Riders of the Pale Horse (9 page)

“What is there to the east of us?” Robards demanded, focused on the map at his feet.

“North of the mountains, the Chechen and Ingush, as I have said,” Mikhail replied, almost chanting the words. “In the southern highlands, some Chechen and Ingush still, but not many. Mostly Tusheti tribes. Some Karachai also, but most Stalin deported to Siberia. They have not returned.”

“Is there trouble in that area?”

“For the modern man, there is trouble everywhere,” Mikhail replied, “but more here than elsewhere. Farther east the mountains curve down southward and fall into the Dagestani lowlands, which in turn slide into the Caspian Sea.”

Robards pointed with the toe of his boot to the region where the mountains began their curve. “What about to the west here?”

“The Kasheti region of Georgia,” Mikhail answered once Wade had translated. “Though they are more a name than a tribe in these days. Stalin had a special hatred for them. Why, no one knows. But almost the entire tribe was scattered. On the other side of the Georgian border, here to the southeast, lies Azerbaijan. Further south, Armenia. To the southwest, Turkey. There again one finds the battle between
Muslim and Christian, especially in the Christian enclave inside Azerbaijan.”

Robards nodded approvingly. “Your knowledge is great, old man.”

“In my youth I journeyed far and wide,” the elder replied proudly. “I was a trader, and a good one. Dagestani carpets were my specialty.”

“Are there passes down through the Caucasus range to the southern lands?”

“None that are not fiercely guarded by tribesmen.” Mikhail squinted. “Was not our objective the highland hospital?”

“Always best to know where the back door's located,” Robards replied. “Ask the gent how old he is.”

“I am about to see my seventieth year.” He cupped his arm close to his chest and made as though holding an invisible gun. “Yet remain strong enough to hold a Skorpion with one hand and shoot a level line.”

“Skorpion's a machine pistol with the kick of a mule,” Robards explained to Wade. “Says a lot about the world we're in when an old guy uses that as the symbol of his health. Tell him I hope I'm in such shape at his age, if I make it that far.”

“Your friend carries the scent of good fortune with him,” Mikhail replied. “That is why I agreed to come. He should choose to remain and make his home here. There is much work for one such as him, and the hillsmen are known for their long lives. My father still tends his sheep, and my great-uncle swears he will see his two hundredth year.”

“We oughta talk once this little jaunt's over,” Robards replied. “First I need to see how much chance there is of me walking into somebody else's bullet.” He stared at the crude map drawn in the dust and said, “Tell me about the pass we'll be taking.”

“We shall join the Georgia Military Highway south of Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia's capital city,” the old man replied. “This follows the central and clearest pass through these jutting peaks. It winds through gorges and hairpin turns and
drops and ravines before descending into Georgia. The road is the single paved Caucasus artery, not often either washed out or bombed. Too many trucks carrying far too many goods have ground the road's surface to a trail of cracks and bumps and gravel and dust. But at least we should be safe. Russian military convoys travel its length, followed by civilians who bribe the transport officers for the right...”

A swiftly moving cloud brought them all around. Wade searched the windless horizon and realized with a start that the approaching cloud was alive. A sound of honking strengthened as the cloud became hundreds of thousands of migrating waterbirds.

Robards looked an astonished question at Mikhail, who replied through Wade, “North of our campsite is the Volga Delta, a remnant of the wilderness that once held all of Russia in its grasp. Where the great river joins the Caspian Sea, there lies a maze of marshes and streams. Three hundred species of birds live there. Plus the saiga antelope. Wolves. Wild boar. Steppe eagles.”

The cloud of birds arrived overhead, throwing their campsite into fleeting shadows. The bird cries became so loud that the old man had to shout to be heard. “In my father's time, the birds formed flying walls that went on for hours and days on end. Now the flocks pass only in the morning and in the evening, and only for a week at most.”

Robards listened, nodded, and watched the sky. There was nothing to see save the cloud of birds. He called the question, “Same time every year?”

When Wade had translated the old man shook his head emphatically. “There is no set time to their pattern, no date upon which the giant gatherings begin. Yet the birds know, as do the saiga antelope. On a certain day each autumn, as early as the first week in September or as late as November, the herds join and begin to move. And then, a few days later, the first Siberian wind arrives.”

As quickly as it began, it ended. The last of the birds
passed overhead, and within a few seconds their raucous cries blended with the gathering wind.

“In the autumn,” Mikhail continued in a quieter tone, “the steppe's silver featherwood stands burnished by the sun like ripening wheat. It shivers in these gathering winds as though knowing what the birds and the animals know—that soon the wind will turn and howl in icy fury from the north. Here in the south we have only the slightest taste of Russian winter. But I have traveled. I know. Not so far to the north, the land will soon turn to iron, its coat of ice so hard and jagged that tires can be cut to shreds. Then the land is empty as only a Russian steppe can be, lost to the vacuum of unconquered winter, its isolation accented by a lone wolf's howl.”

“A good time to be somewhere else.” Robards raised his boot and deliberately erased the map scratched into the earth.

“Let's move out.”

The Caucasus Mountains, one of the world's youngest ranges, were not yet worn down and softened by nature. They did not rise gradually from plains to foothills to high reaches. Instead, they
leapt
into being. The world was flat, an endless steppe, and then came the walls of rock crowned by ice and snow. Waterfalls thundered down from all sides. Among the silent giants loomed a dozen peaks higher than Mont Blanc, Europe's tallest mountain. Two thousand glaciers locked the highlands beneath frozen seas a mile and more in depth.

The southern Kalmyk Steppe was a sweeping earthen sea, bound on the south by the Caucasus Mountains, rimmed to the east and west by the Caspian and Black Seas. To the north there was no boundary, no ending, no rise nor fall nor physical landmark. The name changed with distance, from southern to central to northern, yet in truth the steppe continued in one flat empty stretch from the Caucasus to the Arctic wastelands, a distance of over three thousand kilometers. Winter winds generated in the depths of Siberia howled unchecked
down its length until they crashed in frustrated fury against the unyielding Caucasus range.

Today, however, the weather was with them. Warm sunlight marked their traverse along the steppe's southern edge. They kept to byroads that were little more than rutted tracks, circling around several Chechen enclaves, heading ever closer to the mountains that dominated the horizon.

Their journey was noisy and dirty and slow. As the day progressed, the wind became their constant companion. Several miles after they joined the highway, they passed another petrol station. Robards insisted they stop and top off their tanks. They sat in sweltering heat, trying to breathe through the diesel fumes and dust clouds as inch by inch the mammoth line crawled forward.

“Take a look at those,” Robards said when Wade climbed on his running board during the wait. He jutted his chin toward the meadow flanking the station where a flock of shaggy beasts cropped meager grass.

“They're called yakaws,” Wade explained. “A cross between yak and cattle. You see their milk a lot in the markets.”

Robards pointed to where shepherds watched the animals, ignoring the station's noisy cacophony. “What tribe are they?”

“I'd guess Ingush,” Wade said after a moment's hesitation. “The Chechen generally have sharper features. They are said to be a Persian tribe. The Ingush are probably of Turkish descent. Some say Afghan, though. They are swarthier; a lot have the hawk noses and full features of the Himalayan tribesmen. They're considered the more easygoing of the two, but that's only a matter of degree. As Mikhail said, the Ingush farm and tend cattle. A lot of them wear expensive sable hats or fedoras.”

Within a half hour of leaving the station, they began a steady climb. Their speed slowed even more, seldom creeping above twenty miles an hour. The old man rode in the first truck with Robards. Wade found himself not minding the solitude at all. The scenery was vast and ever changing, the
road an invitation to explore the interior as well as exterior landscape.

Streams and rivers crisscrossed the highway every mile or so. A dozen waterfalls glistened in the distance. As the two trucks crossed one makeshift wooden bridge, Wade spotted the metal girders of a more modern construction. It was upended and embedded in a monstrous pile of debris, testimony to the spring floods that roared down from above.

The mountains' lower reaches were dreamlands of mist and silver birches. As the trucks ground relentlessly higher, the mists gave way to aching blue-black skies, the birch to ancient firs and then to silver-green meadows.

They rounded yet another curve and a broad, rushing river came into view. At the top of the rise they pulled into a turnout crowded with trucks and buses and people taking a break from the heat. With his first step into the icy torrent, Wade lost all feeling in his feet. He continued out until the rushing current threatened to pluck him away. The mist hanging above the river dropped the air's temperature by fifty degrees. Wade stood and reveled in the coolness until he saw Rogue wave for him to return.

When he arrived back at the trucks, the old man said with pride, “That is the River Terek. We follow its path all the way to the Krestovy Pass. Pushkin called it the laughing waters. Tolstoy called it the river of smoke.”

Mikhail then pointed off to his right to where a rutted track broke off and meandered into a heavily wooded glen. “The entrance to the Fiagdon Valley. There lie the remnants of the Ossetian city called Tsimitar. Beyond that stands the City of the Dead, where until the Middle Ages my people came and buried their kin in family towers built over a thousand years ago. Now there is nothing. Stalin, the killer who was half-Ossetian himself, succeeded where even Tamerlane had failed. Today our valley is empty of life.”

Rogue grinned at the news. “Tribes who love to carry steel, fight, sneak across borders with contraband, pass down
grudges for centuries, and wear fancy headgear. Tamerlane and the Mongols and a battleground for over two thousand years. Makes me wish I could strap a sword to my side and go riding off on a great white charger.”

“It doesn't bother you,” Wade countered, “hearing about all the tragedy this land has known?”

Robards gave his easy shrug. “They lived, they died. Same as you and me, Sport. Life's only a tragedy for those on the receiving end, a place I avoid.” He tossed an empty Pepsi bottle toward a colossal pile of trash. “Come on, time to head for the hills.”

As the road rose to meet the mountains, the curves became more extreme, the climb steeper. Ahead of Wade, Robards slowed his truck to a crawl. A protruding rock outcrop crumbled as Rogue's truck hugged the wall for safety. While Wade waited for Rogue to manage the turn, he swiveled in his seat and looked back. To his left, the road dropped away to nothingness. A mountain eagle drifted on an unseen current, its four-foot wingspan unfurled and stable as it screamed at these human interlopers.

Beyond and two thousand feet below, a valley expanded as it left the mountain fastness. The earth was mirrored silver in the harsh afternoon light. Richer bands of green ran alongside delta rivulets that tracked over the burnished autumn steppe. Here and there the utter flatness was broken by solitary foothills, rising and falling like tiny waves upon a silver sea. Winds whistled and moaned, the constant voice of this alien land.

The roar of Rogue's engine signaled Wade that the way was clear. He ground the gears and started forward, inching his way around the bend. Halfway around the curve, he turned back once again.

At that moment, before his vision was blocked by the cliff wall, Wade knew a moment of utter clarity. He felt his own life yawing forth in an instant of realization, a glimpse of choices soon to be forced upon him.

On the one side was the terror of open space with no visible support whatsoever. On the other the strength and power of visible and solid cliffs.

Yet for some reason, it was the cliffs that frightened him most of all.

6

The Daimler swept them toward Heathrow Airport, which was as far as Cyril Price would allow them to be seen together in public. Once on the plane, she would be on her own. Allison watched the windshield wiper clear away the misting rain and felt her own emotions sweep back and forth, back and forth, between the thrill of adventure and the fear of unknown dangers.