The Horse Road Read online

  For my dear friends, Shelley, Patty,

  Jane and Henry.

  You have deeply enriched my

  life for many years!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Heavenly Akhal-Tekes

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  The golden stallion danced beneath me, his coat flaring like flame as the morning sun tipped its brightness over the Alay Mountains.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ Batu cried, fighting his snorting mount to a standstill.

  ‘Ready! Ready!’ we all cried in reply, our horses bouncing along an invisible ragged line at the crest of the hill. In our imaginations this line marked the beginning of our race, and we had ridden out from the nomad camp at dawn to reach it.

  The Hsiung-nu boys and girls gripped their legs around horse blankets, for no one except me owned a saddle, and hauled on reins. Their faces were tense with excitement, focused with determination. Back in the camp, there would be prizes of harness and ribbons for winning this race, but more glorious than that was the honour of riding the winner. Gryphon and I had to win; my mother’s horses were much sought after. If we won this race, the nomads would barter for the right to have their mares bred by Gryphon; every year, my mother and I would bring him out here into the mountains, into the summer pastures. In return, the nomads would give my mother felt rugs to sell in the city, and hard cheese they’d dried on the roofs of their yurts; they would come to my Greek merchant father when they needed new iron daggers, or coral necklaces for their wives and daughters. It was our horses that helped to support us, that helped to pay for my brothers’ schooling, and for the beautiful objects from all over the world that filled our city home. It was our horses that helped to make us so rich that my father could betroth me, his only daughter, to the son of the king’s Falconer.

  I must win this race! Then everyone in the camp would crowd around Gryphon, the winner! They would admire his glorious golden coat with its hard metallic shine, its pale dapples. They would run their hands down his long, clean legs with black stockings; his elegant face with its fine veins; his black tail tied in a knot behind his hindquarters. ‘He’s the best one!’ they would cry, their wind-reddened faces alight with respect.

  ‘Steady now, steady,’ I muttered as Gryphon shied, his hooves sending small stones clattering downhill. Patting his neck, I felt the tension in his muscles. I couldn’t hold him much longer, my beautiful Persian horse.

  ‘Come on, Batu!’ I yelled to my friend, crouched on a bay mare to my right. He grinned mischievously, his long black hair lifting in a breath of chilly air. He liked making us all wait. We were like arrows, held against quivering bowstrings before the moment of release.

  ‘Kalli!’ Batu called to me, teasing as usual. ‘You ready to lose? You ready to run in dust?’

  ‘You’ll be running in Gryphon’s dust!’ I cried back.

  Beneath us, the valley plunged downwards through the mountains. It seemed impossibly steep, strewn with stones and low-growing shrubs. Beyond the valley the foothills lay like dropped fabric, in soft folds of lush summer grass and wild flowers: the bright splash of poppies, the tall stems of blue iris. Further away still, two days’ ride in the distance, lay my city home of Ershi, in the wide Golden Valley of Ferghana where vines and wheat and apricot trees grew beside irrigation canals.

  My stallion bounced sideways, dragging at the thin leather reins bunched in my hands. He mouthed at his bronze bit, and his curb chain rattled. My mother insisted that I ride him with a curb instead of with a snaffle bit and she was right; I would never have been able to control him in a snaffle. She had learned about curbs from the Celtic tribes, long ago when she lived in the sea of grass far to the north, before she was taken as a slave. On the side shanks of Gryphon’s bit, little bronze eagles became covered in foam as he dragged at his reins and grew more excited.

  I gripped tighter, felt his muscles straining beneath me as he longed to run down that shadowy valley. The sunlight gleamed on the snowy peaks that hung over us like a wave, white with foam, in a spring river.

  ‘Run!’ Batu yelled suddenly, taking us by surprise. His dark face broke into excited laughter. ‘Run!’ he yelled, flinging one fist high into the air.

  Gryphon soared forward and for one moment we seemed to hang suspended over the world as the blue sky dipped to meet us. Wind whistled in my ears. On either side of us, along the line of riders, people whooped and yelled. The horses poured forward over the crest, hooves thundering. Then the valley rose under us. Gryphon’s front hoof hit the ground. We were earth-bound again. I dug my booted heels into his golden flanks. My legs tightened around his ribs, beneath the bright blanket that my father had brought back from a trading trip to Samarkand. Its woven hems, embroidered with flowers and stars, flapped against my ankles.

  Down, down!

  We plunged through the valley. Now we were arrows let loose, a volley of rushing speed. Wind poured into my open mouth. I was laughing, yelling, feeling the summer morning fill me with joy. ‘Run, Gryphon!’ I cried, and my stallion burst past the horse ahead, its tail whipping across my arm. In the corners of my eyes, I saw the other horses, their riders crouched over their necks. Shoulder to shoulder we streaked down that narrow valley as it tipped us, like a torrent of stones in a riverbed, towards the foothills. Gryphon dodged a boulder; we swerved past it like one creature, like the centaurs in the Greek stories that my father liked to tell as we sat around a fire on snowy winter evenings. Gryphon and I were moulded together by sheer determination, and by the pleasure of our speed. I was only half a girl; the other half of me was all running horse: long sinews, big heart, pride.

  Just ahead, a grey horse filled my squinting eyes. Gryphon’s nose was almost against its flank as we pulled closer. The heavy breathing of horses surged in the air. We were flying, soaring, we were shoulder to shoulder with the grey horse. ‘Run, run!’ I yelled and Gryphon’s hooves pounded the ground faster and harder. We pitched down a final steep fall of valley into a swell of foothill. The grass rose around us like the pile of a huge wool carpet. We rushed through it. The shadows of the mountains were behind us now, and sunshine gleamed on Gryphon’s black mane. The nomads trimmed their horses’ manes short, but I liked to let Gryphon’s mane grow long. I liked the tickle of it against my cheek as he galloped, and I liked tying small red tassels into it for decoration.

  I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that most of the horses were behind us now. Only Batu still galloped beside us, away to the right. Perhaps he felt my glance for his head turned and I saw his wide, bright grin. Then he crouched lower on the bay mare, and dug in his heels.

  ‘Come on, Gryphon!’ I shouted. Neck and neck our horses streamed downhill, then up a rise. For a few minutes we were the only two people running along the crest of a foothill, angling back towards the shadow of the mountains. The other horses crested the slope behind, and rushed after us in pursuit of victory. Branches flicked against my arms as we galloped through a thicket of pistachio nut trees. We clattered down a rocky bank beneath willows with their long leaves licking our backs like dogs’ tongues. Gryphon leaped into the rush of the mountain stream at the bottom of the bank. The roar of water filled my ears and I felt its cold bite on my legs. It sprayed around Gryphon’s slender black legs. With a final hea
ve, he pulled himself up the far bank, and I heard Batu’s mare breathing just behind. Then we climbed uphill again, following the whisper of track that snaked into the folds of the mountains. Shadow threw itself over us like a cloak.

  I burst through a thicket of wild apple trees covered with late blossoms; they floated in the valley like clouds resting. Suddenly I realised that the only hoof beats I could hear were Gryphon’s pounding along the narrow trail. We were winning! Now we would hold the lead all the way eastwards, galloping finally through one last narrow valley and coming to the white felt yurts of the nomad camp. Gryphon would win!

  ‘Good boy, good horse!’ I yelled, my heart leaping high in my throat.

  We dodged around a walnut tree, flew across a patch of grass filled with hollyhocks and wild onions. I smelled their tang as Gryphon’s hooves crushed the tender stems.

  But where was Batu? How had we managed to leave him so far behind? His bay mare was a cross between a Persian horse and a nomad pony; although stockier than Gryphon and shorter in the leg, she was brave and determined, and she often won races. I glanced back once more but there was no sign of Batu and the bay. Now other riders galloped into my line of vision: the girl on the grey gelding that we had overtaken high up the valley, a boy on a sturdy sorrel with a white star. I fought Gryphon, trying to slow his headlong rush, trying to see Batu. The sound of hoof beats coming up behind Gryphon filled his narrow golden ears; he laid them back, then tightened his jaw against the curb chain and plunged onwards. We hurled down a dip, pounded up the other side with snowy peaks filling our eyes.

  Perhaps something has happened to Batu, I thought. Perhaps I should turn back and find him.

  But then I might lose the race, and no one would rush laughing and exclaiming from the nomad camp to meet us; no one would run their hands along Gryphon’s arched neck and speak admiringly of his speed. Gryphon deserved to win! I wanted the glory of it for him. Anyway, why would anything have happened to Batu? He had been racing this track since he was a sturdy little boy of six years old, competing in the festival of the First Moon of Summer. He knew every rock, the swell of every slope. He knew where the wild boar rooted with their hard tusks, where the wolves gathered to howl their mournful songs, where the brown bears denned. Yesterday, in the midst of a wild mounted game of buzkashi, as men and horses fought for control of a goat’s carcass, someone had blackened Batu’s eye. Surely this injury could not be causing him problems now. Or did he have other injuries that I didn’t know of?

  Gryphon and I pounded on, still in the lead but with the grey mare gaining while I tugged on the reins and tried to decide what to do. Gryphon’s eyes rolled as the mare’s hoof beats grew louder.

  Batu would turn back to find you, whispered a voice in my head. Batu is a loyal friend.

  I kicked Gryphon hard in the ribs, taking him by surprise. Hauling on one rein, I wrestled him off-balance and off the thread of track, and the grey mare shot past. A shower of pebbles bounced against us, and then the sorrel horse went by. Gryphon bucked in protest, his hard hooves hammering the grass. His arched back tossed me upwards so that colours whirled in my vision: golden light, flaming green grass, blue sky. I clung on with my legs tight as a wrapping of rawhide. The two pads of my saddle, stuffed with horsehair, bounced on either side of Gryphon’s spine. Their loose framework of leather strips and carved wood strained against each other.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, steady, easy, Gryphon!’ I soothed him, fighting his head around until we were facing back in the direction from which we’d come. The reins cut into my palms. The curb chain dug into Gryphon’s lower jaw, the little carved eagles on the shank of the bit pulled back beneath his bent head. If anything broke now, I would lose control of this ball of fierce energy that my horse had become. Fighting Gryphon was like fighting a sandstorm or an avalanche. I pummelled him with my boots, driving him back as other horses streamed by us and were lost from view over the next hill.

  Silence filled my ears, and the song of a finch in a birch grove danced inside the silence. The thin mist of dust, kicked up by the horses on the stony path, sifted down to coat the summer grass. Gryphon’s breath heaved. He tossed his neck angrily against the pull of my tight reins, and snorted impatiently as we trotted along.

  ‘Batu!’ I yelled. ‘Batu, where are you?’

  If only he would answer, I could turn Gryphon’s head again and kick him into a gallop; I knew already how he would leap away, determined and eager to catch up to the other horses, to pass them by, to win. We thought alike, Gryphon and I. At home on our horse farm in the Valley of Ferghana, Gryphon would stand sleepily in his pasture with his eyes half closed, his belly stretched tight with lush alfalfa. And I, in my father’s two-storey brick house, bent over my bride-wealth embroidery, was a shy, plump girl who couldn’t speak to dinner guests. But out here, in the mountains, when we visited the nomad camp every year, Gryphon and I transformed into wild things, free and fierce and alive. For a short time, I became the daughter that my mother probably wished for. And for a short time, I could forget about the life that waited for me in the city of Ershi, the life where I would be trapped indoors, separated from the horses, doomed to be married to a boy I had met only a few times and was too shy to speak to. My unthinkable future.

  Tears prickled in my eyes. Perhaps I was overexcited, or overtired, or simply overcome with the great looming silence of the mountains. I rubbed the tears away impatiently, holding the reins in one hand. Crying was for a city girl, not for a girl whose mother had survived losing her own people, and being sold at auction. Forget about your city life, I scolded myself. Just find Batu!

  ‘Batu!’ I yelled again but only my echo answered, ringing off the rocky cliffs in the mountains. Annoying boy, I thought. He’s probably just playing a trick on me, as usual.

  A crow flapped across the treetops, cawing harshly. Gryphon trotted angrily on down the trail, tossing his head and snorting, threatening at any moment to tear around in a circle and run downhill without my permission. I held him straight onwards with my legs, and ignored the agitated swishing of his knotted tail.

  ‘Batu!’ I yelled again. A marmot gave a shrill whistle, peering at me from a rock pile, and holding grass between its front paws. It looked like a little man, sitting up on its furry brown haunches. Then it dived suddenly into the dark mouth of its burrow.

  A trickle of apprehension ran down my spine. For the first time, I began to truly believe that something had happened to Batu.

  I felt very alone. The silence seemed larger, crouching somewhere near me, ready to pounce. A cold eddy wafted off the mountains and fanned my flushed cheeks, blowing my long black curls. I patted Gryphon’s shoulder for comfort, and my hand came away damp with pink sweat. No one knew why the Persian horses sweated blood; it was simply one more thing that made them different from other horses.

  The murmur of running water filled the air as we approached the place where the path crossed the mountain stream. Suddenly Gryphon’s ears pricked, straining towards some sound that I hadn’t heard. He stopped in the path, snorting, and I laid my hand upon the hilt of my dagger fastened at my waist. Then I heard it too: a thread of sound, a boy whistling. Out from the shadows of the willow trees came Batu, brilliant in an orange tunic held at the waist with a turquoise sash, and trudging steadily beside his limping brown horse.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I cried, urging Gryphon into a trot. Reaching Batu, I slid from Gryphon to stand beside him.

  ‘My poor mare,’ he said gloomily. ‘That boy on the sorrel gelding? He knocked into us going down the bank into the water, and my mare stumbled and fell. She’s hurt her leg. See?’

  I squatted beside him and ran my hand down the mare’s left hind leg, feeling the heat and the swelling in the flesh above the fetlock joint.

  ‘So now we’re both riding in dust,’ Batu said with a rueful grin. ‘I’m sorry, Kalli. I should have ridden Rain instead.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied, trying to feel my friend’s worr
y and even the pain that perhaps throbbed in the mare’s leg; trying to ignore the heavy lump of disappointment that filled my stomach. I straightened, stared at the mare’s hanging head, and at Gryphon’s neck where the sweat was drying and leaving his coat stiff and salty. It wasn’t fair! Now Gryphon had lost his chance to win, even though he was the fastest horse I knew! This might be the last year that I raced. Perhaps at this moon next summer, I would be behind walls in Ershi, smelling mountains far off in the wind like a horse that tries to smell its way to water across a desert.

  I kicked at a stone in the track, and fought against the fresh sting in my eyes.

  ‘Kalli,’ Batu said kindly. I glanced up into his dark, angled eyes; the bruise a blue stain like spilled water. His wide brown face, framed by his mane of long hair, was as familiar as my own for I had known him all my life. Now his forehead was wrinkled in a worried frown.

  I was suddenly ashamed of being such a child. ‘It’s fine,’ I reassured him, mustering a smile. ‘I wanted a summer walk. I love dust!’

  Batu’s face broke into his flashing grin, then suddenly his gaze sharpened on something above me. I swivelled to look upwards. High against the light, a golden eagle soared on the mountain wind. The shadow of its wide wings slid across us and passed on; I glimpsed the cruel curve of its yellow beak, the glint of its eye. It wheeled in against the face of the mountain, and swooped around a pinnacle of grey rock to disappear from view. Batu breathed in sharply, like an excited horse.

  ‘Maybe there’s a nest there!’ he cried, the race forgotten. His father was a white bone chief, a fearless hunter who rode a dark horse and carried an eagle on a leather gauntlet upon one arm. Together, man and eagle hunted for rabbits to cook, or for the foxes that attacked the nomads’ herds of sheep. Batu had told me that a trained eagle might even fight the great grey wolves that roamed like vengeful ghosts. The eagle, he said, flew right at their eyes.

  ‘I must climb up and see if there’s a nest!’ Batu said. ‘Then I can return here another day and capture an eaglet! It is time, Kalli, for me to train an eagle of my own! Do you want to climb with me?’