The Young Black Stallion (6 page)

The falcon played easily on the air currents that swirled around the jagged peaks. Her long, dark, pointed wings swept the sky in quick yet graceful arcs while she scanned the rugged terrain below for signs of movement. She was at home here in the cold winds of the upper air.

Like all birds of prey, she lived by the law of wing and talon, a finely tuned hunting machine perfectly adapted to her sky-bound world. She was a peregrine falcon, born and bred in distant Persia. Unlike most falcons, her home was not a nest on a mountain peak but the tent of her master, the noble Abu Já Kub ben Ishak. The desert chieftain would dine with her sitting on his left wrist and sleep with her perched beside his head.

From her lofty vantage point the gray mountains and blue valleys were fully exposed to the falcon. Nothing that moved below could escape her attention. She drifted easily with the winds, patiently watching the land-bound world pass by below her.

Clouds formed, dissolved and re-formed all around her, allowing only fleeting glimpses of the shadowy gorges that fell away below. She twisted and danced through the blue sky, her wing strokes coming in rapid bursts that were punctuated by short periods of soaring. Her keen eyes, several times more powerful than man’s own, spied something moving on a trail that wound up a ridge on a distant mountainside.

Widening the arc of her flight, the falcon drifted with the wind to get a better look. Banking off the wall of wind, she folded her wings slightly and descended. Her curved, blue-black bill opened and she cried out a greeting to the solitary traveler as she circled low overhead.

Down on the ground the black colt slowly and carefully negotiated the steep, rocky path as it wound upward, ever upward into the sky. His hoofbeats rose and fell in broken rhythm along the sun-beaten trail. The falcon’s shrill cry startled him. He stopped in his tracks, pricked up his ears. For a moment he turned his gaze skyward, and then plunged forward again.

It had been three days and nights since Shêtân left the valley. He must go higher, away from those who would do him harm. The wind began to carry an inviting message, and the colt quickened his pace.

At last the path he was following led to a canyon, shut in on three sides by sheer, towering cliffs. On the far side of the blind canyon, water welled up through the hard ground and collected in a pool. This was what the colt had scented from far away. He reached the gurgling pool, lowered his head and drank deeply from it.

When he finally pulled his long nose out of the water, he began looking for grazing, but small thickets of
dry grass and ferns were all he could find to eat. Returning to the spring, the colt walked forward, keeping his head low. He stamped his sore hooves in the icy water that bubbled up from the heart of the mountain. Then, carefully lowering his large body, the colt swung over onto his back. He twisted from side to side, kicking his free legs in the air and grunting with pleasure as he drove his back into the cool mud. Pausing, he lay still, then scrambled to his feet and shook himself. Water flew from him in a misty spray. He snorted, tossing his head. Then he rolled in the dirt and rested in the hot sun.

He dozed there, but it seemed a part of him could never sleep. Something moved behind him and the colt jumped up, nostrils flared, ears cocked back and muscles tightened. A line of silent shadows was coming down the footpath that wound along the far side of the canyon. A small herd of wild mountain goats were making a bumpy descent toward him. One after the other these ibex picked their way along the narrow path crisscrossing the vertical canyon wall. They were stocky animals, with brown, black or white coats. A dense mane covered them from the neck to the withers and they had thick, strong legs. Their spiraling horns were slightly bent back and ended right above their large, coal-black eyes. The herd emerged onto the canyon floor and were well on their way to the pool before they paid any attention to the black colt.

Shêtân’s eyes followed them, his forelegs stiff, neck and body arched. He sniffed the wind for signs of danger. The lead ibex, a large white she-goat, began whistling an alarm to the others. They stopped to wait and see what the black stranger would do next.

The colt knew no better what to make of the ibex than they did of him. He tossed his head back and forth. It was not a threatening gesture, so their leader crossed the canyon floor to the spring and began to drink. The rest of the herd followed. The ibex moved awkwardly across the flat land. They seemed almost uncomfortable on level ground.

When Shêtân moved closer to them, they merely returned to the other side of the canyon, as if to wait for the big spindly-legged beast to take his turn drinking from the pool and then be on his way. As the hot sun beat down on them, the ibex sought out the shade provided by a rock ledge and rested, while their leader kept a wary eye on Shêtân.

As the colt ventured still closer, the ibex queen responded by arching her back. The hair on her croup and hindquarters stood erect. She lowered her head and pretended to return to her grazing, all the while watching the stranger move nearer.

The colt had never seen creatures like these before. He recognized the threatening signals but could not restrain his curiosity. When he came too close, the ibex sprang up at the big black colt, rattling her horns in his face for presuming to be so familiar.

Shêtân backed up and pawed the ground. The colt and the ibex were trying to read in each other’s eyes what was about to happen next. The rest of the herd anticipated the warning cry of their guardian and dashed up the path by which they had come. The ibex stood her ground until the entire herd was well on its way up the steep slope of the canyon. Then she nonchalantly turned her back on the colt and walked unhurriedly
after them. When she reached the base of the slope, she shot straight up the path like an arrow to join the rest of the herd.

The colt snorted as they passed over the crest of the ridge and disappeared into the highlands above him. When he found himself alone again, he whinnied loudly. It was not the whistle of a war-horse, nor an angry challenge. It was almost a lonesome sound.

A shadow passed overhead. The shrill cry of the falcon pierced the sky again. She dipped her wings and circled one last time before leaning heavily into the updraft and sailing higher above the rim of the canyon and out of sight.

In the days to come the hunter falcon regularly patrolled the mountain sky, silently threading her way between closely spaced peaks and then swooping down through wind-funneling passes. The breezes bent cleanly around her sensitive wings. She knew well the drafts and wind currents of the upper altitudes and used them to her best advantage, much as a sailor uses the ebb and flow of the tides.

Totally devoted to her master, she was unlike any other falcon. Sometimes she would even track his prey for him during the nights of the full moon. She lived at Abu Ishak’s camp, but her days were spent hunting for game and floating among the clouds, a silent witness to a thousand dramas played out on the mountain slopes. Her shadow flitted over the rugged terrain below. Time and again she circled above the blind canyon where the ibex came to drink and where the wild young stallion had taken refuge.

In the afternoons, after drinking, the shaggy ibex
wound their way along the steep trail leading up the canyon wall. They deftly negotiated the path, and Shêtân watched them, seeming to note each hoof hold, every niche, every curve, as if to memorize when and where to step. Soon it was Shêtân’s turn to try.

On his first attempt, the colt was halfway up the wall when the trail crumbled beneath his weight and he slid down the embankment. To keep from falling as he dropped, Shêtân sat down on his hindquarters and braced his forelegs until he came to a stop in a cloud of dust.

Two more times he tried climbing the slope, and twice more he came sliding and tumbling down. But a fire of determination burned in his black eyes, and he began picking his way up the path once again. He pressed himself flat against the contours of the wall, cautiously testing the rock and gravel before him as he crept along.

His breath came in snorts. His body was tense, his muscles shook and swelled. Inch by inch he edged along the wall, following the sharply angled turns of the path. When the trail widened, he would pause to regain his balance and then press on, teetering back and forth atop jutting rocks and slender ledges.

At last he scaled the final lip that marked the wall’s summit. Surrounding spires of mountaintops rose up sharply around him. They settled into a long, sloping plateau that climbed slowly into a sawtooth maze of peaks and valleys that framed the distant sky.

In triumph over having scaled the wall and reached the higher ground, the colt jerked back his head and reared up on his hind legs, pawing the air and
screaming above the wind. His coat was alive with static electricity. He shook his lanky black frame to discharge it.

The herd of ibex grazed nearby on the patches of brown grass that dotted the sloping landscape. The colt loped in that direction but didn’t join them, content to keep a respectful distance from the herd. As the days went by, however, this distance diminished. He moved with them as they wandered over the slopes and ridges to different grazing grounds. When there was little grass to be found, he learned to eat the moss and lichens that grew on the rocks, just as the ibex did.

In time he was crossing terrain that was far more treacherous and forbidding than the wall that had reared above him in the canyon. He ran with the goats, living as they did, becoming one of them, looking as wild and untamed as they, at ease in the vertical spaces of the high country. For Shêtân, like the ibex, the freedom from disturbance on the mountaintops was more important than the better grazing below.

Soon the colt knew well the goat paths for many miles around and the best places to graze. He wandered the mountains, eating when hungry and sleeping when tired. As the spring days became longer and warmer the colt grew bigger. His muscles developed and became well defined. There seemed to be nothing lacking in his conformation, no sign of weakness. The tender-hoofed yearling who had lived in the green valley no longer existed.

Even though he had been accepted by the ibex herd, Shêtân still remained aloof. During the half-light of dawn, when the morning star began to rise above the
horizon, he would stand alone on some high cliff, his dark body outlined against the blue sky. The wind filled his nostrils, singing to him of other lands, other worlds.

On one such early morning, as Shêtân stood atop a precipitous cliff, a streak of light blazed through the clear mountain sky for a moment and then was gone. The young stallion reared up and pawed the air with his forelegs. He looked as if he wanted to climb higher into the sky, to leap up and cross the bridge that would take him beyond the stars. He whistled a sharp blast. Then, echoing across the canyon, a bellowing cry answered him. The black colt pricked up his ears. He heard the cry again. It was a hostile sound, a challenge to any and all who heard it.

A white ibex ram, twice the size of any other goat in the herd, stood alone on a rocky crag not more than a hundred feet away. The long, crooked spirals of his broad, tapering horns were chipped and marked from heavy fighting. They raked up from his proud head while a matted beard hung down stiffly from his chin.

Below them the herd of ibex clustered together on the plain. The other goats began bucking and grunting as they watched the stallion and the ram face off and challenge each other. On their high promontories, the two males were perched where one would expect to find birds of prey rather than creatures with four legs and no wings.

The ram charged down from his lookout and joined the other goats. The submissive younger rams stretched out their necks, lowered themselves to the ground and backed away from the path of the threatening
ibex, who let it be known to all that he was king of the herd.

As Shêtân moved closer, the aggressive ram separated from the others and began to circle the colt. He shook his saber-sharp horns, legs stiff, hair erect. In response the colt lashed his tail and flattened his ears back on his head. He raised his foreleg as a warning to the ibex, who inched closer and closer. The ram charged.

Shêtân did not try to meet head-on the horns that came hurtling toward him. Instead he broke away to sidestep the low pass. Then he leapt upon the ram’s broad back in an attempt to knock the ibex to the ground. But his enemy would not go down and shook himself free. The stallion stumbled. Before he could regain his balance, the ram’s horned head gashed his right foreleg. Shêtân screamed with pain. He whirled to strike back with his hind legs. His hooves landed a direct hit and the ibex was sent tumbling.

Forefeet trampled the ground as they sought the rolling body. The enraged horse hammered the ibex across the back of the neck. The ram slid to a stop against a pile of rocks. Shêtân lunged forward again, raking the thick, furry hide with his teeth. But the ibex was far from beaten. With a surge of brute strength he heaved up. The stallion lost his grip and teetered backward. The ibex picked himself up. In a moment he had gained the higher ground.

Once again the ram went on the attack, his long horns seeking the stallion’s vulnerable stomach. He tried to draw the horse out into the open, but Shêtân
would not make an easy target of himself. He dodged the spiral horns that had already marked his body and showed his cunning by waiting for just the right moment to make his move. But they were both becoming battle weary. It was only a matter of time before one of them would make a fatal mistake.

Finally Shêtân saw his chance to catch the ibex off guard. He pretended to lunge forward. In response the ibex lowered his head to ward off the blow. The horse swerved and attacked from the side. The ram stumbled and fell. The blood-maddened stallion reared up and brought his full weight down upon the ibex. His mighty forelegs mercilessly crushed the beast’s horned skull.

The triumphant stallion stood over the fallen body of the ram, and the mountains resounded with the echo of his powerful cry of conquest. Blood dripped from his wounded foreleg, his breath came fast and hard, but his eyes were sharp and clear. He turned his gaze to the sky, where the all-seeing falcon soared easily, drifting freely with the inviting morning wind. The bird watched Shêtân back up and limp off, headed still farther into the highlands. Soon the stallion had left the ibex herd far behind. He was alone again.