The Horse Road Read Online Free PDF

ragged, her boots worn flat from walking when she should have been mounted. A boy of about two pressed against her side and he was you, Batu. She begged for work, although to work in town is as bad as slavery for a nomad. Losing their freedom to roam is like losing their spirit; it was only her body begging at my gate. Her spirit was running with her lost herds; I knew this suffering well. Her husband, and her family’s flocks and herds, had died in a bitter drought the previous year, and the people had come to Ershi searching for work.
    â€˜So I took her in to my household and she helped take care of my farm. And later, after my daughter was born, this nomad woman, Berta, and I began to teach each other everything we knew about horses. We lived in the pastures of my farm, and in the stables. We lived for the feel of rope, for the touch of a muzzle, for the moment when a horse trusts you and lets you fly with it. And that was how your father, Kallisto, and your mother, Batu, and I all found a way to cajole our souls back into our bodies despite the suffering. It was how we found both our freedom and the thongs binding us to each other’s tethering posts.’
    â€˜Then what happened?’ Batu asked; perhaps, like me, he enjoyed the sound of my mother’s husky voice rising and falling against the river’s murmur.
    â€˜Then your mother went to a festival and met a white bone chief, a nobleman nomad with huge herds of sheep and horses, and with fine brother warriors to ride beside him, and with an alliance with the king of Ershi. And that chief married your mother, and took her back to his yurt along with little Batu, whom he adopted as his own. But Berta and I, before she left, swore an oath that we would always be each other’s companions in war or peace, in drought or richness. And in all those years since, she has always brought me her cheese, wool, gold and felt in exchange for horses. So we have helped to keep each other from the years of hunger, and we have raised children that speak the same tongue. This is a good thing to remember on the eve of war: how freedom and loyalty, though opposites, can keep your spirit in your body.’
    Now my mother’s keen gaze focused suddenly on Batu; I saw his shoulders straighten. I tilted my chin as her eyes swept my face; sometimes, I wondered what my mother saw when she looked at me. My father, when he was briefly at home between trading trips, merchant business, dinner parties, the gymnasium, or the bath house, called me his sweet peach, his plump dove. He stroked my springing black curls, hugged me to his great belly that often quivered with laughter; he told me horse stories that he’d collected from all over the world. He fed me sugared almonds, dates stuffed with apricots and honey; he brought me necklaces and Parthian gowns that I seldom wore,preferring to dress in riding tunic and trousers as my mother always did. Things were easy with my father, although I sometimes felt that he had no idea who I really was.
    But with my mother, who could say? Did she wish I was taller like her, faster at jumping on to a moving horse, stronger in the leg when galloping bareback between poles stuck into the ground, more accurate when shooting arrows at targets, twisted backwards from the waist? Did she wish I had her regal bearing, the golden hair of her tribe, instead of being my father’s plump Greek partridge? Did she wish I could speak clear, calm words suitable to any occasion, instead of being tongue-tied and blushing in marketplaces and by city pools?
    I bit the inside of my lip and steeled myself to meet her level gaze without flinching. Her voice took me by surprise: soft, soothing, the voice she used for agitated horses. ‘Kallisto, times are always uncertain, but there is nothing uncertain about the troubles of war. In war, choose your friends wisely, keep fast to your loyalties, find the ones who will support you through suffering. And