To Ride the Gods’ Own Stallion (2 page)

In the Serpent's Coils

I'm begging you for more time, Jahdunlim. Only some more time.”

Soulai's shoulders tensed at the sound of his father's pleading. Exhausted from the long night, and strangled by guilt, he squatted in the corner of their burned-out home and pretended to study one of his few undamaged horse figurines. He turned it over and over in his hands. The clay body, newly hardened, was still warm from the fire. It seemed almost alive.

“And what would you do with more time?” Jahdunlim snapped, as he stood outside the charred doorframe. He refused to set foot in the remains of their home. Soulai's mother, hurt by this dishonor, pursed her lips. She swept the ashes into random piles, then absently restacked fallen mud bricks. “Time cannot birth new harness,” the trader barked. “Time cannot mold new silver.”

Soulai's father humbly spread his palms. “Only in time can I replace your valuables. I promise I will make you new harness, new reins—”

“There is no time for promises, man,” Jahdunlim interrupted. “This is business. Now. Promises pay no silver.” He cursed and clapped the butt of his stubby whip across his palm. Soulai glanced up. To his surprise, the man's piercing black eyes were appraising him.

Jahdunlim abruptly turned away. “Follow,” he ordered, and Soulai's father obediently trailed the trader away from the wreckage, all the way to the curve in the mountain footpath.

Jahdunlim's horse, tied to a small wild pear tree, nickered, and Soulai shifted his gaze. The skinny gelding was a different one from the last visit. His mane hung dirty and matted, and flies swarmed around his weepy eyes. As unkempt as the horse was, however, the rug and bridle could not have been more handsome. Jahdunlim has an eye for fine things, Soulai thought. He turned back to watch the two men. Their vehement gestures showed that the talking had turned quickly to arguing.

Guilt stabbed him again. Every bit of this is my fault, he grieved, my second disaster in two days. And all because of the clay. Was it worth it?

Unconsciously he stroked the figurine cradled in his hand. It had been one of his favorites: a long-maned stallion, head thrust into the wind, nostrils flared. The fire had forged hairline cracks in the neck and loin, but otherwise the horse had emerged looking the same. Still, it felt different. He rubbed some soot from the haunches and tapped the horse's barrel. It clanked. Carefully he set it in the ashes at the end of a row of rearing and prancing figurines, some now headless, some three-legged.

“Soulai!” his mother whispered at his shoulder. “You stay here. I'm going to get your sisters and the baby. Your uncle, too.” She shot a glance at Jahdunlim, who was at that moment jabbing her husband in the chest. “And you watch that one,” she warned. “Worse than the jackal he is, grabbing every last scrap for himself.” She folded her arms and shivered, then hurried up the path.

The men stopped talking as Soulai's mother passed. The moment she was out of sight, however, Jahdunlim leaned close and shouted, “Choose!”

Soulai saw his father shrink. An uncharacteristic expression distorted his face. Slowly he turned, head down, and walked toward the blackened skeleton of their home and workplace. Jahdunlim skulked in his shadow, eyes fixed upon Soulai. When the men stood before him, he forced his trembling legs to stand. His father had a queer look in his eyes.

“I'm sorry, Soulai,” he said. “There is no other way.” His leathery hands roughly gripped Soulai's wrists. From somewhere Jahdunlim produced a thong that he wrapped around them, pulling the knot so tight that it bit into the skin. Soulai gasped and jerked away. But the thong held snug. Panicked, he glanced from his bound wrists to his father's stony face and then to Jahdunlim's yellow grin. With a sudden chill, he knew the price of his weakness.

“No more than five years,” his father stated, the slight tone of uncertainty multiplying Soulai's fears.

The trader threw back his head and laughed. “Are you saying you don't trust me? The word of Jahdunlim is known from Harran to Babylon. Now, I'm off. I have customers waiting.”

Footsteps sounded and Soulai looked up to see Soulassa sprinting down the path ahead of several villagers. His mother hurried along, the baby clamped to her chest with one arm and his youngest sister balanced on her hip with the other. An aunt, clutching the hand of another sister, bustled alongside his uncle. Tagging behind, exchanging inquisitive looks, came two boys his own age. There were others, he knew, but Soulai's vision suddenly blurred. He managed to swallow the cry that shot to his lips, only to hear it burst from his mother's.

“He comes of free will,” Jahdunlim shouted. He lifted his whip as a weapon and halted everyone except Soulai's mother. She slid her daughter from her hip and, wailing brokenheartedly, rushed to embrace her son. The baby's high-pitched voice joined in.“Why? Why? Why?” she cried, first to the sky, then to her husband.

Scowling, he yanked her free. “It's the only way,” he repeated. “I had to choose one of the children. And he's the one who…” His hasty glance at Soulai revealed his disappointment. Gathering his composure, he straightened. “A man measures his worth in his scars,” he said gruffly. “In five years your son will come back a man.”

At the mention of five years Soulai's mother ceased her crying. She took a wavering step backward and her free hand hovered near the empty O of her mouth. The jaws of his two friends fell open and their eyes met Soulai's. Crushing humiliation made him look away. Standing apart from everyone was Soulassa. Her black eyes darted from her brother to her father, then back again.

The baby's crying rose a pitch and Soulai fought against bursting into tears himself. He ached to feel his mother's arms enfold him. I'm not ready to be a man, he wanted to scream, not yet! I'm just a boy—a smallish, bony-shouldered boy who runs from lions. Can't you all see that?

But Jahdunlim was prodding him toward the path leading from the village. The trader tore free the reins of his gelding. Instead of mounting, however, he used the animal and himself as buffers for their retreat. Soulai glanced over his shoulder. The image he carried with him was of his mother kneeling upon the ground, one trembling hand covering her mouth; of his father, stiff-jawed and silent; and of Soulassa, calmly gathering his horse sculptures into her arms.

It seemed fitting, he thought, that since he had mourned his death last night, he'd have a funeral procession today. His life was over. He wasn't a man; he wasn't even a son. He was merely a thing to be bartered.

Head bowed, he stumbled down the dirt path. The thong cut into his skin with each step, inscribing his father's words:
A man measures his worth in his scars.
That thought brought prickles of sweat to his body. His legs grew shaky, and he slowed his steps for fear that just stubbing a toe might fling him over the mountainside—though actual death, he considered for a grim instant, would be just. Because I should never have been born.

While he had never traveled from the mountains surrounding his village, Soulai knew from his father's stories where this path led. Two more hillocks ahead, and after a big loop to the left, they would come upon a huge stone aqueduct—the width of four men laid end to end—that sucked water from a spring. Like a giant snake it stretched all the way down the mountain, disappearing in the shimmering heat of the flatlands. He'd been told that the stone serpent's body stretched two days' journey on foot to Nineveh, royal seat of the Assyrian kingdom—a city populated with thousands of men…and their slaves. According to his father, it was a city of such cruelty that one misstep could leave you impaled, still breathing, eyes bulging, upon the city gates. His heart pounded against his thin chest as he struggled for breath. His sight blurred again and this time he let the tears come. This had to be an awful dream. Sick to his stomach and swaying on his feet, Soulai halted, trying to shake away the horrible images. A sharp pain stabbed his buttocks as Jahdunlim swatted his whip handle across them once, then twice. “Move along,” the man growled. Soulai's vision cleared. Sweat continued trickling down his wrists, burning salt into his chafing wounds, and he knew he would not awaken from this nightmare.

One of Many

The underworld. The shadowy realm of the dead. This has to be it, Soulai thought as he shifted uncomfortably upon his mat. “This has to be the underworld,” he murmured.

“Welcome to it,” came a drowsy voice from the other side of the room. “Will you keep to silence?” came another. Soulai flushed. He had thought them all asleep. Now, as a cockroach grabbled its way across the low ceiling of the cramped room, he was grateful for the early morning darkness.

Tired as he was, he'd once again barely slept. Only a few weeks of slavery had passed, and the five years of bondage still looming in front of him weighed on him. Miserably he poked with his foot at a flake of plaster until it fell away with a faint tinkling sound. Sticking his toe into the hollow, he sensed a slight bit of moisture. It reminded him of his clay. How long it seemed since he'd cradled a damp ball of the stuff in his hands and anticipated its possibilities. No possibilities existed now: The mud and clay that surrounded him were dried up and crumbling.

Like I am, he thought, as his fingers touched the small tag attached to the choking thong around his neck. It had replaced his precious copper coin, which Jahdunlim had snatched back as “owed to him.” Wedge-shaped symbols had been scratched, then baked, into the clay surface of the tag. He couldn't read the marks, but he'd been told that they spoke his own name, as well as that of one of King Ashurbanipal's sons—Habasle, a man he had yet to meet, a man who now, oddly enough, owned him.

For the hundredth agonizing time, Soulai recalled how Jahdunlim had marched him two long and dusty days toward Nineveh where, on the third day, in a bustling marketplace crowded with oxen, goats, donkeys, and hinnies, he'd traded him and some sheep for a few pieces of silver. Led away to the palace by a stranger, Soulai had been shoved into a line of other men and boys. He'd been touched and poked. His tongue had been yanked nearly out of his mouth, his hair chopped off above his ears. And then he'd been branded. Never in his life had he known such searing pain.

The star-shaped wound on his left shoulder burned afresh at the memory, and he winced as the scabbed outline caught on the hairs of the palace's itchy wool tunic. Between the sores on his wrists and the one on his back, he was collecting scars, all right. Am I a man yet? he wanted to cry out to his father.

“It's too hard,” he groaned instead.

An annoyed sigh preceded the rise of one of the room's occupants. The boy, or man—it was hard to tell—swung to a sitting position and carefully lit the smoky oil lamp that served as their only amenity. Lifting it high, he leveled an impassive gaze at Soulai. An ugly, pinkish scar stretched from his hairline across an empty eye socket and past his cheekbone. “Whining won't help.”

“I wasn't whining,” Soulai retorted, knowing he lied. He climbed to his feet, barely able to straighten in the little room. Although sunshine had yet to poke beneath the flimsy wooden door, he could already hear hundreds of sandaled feet marching across dusty tiles. Another day's labor as a slave was dawning.

“It's just that…that…”—he was struggling for words, sounding dangerously childish—“…five years of my life seems—”

“Your life?” the lamp holder interrupted. “Your life matters not a lick. In fact, you don't even exist.” He snorted in disdain. “Look around you, boy. You're one of us now—no more than a shadow, no more important than dust.”

The grim fortune, told so bluntly, stunned Soulai into silence. He felt as if hands were tightening around his throat. Rushing for the door, he shoved it open and ran out.

But the dark morning offered little relief; the air already hung heavy with the threat of coming heat, and red-mouthed hearths belched as much smoke as bread. He bit his lip. Ducking between a parade of platters piled high with oily dates and rosy pomegranates, he stared with renewed horror at the snaking line of placid-faced servants. One after another they came, as silent and lifeless as shadows. His fists tightened. No! He couldn't be so easily harnessed. But in his next step, one of the rigid sandals he'd been forced to strap onto his feet caught in a crack and he tumbled headlong onto the courtyard tiles. Climbing to his knees, he found himself staring into one of a dozen reed birdcages stacked beneath an alabaster colonnade. A broken-feathered creature that had once shimmered with the colors of the rainbow lay on its side, beak slightly agape, dead.

Soulai felt his own mouth fall open, felt the same struggle for breath. Panic was beginning to take a strong hold on him when the hungry whinnies of horses broke the morning air. Ti would be waiting, he thought. The one unquenchable flame in this gray world. For Ti, he could hurry.

Rising, he ran across the small courtyard, dashed down another flight of stairs, and sank into the musky aroma of the royal stables. Lanterns lined the brick walls, dispersing their yellow glow up to the thatched roof. The lights were reflected in the dark eyes of a thousand restless horses tethered side by side in long rows. Other stableboys like Soulai were arriving, picking up the rush-woven baskets stacked beside the doorway and sleepily heading off to the grain master to receive their allotment.

Ten of the royal horses—three geldings, two colts, and five stallions—were assigned to Soulai's care. In all his life, he'd never seen animals as beautiful as these. His fingers trembled just to touch them. With their chiseled heads and large, liquid eyes, these creatures were as different from the mounts that had passed through his village as peacocks were from pigeons.

They were looking for him now, “his” horses were, heads straining against their tethers. A shiver of awe, mixed with a little fear, ran the length of his body as he approached them. Half-hiding the full basket beneath his arm, he slipped in beside the first colt, a chestnut, and cupped a hand beneath the bony jowl. The colt dove for the grain, but Soulai used his own head to block the way. He guided the horse's muzzle to his face until nostril touched nostril. Slowly he exhaled his greeting. The animal responded by standing stone still and taking in the scent. Then his wide nostrils fluttered as he blew back a greeting of his own. The magic lasted only an instant. In the next breath the horse tossed his head and nickered impatiently for his grain. Soulai scooped two handfuls into the stone trough that ran the length of the stable and grinned as the soft muzzle tore into it. As he walked around the chestnut to the next horse, he carefully ran his eye over the animal's body, checking for any cuts or swellings that could mar perfection.

In this manner he worked his way from one horse to the next, petting, feeding, appraising. His heart began to beat faster as he fed the seventh and eighth horses. But he forced himself to take smaller and slower steps. He fed the ninth, taking the time to tentatively rub the broad forehead and watch the grain dribble through his fingers into the trough. Only then did Soulai lift his eyes.

His throat caught. The tenth horse, a young stallion named Ti, was staring at him. Staring right through him, really, as though he didn't exist. But, as always, Soulai was mesmerized. The horse embodied everything he had ever tried to mold from clay: flightiness blended with fieriness, graceful beauty disguising explosive power. When Ti swelled his neck and shook his mane and split the air with his defiant whistle, Soulai was filled with such awe that in that moment he could almost forget his own slavery.

Ti. The name was Sumerian, meaning
arrow
or
life
. He, too, was new to the stable, having just been purchased from the famed horse breeders of Lake Urmia. Three years of age, Soulai had been told, and, while the stallion accepted a rider on his back, he had yet to learn to pull a chariot or to stand quietly while the arrow was let loose—though he could certainly gallop as swiftly as the arrow's flight. Soulai remembered with a grimace how on his first day at the palace, on the way to the drinking trough in the crowded stable courtyard, Ti had pulled the lead rope from his inexperienced hands. To Soulai's churning mix of embarrassment and admiration, Ti had careered around and around the walled enclosure, diabolically evading all outthrust arms. The excited horse had even challenged an older stallion, and a stouter one at that, by rearing up and striking at him with his hooves. When Soulai had finally managed to snatch the dangling lead, Ti had halted immediately. Then Ti had trumpeted his triumph to the hills. No one would question
his
bravery!

A nearby lamp cast flickering light across Ti's croup as Soulai moved alongside him. Even dimmed by the stable's smoky atmosphere, his sleek coat shone. Soulai ran his hand along the taut flank, the muscled shoulder and back, remembering with a smile how Ti had attracted all eyes on that first day. Splashed with large patches of both silver and gold, the stallion fairly shouted the promise of good fortune to anyone skilled enough to ride him. His silky mane and tail waved in a fitful breeze; his nostrils flared so wide as to show crimson in the light. But it was the horse's eyes that enchanted: one a milky blue that echoed the sky's endless depths, the other a gleaming yellow that challenged the sun's radiance.

The head charioteer to King Ashurbanipal had strode across the yard and chastised Soulai after he'd regained the lead rope. “You'll be duly warned to keep two eyes and two hands on the lead to this one,” he had scolded. “Do you know?”

“Know?”

“What you have here?”

Intimidated by both the man and the horse, he'd shaken his head.

“A parti-color,” the man snapped, and Soulai felt as ignorant as a small child. “A parti-color stallion fed on the grasses of Lake Urmia. And this bit of braided leather is all that's harnessing his power.”

Soulai nodded uncertainly.

The charioteer cast an exasperated look heavenward, then continued in a clipped tone. “Parti-color horses—especially those with odd eyes”—he was grasping the halter with both hands now and studying Ti's face—“are prized for their rarity and their bravery. You'll find no horse more ready for the hunt, boy. With some training, not even the roar of a lion will frighten one such as this.” He placed his hands behind Ti's withers and leaned his weight on them. “Well-knit,” he said, nodding. Then he slid an expert hand along Ti's shoulder and down his near foreleg. “Clean bones, sloping pastern.” He traced his hand lightly up the leg and, stepping back, whistled in surprise. “Look here!” His fingers reverently outlined a large white patch upon Ti's shoulder. “It's a bird of some sort…a hawk, I think. Why, Ninurta, god of the hunt himself, has branded this colt with his own image.” The man let out another low whistle and shook his head in admiration. The look changed to worry when it returned to Soulai. “You take care of this one, boy,” he admonished, clapping Soulai sharply on the back. “The gods have important plans for him.”

The memory of the charioteer's magical words had lulled Soulai into a trance. It took the sharp crack of Ti's hoof striking the stone trough to jolt him back to his chores. The stallion's ears were pinned back and he was tossing his head with growing anger. Soulai quickly scooped out two handfuls of grain and then added a third that he'd managed to skim from the rations of the other horses. He didn't dare push his nose-to-nose greeting on Ti. He had tried only once and been punished with a stinging, bare-toothed snap. Gingerly he touched the bruises on his cheekbone and longed more strongly than ever to befriend this stallion.

Ti continued to ignore him, however. So while the horse ate, Soulai skimmed his fingers along the sleek hide and down the left shoulder. Slowly he traced the image of the bird with outstretched wings. He could almost smell the crisp mountain air, could almost feel the hawk's wild freedom. A shiver of excitement rippled through him. The gods had plans for Ti. Maybe if I bind myself to him, he thought, an animal so brave that he can't be frightened even by a lion, maybe I can share his fate. That was it! Astride a stallion such as Ti, he'd escape this underworld; he'd find some way to prove that it was better he
had
been born.