Temüjin nodded, and marked time for a moment like a horse in a dressage competition. Taras barked.
“You too, huh?”
Kalinka pushed hard, but the door did not move. She smacked it with frustration; the door didn’t sound as if it was very thick, but moving it was beyond her.
“It’s no good,” she said finally. “I can’t shift it. Not that I really expected I could. This door looks like it’s been here for thousands of years. I mean, well done for finding it, but I really don’t see that we’ve achieved anything.”
Temüjin sighed with frustration and turned away from the door with what Kalinka thought looked like disgust. The next second, he lashed out at the door with his powerful hind legs.
Thinking she was witnessing an outburst of equine temper, Kalinka walked quickly up the slope and out of the way. Taras yelped and followed with his tail between his long legs. Both of them still remembered the savage kick Temüjin had delivered to the wolf; the poor animal must have flown six or seven meters through the air.
“Hey, take it easy, Temüjin. There’s no need to get angry about this.”
But Temüjin wasn’t angry. He was only doing what clearly needed to be done—he was kicking in the door. Börte turned and helped him with her own back hooves, and within a matter of a few minutes, the two Przewalski’s horses had reduced the ancient door to matchwood.
Temüjin breathed a sigh of relief as the girl stepped inside, struck a match and put the tiny flame to a small stone censer that was mounted on the wall behind the demolished door; finally it seemed she was good for something after all: fire and light.
A strong smell of burning animal fat filled the air, and the entrance lit up to reveal a wide, curving passage that was a continuation of the spiral design they had seen on the ground outside.
Kalinka lifted the censer off a hook on the wall and led the way down into the shadows. Her teeth were chattering, but not just with cold—she was afraid. There was something about the place that reminded her of the crypt in Nikopol, where she had spent a very disagreeable week.
“I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t frozen to the marrow,” she admitted. “I don’t think I could ever be an archaeologist and go inside some dead pharaoh’s pyramid.”
After several minutes, the passage opened up to reveal a much larger space. Kalinka found another censer and lit it, and then another, and before long, she saw that they were in an ancient burial chamber. The high, vaulted ceiling was covered with paintings—cave paintings of horses and a young woman wearing long robes, who appeared to wield power over them and some kneeling tribesmen. On the floor was a sword. Kalinka picked it up and looked at the old weapon in the flickering lamplight and scraped the edge with her thumb: the blade was still very sharp.
“It’s made of bronze,” she said. “I don’t know how old that makes this place exactly, but from the look of those people painted on the ceiling, I’ll bet we’re the first people in here in at least two or three thousand years.”
Temüjin and Börte were sniffing at the skeletons of many dead animals that lay in a huge circle on the stone floor. The skeletons were dressed in ancient harnesses and armor, and it took Kalinka a moment or two to see that these were all skeletons of ancient horses, and that most of the skeletons showed signs of having met violent deaths.
“I’m beginning to understand how you found this place,” she said to Temüjin. “You could smell them, couldn’t you? And no wonder—there must be at least fifty dead horses in here. Perhaps more.” She glanced at the sword. “And I’ll bet this is the sword that they were killed with.”
Out of respect for Temüjin and Börte, she put the sword down—just in case it made them feel nervous.
“But why? Why would anyone kill all these horses and bury them?”
The answer to her question was soon revealed, for in the center of this circle of horse skeletons, holding a bronze spear and wearing a helmet and breastplate, was the mummified corpse of a girl not much older than Kalinka herself. Kalinka guessed she was probably the same girl depicted on the ceiling painting.
“A warrior princess. That’s what she must have been. Or perhaps a priestess. That would certainly explain why those tribesmen are kneeling in front of her in the pictures on the ceiling. I guess they must have slaughtered all of these poor horses when she died: so that they could serve her in the next life. The same way they used to bury a pharaoh with all his possessions.”
Feeling sorry for her, Kalinka laid a kind hand on the mummified girl’s breastplate.