Read Online The Horse Road by Troon Harrison - Free Book Online Page A

only a normal heat running below the surface of his thin skin, his silky golden dapples. At least
he
was beginning to heal, I thought, although the flesh was puffy with invisible bruises closer to the wounds. What did it mean? I wondered. Was the leopard attack a bad omen; had some powerful shaman sent it to strike my mother? Or had the evil Angra sent a deva, a dark angel, to rend my mother’s spirit from her body?
    â€˜Look!’ Batu said suddenly; the excitement in his tone jolted me from my worried thoughts and I lifted my head. Gryphon’s neck tightened as he became instantly alert, and his eyes, huge and dark as an antelope’s, strained to take in the view.
    Before us, the ground dropped away in a final slope and the Golden Valley of Ferghana spread like a lake, calm and broad and flat, stretching far to the north and west, filled with white heat and sky light, a patchwork of fields threaded with the glitter of irrigation canals, softened with the shadows of ash and elm trees. Reining in, I stared at it with delight and relief. There was no end to the valley within sight; it uncurled to the far horizons, hazy and blue. I knew, from my father and other traders, that mountains walled it in: the Chatkal ranges were massed to our north; the Kuramin lay far to our west. Briefly I thought of my brothers with a pang of envy for they had travelled westwards beyond those mountains, towade at last in the Mediterranean’s blue waters, and bring me coral beads and stories of places I might never see.
    I stilled Gryphon as he fidgeted beneath me, his tail whisking across my thigh as though to remind me of his mares waiting in the valley below. Of Swan, with whom he had sired two beautiful foals that my mother and I were training.
    â€˜We will be home before dusk!’ I cried to Batu.
    A quiver ran through Gryphon’s muscles for he was a horse who could find his way home over many miles. In the autumn of his third year, he had strayed from our pastures and driven a small band of mares up into the foothills. My mother’s men had spent days tracking them and searching for them. At last, on a night of fine, stinging snow blowing on a north wind, when the land lay bleak and white and the wolves ran in the forest, Gryphon had driven his mares home into the stable yard and trumpeted at the door, demanding grain and warm shelter.
    Now, on this ridge above the valley, Gryphon recognised the smell of alfalfa fields growing lush in the summer heat, the smell of flowers on the grapevines, the dust and fresh water smells of home. He bunched beneath me, fighting the bit, jostling against Rain. When the gelding didn’t move, Gryphon swung his head in impatience, nipping Rain’s glossy neck and leaving a trail of wet, ruffled hair but no break in the flesh. I kicked Gryphon sideways, and circled himbetween Rain and the wagon, making him pay attention to my leg commands.
    â€˜Ride on!’ my mother cried. Grasshopper broke into a jog trot and, surprisingly, my mother let her go, bouncing weakly down that long track into the valley. Rain and Gryphon trotted too, and I heard the wagon groaning behind us, and the clatter of the servants’ horses.
    â€˜Look at the road!’ Batu shouted as we descended, and I shielded my eyes and squinted through the shimmering air. I knew where to look for the road that ran across the plain, curling southwards from the city and dividing into tracks that led to villages and farms, and running on to the high mountain passes that disgorged weary travellers at last into India. Now the road’s surface seethed and crawled as though covered by a torrent of ants. Clouds of dust boiled from it, for our spring had been exceptionally dry.
    â€˜Everyone is fleeing,’ I muttered, and urged Gryphon on down the track, in spite of his wounds.
    We broke into a canter when we reached the level floor of the valley, but even above the drum of our hoof beats I could hear the din