The Winter Horses (20 page)

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.

“I think she must have been very beautiful,” she whispered. “I wonder what happened to her. It makes you think, doesn’t it, Taras? That you’re not the only girl with problems in this world. I mean, look at her. Did she just die of some illness, perhaps? Or was she killed, like her horses? In battle by her enemies? I don’t suppose we shall ever know for sure what happened to her, but I should like to have known her.”

Kalinka bowed her head in respect for the little warrior priestess for a moment.

“Dear lady, you are not forgotten,” she said quietly.

Temüjin and Börte were still sniffing at the skeletons, as if they wanted to make quite sure that they were dead.

“I’m sorry,” Kalinka said to them. “This must be very upsetting for you both. To see so many of your kind in a mass grave like this. I’d like to apologize to you on behalf of humankind, in general. I may be just a child with little experience of the world, but it seems that people are capable of great cruelty, not just to animals but also to each other. You hear all sorts of terrible stories these days. I even heard tell of people in the south who were so hungry, they ate their own children. Max is right; I don’t think it does any good to hate. But you can’t help feeling more than a little disappointed now and again that man is such a destructive species. I don’t suppose the priestess would have allowed them to do such a terrible thing as kill all these horses if she’d been alive. I know I would certainly have forbidden it.”

Taras barked and sat down. The ancient burial chamber made him feel uneasy—he sensed that there were ancient forces at work in the ancient tomb, and he thought there could be little chance of sleeping comfortably in such a place. But for the moment, there seemed to be no other place that they could go.

“I hope she won’t mind us disturbing her grave like this,” said Kalinka. “Then again, what can she do?”

Taras barked and let the bark turn into a sort of whine—he sensed that there was a lot more the dead warrior priestess could have done about their presence
there than evidently Kalinka suspected, and already he half expected to see or feel a ghost. Max might not have believed in ghosts and spirits, but like most dogs, Taras was much less skeptical about such things. Besides, there was a lot more to being a spirit than appearing in the form of an apparition or going bump in the night. Spirits could affect what people did, and sometimes they could even take them over. How else could you explain someone like Captain Grenzmann, who was possessed with the idea of his own countrymen’s superiority over all other peoples?

Kalinka had wandered off with one of the lamps to explore.

“There’s everything here that you could want if you were a warrior priestess,” she said. “Armor, weapons, even a chariot—all perfectly preserved. Who knows? Perhaps she could have helped us fight the Germans. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she could have defeated them, too. I mean, just look at the blades on the wheels of this chariot. And her bow and arrows on the side of the platform. I’ll bet she was pretty formidable in her day. I’m sure some of those jars must contain food and drink, although I’m not going to risk it—not after all this time. Even though I’m very hungry.”

She opened one of the jars anyway and put her fingers inside it experimentally.

“Actually, it’s not food in this jar,” she said. “It seems to be what looks like a sort of paint. Silver paint. I could
have used some of this back at Askaniya-Nova. For the walls of our cave. I might have painted some silver horses. What do you think about that, Taras?”

Taras yawned. All of a sudden, he felt as if he could sleep after all; was there something in that strange-smelling animal fat burning in the censer that was making him feel as if he could not stay awake a minute longer? Or was it just the sense that they were safe after all—at least for a while?

Börte lay down with a sigh and closed her eyes. Temüjin went to inspect the chariot, but only as a way of staving off tiredness. He, too, wanted to lie down and sleep.

“Well, I don’t know about all of you,” said Kalinka, “but I am going to get some sleep. Let’s hope that the Germans don’t find this place. I don’t suppose there’s any way out of here other than the way we came in.”

Kalinka lay down next to Börte and laid an arm across the horse’s neck as if the animal were a teddy bear; she told herself that a living, breathing horse was much more comforting to sleep with than some smelly old stuffed toy.

Temüjin lay down beside the old chariot; he flicked his furry tail a couple of times and closed his dark eyes. He could not explain why he trusted the girl and believed at the core of his being that she could help save his species, any more than he could account for how he had known that the ancient stone circle should have concealed a place of holy sanctuary for them; but he did and
he had, and that was all the reason that was needed for a creature such as him. He liked the girl even more for what she had said about her own kind.

The last to sleep was Taras. The wolfhound yawned and lay down beside the girl; strangely, all of his previous worries about the place were now gone. His companions were out of the cold bora wind, and that was all that seemed important.

He dreamed a vivid dream of ancient tribesmen and their young warrior priestess, of her horses and of the wicked Germans.

C
ORPORAL
H
AGEN CLIMBED OFF
his motorcycle, walked stiffly across the snow to the end of the trail and shook his head.

“The tracks stop dead right here, sir,” he said. “It looks as though they doubled back on their own trail, which means we must have driven straight past them somewhere. Probably in those woods.” Hagen took off his steel helmet and rubbed his squarish head for a moment. His leather coat creaked as his arm moved, and it sounded just like the snow shifting under his boots as he walked. “You did say this was a child we were after, sir, didn’t you?”

“You know I did,” said Captain Grenzmann. “Why do you ask?”

“Only it’s not many children who could lay a false trail like this and would have the nerve to hide from us as we passed straight by them.”

“S’right, sir,” said the SS man called Donkels. “This can’t be any ordinary child.”

“Unless it was the horses that did it,” said the third SS man. “Them being as cunning as you said they were.”

“That would be very cunning for a horse,” said Donkels. “A horse would have to be as cunning as a fox to do something like that.”

“And I keep telling you that’s exactly what these horses are like,” insisted Grenzmann.

“Well,” said Hagen, “it seems we have to go back the same way we came.” He yawned, wiped the inside of his helmet with a handkerchief and then placed it back on his head. “Look, sir. Why don’t we call it a day? Or more accurately, a night, since that’s what this is. We’ve been on their trail now for what—eighteen hours? We tried our best to catch them and we’ve failed. Not that anyone ever needs to know that, sir.”

“I will know it, Corporal,” Grenzmann said coldly.

“All I’m saying, sir, is that since we are now returning the way we came, why don’t we keep going until we run into the sergeant and the rest of our men? Perhaps they’ve made camp back there. We can rest up a bit, get some hot food inside us and then try again tomorrow.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll see some sign of the horses when it’s light. But if we don’t then, where’s the harm in just going back to the big house at Askaniya-Nova? A couple of wild horses and a child. I mean, really, sir, is it worth all this effort?”

“That’s right, sir,” said Donkels. “No one could have done more than you did. Anyone else but you would have given up ages ago.”

“You think so, huh?”

“Yes, sir. You’ve been quite relentless, sir.”

“But now the time has come to give up, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me tell you what I think about that idea.”

Grenzmann drew his pistol, laid it on his lap and stared at it meaningfully. The other three men shifted awkwardly.

“We’re going on with the search,” Grenzmann said firmly. “Until we find them. Do you understand? Nobody is going to quit now. Need I remind you that this is a breeding pair of Przewalski’s horses we’re pursuing and we have a duty to cleanse the earth of their wandering kind forever? That’s a duty I’m not about to shirk just because you are all feeling tired. And anyone who wants to argue about this can take it up with Mr. Luger here.” Grenzmann paused. “Anyone? How about you, Corporal?”

Hagen shook his head.

“No, I thought not. So let’s have a little less argument and a little more enthusiasm. Now mount that motorcycle, Corporal, and let’s move, shall we? There’s no time to waste. As you say, it’s clear they’ve doubled back. That can only mean that they know we’re close to catching
them. In spite of what you say, we haven’t failed yet. Not by a long way.”

Hagen saluted smartly and climbed onto his motorcycle; he had no love for Grenzmann, but he feared the captain and he knew the others feared him, too. It was fear that kept them all in line and often made them obey orders they sometimes found distasteful; at least that was what they had told themselves.

Minutes later, they were speeding back along the frozen trail.

An hour’s hard ride brought them back to the circle of standing stones, and they might have carried straight on because the previous tracks of their own wheels were much more noticeable in the moonlight than anything else. The ancient monument was almost behind them when Grenzmann glanced back over his shoulder and noticed two lines of hoofprints leading off at a tangent and over the brow of the hill. He slapped the arm of the man beside him and pointed.