For a brief flicker in time, I felt comforted.

But later, riding towards the dawn, towards the moment in the city when I would have to face Swan's absence, I sank back into numb grief. The landscape blurred past. Heat beat on to me. My bruised leg ached and throbbed. Batu whistled far away, in some
place of his own. Shadows licked me. Birds stitched the high sky together. Gryphon swung along, easy and relaxed, unaware that his favourite mare had passed from the world. My chin sank against my chest, and my shoulders sagged under the heaviness of that grief. It was hard to breathe against it.

We reached Batu's valley on the second morning, and he exclaimed with surprise when we rode beside the river and were not stopped for a password. We arrived at the cave unchallenged, and Batu slid from Rain to duck inside; through my cloud of grief, I heard the murmur of voices. When Batu reappeared, his face shone.

‘The war is over!' he cried. ‘Some of the nobles rebelled, and killed the king. His head was sent out to the great general of the Middle Kingdom's army on a plate, accompanied by a letter! Ershi has a new king, who will deal peacefully with the Chinese, and will send horses eastwards for his cavalry. In return, silk will come into the Golden Valley.'

‘The traders will be happy,' I said listlessly.

‘The siege has lifted; my raiding band has broken up and the men are returning home. You can go and find your mother, Kalli!'

I nodded again but Batu's voice seemed as distant as the howl of a wolf, and of no importance. I waited while he went to the pasture to find the spotted Mountain, and to bring him with us on a lead rope. It was dusk as we dropped out of the foothills, and
picked our way over the trampled fields, marred with the black circles of a thousand campfires. Trees stood like skeletons, stripped of limbs. The alfalfa crop was ruined, rolled over by thousands of wheels, trampled by the feet of oxen and camels and yaks. The canals were clogged with debris: broken harness, shattered arrow shafts, torn clothing.

‘Too bad you aren't nomads,' Batu teased. ‘You could just move on to fresh pastures.'

The enemy army was pulling out from the valley; already, its encampments were specks clustered along the foot of the mountains to the east, where once I had seen the dust rising as it marched to besiege us. Farmers and peasants moved silently along the valley tracks, creeping back from the mountains, returning home to their ruined fields, searching for missing oxen, bewailing the loss of their sheep and chickens.

We scouted under the willow trees where I had left my gear; surprisingly, the saddle was still there although my other things had been taken. I cinched it on to Gryphon's back before continuing. It was dusk when we approached Ershi's high walls, and slipped in the south gate through which I had surged fifteen days previously with the cavalry sortie. Then, anything had seemed possible. Now, I had lost my jewel casket and all its contents; they lay hidden under a mattress in the warlord's house beneath the watchtower. And now I had failed to find the golden harness. And now Swan – I turned my thoughts away
from the memory of Swan, and pressed them against a blank wall of grief.

This is the darkest moment of my life
, I thought miserably.
This is a terrible homecoming. I have failed completely.

‘Listen, the water is running,' Batu said as we rode up through the streets, and I heard the gurgle of the drains, and saw the stars reflected in a pool. Already, our engineers had repaired the harm done by the invaders, and had restored the flow of the river that kept Ershi clean and watered, its gardens green, its horse troughs filled.

Batu hammered on the door, and our young watchman, returned from the war, swung open the portal and demanded to know who stood outside. When I followed Batu in, Fardad rushed from the kitchen, wailing and crying my name. My legs buckled at the knees when I slid from Gryphon. Sayeh slipped from the stable, pushing through the yearlings and foals to take Gryphon's reins. The young horses turned their faces, their long, shining, dark faces, towards their stallion, and nickered gustily. I went past them without patting them, although I was jostled by hip bones and shoulders, and nudged by whiskered muzzles.

Swan, oh Swan!

Blinded by tears, I went up the stairs by feel, and blundered down the hall past the brilliant tapestries, and into my mother's chamber. Her head turned on
the striped pillows and colour flooded her hollowed cheeks. With a grunt of effort, she pushed herself upright and leaned against the painted wall; tulips and tigers flowed around her head, behind her crown of golden plaits. Her blue eyes were clear and sharp, running over me.

‘Mother!' I threw myself upon her damask coverlet, and laid my head against her chest; her fingers cradled me in a fierce grip.

‘You're better now, Mother?'

‘The fever has passed, and the wounds are knitting together. But you, my daughter … what has happened to you?'

‘I tried to save Swan, but I failed! I failed her, Mother! She is dead now, sacrificed by the magus because Arash stole her away from our courtyard and used her to win favour with the king.'

‘That king is dead now,' my mother said. ‘But Swan is still alive.'

‘
What?
' I sat up, pushing escaped curls from my filthy face. ‘What?'

‘When the king's head was sent out to the enemy, a letter of treaty accompanied it. Lila's mother has been here and told me the very words in that letter. One of her daughters is married to a nobleman who took part in the rebellion and plotted to slay the king. The letter said that the people of Ershi would trade elite horses for silk, and provide the Son of Heaven with celestial steeds, if the enemy would lift its siege.
In return, Ershi would retain its army, and the safety of the city. But if the enemy would not agree to these terms, then all the horses inside Ershi would be slaughtered, and we would fight on until the walls fell, and there was not a warrior left to lift a weapon.'

‘But Mother –'

She held up a white hand, ringed and calloused still, in an imperious gesture, and I subsided immediately into silence like one of her well-trained fillies.

‘The terms were accepted,' my mother continued in her cool, steady voice. ‘The Chinese general and his best horsemen entered our city, and chose the horses they wanted to take away with them, including most of our mares.'

‘I'm sorry …'

‘Listen, Kallisto. One of those horses they took was Swan, for Arash had not yet presented her for a sacrifice, and instead he gave her to the enemy. He could have kept her hidden but he wanted to obtain favour with the new king.'

‘But Mother, are you sure? How do you know all this?'

A tiny smile quirked the corners of my mother's wide, stern mouth. ‘Lila has been running around in this city like a nomad spy planning a horse raid, and your new body servant has been just as bad. And then, of course, Lila's mother can find news like a horse finding water. And Fardad has been in a state of
pure agitation, and out gathering gossip in the marketplace like a man of half his years.'

Swan! Swan,
alive
!

My heart rose in me, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. I climbed to my feet, and my shadow leaped high upon the walls of my mother's room.

‘I am going to wash, and eat!' I said, and then I kissed her firmly on both cheeks, and hobbled down the stairs to the courtyard, calling for hot water to be brought from the kitchen.

Swan, still alive. I had been granted one last chance to save her. It was time to leave myself behind; that timid, stuttering girl with the shy downward glance. It was time to raise my head high; to step through that door on the other side of war, as Berta had once said that I would. For Swan, I would transform myself, becoming a woman with a voice clear as a bird call, with eyes that did not waver; a woman who would be listened to when she spoke.

‘You cannot come with me – your mother would have a fit and lose her mind if she found out,' I told Lila sternly. She did not respond like a well-trained filly; she simply ignored me and continued applying purple imported mascara to her sweeping lashes.

‘You had better go home and dress yourself,' she said at last. ‘You said we will ride at daybreak, within the hour.'

As I sighed and turned to the door, Lila laid down her bronze-handled mirror and came over to hug me. ‘The more servants you have with you, the more respect you will command,' she murmured, pressing her face to my shoulder. ‘And Kalli, this might be our last chance for an adventure together. Now that the war is over, my father has decided I will be married before winter. I need to come with you to the army camp, I need one last gallop.'

A chill prickled my neck; I strained to hear the caged finches singing in their willow withy cage, but Lila's house was cloaked in silence. ‘Of course you can come with me,' I whispered. ‘But do you think you would be as splendidly dressed as this if you were truly my servant?'

She laid her long hand flat over her mouth, holding in a giggle, and her antelope eyes shone in the lamplight. ‘The glory of the servant reveals the greater glory of the mistress,' she said, and ran a hand over the shimmering drapery of a new riding tunic; it was pale yellow silk with embroidery of blue and orange. ‘My sister's husband obtained this silk from the Chinese generals,' she said. ‘And my sister's tailor made it only yesterday. Will you please make sure to wear something as fine? Your green Indian silk?'

I nodded, and left her combing her hair, straight and long as a horse's tail, and dragged my sore leg through the withered garden. Bean vines crunched beneath my feet for the water had not been restored to Ershi in time to save them. As I changed in my room, pulling on the green silks and my best riding boots, Sayeh came looking for me, her blue eyes filled with anxious excitement.

‘We are all ready in the courtyard,' she whispered.

I nodded, my stomach lurching with tension, and tiptoed into my mother's room where she slept peacefully and deeply; she did not stir as I lifted her
long sword from its place against the wall. In the hallway, I buckled the sword around my waist. Then I followed Sayeh outside and gazed down. Batu, mounted on Rain, was splendidly dressed in new leather leggings over trousers of brilliant saffron, and had covered his dark head with a hat of wolf hair. He was flanked by three other tribesmen who had not yet returned home to their pastures. Still clad in their armour, they carried bows and arrows, long swords, and lances, and sat on their fidgeting horses with haughty ease.

‘My father and most of his men have already gone home,' Batu said. ‘But these men can spare you one day.'

Beside the tribesman, Lila, in her pale silks, sat astride Mountain while Sayeh stood holding the reins of the mule and of Gryphon. All the horses in the courtyard were splendidly arrayed in their best harness; the gleam of the dawn sky reflected off polished bits, semi-precious stones decorating brow bands, and inlays of gold and silver. Blankets lay upon backs, smooth and unwrinkled, and brilliant with embroidery; bright tassels hung from cruppers and breast plates. The horses' coats had been groomed to a high shine, and their fine tails lifted in the gusting breeze.

As I looked down at the assembled company, a grin split my face, and Batu's eyes lit up in response.

‘Do you have the parchment and ink?' I asked
Lila, and she nodded. I felt in my own pocket one last time, my fingers curling around the cool lump of my father's seal, the extra one he left at home when he travelled away, and that would impress his mark upon any business document and make its contents binding. Then I took Gryphon's reins and mounted into my saddle, the one with the extra loops of leather that my mother had trained me, bruised and aching, to use through many long hours beneath the clapping poplar trees.

The wind lifted against my face as I rode towards the east gate at the head of my party of seven, and over the Alay Mountains the clouds were massing, boiling upwards in citadels of dazzling whiteness with dark underbellies. The elm and walnut trees tossed in the fitful air, and dust dervishes whirled in the road. We set the horses into an easy trot on a loose rein, and followed the retreating Chinese through the valley's broad bowl, passing fields where peasants swept the debris of the army from their mud homes and tilled their trampled fields into fresh furrows again.

‘The horses are in the centre of the retreat,' one of the tribesmen told me in Turkic, trotting alongside Gryphon on a red roan gelding. His eyes were dark slits beneath the black curls of his astrakhan hat, and the wind snatched at his trailing beard.

‘You are the spy?' I asked.

‘Yes, I rode out last night after Batu came with
your request. The Chinese general has put the horses in the care of the horsemen he brought with him from the east. A high-ranking man named Sheng has been placed in charge of the elite horses and their care. Because the elite horses have been short of food and water during the siege, it has been decided that they need fresh fodder, and several days' rest, before being marched through the mountains. Some of the army will begin moving into the pass towards Osh today, but the remainder of the army will stay while the horses rest and eat before being moved on.'

‘We will ride through the infantry until we reach the horse pastures,' I said, and the man nodded and dropped back to ride beside the other nomads.

The sun was high in the sky before we encountered the last fringes of the great army that had besieged us. We rode on along the track, through the midst of the tents and picket lines, the wagons and supply lines, the strange foreign tongues and slanting stares. No one stopped us, for now that the war was over, our countries were trading partners and at peace. I glanced once or twice at Sayeh, but my body servant's face remained impassive and I could not tell what she was thinking as she rode, the daughter of a woman with the same foreign tongue and stares as these soldiers. Did she wish to ride away with them, high over the roof of the world, and find her way to her mother's childhood home? But perhaps going back was never possible;
perhaps my own mother had known this even though she mourned for her lost tribes, her childhood herds. Perhaps she had known that only Ershi could be home to her now … or if not Ershi, then her farm in the valley, where the horses had learned to understand when she spoke her own language. And soon now, Lila would be going to a new home, the house of a husband inside the city walls, a house with high ceilings and carved niches and sumptuous tapestries and thick, knotted carpets. A home where finches sang in willow cages. But perhaps Lila would not mind, for she liked shopping and embroidering, weaving and gossiping with servants, far more than I did.