The Horse Road (4 page)

‘What things?' I asked.

‘I had lost my freedom, walking my own path, riding my own horse. And I had lost the opposite of freedom: the tie of loyalty and love that holds us like
a horse at a tethering post outside its master's yurt. A person must have one thing, or the other, to have a spirit in one's body. To find both things is richness, something to fight for.'

‘How can you have them both, when they are opposite?' Batu asked.

‘You can find that path,' my mother answered enigmatically. ‘Now listen. In the slave market, a young man bought me, a tall broad man with a big laugh and a curling black beard. He had journeyed many miles alone looking for his own life. Like me, he had left much behind, much that could never be reclaimed. Like me, he had to learn new words for hunger, for loneliness, for home. He brought me to the city of Ershi in the beautiful valley, amongst the pomegranate trees. For two years I cooked in his kitchens, hauled water from the pools, searched the markets for sweet honey. Then the young man gave me my freedom; he told me to choose whether to return to the plains of my people, or whether to stay and marry him.'

Behind my mother's shoulders, our horses went on cropping the sparse vegetation along the cliff base.

‘I said that I could not live without horses because they were my freedom,' continued my mother, ‘and that without them, I would remain a slave. So the young merchant bought me a Persian stallion and mare, and gave me my freedom, and married me.

‘When I was a young mother, with two boys born
and a daughter still curled in my belly – you, Kallisto – a nomad woman came begging at the gate of our outer courtyard. She was without any jewellery, her cloak was ragged, her boots worn flat from walking when she should have been mounted. A boy of about two pressed against her side and he was you, Batu. She begged for work, although to work in town is as bad as slavery for a nomad. Losing their freedom to roam is like losing their spirit; it was only her body begging at my gate. Her spirit was running with her lost herds; I knew this suffering well. Her husband, and her family's flocks and herds, had died in a bitter drought the previous year, and the people had come to Ershi searching for work.

‘So I took her in to my household and she helped take care of my farm. And later, after my daughter was born, this nomad woman, Berta, and I began to teach each other everything we knew about horses. We lived in the pastures of my farm, and in the stables. We lived for the feel of rope, for the touch of a muzzle, for the moment when a horse trusts you and lets you fly with it. And that was how your father, Kallisto, and your mother, Batu, and I all found a way to cajole our souls back into our bodies despite the suffering. It was how we found both our freedom and the thongs binding us to each other's tethering posts.'

‘Then what happened?' Batu asked; perhaps, like me, he enjoyed the sound of my mother's husky voice rising and falling against the river's murmur.

‘Then your mother went to a festival and met a white bone chief, a nobleman nomad with huge herds of sheep and horses, and with fine brother warriors to ride beside him, and with an alliance with the king of Ershi. And that chief married your mother, and took her back to his yurt along with little Batu, whom he adopted as his own. But Berta and I, before she left, swore an oath that we would always be each other's companions in war or peace, in drought or richness. And in all those years since, she has always brought me her cheese, wool, gold and felt in exchange for horses. So we have helped to keep each other from the years of hunger, and we have raised children that speak the same tongue. This is a good thing to remember on the eve of war: how freedom and loyalty, though opposites, can keep your spirit in your body.'

Now my mother's keen gaze focused suddenly on Batu; I saw his shoulders straighten. I tilted my chin as her eyes swept my face; sometimes, I wondered what my mother saw when she looked at me. My father, when he was briefly at home between trading trips, merchant business, dinner parties, the gymnasium, or the bath house, called me his sweet peach, his plump dove. He stroked my springing black curls, hugged me to his great belly that often quivered with laughter; he told me horse stories that he'd collected from all over the world. He fed me sugared almonds, dates stuffed with apricots and honey; he brought me necklaces and Parthian gowns that I seldom wore,
preferring to dress in riding tunic and trousers as my mother always did. Things were easy with my father, although I sometimes felt that he had no idea who I really was.

But with my mother, who could say? Did she wish I was taller like her, faster at jumping on to a moving horse, stronger in the leg when galloping bareback between poles stuck into the ground, more accurate when shooting arrows at targets, twisted backwards from the waist? Did she wish I had her regal bearing, the golden hair of her tribe, instead of being my father's plump Greek partridge? Did she wish I could speak clear, calm words suitable to any occasion, instead of being tongue-tied and blushing in marketplaces and by city pools?

I bit the inside of my lip and steeled myself to meet her level gaze without flinching. Her voice took me by surprise: soft, soothing, the voice she used for agitated horses. ‘Kallisto, times are always uncertain, but there is nothing uncertain about the troubles of war. In war, choose your friends wisely, keep fast to your loyalties, find the ones who will support you through suffering. And freedom! It is more important than life and –'

She broke off, turned her head abruptly as Gryphon let out a blasting snort, warning of danger. He flung his head around, searching for its source. I narrowed my eyes, watching. Sometimes Gryphon liked to play games, getting himself into an excited lather or a tremble of fear just because he was young and had the
energy to do so. I wasn't sure now whether he was playing, or whether danger truly threatened us.

The yearling, Tulip, grazed a tussock of grass beneath a ledge. Grasshopper stood still, further down the gravel bar, watching the stallion as he repeatedly tossed his head, snorting fiercely. My mother rose stealthily from her rock, pulling her dagger from her belt as Batu let go of his mare and waded from the water where he'd been standing on a rock.

One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Wind whispered, grass quivered.

The stallion snorted again, his black nostrils flaring so wide that I could see the redness inside them.

‘Perhaps we should start for camp and –'

‘Mother!' I screamed.

It was airborne. It was all drift, power, grey and white, blizzard. It had launched itself from the ledge above Tulip. It was all hard muscle, long sinew, raking claw; a snow leopard, silent and deadly, the great carnivore of the high mountains that could appear and disappear like a shaman into whirling snow or dappled rock.

It will kill her!
my thoughts screamed although my mouth was silent.

My mother lunged with her dagger raised but at that moment – the leopard still dropping through air – Gryphon barged forward, knocking my mother on to her back on the stones. He drove Tulip away from the cliff with ears pinned back, head low and snaked
out, eyes rolling and wild. The yearling, still oblivious to the leopard, squealed and shot across the gravel away from the stallion's wild rush.

‘Gryphon, Gryphon – no!' I cried. The great dappled cat landed across Gryphon's hindquarters in the moment before he could whirl to face it. I saw blood spurt from my golden horse, streaking his flanks and haunches as the leopard clawed at him, half hanging from him, paring back layers of skin and flesh like the layers of a wild onion bulb.

Gryphon's high scream of rage and pain filled the canyon, ricocheting through our ears, almost masking the deep vibration of the leopard's snarl.

‘Gryphon!' I yelled again and the horse lunged forward, simultaneously kicking backwards with all his strength into the leopard's dangling body. The cat twisted, and fell off on to the rocks where he left pawprints of blood. Gryphon whirled to face him, and the leopard crouched, ready to spring again. My mother flung herself between them, arms upraised, yelling wildly, her dagger glinting in her hand. Batu and I sprang to join her; for a moment we stood between the leopard and Gryphon in a ragged line, staring into the cat's burning golden eyes, its stiff whiskers drawn back over heavy teeth that could break an arm bone or pierce a skull.

My mother stepped forward, yelling, as the leopard crouched lower, its long tail brushing the gravel in a mesmerising arc.

Then it sprang again, right at my mother. I heard her dagger strike rock as it flew from her hand and bounced off into the river's rush. They were locked together, my mother and the great cat, rolling over the stones, in and out of pools. Blood and splashed water sprayed around them. Batu lunged beside them, his dagger darting in and out but not meeting its mark as he was too afraid of stabbing my mother. Her yells became fainter, buried in the cat's heavy coat, muffled by its deep snarling. I shot suddenly across the rocks and caught the cat by the tail; its thickness and weight filled my hands. I yanked on it hard, like yanking in a fighting horse; I twisted it, like twisting a lead rope around a tether post. I snatched up a rock and brought it down hard on that twitching, writhing tail. The leopard roared angrily, and my mother's hand struggled out from beneath its neck, so that Batu could slip his dagger into her hand. I saw her plunge the knife into the cat's shoulder as I tried to haul it backwards by its tail, away from her body.

With a rushing roll, the leopard untangled itself from my mother and crouched flat against the rocks, glaring at our ragged circle of raised daggers and stamping hooves. Then it turned, swift as a winter wind, and bounded towards the cliff. Gryphon plunged after it, rearing, striking at it with his flinty front hooves. The cat ignored him and leaped impossibly high from the ground on to a ledge of rock. It seemed to fly up the
side of the cliff, and disappear amongst the shrubs. Only a smear of blood marked where it had passed.

‘Mother!' I cried, wrapping my arms around her, pressing my face into the horsy smell of her tunic. I was shaking like a leaf, and for a moment I felt her shaking too. Then she drew herself erect and straightened her shoulders.

‘Perhaps there is some warrior in your spirit, Kallisto,' she said, placing her palm upon my head as though bestowing a blessing. She stooped and kissed my cheek; not a soft, absent-minded kiss like those my father gave, but a firm, decisive kiss that felt like a brand. I was her daughter now, perhaps, at last.

Then she stepped away from me, and I saw how the entire left side of her tunic hung in shreds and how blood poured from the pale skin beneath, raked by leopard claws.

I yanked off my sash and dipped it into the river.

‘Batu! See to Gryphon!' I yelled, but already he was ripping off his own tunic and leading the trembling, sweating stallion into the cool water. He dipped his tunic in and used it to wash the deep wounds on Gryphon's hindquarters while I washed my mother's shoulder and left arm and ribs, and bound my sash around her to staunch the frightening flow of blood.

Tulip and Grasshopper and Batu's mare paced restlessly in the shallow water, where they had plunged in panic and now breathed heavily, huffing warnings of danger.

‘We must ride at once, before it gets any darker,' my mother said.

I led the horses from the river, and helped my mother mount Grasshopper who for once stood mercifully still, not giving her usual series of hops upon being mounted. My mother held the reins in her right hand; her wounded shoulder sagged and her face was pale as chalk.

‘Mother, can you do this? I could –'

‘Lead Tulip beside Gryphon,' she said. ‘Batu, you can bring up the rear.'

I held Gryphon's face in my hands and kissed him beneath the eyes, and told him softly how sorry I was for his injuries, and how proud of him for saving Tulip. I tickled him behind the ears, and ran my palm down his neck beneath the silky mane. His skin quivered all over as though he were being swarmed by flies; I waited while he pressed his face against my ribs and became still. Then I mounted him carefully, keeping my leg and boot away from his torn quarter and flank, already rising in swollen ridges around the lips of ragged wounds.

We fell into step behind Grasshopper as her hooves slipped and scrabbled on that steep path. Shadows barred our way. Wind made grasses twitch and swing. Shrubs crouched menacingly. My skin crawled and chilled, my eyes darted from grass to shrub to dark line of rock crevasse snaking towards the path like a snare line. The horses swung their
heads from side to side, flinched and snorted. Their skin shivered. As their hooves reached the top of the canyon wall, they all broke into a canter; we had to fight with them to make them walk with the lame mare across the moon-drenched hills.

All the way back to the yurts, I could feel the fierce eyes of the leopard glinting in the darkness over my turned shoulder, and the bright sparks of fires burning in the high mountains as the Chinese prepared to invade our peaceful valley.

Ahead of me, my mother swayed in the saddle, clutching her torn shoulder with blood seeping over her hand.
Father is away trading in the Levant
, I thought,
and my brothers, Petros and Jaison, are with him, and Mother is wounded, and how will we save the horses? Oh, how can we save them now?

I opened my eyes as dazzling light fell across my face; struggling on to one elbow, I saw that Berta's wooden door, painted blue as summer sky, stood open. Rolling hills, waving with grass, filled my line of vision. I swivelled my head, my glance flicking around the yurt's pale gloom. I must have slept in late for the cots were empty, and only the breeze eddied against the reed mats, woven with bright woollen patterns, that lined the walls. The hearth fire was banked so low that it barely smoked. I threw back my covering of fox fur, swung my feet on to the felt carpet, and stretched tall, reaching my arms towards that perfect sky arched over the high hills.