The Horse Road

by Troon Harrison

  ‘Slide off and run ahead,’ she said. ‘Start getting the horses ready to leave. I will join you soon.’

  My feet hit the ground with a thud and I pushed my way into the crowd, feeling as though I were suffocating as bodies and animals squeezed tightly against me. I could see nothing except what was right before my eyes: a woman’s gauzy veil, an embroidered tunic, a horse’s tail. I caught hold of it, in danger of being swept off my feet and dragged underneath by the crowd. I knew the horse was too confined to kick me, although I heard it give a nervous snort. ‘Steady, steady,’ I said to it and it quietened, although its rider never even knew I was there. Presently I spotted an opening in the crowd, darted into it, clenched my jaw and struggled on towards the east gate.

  Swan, oh, Swan! I cried in my thoughts. Wait, I am coming for you! Trust me!

  She will be confused and afraid, I thought; she will wonder what is happening to her, why she is penned up in this noisy, crowded city. She will be happy again though when we reach the valley, when she wades into the cool water. I imagined the reflection of her white face in the river’s surface, and the way that water droplets would spill from her lips. I imagined the long, kind, considering gaze she would give me.

  Now I was jostling into the deep shadow lying directly beneath the soaring wall.

  I craned my neck, watching doves wheel above the waving treetops and the sandy battlements. The stalls of tea sellers were adrift in the tide of people that crushed towards the gate’s high entrance. Then I was under the wall itself, being swept along like a stone grinding through a canyon. Panic tightened around my ribs, and I struggled to breathe. All around me in the long gateway rose a babble of tongues: Turkic and Persian, Greek, Bactrian, Mongol, Sogdian, Kushan, Indian, and others that I couldn’t recognise, for traders entered our city from many far places. In any tongue, the language of fear sounded the same.

  Now I burst through the other side of the gate, squinting in the sunlight, and the crush of the crowd eased. I drew a ragged gasp and began to run, dodging a wagon heaped high with hay, freshly cut with a scythe. The caravanserai lay to my right, where travellers found lodgings for themselves and stabling for their animals. I skirted the water fountain built against the entrance, fed by an underground spring. The great yard was filling with cavalry units; I glimpsed their masses of shields and spears, their curved bows and shining scale armour. Perhaps Batu’s father was in there with his men, and so perhaps were my mother’s horsemen and my father’s servants, all called on to fulfil their duty to the king and to fight for our city. And perhaps some of our horses were there too, our geldings harnessed in their bright blankets, their decorated bridles. I hoped that there was enough horse armour to keep them all safe.

  I took a short cut through a warren of narrow streets where laundry dried on ropes and women shrieked. I struggled across a vast open marketplace; it seemed to stretch on endlessly. The hammering of the tin and coppersmiths was submerged in the din that roared through the entire city.

  Swan, Swan! I cried longingly.

  I dodged piles of spices from Arabia; skirted a pile of early melons; pounded past a kite-maker’s stall festooned with bright ribbons of cloth.

  Now I was running slightly uphill along a broad street where merchants’ houses basked in the sun behind their high walls. I leaped a covered drain, ran alongside a stone channel carrying fresh water from the reservoir, circled a pool where women could fill wooden buckets. Sobbing for breath, I passed the merchants’ grand entranceways, the courtyards, the walled gardens; passed a fire temple, passed a gymnasium. Now I was turning on to another broad street, lined with elm trees.

  Swan! Swan!

  Here was my father’s high wall, and the great double doors of rare and costly wood, carved with geometric Greek patterns. When I hammered upon it, the wood was solid and heavy under my fist. Slowly, Fardad, our old porter, swung open a small, hinged window in the door and peered out, his wispy grey beard quivering. His eyebrows, bushy as caterpillars crawling across his forehead, twitched in surprise when he saw me, bent over and gasping for breath.

  ‘Honoured child!’ he cried, rattling aside a bolt.

  The door swung open and I fell inwards, clutching the pain in my side. Then, I straightened. A smile of delight stretched my sweating face.

  Through my misty vision, I saw that the outer courtyard was filled with horses. Their backs shimmered like gold; they turned their long elegant faces towards me and regarded me with their huge dark eyes. I wanted to weep; I wanted to hug each one of them: the golden mares – Honey and Peach, Apricot, Sandy, and Twist. My eyes ran over the greys: Iris, Thunder and Smoke; over brown Mouse; over the bays, River and Rocky and Brocade; over the chestnuts, Peony and Nomad and Pomegranate. Over Swan’s yearling filly, the black Pearl.

  Over Swan.

  My heart stood still. She turned her long neck as I had known she would; her eyes were deep pools. They considered me with calm kindness. The light ran down over her like poured water. Her face gleamed.

  When I ignored Fardad’s urgent questions and thrust my way between the horses, Swan’s nostrils fluttered in greeting. The tail of a foal flapped against my arm. The shoulder of a mare pressed against my back. I was deep in a crowd of horses and I was happy for the first time since Batu and I had lain on the ridge, watching the army. I laid my cheek against Swan’s long head, and breathed in her sweet, familiar scent. My mind filled with flowers and grass, with birdsong, with sky.

  The mares and foals turned away from me, jostling to view some new commotion at the door. I craned my neck in time to see Grasshopper push her way inside. For an instant, my eyes refused to believe what they were seeing. Then I accepted the truth of it: Grasshopper had carried my mother home. She lay along the mare’s neck, unconscious, and the broken reins of shagreen leather dangled from the mare’s snaffle bit. Fardad and I rushed to Grasshopper and caught hold of my mother’s body as she slid over the mare’s shoulder to land heavily across our feet.

  ‘Marjan!’ bellowed Fardad, his voice surprisingly loud despite his age, rising even over my scream of shock.

  When my mother’s body servant pushed her way through the horses, we all lifted my mother and carried her up the outer staircase, and along the dim hallway to her room. Gasping, we laid her on her high and magnificent Greek bed with its veneer of tortoiseshell, its inlays of ivory. Her head lolled against the round pillows, imported from Corinth.

  ‘Fetch water,’ Marjan said, her firm capable hands already holding a knife, slitting my mother’s tunic, rolling the fabric back from my mother’s arm and shoulder as Fardad rushed out.

  ‘What is happening?’ I asked. My hand flew up to grip the amulet around my neck.

  ‘Look at the wounds, they are festering,’ Marjan said, and she laid a hand upon my mother’s sweating forehead. ‘She is hot; there is strong evil here.’

  I leaned closer, noting the swollen flesh around the leopard’s claw marks, and the red lines that streaked up my mother’s arm and shoulder.

  ‘I will send for a magus,’ Marjan muttered. ‘We need herbs, and prayers.’

  ‘We’re not s-staying! We were only c-coming to fetch the horses,’ I stammered but Marjan shook her head gently without raising her gaze from my mother; she had been my mother’s servant since they were both young women.

  ‘Your mother will not rise from this couch in time to take the horses anywhere,’ she said. ‘Go up on the roof and be thankful you have reached home before sunset. Go! You cannot do anything here for your mother.’

  I turned away, sick and faint. In the hallway, Fardad rushed past carrying a copper bowl half filled with water; a linen cloth was slung over his shoulder and he was muttering to himself. I passed beneath the tapestries hanging on the walls, their bright intricate patterns brilliant in the corners of my eyes. The thick pile of knotted carpets muffled the thud of my boots.

  In the courtyard again, I removed Grasshopper’s broken bridle and her sweat-dampened blanket, and smuggled
her a treat from the stable: a handful of grain. The other mares craned their necks, eager and curious, catching whiffs of sweetness from my tight fist, but Grasshopper laid her ears back in warning. I checked that the stone water trough, fed from a rain cistern, was full.

  Then I stood for some time, leaning against Swan’s side and rocked by her calm breathing. Around me rose the familiar sounds of a horse herd: the click of a sinew, the swish of tails whisking flies, the sound of teeth biting an itchy spot, the gurgle of a stomach. There were seventeen elite mares in our courtyard, and six yearlings, and eight foals – for my mother believed in breeding her mares on alternate years and letting them rest in the year between. All the mares were branded on their left quarter with my mother’s five-pointed mark. To me, the brand always looked like half of a star, but my mother said it was to symbolise a hand. She said that in her tribe, if a thief was caught stealing another man’s branded horses, his hand was cut off.

  Finally, I obeyed Marjan and trudged up the stairs, their mud bricks worn in the centre of each step, to emerge on to the flat rooftop. From its centre, I could see into our inner courtyard with its blue-tiled water fountain and its pomegranate tree. Turning, I could see the outer courtyard with its high wall containing the stables, the storage rooms, and the backs of all my mother’s mares and foals, the points of their ears, their thin manes falling from their long arched necks. For a moment, my eyes lingered on Swan’s cool shine.

  Pacing to the further side of the rooftop, I could see into our garden lying between our house and the house next door, where my friend Lila lived. I glanced hopefully towards her rooftop, hoping her tall, slender form might be visible there, but the roof lay empty. Beyond Lila’s house crowded the sandy walls and rooftops of many other houses, shops, temples, bath houses and markets. To the north, the walls of the inner citadel, protecting the king’s palace, crowned the hilltop.

  To the east, I could see what my mother and I loved best about our home: the view over waving treetops, over bazaars and alleyways, into the Valley of Ferghana. I stood there, gazing down that wide tongue of breezy space. In the light of the setting sun, I could see the valley road still choked with people and animals fleeing into the city. And far away, in the blue distance, where the Alay Mountains rose into their snowy peaks, I could see a plume of smoke.

  It climbed into the air like a brushstroke. It caught the last sunlight and glowed pale and sandy. It was neither brushstroke nor smoke.

  I knew that only a great army could raise such a column of dust.

  I knew that I was trapped in the city, like a horse is trapped in a stable when fire takes hold of the straw.

  Chapter 6

  By morning, when I went to visit Lila and stand on her rooftop, the army from the Middle Kingdom was encamped before the city walls.

  ‘They’ve been on the move all night,’ Lila’s father said glumly. ‘It’s said that we are completely surrounded.’ Glumness was usual for him; he was a tall, thin banker who provided letters of credit for the caravan leaders. He moved through life with caution and sternness, as though he had never felt joy.

  ‘This is very bad for business,’ he continued. ‘Very bad indeed. The caravans cannot come to trade as long as the siege continues.’

  ‘Siege!’ Lila’s mother gasped and laid a plump, bejewelled hand over her mouth. Despite the grave circumstances and the early hour, she was perfectly made-up with cosmetics: rouge on her rounded cheeks, black kohl lines around her eyes, red on her pouting lips. The fragrance of jasmine floated from her in the wisp of morning breeze. She cuddled between Lila and I, holding our arms as though to protect us and keep us close.

  ‘When will our army ride out?’ she asked. ‘Surely the siege cannot last for very long! We have such a good cavalry, and so many brave riders! They say that the hippodrome is being used as an army camp, as well as the caravanserai, and that the troops will attack from the east gate. So much commotion in our peaceful city! But what a blessing for you, Kallisto, that the king ordered the elite horses of the valley to come safely inside the city before the invaders arrived!’

  As she paused for breath, I thought of the birds in the wicker cage that hung in her reception room and never flew, but I said nothing. Although we had always been neighbours, Lila’s mother was so different from mine that I often didn’t know how to respond to her breathless chatter. She had three daughters older than Lila, and they had all married into wealthy households; it was partially through them, and their network of servants, that Lila’s mother was able to indulge her love of gossip and city news. In my household, it was my father who collected stories as though they were burrs that clung to him.

  ‘The elite horses are the treasure of Ferghana,’ Lila’s father intoned, squinting into the valley. ‘We cannot allow them to fall into enemy control. A good war horse is worth more than its own weight in gold because it protects our country in time of attack.’

  I thought of Gryphon, his golden shimmer hidden safely in the valley with Batu, and I felt one quiver of hope. Then I stared into the valley again, where the army crawled and seethed across the fields and gardens. From this height, it was hard to make out details; only here and there, the bright shine of a silken tent, or the lazy lift of a banner. Long lines of wagons were still rumbling towards the encampment like migrating snakes.

  ‘Last time the Middle Kingdom sent troops, many starved to death, and the weakened remainder were defeated,’ Lila’s father said. ‘But this time, they come well-supplied.’

  ‘They say the king will never trade with the emperor who calls himself the Son of Heaven,’ Lila’s mother said. ‘He will not send our horses away, although there are some in Ershi who do not agree, and who wish to open the trade routes to the east. And oh, Kallisto, speaking of the court, you will not have heard yet that Arash’s father has met with some difficulty. Some disgrace.’

  She savoured the word in her mouth for a moment, like a plump apricot. ‘It’s rumoured that he had something beautiful, a golden treasure from the past, and he had promised it, and some more treasure besides, to one of the princes. But then, before he gave it, he wagered it in a game; it’s said he was drunk at the time. And he lost the wager and the treasure. Some caravan leader won it from him. The prince was very angry, and Arash’s father has been demoted from Royal Falconer. He is banished temporarily from the court! What a terrible thing to happen, and now, of all times, when we have so much else to worry about!’

  She let go of our arms to wring her soft hands together as though this turn of events had some personal effect upon her comfortable life.

  ‘I hadn’t heard all this,’ I muttered.

  ‘So hard on Arash – such an ambitious, clever young man! I do hope this will not affect his future.’

  ‘The king will have greater matters to attend to now, and will not need his falcons for the hunt,’ Lila’s father said. ‘The petty squabbles of princes are of no account in a time of war.’

  As though she hadn’t heard this, Lila’s mother continued, ‘Oh, and your poor, dear mother! I must go and make sure she is being well cared for, that her needs are being attended to! Servants are so untrustworthy when the mistress of a house is ill and the master is away from home. How awful for you, my dear Kallisto. You must try and be a brave girl in this awful time! I will go and prepare to visit your mother immediately.’

  With a final squeeze on my arm she departed in a swirl of azure gown, her small veil drifting backwards from her elaborate headdress and curled hair. Her perfume lingered on the rooftop. Lila’s father gave a last grim look at the valley and then followed his wife without a word. Lila and I stepped closer together and wrapped our arms around each other’s waists. Hers was much more slender than mine; she was going to be as tall as her father, and far more elegant than either of her parents. It was as well that I had known her all my life, or I might have been intimidated by her beauty.

  ‘Are you scared?’ she asked, slanting a glance at me with her dark, almond-shaped ey
es outlined in black.

  ‘I’m scared for the horses,’ I said, my voice small. ‘They are trapped here, the mares, the foals, Swan. The yearling, Tulip, arrived tied to a wagon late last night. We do not have enough food in our stable granary to feed them all for very many days. My mother sent a wagon of water and grain into the city but it was taken by a tribal chieftain as it entered the gate, and is being used for the light cavalry. And my mother was not even in her right mind this morning before I came to visit you. She was muttering and crying in her dreams.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lila said softly. ‘I’m scared too. Let’s go inside.’

  In her room, Lila brightened again. ‘Look!’ she said, shaking out the folds of a new gown of green brocade sewn with tiny jet beads. ‘Does it become me?’ She held the gown to her body and shimmied across the room like a dancing girl; an exhibition that would have horrified her mother but that reduced us briefly to mischievous laughter. I flung myself backwards on Lila’s couch, across a covering of dark sable furs imported from the Baltic lands, and watched while Lila unscrewed caps from various jars of face cream and sniffed at their contents.

  ‘Have you washed since coming home from your nomad adventure?’

  ‘I bathed this morning. Marjan heated water for me.’

  ‘You still smell like horses. But that’s nothing new. Oh, try this perfume I bought in the market yesterday!’

  She held out a small glass jar with a crystal stopper, her arm bracelets chiming prettily. Removing the stopper, she wafted something smelling like sandalwood beneath my nose and I promptly sneezed. ‘I’d rather smell like horses.’

  ‘You’re such a barbarian. How will you ever move in court circles?’ She flopped beside me on the fur and stroked it absently.

  ‘Is it true, about Arash’s father?’

  ‘So my mother believes. Do you think this will affect your betrothal?’

  ‘No,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Even if in disgrace at court, his father is still a rich aristocrat with lands and power. The king will need his support in this war, and will not risk internal strife when there is a common enemy outside our gates. And the agreement between him and my father is of long standing; they made it when Arash and I were babies, and my father is set upon the match.’