The Horse Road (29 page)

It was not until evening that the rain slackened into silence, and I prepared to dine with my parents upon the roof while my brothers went off into the town to visit their friends. I dressed carefully in a robe of pale blue velvet with embroidered hems of silver stars and lilies, and wound a strand of pearls – one my father had just brought for me – around my neck. Brushing my hair for a long time, and curling it around my fingers, I rehearsed what I was going to say when I stood before my parents.
I will not stutter or stammer
, I thought.
I will not blush or drop my head. The girl who used to behave like that is gone; she is left behind on the other side of the war and now I have closed the door on her timidity.

Sayeh brought me a green ceramic bowl, made by the potters in our valley, and containing water in which I washed all my rings. Then I held my face very still while she lined my eyes with kohl, and brushed powder upon my cheeks.

‘Do I look older?' I asked anxiously but Sayeh only shrugged her bony shoulders and replied, ‘Here are your sandals,' as she laid them at my feet. The plaited straps felt flimsy and strange when I slipped my toes between them, for I had worn only riding boots for many weeks. The soft drapery of my robe felt equally strange against my legs as I climbed the steps to the rooftop.

My parents both turned their heads as I paced across the flat surface towards where they sat on stools placed upon a knotted carpet. Beyond them, the valley was cloaked in a mist of new green growth, like a gauzy veil, and it burned fiery bright as the sun finally broke through the clouds and stroked the fields with long fingers. A bird began to sing in the apricot trees beyond our wall.

My father beamed at me. His face was soft and tired above the oiled curls of his long beard, threaded with the first few strands of grey, but his eyes were bright beneath their heavy lids.

‘Be seated, daughter,' he said. ‘Your mother has just been telling me of all you have done in my absence. It is a tale more remarkable than any I have heard in months of travelling. Who would have thought my plump dove was such a fierce spirit after all?'

I flushed in spite of myself, and ducked my head shyly at his praise.

‘I am not as plump as I used to be, Father,' I said, and my mother gave an uncharacteristic snort of
laughter. My father's hands, clasped loosely across his belly, rose and fell as he chuckled.

I lifted my head and stared him in the eye. ‘Father, I will not marry Arash,' I said calmly. ‘He is a boy without honour. He is skilled in deceit, and though he can draw a bow, and ride a horse, he is a boy who lives by lies.'

My father inclined his head thoughtfully; he could not argue with my reasoning. The boys in our city, whether Greek or Persian, were taught these three things first and above all else: to ride, to shoot, to tell the truth. Only the evil Angra could approve of a man who was dishonest.

The fleeting sun spilled over my father's striped robe of Syrian damask, and cast the shadow of his heavy nose across the generous curves of his mouth. At his side, my mother was as still and tautly upright as a leopard hunting in the long grass.

‘Father,' I entreated softly, ‘I cannot marry him.'

Still my father reflected, lifting his onyx drinking horn carved in the form of an antelope, and taking a long sip of his wine. He considered it as it ran over his tongue. The evening sun sucked mist from the wet fields and the canals so that it rose over the valley soft as thistledown. Above my left shoulder, the palace's sprawling ramparts flared red, and the peaks of the snowy Alay Mountains gleamed brightly white as teeth.

My father gave a long sigh and set his drinking horn down.

‘If you will not marry him, what is to become of you?' he asked.

I shrugged, feeling myself tugged and stretched the way I had been once before, gripping Gryphon's tail as he struggled to pull me from the dark jaws of the tomb. For what was to become of me? The distant mountains called to me on the still air; their voices were like wind sighing in grass, like rivers murmuring over cold stones, like the singing of wolves and the drumbeat of horse hooves. But here, here in the valley, was where I had caught foals wet from their mothers' bellies, had quenched my thirst with the sweetness of summer grapes, had trained Swan and Gryphon in the pastures around my mother's stables while red poppies lit the grass on fire.

‘What is to become of you?' my father asked again.

‘There is Batu,' my mother said. ‘He is the son of a white bone chief, and heir to good pasture and fine herds. He is honourable and loyal, and will hunt with eagles when he is a man.'

‘Nomads,' my father grumbled. ‘Does this girl seated before us look as though she has been raised to live in a tent, cooking food inside sheep bellies? No! Whether she likes it or not, she has been raised in luxury. She might be a warrior when life requires it, but at night she sleeps in an imported bed and not on the ground with her feet in the fire! I am not letting her marry a nomad!'

‘Perhaps she is too young to be married anyway,' my mother said soothingly, and my father subsided with a grunt.

‘I have an idea,' I said, and my parents' eyes flickered away from each other and stared at me with such intensity that I squirmed. Then I straightened my shoulders and drew myself up as tall as I could.

‘I would like my bride-wealth now,' I said clearly. ‘I would like Swan, and her yearling filly, Pearl. I would like some of the two-year-old mares that are in Berta's care, and I would like some of the other yearlings. I would like a stable to keep them in, on Mother's farm, and I would like some pasture to run them in. I would like my own brand for their quarters, a full star.'

There was a long silence. A camel bellowed; the sun slipped from the palace, and long purple shadows puddled at the feet of the mountains and stretched across the plain.

‘A horse trainer,' my mother said softly, and a glow of pride kindled in her eyes.

‘Could she do this?' my father asked.

‘She has arranged a trade deal for the House of Iona with the silk caravans that will begin coming to our city now from the east. She has brought wealth and fortune to us, and made a shrewd bargain with this foreign man, Sheng Mu. Already, they are saying there will be a silk road over the mountains, that the caravans will journey along it
bringing us bolts of fabric in exchange for our Persian horses. Your daughter has made sure that bolts of silk will come to your warehouse, that the trade goods of east and west will meet here in Ershi, and bring you riches. Of course she is capable of raising and training horses!'

My mother's eyes locked on to my face and I felt it at last: the praise I had sought from her all my life, since I was a chubby child with legs so tired they could barely grip a horse. A glow of pleasure warmed me inside my soft robe.

My father nodded and took another long sip of wine. ‘Yes, so be it,' he said at last. ‘Kallisto, I will not give you your mother's pastures or stables, but you shall have your own. There is land for sale in the valley, adjacent to your mother's farm, and I shall have the deeds of purchase drawn up in your name. You shall raise horses with your mother's help, and when Sheng Mu's caravans arrive next summer, you shall receive some of the silk that he sends. Perhaps it will not be called the silk road, that path over the mountains, but the horse road! And you, my sweet peach, you will be part of its history.'

He raised his drinking horn to me in a silent toast, and drained its contents as the servants arrived bearing trays of steaming rice, beans with coriander, and meat braised in garlic and sesame seeds. My father fell to eating with gusto but every so often, I felt his eyes leave his plate to linger quizzically upon me.

‘And how did you know,' he asked at last, wiping his mouth on a flat bread, ‘how did you know how to write up this trade agreement with Sheng Mu?'

I laughed. ‘Oh, Father, that was easy! Remember how you taught me my numbers? One camel-load is the basic unit of measurement. A donkey-load is worth only half a camel-load. But a wagon-load is worth four camel-loads. This was how you taught me to do sums!'

My father laughed, his chest vibrating, and ran his hand tenderly down my mother's stiff arm, caressing the lines of her wounds with the tips of his fingers. ‘Such a daughter you have given me,' he said.

‘What about Failak, the warlord?' I asked.

My father's face darkened into a deep scowl. ‘He will never trade in this city again – I shall see to it! And your mother is going to speak to Berta's people about riding against him, and driving him from his stolen valley!'

I gulped and took a deep breath. ‘I left all my jewels under a mattress in his house,' I said but my father waved a hand dismissively.

‘When you begin selling your horses with their star brands, you will not need your old father to buy your jewels. You can buy your own then!'

‘Thank you, Father!'

I rose and kissed my mother's cheek; it was still too thin, but warm and firm beneath my lips, and her grip on my wrist was as strong as it had ever been while she kissed me in return. My father pressed my
head to his chest and stroked my hair and patted my cheeks. ‘Too many scratches. Put some salve on them or I will never find you a husband!' he joked.

‘Yes, Father,' I said with a giggle, and then I ran down the stairs two at a time. Camels were dozing in the courtyard, and donkeys drank from the full water trough. I ducked into the stable's fragrance of straw and grain, and called her name. Swan's pale sculpted face turned to me in the dusk while her nostrils fluttered in a loving nicker.

‘Your foals will journey far, over the horse road,' I whispered, stroking my hands over her muzzle. ‘But you, you will stay with me for always!'

Then I laid my face against her shoulder, and peace ran through me like a shining river.

Several thousand years ago, a magnificent creature appeared in the deserts and grassy steppes of Persia (now Iran) and Central Asia. The horse was tall, around sixteen hands high, and elegant with a golden bloom upon its silky coat. Bred for war by the Persian and Scythian nomads, this Turkmen horse allowed for the development of superb cavalry units and was greatly prized for its endurance, speed, power and beauty. Although the nomads left no written documentation of this horse, warriors were sometimes buried with their favourite mounts. In the ice tombs of Pazyryk, archaeologists have found the skeletons of tall noble horses dating back to the fifth century BC. Showing no scars from whip or spur, these horses were intelligent and bold, ridden on a loose rein, or even just by leg pressure alone. On them, the Persians developed their famous
‘Parthian shot', shooting arrows backwards while racing away from their enemies.

Over the years, the golden horses maintained their size and speed, for the nomads bred them selectively, and fed them on a nutritious leguminous crop called lucerne (alfalfa) as well as grain, fat, and even eggs. When Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) waged war against Persia, he imported 5,000 of the Persian horses into Greece, and they were used to improve the shorter-legged Greek horses, eventually becoming the foundation for the Roman cavalry horses. It has been suggested that Alexander's famous mount Bucephalus, whom he rode for decades over thousands of miles of military campaigns, was of Persian stock – as was the mount of the conquering warrior, Genghis Khan, whose light cavalries swept the grasslands.

Meanwhile, far to the east, the Chinese Emperor Wu-Ti was having difficulty defending the borders of his country, despite the building of the Great Wall to keep the nomadic Huns from attacking on stocky Mongolian horses. In 138 BC, Emperor Wu-Ti sent a spy, a political adventurer named Chang Ch'ien, to sneak through the Hunnish territories and find allies to help the Chinese fight their enemies. What Chang found instead were horses – the golden horses of Ferghana, Samarkand, Kokand, and Bukhara in Central Asia. When Chang returned to China thirteen years later, he described these horses as having
tails that swept the ground, a double spine like a tiger, and hooves like a thick wrist. Emperor Wu-Ti remembered the legend of celestial (heavenly) horses written of in the
Zhouyi
(Book of Changes) – horses that would come from the north-west, and which possessed the qualities of heaven: feelings, consciousness and omnipotence. The legend promised that such horses would make the emperor wise and immortal. Also, Wu-Ti realised that these tall, powerful, fast horses would give his cavalry an advantage over his old enemies, the Huns.

Chang also told Wu-Ti how these horses from Ferghana sweated blood – this was a mystery at the time, but nowadays, it is believed to be caused by a parasite that lives in the rivers. When the horses drink, the parasite burrows just beneath the surface of the skin and causes slight bleeding when the horses sweat.

Determined to possess these heavenly horses, Wu-Ti sent envoys over two thousand miles of mountain and desert to trade for them with gold. The exchange was refused and the ambassador was murdered. A military expedition also ended in failure. In 102 BC Wu-Ti sent a second campaign against Ferghana, consisting of 60,000 men and 30,000 horses; he sent engineers to cut off the city's water supply, and arranged for supplies of rice to keep his large army fed.

At first it seemed that this attack might also fail
for the people of Ferghana shut themselves and their horses inside their walled capital city and threatened to kill all the horses. However, the citizens eventually killed their king and replaced him with one more favourably disposed towards the Chinese. He ended the siege by agreeing to allow the Chinese to take some celestial Persian horses back to the emperor. Trade agreements were forged, allowing the flow of horses to the east in exchange for silk; thus the eastern portions of the famous trade route, the Silk Road, were opened up. The spy, Chang, is credited as being the father of the Silk Road, and trade in horses continued long after the secret of making silk had been discovered by the west.