The Horse Road (15 page)

‘From your herd?' she asked and I nodded. ‘My father's people had many horses, horses like the wind,' she said, and then her mouth folded in a tight line, and her soft eyelids swept down.

‘Walk on,' I said to the mare, and we wound our way after Lila, with the slave girl keeping step. She was still gripping the foot loop when I rode Grasshopper through the open gate at home.

‘Honoured child!' Fardad bellowed, rushing from the storeroom with his tunic flapping as I dismounted. For one moment in time I thought that he was bellowing because of the ragged stranger standing stiff as a twig at the mare's side, and then I realised that his cheeks were ashen above his wispy beard, and that his eyebrows had disappeared beneath his skullcap.

‘I couldn't stop him!' he wailed, clasping his old hands, with their tracing of blue veins, together. ‘Your father's household guards are all away fighting! Marjan tried to rouse your mother but she wasn't able to! And you were not here to prevent it! She has been taken!'

Something like a bolt of lightning flickered through me. The taste of sulphur burned my tongue. The light dimmed as though a storm cloud passed before the sun. I knew then, before Fardad said another word, that something had changed in my life, that something terrible had occurred.

‘Swan?' I whispered, my throat closing around her name as though I could keep it safe there.

Fardad nodded; behind him, our cook and two servant girls and Marjan stood in a semicircle, staring at me with long, compassionate faces.

‘It was your betrothed, Arash. He came with his
retinue this afternoon while you were in the market. And took Swan away.'

‘Where? Where did they go? Where?'

My voice, usually so soft that people had to ask me to repeat myself, bounced around the courtyard like a pebble ricocheting off the mud walls. Doves rose in protest from the rooftop and spiralled upwards. The slave girl moved away from me, drifting amongst the mares with her hands touching each one of them: fondling their muzzles, their silken tails, their shining coats. In all that golden gleam, there was no flash of white, no shine like cool water, no eyes to greet me.

Oh, Swan!

Lila had her arm around my shoulders but I barely noticed.

‘I don't know where he took her,' Fardad said, tugging at his thinning beard in his agitation. ‘I don't know why he wanted her.'

I snatched at Grasshopper's reins so fast that the mare swung her head up and away, her neck tense and her eyes rolling white. I leaped into the saddle without using the foot loop, my heels kicking into her ribs even before my weight had settled fully on to her back. I wrenched her around in the courtyard's confines, scattering mares and foals. The stricken faces of the servants, Fardad's wild rheumy eyes, Lila's open mouth as she cried out, and the slave girl's curious, flat gaze all spun around me in a whirl. Then the mare's front hooves were through the door; I heard her tail lash
against the frame as we shot past and as I pulled her head northwards and drove her uphill at a gallop. The hard pounding of her hooves alerted people ahead of me so that they scattered to the sides of the street, calling out alarmed questions. Their voices were like bird calls, meaningless, insignificant.

I kicked Grasshopper onwards as she faltered and she gave a soaring buck across a drainage ditch, and galloped hard and fast, her back flattening out, across a stretch of wasteground beyond. We careened around the corner of a fire temple, the pillars on its portico flashing by, pale as the trunks of trees in a birch forest. Hens scattered around us like leaves. The mare snorted loudly but kept galloping, her powerful hindquarters driving us uphill between the houses of merchants and bankers until we were against the very walls of the inner citadel. We shot through the archway into the outer courtyard of the Royal Falconer's sprawling house, knocking aside two porters who ran after us with their daggers drawn. The mare skidded on her haunches, her nose inches from the solid doors that led to the second courtyard, and I leaned over her shoulder and hammered upon the door with my whip handle.

The porters with their drawn daggers were beside me, reaching for the mare's reins. I swung my whip in a circle. ‘Keep your hands off!' I shouted, and collected the mare under me, making her hop and leap sideways across the courtyard. They stayed outside the range of her slashing hooves.

‘Open the door!' I shouted. ‘The honourable lady Kallisto of the House of Iona is here to see your master's son!'

I kicked the mare hard as the doors began to move and we barrelled through the crack like a fish going between rocks in a canyon's torrents. The porter sprawled backwards, clutching his cap as it slid over the back of his curly black hair. I wheeled Grasshopper in a tight circle on the paving stones laid in a pattern of golden and black around the pomegranate trees. My voice echoed from the stuccoed walls painted in brilliant colours – red, white, yellow – and carved into flowing designs. The porters and guards, still with their hands on their dagger hilts, stared at me, dishevelled and desperate in my grubby tunic, my oldest boots, and alone without a single servant or family chaperone.

‘Our master and his son are fighting with the cavalry,' one said at last. ‘Will you wait in the reception hall and take a cool drink?'

‘Arash is not fighting, and I will wait,' I said, glancing upwards to where the last rays of setting sun kindled the palace's rambling facades into brilliance. They led Grasshopper away after I gave instructions for her to be groomed and fed; then I stepped inside the first reception hall through which I had entered this house once before, on a feast day, with my parents. I paced the hall's cool length. I stared at its walls with their paintings, tapestries, and niches filled with marble busts of kings and statuettes of goddesses.
A servant woman brought me a tray holding a bowl of melon soup flavoured with cardamom seeds, and a damp cloth to wipe my hands. I ate and drank in a daze for I had become a stranger to myself. I was freezing cold as though it were winter and the wind was blowing down over the Alay Mountains with snow in its wings. My skin crawled and shivered.

Swan, oh Swan.

My heart pounded, slowed, raced onwards. My boots paced past the leg of a couch piled with cushions and bolsters. I skirted a great wooden chair carved with stags' heads and twining antlers; I rounded a table inlaid with sheets of coloured Italian glass. I ran my hand over the wall hangings depicting hunting scenes and the coronation of the king; foreign princes waited to give him a tribute of horses. They were smaller than our Persian horses, I thought, staring at them for a moment, noting their short legs, their height in comparison to the chariot they pulled, four abreast. Then I paced on again.

Swan!

Night crept in the doorway, lay down over the pomegranate trees. The light of oil lamps fluttered over the black and golden tiles. My head spun with fatigue and fear, and time stretched out endlessly, a sea where I was adrift; alone and lost without my white star, my white mare. I clutched dizzily at my shoulders, my arms hugging myself.

‘Kallisto?' Arash strode in, his bodyguards at his
heels. His head was high, his back stiff and straight in a robe embroidered with semi-precious stones. Light winked on the gilt scabbard of his dagger slung on a belt with a golden clasp. His beard seemed darker in the flickering light.

I flew at him. ‘Where's my mare?'

‘Calm yourself. Be seated on the couch.'

I ignored him. ‘Where's Swan? Tell me! You have no right to take her.'

‘His Magnificence, King of Ershi, Crown Jewel in the Golden Valley, has need of her,' he said smoothly. He folded himself elegantly on to a couch and took a dried fig from the tray that the servant woman held out. I spun around in my restless pacing.

‘His Magnificence, the king?'

‘We are at war with the rabble from the east. All over the city, our magi are sacrificing to the Great Holy One, to Ahura Mazda, creator of every good thing, keeper of the light. What greater sacrifice, dear Kallisto, than a white mare without blemish? Imagine her, clad in her costly caparisons, led to the altar flame by the priests of the king's temple in the palace courtyard! Such a sweet smoke would arise to heaven, don't you think? Surely then the king and his cavalry would win the support of Aruha Mazda, and we would win this war.'

I stumbled against the table, knocking over the bowl from which I'd eaten soup. The thin ceramic, fired to a high temperature, shattered at my feet,
sending fragments flying in every direction. I tried to speak. My voice was lost. I clutched at my throat with both hands, and stared at Arash in stricken silence.

‘You understand, don't you?' he asked at last. ‘You and I, Kallisto, can give the king what he needs most at this moment. We can bring great honour to him, and obtain great blessings from the Supreme Being. Perhaps we can bring victory to the city, and we can find favour. All I need to accomplish this is Swan.'

My throat pulsed beneath my clutching hands. My voice broke free in a shriek. ‘She is not yours to take, or to give!'

‘But she is. She is part of your bride-wealth, listed by name in your marriage contract. So she is mine to take, and mine to give to the Most Revered King so that he might sacrifice her. I will speak to the magi tomorrow and make the arrangements. You do not have to trouble yourself with the details.'

‘She is not yours to take!' I shouted, my voice breaking into sobs. ‘You cannot do this!'

‘But I already have, and when your father returns from the Levant he will give you to me in marriage, and you will have to obey my wishes. In the meantime, Swan is housed in safety until the sacrificial ceremony.' He gave me a mocking smile and continued, ‘You know what your nomad friends say?
If you have two days more to live, take a wife and a horse. If you have only one day left, take a horse.
Who
knows how many days we have left to live in this war? So, I have taken a horse.'

He jumped to his feet as I rushed at him with my fists up and dodged me, shouting for his bodyguards. Although Jaison had taught me to wrestle, and although I could shoot an arrow through a straw man at fifty paces from a galloping horse, I could not fight off three men grabbing my arms from behind. Although I struggled until I thought my blood would explode from my head and my heart burst from my ribcage, I was steered out of the door and lifted on to Grasshopper. She lurched forward, snorting, as men hauled on her reins. At the front gate, someone smacked her across the quarters with a whip. She surged out into the street, already galloping as I fumbled for the reins and braced myself for a downhill plunge under dark trees. The high walls around opulent homes threw the crashing echo of hoof beats back at us, and the face of the half-moon lifted clear of the palace and shone down, pale as a white mare.

At home, it was the slave girl with the blue eyes who took Grasshopper's reins, who led her away into the rustling barley straw to feed her and stroke her into calmness. It was Marjan who guided me upstairs with her hand pressed hard in the small of my back, who kneeled on the rug to yank off my boots and push me on to my bed, throwing the covers over me. All night, while the moon rode the sky, I tossed and moaned, fighting with demons of fear and grief the way my mother fought in the room down the hall.

‘But perhaps this is the Great One's will,' Lila said, sitting on the end of my bed with her brows creased in a worried frown. Her long fingers smoothed the damask coverlet edged with fox fur, and her earrings glinted in the morning light. ‘You know that a horse sacrifice is the most powerful one of all. And that a white horse without blemish is the greatest offering one can make.'

I nodded, my face swollen with crying.

‘The army of the Middle Kingdom is ravaging the valley, laying waste to all the crops. And Ahura Mazda has commanded that we till the land and make it fruitful. It is the forces of Angra, the evil one, that make the land barren. And the evil one has brought the drought to us. All of the horses in this city will die if we don't get water soon. Perhaps you can stop this from happening if you give up Swan.'

I wiped my nose across the back of my hand, smelling the sweat in my tunic sleeve. I tried to think about all the horses milling restlessly within the confines of the city walls, growing thinner, hungrier, thirstier. I tried to visualise all their foals, tugging at dried teats, flapping their fuzzy tails in agitation as their bellies shrank and pinched.

All I could see was Swan's face, her pools of eyes.

A fresh sob broke from me. My throat was raw with crying. Lila moved closer and put her arm around me. ‘Maybe giving up Swan will win you a place with the great angels,' she whispered.

I moaned. ‘I just want – I want Swan free and safe, I want her resting beneath the poplar trees in my mother's pastures. I just –
want her
!'

Lila stroked my tangled hair. The slave girl, bought yesterday from the oil seller, hunched on the red and black rug at the foot of my bed and sneaked glances at me. Perhaps she had slept there all night; I hadn't even noticed her until now.

Something tugged at my mind, like a fish nibbling at bait. I tried and tried to catch that slippery thought but it kept darting away. It was a memory of something that Arash had said last night in the reception hall. Suddenly, it flashed into my mind, hooked, bright and shining.

‘This is not about Swan, or about saving the city!' I exclaimed. ‘This is not about pleasing Ahura Mazda, or about right thinking. This is about Arash's desire for power in the royal court.'

‘
We can find favour
,' he had said in his voice like beads of honey. I knew, suddenly and with firm conviction, that this was what Arash wanted. He didn't care about saving the horses walled in Ershi. He wasn't concerned about appealing to Ahura Mazda, Creator of All, so that the tide of war would turn and sweep the enemy from the valley, or so that Angra's demon of drought would be chased away by Anahita's four grey mares, Wind, Rain, Clouds, Sleet.