The Tiger-Headed Horseman (25 page)

Very occasionally the troops would come across a small herder community. The soldiers had never seen anybody other than Baatarulaan residents and had been told that all others were the evil untrustworthy Outsiders that Khad had once alluded to. They laughed at the gers that differed so much from their own shabby apartments. The herders had darker skin and immediately ignited the hatred that fear only too often instils.
Tengis knew better. Any herder community that they came across had obviously not sworn allegiance to Lily and the rebels, or else it would have joined that shabby rabble and moved on with them. Ever the tyrannical diplomat, Tengis sought out the leader of such groups.

‘You can join us,’ said Tengis to the leaders, ‘or you can become permanently joined to the earth. Your choice.’

‘Why should we join you?’ asked the leaders. ‘You have made our lives even more difficult than they ever needed to be.’

‘Let me put it this way,’ said Tengis, ‘he who drinks dies; he who does not drink dies as well. I honestly don't care either way; it depends whether you want to live a little while longer or not.’

Mostly the herders chose to become soldiers. Each time Tengis departed such a community, regardless of whether he had slain its occupants or recruited them, he insisted on a large bell being pealed to ward off any bad spirits. He was aware that almost all herders believed strongly in the spirit world. Tengis couldn't be bothered even thinking about picking a fight with people he couldn't see, so, as his only concession to the heathens he encountered, he adopted a little local culture to protect his progress.

By the close of the third day Tengis's troops had marched over one hundred miles. Not a great distance for a herder, but a frightening chasm of space for the city dwellers. From his calculations, estimates and secret reconnaissance details Tengis knew he was less than half a day's march from where Lily was reported to be camped. He was also within shouting distance of the source of his secret wealth. It was a good place to establish his barracks. Sounding the bell loud above the Steppe, his general bid his troops to set up camp. Oldortar would love to have seen a regimented uniformity to the camp with a carefully designed matrix pattern running through it. Instead, he had to make do with the sort of camp he had seen built in miniature
by smelly, petrol-drinking ex-corporate financiers who lived beneath the bridges of Baatarulaan. He shook his head in dismay as several not even nearly vertical flagpoles were erected in the centre of the barracks. As the flag of Tengis was raised on each, the wind whipped up and tangled them into a knotted mass halfway up. At that moment Oldortar decided that it was time to retire to his tent. He hoped that Tengis would not notice the mess and thanked the spirits that dusk was quickly falling upon them.

In the middle of the night Tengis silently sneaked out of his tent. Peering into the surrounding gloom, he made sure no one was watching him, muffled his horse's feet with rags, and rode out of camp towards the mountains. Arriving at a gorge he had known once before, he followed the natural passage through the night air. Presently he arrived at a clearing that he recognised led to his private, grotto-based bank. The entrance was as he had left it. Several large boulders blocked the doorway so as to prevent any unwanted visitors, so there was no chance that anyone had passed into his cave this way.

Tengis tied a rope around one of the boulders, its other end to his horse, and lashed the poor beast until it had heaved both of the boulders aside. Tengis stepped into the gloom and, lighting up a torch, was instantly filled with the same excitement that had captivated him the first time he had discovered the cave. The shiny metal substance shone and glimmered all around him, making the torchlight appear to lick the walls with lusty abandon.

Kneeling at the centre of the cave, Tengis closed his eyes and raised his hands towards the roof.

‘Khad!’ murmured Tengis. ‘Khad, if you can hear me, mark my words. I am calling you from the place that defined your soul. I am calling you from the place that will define mine. I offer you my soul in the same way as you have given me yours.
We are united. We are one. As I face my enemies this coming day, help me vanquish them. Assist me as I eradicate any doubt of our might. We will once again rule this kingdom. We will once again be invincible.’

The voice in his head remained silent. It had not spoken to Tengis for some time but he knew that it was planning something. Tengis could also sense from the feeling of confidence that pervaded his body that the voice inside him agreed with his every thought, word and deed. He was as powerful as he believed himself to be. The voice in his head had always told him so.

Once Tengis had completed his ritual, he searched the cave for his planning documents and health and safety manual. Heading towards the wheelbarrow-cum-filing cabinet that he had taken great pride in organising, he saw that its contents had been spilled across the ground. Seething, he crawled among them and brought them together in one pile. Somebody had been there! Somebody had been going through his personal things!

Tengis wracked his brain but could not understand how anybody could have come through the entrance, and he knew there was no other way in. Nevertheless somebody had been here. He thumbed through the documents; they had almost all been read, apart from the less interesting ones. Somebody knew about his connection with Khad – but who? He couldn't understand how anybody could have gained access to his vault. If they had, then they surely had to be still there; he had scoured the vault and knew of no other way in or out. He was sure there were no other passageways or exits. It was impossible he knew but somehow somebody now most definitely was aware of his intentions. Somebody knew that he was planning to take absolute control of Ongolium; that he would willingly use Outsiders to apply force if required.

As he panicked, a realisation came to him. He knew beyond all doubt, ridiculous as it was, that the person who had been here was Lily. She had to die and soon.

23

When Lily opened her eyes she thanked the spirit world that it was daytime. Sunshine shone on her face, warming her ice-cold skin. Had it been night-time she would surely have perished. As she lay half in and half out of the river she wondered why it was that among all the Ongolians it was she who was being chosen for so many adventures. She speculated that perhaps everybody had so many adventures as she was experiencing but simply chose not to talk about them. She worried fleetingly that she was being ungrateful, dour and mournful by bemoaning all that happened – but only fleetingly. No one could claim to have uncovered the source of Khad's evil, discovered the truth about Tsara and found the current resting place of Chinggis Khaan all in the space of one day.

She laughed weakly. It was too much to believe. She began to doubt it was true. Lucky waded over and licked her face. His tongue was warm but his breath still smelled of cabbages. That always brought her back to reality. It also reminded her that he had shared her exploits so far and didn't look like leaving her side anytime soon. She hugged his wide neck lovingly. She might be a simple herder girl but she knew that, without the debts or ill-gotten trappings of Baatarulaan, she was richer than anyone there; and that living without the sociological handicaps that thwarted Baatarulaan's citizens she was infinitely more fortunate than they. She dragged herself out of the water, pulled herself together, lit a fire, pulled a metal canister from her
saddlebag and made herself a nice cup of tea. Nothing made things better than a nice cup of tea. Lucky even forgot all about carrots when he had a bowl of tea with two lumps of sugar. It always worked.

Nightfall was approaching, as it inevitably did, and Lily began to fear for shelter. She had not expected to have been taken elsewhere in the real world after visiting the spirit world. It was a most unusual occurrence and had only ever happened once before when she inadvertently reappeared in the ger next to her own just as her parents were enjoying a particularly intimate moment. Lily had never really recovered from that. Gathering what strength she had, Lily walked to the top of the highest rise near the riverbank.

She had known the Steppe all her life but it was still forbidding to her, a vast and barren place. Peering into the distances of every direction, she dearly hoped that she would find something she recognised. It didn't take long. Three hundred metres downriver she identified a bend in the river that seemed familiar. Ushering Lucky to accompany her, they walked towards it. To her bemusement they found themselves standing at the campsite where they had been before she had last visited her spirit friend who turned out to be Tsara. Arriving at the camp, Lily ensured everything was at it should be, which it was. As she gave her thanks to the spirit world, she noticed that the moon had moved on and was becoming fuller. It wouldn't be long before she had to meet with Danyal and Millie. That inexorably would mean facing Tengis. Given that, the last she had heard, Tengis was awfully keen for Lily to die, seeing him again was not going to be straightforward.

Without spending too much time or energy trying to figure out how it was that they could have possibly rediscovered their camp, Lily bid Lucky goodnight and they both clambered into the especially odd-shaped tent and snuggled up against one
another. As she lay falling asleep, Lily knew that spirits did things for a reason. That everything they did was part of some bigger plan; Tsara must have known Lily would end up back here. Lily knew that Tsara would not have endangered her when she had returned her to the cave – at least she hoped not. What she couldn't understand was how Tsara had managed to move Lucky as well, but then again Lily was only a visitor to the spirit world; perhaps once she was a fully paid-up member these kinds of things would become clearer, although she hoped that day was still a long way off.

Lily awoke the next morning with her face firmly pushed against Lucky's nose. The horse dribbled a lot more from his nostrils than she had previously noticed. Where it had oozed into her hair it was gelled back flat against her head at an interesting and mildly amusing angle. It was a tribute to Lily's spirit that she refused to be perturbed by such an event. Her horse was part of her and she part of it – such was the way of the herder. A good night's sleep had been what she had required. She couldn't remember the last time she had been able to enjoy one. It was certainly not since before her father had been captured and that had been weeks ago.

While it remained extremely cold, the sun shone strongly and she was able to absorb at least a little warmth from its rays. Lily left Lucky sleeping; he was particularly bad in the mornings and even more so if a good dream about carrot fields was disturbed. Having rekindled the fire, she prepared a meagre breakfast of stale bread and mutton. Almost every meal eaten by herders in nomadic camps consisted of mutton, mutton, mutton or mutton, though sometimes as a treat they ate mutton, but only on very special occasions. That morning Lily boiled some mutton scraps along with some dumplings consisting of mutton tail (which was almost entirely fat). Mutton helped herders build up a tolerance against the freezing
temperatures they had to endure on the Steppe. It also removed one of the more problematic predicaments that have plagued mankind since its birth, namely – what to have for dinner.

Sitting next to the fire, Lily looked at the ‘to do’ list she had drawn up with Tsara. It seemed to be getting longer every time that she thought about it. She was sure that wasn't supposed to be the case. Although she had no major new items to add to it, she had discovered many factors that added colour to the old ones. She now knew far more about Tengis and his true intentions. She knew what happened to Chinggis and how Khad had seized power. She knew that she was being helped by at least one other person from a different world, which always made her feel more than a little special. She also knew that she was as yet nowhere nearer to fulfilling her destiny and, although she didn't really know what that was going to entail, she did know that she needed to keep on going. Fear would get her nowhere.

Since she had left Baatarulaan a good deal had happened. Before she started to forget it all, she jotted it down alongside the existing action points. It was still several days before she would be able to speak to Danyal and she had no idea how long it would be before she was able to speak to her herder community. She also hadn't been able to revisit the spirit world and speak to Tsara since she had found Chinggis in the crystal temple. Lily was bursting to speak to somebody but from the middle of the bleak Steppe she knew this was highly improbable. Talking to a horse was all very well but Lily had quickly discovered that it tended to be a largely one-way conversation.

As Lily sat wondering how she would be able to communicate with her allies Lucky joined her by the fire. He neighed knowingly. Lily had never been able to figure out how but her horse seemed to know what it was she was thinking most of the time, especially on the odd occasions when she was mad at him. She
stroked him fondly before returning to her thoughts about making contact with those in Baatarulaan, the herder community and spirit world.

Lucky drifted away. Reaching a slight rise behind the camp, he whinnied noisily to grab Lily's attention.

‘What is it, Lucky?’ asked Lily. She was feeling a little irritated and in no mood to play games. Lucky whinnied again and swished his mane manfully. Just as Lily was a about to scold him she noticed that several other horses were slowly making their way up from the other side of the rise to join Lucky. As Lily watched on, the four horses acknowledged one another by rubbing noses affectionately. Lily was not entirely certain what it was she was seeing, but her instinct began to form an impression. At any other time and under any other circumstances, Lily would have dismissed her thinking out of hand, but given what she had already encountered nothing seemed too far-fetched.

As she watched on, the horses formed an equine parade and side by side walked towards her. Each new horse was unsaddled but had a saddlebag. None of the new horses had any distinguishing features other than their natural beauty and a label sewn on to each saddlebag. As Lily walked from left to right inspecting each of the three new horses, she logged that the labels read: ‘Mr Danyal, Baatarulaan’, ‘Elder Chuluun, Steppe’, ‘Tsara, Spirit World’. She gasped. Lucky looked down at her, a smug grin spreading across his muzzle.