Ash and blood
Gieve still felt the taste of dust in his mouth. He took a sip from the flask of skin and forced himself to swallow. He would have preferred to spit, but there was no need to waste water in that desert of stones and dry land.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and handed the flask to Isfan, at his back. At the same time, he gave him a look.
The boy was not good, but he could have been worse off. Under the landslide that the earthquake had plunged on them, they had lost his horse, killed by the boulders, and Isfan had remained with a leg badly stuck in the debris.
He'd been lucky to get away with just a broken ankle, Farangis had said after having treated his wound and bruised the fracture. Isfan, however, was not of the same opinion, and now he was silent, with long face, behind of Gieve. He accepted the flask and drank almost with rage.
"Do not get mad" Gieve said, "you're still alive."
Isfan looked at him badly. "Alive and useless," he muttered.
"This was you even before you broke your leg" said Gieve and smiled amused to see the other blush with rage.
"Be quiet, both of you" Farangis intervened, "you behave like children." She held back his mare and let Gieve reach her.
Farangis's clothes were dirty and tattered cloak, some scratches marked her face and she had wrapped a bad cut on her left hand, hit by a sharp stone.
"No one here is useless. Not even you, Gieve, since you saved our lifes, "said the priestess.
The minstrel bowed on the saddle, carefully not to hurt his shoulder bruised under the landslide. "I'm glad to have served you, my lady," he answered ironically.
Farangis ignored him and turned to the wounded boy. "I had not chosen you for your legs, Isfan, but for your instincts. Do you feel something?" she asked, vaguely pointing all around.
The boy looked at her as if he had not understood, then he shook himself and raised his face to sniff the air. Not to be outdone, Gieve imitated him.
"There's a strange smell," Isfan said.
"I hope not to be me, in any case not even you have a good smell" answered Gieve, and raised his hands in a gesture of peace at Farangis's frowned gaze. "I was joking."
"Apart from your smell, always unpleasant, there is something else" Isfan said, and began to smell the air with force, so that the comrades could hear him inhale from the dilated nostrils. He suddenly frowned and stopped sniffing,
withdrawing slightly. "I smell old ash and stinks of corpses."
Gieve looked up at the clouded sky, looking for traces of smoke and silhouettes of vultures in flight, but he did not see them. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"Very sure!" exclaimed Isfan, irritated by the doubtful tone of the other.
The minstrel turned to Farangis. "Your Djinn what do they say? Do they too smell stench of death?"
"The Djinn are silent, I think they have moved away. Here there is something they does not like and prefer to avoid" replied the priestess. "I feared it would happen, that's why I wanted Isfan: I need you to guide me, until the Djinns come back to talk to me."
"Essere allevato dai lupi ha i suoi vantaggi", sogghignò Isfan.
"Glielo concedo" rispose Gieve, sorridendo conciliante.
"Guide us there" ordered Farangis.
Isfan nodded and indicated to Gieve the direction to follow, among the humps of the ground. The minstrel gave a spur to the horse, pushing it forward. Farangis followed him.
Leaving the gorges of Kohjir behind them, the three riders entered the rugged, arid and wild plateau, rapidly approaching the border with the territory of Turk and Turan. Already they saw before them the stony hills rising, beyond which the lands traveled by the nomads extended and ran the Great Northern Road, the Golden Way, which led to the distant mountains of Altai, where they were said to flow rivers from the sparkling waters of the precious metal.
First they sensed the smell, now perceptible to all three, growing louder, then, after having passed the highest hump met up to that moment, they saw it: a camp of merchants, or rather what was left of it.
They seemed to have been surprised in their sleep, and they were all dead: men; women; children; animals. Nobody had been spared.
Gieve held back a nausea; Farangis raised a flap of the cloak to protect her nose and mouth from the unbearable stench; Isfan uncovered his teeth in a silent growl of rage.
Corps lay everywhere, scattered on the ground. Miserable bundles of rotting flesh and shattered bones between ragged clothes and stained with blood and viscera. Someone had tried to defend himself, as it was seen from the grotesque poses of the bodies contracted in agony, but it had been a vain struggle.
The fire-blackened poles of the tents, torn and burnt, looked like funereal monuments erected to that obscene carnage.
Everything was wrapped in a sort of gray haze, low and heavy, as if the residual smoke from the fire that had destroyed the camp could not be dispersed in the air, almost the spirits of the dead were clinging to it and treating it down, together to their bodies, in a desperate refusal to get lost in nothingness.
None of the three knights of Parsia uttered a word. Looking at all that devastation, the first thing they noticed was that the trunks containing goods and money were intact. No one had touched them, scattered among the ruins of the tents or the chariots. Whatever the reason for so much violence, it was evidently not to be sought in the lust for gold of the bandits, or caravan raiders.
The three warriors pushed the frightened horses forward, forcing themselves to observe the wounds that ravaged the dead bodies, in an attempt to understand who or what had killed them. Many did not even look like wounds inflicted by weapons, but rather they appeared similar to gashes opened by cruel sharp claws.
Finally, they saw it.
The first to see it was Farangis. It looked like the body of a man taller than the others, but it was not. There was something alien in that mass of flesh and bone, which made one think of some strange wild beast.
The priestess invited Gieve to follow her. She had to force her mare, it was snorting and shaking his head, to direct the recalcitrant step toward the strange corpse. The animal obeyed, but arrived a short distance from the body, it put his paws on the ground and refused to go on, as did Gieve's horse, on the point of go mad by terror, barely restrained by the minstrel.
"A ghoul!" Gieve exclaimed.
"A what ?!" Isfan echoed, stretching his neck to see over Gieve's shoulder.
"A ghoul" answered Farangis. Dismounted and walked over to the inert body, which seemed to growl at her with his sharp teeth like those of a wild beast, uncovered on the scarified skull. "A creature that should not be here." She added.
"Half-man half-beast," said Giève, disgusted. He also dismounted, but continued to firmly hold the reins of the horse, which tried to retreat. "My lovely Farangis, do you really have to get close to that shit? he asked the minstrel, concerned to see the priestess lean over the dead body.
"To kill him it took many saber slashing, but he did not die right away: he dragged himself up to here, perhaps trying to get away," Farangis asserted, ignoring the call of Gieve, intent on observing the body marked by deep wounds, that tore the bare skin, covered with dark and bristly hair. "They must have hit him in more men. They had great courage."
"It did not help them much, perhaps they would have done better to escape," Gieve replied, turning his gaze on the bodies of the men scattered around.
"Words worthy of you," Isfan muttered.
"They died for nothing," Gieve replied. "I do not approve of useless sacrifices, but I do not expect you to understand, my young, stupid soldier." He loosened the reins and the horse immediately backed away, forcing Isfan to cling to the saddle so as not to fall.
The boy tightened his jaw and gave the minstrel a flaming look. He did not answer, but from his expression, Gieve realized that the question was only postponed. The minstrel shrugged nonchalantly and returned to follow Farangis' movements.
The priestess had turned around the body of the ghoul, climbing over the muscular arm stretched out on the outside with the hand clawed open, palm covered with calluses facing up. Farangis studied what was left of the face, more like a monkey's snout, eyes wide open to show the sky the whitish globes without iris.
"Look here" she said suddenly, pointing to the monster's forehead with her forefinger.
"I would rather not," answered Gieve, to whom the stench of the rotting corpse was causing nausea to rise beyond the limits of control.
"I want to see!" protested Isfan, unable to dismount because of his broken ankle.
With a grimace of disgust, Gieve pulled the horse's reins, forcing it to move a couple more steps forward, then turned the horse, so that Isfan could see what Farangis wanted to show them.
"It looks like a tattoo ..." the boy observed.
Gieve also looked at him, and he twisted his mouth as he felt the bile rising in his throat.
On the scarred forehead of the ghoul, still visible on the torn skin flaps, appeared some lines that the minstrel could not decipher. Even so, however, he seemed to recognize some design.
"Snakes" Farangis said and it was as if her voice had opened the two companions's eyes, who in turn finally recognized the symbol half-erased..
A fatal name flashed in everyone's mind, but neither the priestess nor the two men uttered it. The three looked at each other, then turned their eyes all around and it was then that they noticed the same symbols drawn everywhere with ashes, fire and clotted blood.
Farangis returned quickly to her mare and grabbed the bridle. With a leap she was on the saddle.
"Let's go away," she said.
"Very gladly" answered Gieve, who had already climbed in front of Isfan. "Now I understand why there are no vultures or crows to feast on these bodies, and even the jackals have not taken advantage of lunch already served. This place is cursed and not even the beasts want to approach. Your Djinn could warn you, my lovely Farangis, rather than sneak away."
"Their silence was already a warning," Farangis replied, freeing the reins to leave the mare free to run away. The animal snapped forward, like a long-held spring.
Gieve's mount followed it immediatly and Farangis with her companions galloped away from that fatal theater of death.