The Horse Road

by Troon Harrison

  But thinking about Bucephalus’s death only made me cry for Swan.

  So then I told myself the nomad tale about the winged horses that used to drink at an oasis pool, but were spied upon by a cunning king. One night he poured wine into the water, and the horses drank it and became giddy and weak. Thus the king’s men were able to clip the horses’ wings so they could no longer fly in the air, but instead had to fly over the land on their fleet feet, and serve mankind.

  But thinking about this story only made me think about Swan too, a mare with wings on her heels when we ran together in the summer pastures.

  And so, I tried to close my mind to stories, and I was dozing when the ground began to shake. The first vibration was so faint that I thought I had imagined it; it was like a tingle in my bones. I opened my eyes, and held myself very still. Perhaps now the ghosts were coming at last to rend my spirit from my aching body. The second vibration was stronger, running through the cold ground as though the horses in my stories had come alive and were galloping to me, shaking the earth with their pounding hooves. I sprang to my feet. Now the ground shifted beneath the soles of my boots, harder, faster. I whirled around, holding the lamp high. A cry of terror broke from my lips.

  A dull murmur rose through the rocks and soil, and became a grinding roar: the mountain was speaking. Soil trickled between stones, and dust thickened the stale air. I pressed my sleeve across my mouth and struggled to remain standing as the tomb trembled. Now the floor shook like a rug hanging to dry in a strong wind. Roaring filled my head, dust blinded me. The ground pitched beneath me, and cracks zigzagged across the floor. Walls tilted and swayed.

  Earthquake!

  The mountain spirits were angry, fierce, shaking the world like a dog shaking its prey in its teeth.

  I lurched as the ground rose under my feet, and pitched forward. My lamp flew from my hand and plunged me into momentary darkness. Then a burning thread of oil mingled its smoke with the swirling dust. I coughed and choked, dragging off my robe to throw over it and extinguish the flames.

  All around me in the pitch darkness, I felt walls and roof beams, and the mountain itself, sliding and buckling and heaving. The mountain was a horse now, a bucking, twisting horse being ridden by the mountain spirits in their rage. I staggered in the dark, blind and terrified. A rock rolled across one foot. Something struck my head a glancing blow across the temple, and stars with ragged tails soared across my vision.

  Slowly, the ground became still and the loud roar subsided into a growl. Crawling on my hands and knees, I felt around for my fallen lamp, and then took it to the oil jars. Spilled oil coated my palms, and I felt the rough shape of one of the jars, cracked open and rolling on its side. The other jar was still upright and I used its contents to fill my lamp. Then I pulled the flint from inside my boot, and struck a flame.

  On one side of the tomb, the roof beams of round tree trunks were smashed into pale splinters, and had fallen across the altar and the coffin. My glance skittered away from the dusky bundle that lay inside, wrapped in crumbling felts and reed mats. Swinging around, I saw that the tunnel through which I had entered the tomb was blocked with fallen stones, and that I would never be able to crawl through it again even if my father came with a whole caravan of camels to pay my ransom. I stood up slowly and shuffled across piles of dirt and stone to the chamber’s far side, where the wall had collapsed and the beams had fallen inwards. I stared at it for a long time, and felt a whisper of hope rise in me.

  Fetching the antler bone, with its dull tips and its patina of age, I began to gouge at the tomb wall. Stones fell inwards, crushing my toes. Dirt showered into my hair and eyes; I felt it rolling down inside my tunic, gritty against my skin. I jabbed the antlers into the wall over and over, and scooped dirt out with my fingers. It felt as though I worked for hours, lying on my belly, sweat running down my sides, my fingernails breaking and tearing, my tongue pressed against my teeth as I struggled through the wall and the soil that the earthquake had loosened. From time to time, I stopped to rest. Once the ground vibrated again, and I flattened myself into the dirt fearfully, but then the tingle subsided. I continued digging and scooping, pulling the loosened rock and soil towards me and then pushing it downwards between my legs. My boot toes scrabbled for purchase as I climbed slowly up through the roof of the tomb. I strained up and up, like the pale shoot of some buried flower, trying to reach sunlight.

  And then, there was the light, a thread of brightness. A blue woollen skein of morning sky. A patch of carpet woven with cloud patterns. A bird, flying southwards over the Pamirs. I pushed my hand out into that daylight and let it lick my dirty skin, my torn, cut, bleeding fingers. I opened my mouth wide and tasted the air filled with wind and flowering grasses and warm mountainside and the resinous oil of juniper. Weak tears of gratitude ran down my face. Someone’s prayers had reached the ears of the mountain spirits; perhaps Berta had prayed for me, seated by the hearth fire of her yurt; or perhaps my mother, lying queenly and proud in her high Greek bed; or perhaps Batu had implored aid for me. Or maybe, even, the dead warrior, lying in her coffin surrounded by her wonderful fleet-footed horses, had accepted my gift of a golden torc, and had roused the spirits to set me free. The mountain had released me from its belly’s dark embrace.

  I wriggled forward until my stomach was pressed into the grass and only my legs still dangled down into the tiny cavity I had cleared between the loosened stones. And then I felt it a third time; that trembling in my bones. The mountain roared again, grating and grinding and shifting. A bird shrieked. Clouds rushed past, grass waved as though a great wind swept down upon it. I twisted and rolled on the heaving slope; behind and beneath me there was a louder roar as more of the tomb roof collapsed inwards. I cried out as the weight of a tree beam landed across one of my legs, pinning me in place. As the quake subsided, I gripped handfuls of grass and tried to drag myself out from under the beam’s weight but the stems broke in my grip, or tore out by their pale roots. I stretched as far as I could and searched through the grass for a stone to grip but found nothing. I kicked and scrabbled with my free foot but couldn’t dislodge the beam.

  Anger rose in me and I clawed and beat at the ground. Still my leg remained trapped in the mountain’s pinch. I lay my head on my arm and waited for my pounding heart to quieten.

  Faintly, from the valley below, came cries and shouts of alarm, and women’s high wails. The bellows of yaks mingled with the roars of camels and the shrill neighing of ponies. Hoof beats drummed in my ears. I lifted my head to squint through the grass and there, on the curve of track leading up the mountain’s flank, galloped a band of shaggy horses, rushing upwards. And there, ahead of them, a flash of gold!

  I whistled, the shrill call of a bird, the sound my stallion had been familiar with since he was a colt with legs as long and fine as the spokes in chariot wheels. The horses had passed from my line of vision now. I whistled, over and over, at intervals.

  The grass swayed. A hard black hoof appeared, a slender fetlock. A woollen hobble rope trailed between his legs, severed by a knife blade. A muzzle appeared before my face, shining like golden brocade, soft as velvet from Samarkand. He wore his own halter, one that I had made myself with Berta’s help, twirling the rawhide on a wooden stick. Two lustrous eyes shone. Gryphon’s hot breath gusted upon my arm, then my face, as he stepped cautiously forward, spooked, curious, obeying my whistle. I reached out and ran my fingers down his forelegs, talking to him, making his ears with their fringe of golden and cream hairs swivel in the sunlight. He ran his nose curiously over my body, snuffling at the tomb’s grimy soil that clung to me, smelling my hair and my torn hands, before moving off a few paces and beginning to graze.

  We were so close, yet he was free and I was trapped. Soon someone in the village below would notice that the tomb had collapsed, that the ponies were running on the mountain, and soon wild men with fierce dogs would come to return me to Failak’s custody. ‘Gryphon!’ I called softly, urgently, my voic
e thick and raw in my parched throat. ‘Gryphon!’ I whistled and he drifted closer, closer, snatching at the summer grass, its flowers puffing dusty clouds into the air. I stretched my body out long, longer, my sinews burning, my fingers reaching. Then it was within my grasp: a thick fistful of black horse tail. I tugged, and Gryphon snorted and stepped backwards. I seized another handful of tail, higher up, and wrapped it around my fist.

  ‘Gryphon,’ I said, more commandingly, and he stopped grinding grass and swivelled his ears back, listening to me. ‘Run!’ I yelled. ‘Run, Gryphon, run!’

  He lunged forward, eyes rolling with excitement at this familiar command, and his tail tightened in my hand, cutting into my skin. For a moment, he threw himself against my weight and then he stopped, puzzled and confused by this strange manoeuvre that we had never practised. I stared at the slender length of his hind legs, tight with sinew, hard with bones that could break my arm, smash my cheeks. The curves of his hind hooves were hard as stone, sharp as dagger blades. He could kill me, but he was my only hope.

  I spoke softly to him, waited until his eyes stopped rolling, cajoled him with a song that I had hummed when he slipped out of his mother’s body and on to the stable floor, and as I wiped him dry with a twist of barley straw. Now, as he listened to my song, his hind hooves stopped stamping and he became still. Then I spoke his name again, and again I shouted at him to run. This time, when he plunged forward, the force of his motion jerked my arms in my shoulder sockets so that I felt a great tear run through my back, and I thought my bones would splinter. ‘Run!’ I shouted desperately, the world going black with pain, and my hands so tangled in his tail that I would never be able to free them. This was how men were punished, I thought: they were tied between four horses and then torn to pieces when the horses were made to run in four directions. My hands, wrapped with tail, would rip from my arms; my leg would tear free, inside the mountain, and lie by itself beneath the fallen beam.

  ‘Run!’ I screamed, and he dug his front hooves into the mountainside and lunged against my weight, his back hooves striking against small stones.

  I lurched. I slid free! I flew over the grass, my boots dragging and the stallion’s hind hooves whistling past my ears. Grass and rocks and shrubs raked my stomach. ‘Whoa, Gryphon, steady, whoa!’ I called and he stood still and began once more to crop grass in anxious snatches, his eyes rolling. He was on the verge of spooking, of running away across the mountain with my fists still tangled in his tail. Desperately I worked to free them; my fingers were white and bloodless from the tight wrap of the hair. I freed one hand, then the other, ripping at tough black hair with my teeth. I tried to stand but staggered, and was forced to wait for blood to run into my numb legs. Fumbling with haste, I untied the hobble ropes from Gryphon’s fetlocks and retied the pieces on to his halter to make short reins. Then I used a stone to vault on to his back.

  From this vantage point, I glanced around. Several of the tomb barrows had been damaged in the earthquake, and a great slide of rock had licked, like a long tongue, down the face of the mountain. One edge of this tongue had swiped at the warlord’s village; I saw how its force had crushed the walls of houses, broken the garden terraces, and knocked over trees. The tiny specks of the villagers surged to and fro through the alleys and spilled out into the valley, calling and crying. Their ponies still ran loose amongst the tombs, edgy and excited. I nudged Gryphon with my heel, turning him away towards the ridge. We would escape over it into the valley on the far side, I thought, and ride away before anyone noticed us.

  A flicker of motion caught my attention and I reined Gryphon back in. Below, where the track leading to the tombs began, a man was running as though for his life. A knot of mounted men eddied along the edge of the village. The running man dashed amongst a cluster of camels and disappeared. I waited for a long moment, while Gryphon shifted restlessly under me.

  Batu? I could not be sure at this distance. If I rode down to find out, I might be caught – yet how could I ride over the ridge and leave him behind, if indeed he was alone in the valley, and on foot? I waited in an agony of indecision. Then the running man reappeared briefly, dodging at a crouch amongst the camels. I kicked Gryphon hard, sending him into a gallop, arrowing down the track with stones flying and with ponies dashing away in alarm. We pounded out over the valley floor, yaks gazing at us in mild curiosity, camels grunting; the narrow glint of the river filling my eyes. The knot of mounted horsemen burst from the shadow of the village and began to head straight for me with savage cries. The sun shone in their fur hats.

  I swung Gryphon alongside the herd of camels, and the fugitive man rose from where he’d been hiding behind a lying beast, and began to run towards me, his arms pumping at his side, his legs knifing the sunlight. Faster and faster he ran. The horsemen were almost upon him now with daggers raised, and their ponies fighting their bits.

  ‘Batu!’ I screamed, and checked Gryphon’s gallop slightly, holding him level with Batu’s line of flight. The shadows of the horsemen surged into the corners of my eyes and I saw their black beards blowing in the wind, and the cruel gleam of their ponies’ teeth. Then I swerved Gryphon around Batu in a tight arc, and watched as Batu dashed forward with a final, incredible burst of speed that brought him running alongside Gryphon. I kicked Gryphon on as Batu’s feet left the ground in a flying leap, as he dragged at my waist, as his strong legs gripped my stallion’s golden ribs. We surged away, the mountains a blur, the air cutting our eyeballs, our breath snatched from our lungs.

  ‘Run! Run!’ I screamed at Gryphon, and he went up the path towards the high pass like a shooting star. He was fresh from his days of resting in Failak’s pastures, and even with two of us mounted on his back, he was still the fastest horse anywhere in these mountains. Once we had to skirt another rockslide caused by the earthquake, and once we had to dismount to lead Gryphon through a fissure that had opened in the ground. The knot of men gradually fell behind us as we crossed the high pass, weaving between the cairns of ibex horns and sheep skulls, and began the long descent towards the foothills. We were pursued for several hours, but eventually the last rider fell from view behind a ridge, and we were alone with the silence and the wind and the deep, tearing breath whistling through Gryphon’s nostrils. Batu dismounted and jogged alongside.

  It was dark when we stumbled into the shelter of the farm where we had spent the night before, on our way to find the golden harness. The buildings still stood, although a crack had opened in the wall of the house. The family had gone to bed; Batu fed the dog a morsel of dried meat to quieten it, and laid his palm upon Gryphon’s sweating forehead. Then he wiped his hand on both our faces.

  ‘The sweat of the winner is for luck,’ he said softly, and I kissed Gryphon’s face and led him around to cool him off. When I led him into the barn, I gave a start of surprise for I saw Rain’s face turn to us as he nickered a welcome. I gave Gryphon a little water, slid his bridle off, and threw a blanket over his back. Finally, Batu and I climbed the ladder to the barn’s flat roof. My leg, that had been trapped, was so stiff now that I could barely bend it, and I knew that blue bruises were blossoming on it like flowers. I collapsed on to a heap of hay being stored on the roof.

  ‘Am I really here?’ I asked Batu with a groan. I was so tired that I was floating. Every inch of my body ached; I was covered in spilled lamp oil, smoke, dust, bruises, scratches. My plaited curls stuck to my head as stiff as the plaits of a marble statue.

  ‘Of course you’re here. You didn’t think I’d leave you in that cursed village, did you?’

  ‘But what has happened? How long was I in the tomb?’

  ‘The tomb?’ Batu asked in astonishment. ‘That’s where you’ve been?’

  I nodded. ‘Tell me what has been happening.’

  ‘After you rode to the tombs, Failak’s men took me sheep-hunting. When we returned, Failak wouldn’t tell me where you were; he said that you were being well cared for and you were comfortable, but that he was holding yo
u for a ransom payment. He gave me a birchbark scroll to take to your father, who he was sure would soon be reaching Samarkand on his return journey from the Levant. He said I was to wait in Samarkand until your father arrived, then intercept him and give him the birch scroll with the ransom terms written upon it. He seemed to be preparing for a trip into the mountains, heading southwards. I was escorted from the valley by a band of horsemen and sent on my way.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The morning after you rode to the tombs. After the horsemen left me, I came back to this farm and explained my situation. The farmer let me stable Rain here, because he is such a conspicuous horse that I couldn’t risk riding him back to Failak’s village. Then I borrowed a knife, and a bow and two arrows, and returned overnight on foot to Failak’s valley. I have spent five days in hiding, spying on the village, trying to catch a glimpse of you and find a way to set you free. But I saw nothing. So this morning, I decided to free Gryphon from his guard and his hobbles, and to ride him away to fetch help, perhaps from your father if he could be found on his return journey from Samarkand, or perhaps from my own tribe.’

  ‘It was you who freed Gryphon?’

  ‘I shot his guard in the back, and then slid over the grass on my belly, and cut his hobbles with a knife. I was going to try to mount him and gallop away when the earthquake struck. Gryphon spooked; he was unmanageable and broke away to join the ponies that were running loose everywhere; all the herds were panicked and wild. I hid amongst some rocks and waited for a second chance to catch Gryphon. When the final quake happened, he galloped up the mountain track. I was trying to escape from view when you appeared, hurtling over the grass like a centaur!’