Eternal Sky 01(47)

She soothed herself, and in so doing, soothed the mare. The gray lipped her palm, let her smooth it along her cheek and down the high lean curve of her neck. Compared to the mountain ponies Samarkar knew so well, the steppe horses were almost naked of mane—but under the dust, the gray’s coat glistered in the sun. “May I ride?” she asked.

The mare turned to observe as Samarkar walked down her side, maintaining contact, but did not object. Samarkar leaned lightly across a saddle so high to front and back it seemed you would have to work to fall out of it, and the mare did not step away. At least she wasn’t tall, even if her saddle was.

Samarkar reached under her head to unhook the lead line, lowered the stirrups to where she could use them, and swung up into the saddle as lightly as possible. The mare was well trained; once Samarkar’s weight hit the stirrup, she stood like a wall.

Samarkar found the other stirrup, lifted the reins, and sent the mare forward. The sway of a good horse under her was no different, and the ridiculous saddle made it easier to reach out and take the bay’s reins as she went past. Not that she seemed to need to do so; the bay dropped in willingly on her right as soon as the gray came up even with her. Once they were walking—not fast, but every step taking them farther from the cursed, eerie silence that was Qeshqer—she fought the urge to glance over her shoulder constantly to see what might be coming up behind. She was superstitiously certain that whatever it was, as soon as she looked it would spring the ambush.

“Safe,” Temur said, lifting his chin and opening glass-bright eyes. He turned to her, his hands flexing feebly on the saddle. He stretched a hand back toward the empty city. “They don’t come until morning. I have to … have to go there. Please. Edene…”

Samarkar didn’t know who they were. But she was afraid the dead city at her back held the answer, and whatever the sick man wanted would have to wait until she could afford to have it answered.

* * *



All the long walk back up the road, Samarkar could see Tsering standing taut in the shade of a tall pine, one hand laid on the trunk as if for support. If their positions had been reversed, Samarkar knew she would have been leaning forward, breathless, as if she could urge the exhausted ponies faster with the rocking motion of her shoulders. Instead, they toiled up the hill at a snail’s pace, and Samarkar kept her eyes fixed on Tsering.

She didn’t know why she was so superstitiously convinced that the danger lay in the valley and safety on the ridge. Maybe it was the quiet of the unattended fields blowing softly in a low wind, the tender young vegetables curling in from lack of water, or the silence of the city at her back. But she could not shake the sense of malevolent eyes watching, and every creak of stirrup leather went through her like a blade of ice. The irons bit into her bare feet; the reins grew damp in her hand.

Finally, at the top of the ridge, she let herself relax and turn back over her shoulder. Nothing but the peaceful valley lay below, the mountains at its back.

Leaving the mules, Tsering hurried over. She showed the gray her hands and held her reins while Samarkar slid down, the saddle bumping across her belly. It took both of them to ease Temur down, especially as in his delirium he tended to cling to the saddle and fight them. At least he didn’t draw his knife again, and eventually they managed to make him comfortable on the grass of the roadside.

“We’ll have to rig a pony drag,” Tsering said, while Samarkar slipped the mares’ bits so they could crop the grass more comfortably. They didn’t want to wait for her ministrations; Qeshqer was on the wet side of the mountain range, and Samarkar imagined that they’d had no fresh food in days. As soon as she had their mouths freed, they fell on the grass more like wolves than ponies.

Samarkar nodded. It was obvious Temur had ridden as far as he could. “The man’s name is Temur, I think. These horses need water.”

Silently, Tsering pulled the folding bucket from the mule pack and crouched over it with a water skin. It would take most of what they carried to water the mares once, and it was obvious from the stamping that the mules were envious. Samarkar could make more, though it would take time—and there was water in the valley below, if they dared it. And water back the way they had come.

Samarkar wanted to pull the gear from the two mares and check them for galls, but she didn’t dare. If they had to move quickly …

Well, at least they seemed sound. She checked their feet and ankles for heat or swelling and found nothing. Neither one could be bothered to lift her head from her meal.

“We’ll rig the drag,” she said. “In case you have to run.”