Banewreaker(159)

They were splendid creatures, there was no denying it. Their inadequate disguises had long since worn off; ill-cropped manes and tails re-grown in flowing splendor. They were poorly groomed, aye, but they had shed winter's shaggy coat, and their summer hides gleamed with good health.

He had his eye on the best of the lot, an ill-tempered bay with a coat the color of drying blood, a black mane and tail. It had been Hunric's mount, if his memory served. A long-legged stallion with a fine, wedge-shaped head and snapping teeth to boot. The others bore scars of his temper.

The horses of Darkhaven had sharper teeth than those bred elsewhere.

Ushahin waited until dusk, when his own abilities edged toward their height. It was then that he emerged from the verges of the Delta, a length of rope in his crooked hands. It had served to secure his skiff; it would serve for this.

"Come," he crooned. "Come to me, pretty one."

It didn't, of course. His target stood poised on wary legs, showing the whites of its eyes, aware of his intent. He had to use the glamour, a Were trick, catching its mind in the net of his thoughts. Once it was done, the horse stood still and trembled, its hide shuddering as if fly-stung. Ushahin limped from his place of concealment, placing the rope around its neck, winding a twist about its soft muzzle and knotting it to create a makeshift hackamore.

"So," he whispered. "Not so bad, is it?"

The blood-bay stallion shuddered. So close, their hair was intertwined; Ushahin, leaning, his fine, pale hair mingling with the horse's black mane. He could smell the sweat, the lather forming on the horse's blood-dark hide. Its defiance would only be held in check so long, unless he wanted to fight it all the way to Darkhaven. He did not. Now, or never. Ignoring the pain in his crooked limbs, he slid one arm over its neck and hauled hard, pulling himself astride, and clamped hard with both thighs.

"Home!" he shouted, casting aside the net of thought that bound it.

The bay exploded beneath him: bucking, sunfishing, limbs akimbo. Ushahin laughed out loud and clung to its back. It hurt, hurt beyond telling, jarring his ill-mended bones. Yet he was one of the Three, and he had breakfasted with a dragon. No mere horse would be his undoing, not even one of the horses of Darkhaven.

It was a long battle nonetheless. Almost, the bay stallion succeeded in unseating him. It plunged toward the Verdine River and planted its forelegs in a halt so abrupt Ushahin was thrown hard against its neck. The other horses watched with prick-eared interest as the bay twisted its head around to snap at him. It charged, splashing, into the fringes of the Delta and sought to jar him loose against the trunk of a palodus tree, bruising and scraping his flesh.

None of it worked.

By the time the bay's efforts slowed, stars were emerging in the deep-blue twilight. The capitulation came all at once; a slump of the withers, the proud head lowering. It blew a heavy breath through flared nostrils and waited.

"Home," Ushahin said softly, winding his thoughts through the stallion's. Leaning forward, he whispered in one backward-twitching ear. "Home, where the Tordenstem guard the Defile as it winds through the gorge. Home, where the towers of Darkhaven beckon. Home, tall brother, where your attendants await you in the stable, with buckets of warm mash and svartblod, and silken cloths for your hide."

The blood-bay stallion raised its head. Arahila's gibbous moon was reflected in one liquid-dark eye. It gave a low whicker; the other two horses answered. From verges of the Delta, a half dozen ravens launched themselves, flying low on silent wings over the moon-silvered sedge grass.

Ushahin laughed, and gave the bay its head. "Go!" he shouted.

With great strides, it did. Bred under the shrouded skies of the Vale of Gorgantum, it ran with ease in the pale-lit darkness, and thundering on either side were two riderless horses. One was a ghostly grey, the color of forge-smoke; the other was pitch-black. And before them all, the shadowy figures of the ravens of Darkhaven forged the way.

Homeward.



DANI HAD SLIPPED.

It was as simple as that. He did not know that the terrain he and his uncle traversed was called the Northern Harrow, but he did not need to be told that it was a harsh and forbidding land. He knew that bare feet toughened by the sun-scorched floors of the desert were a poor match for the cruel granite and icy clime of the northern mountains. And he had discovered, too late, that ill-sewn rabbitskin made for clumsy footwear. When the cliffs edge had crumbled under his footing, he slid over the edge with one terrified shout.

Unmindful of the pain of broken and bending nails, he clung to the ledge he had caught on his downward plunge, fingertips biting deep. Below him, there was nothing. It was an overhang that had broken his fall; beneath it, the cliff fell away, cutting deeply back into the mountain's peak. His kicking feet, shod in tattered rabbitskin, encountered no resistance. There was only a vast, endless drop, and the churning white waters of the Spume River below.