Page 129 of Wind Rider

You bleed!

River wiped her bloody hands on her pants. “Most of it isn’t mine. Luce and Blue were in a bad way, but they’re free now. They’re quitting the Test.”

Anjo snorted.Hurry and mount!

“Not while we’re in the cross timbers. I think it’d be faster if I jogged ahead of you.” River searched around them and quickly found a long, fallen branch. “I can move the vines out of your path with this. When we get to the clearing between the cross timbers I’ll mount and we can sprint.” River pointed into the goathead thicket, which looked deceptively like the quickest way through this section of cross timbers. “We’re definitely not going that way.” River started jogging in front of Anjo, the mare following close behind. “How many teams passed us?”

Many, but we will catch and pass them. We are stronger.

“Did none of them even pause to be sure you or I weren’t hurt?”

Willow’s Gontia asked me if we were well. I told her yes.

“Well, at least she asked. How many others passed us?”

I saw three other teams—Skye and Scout, Daisy and Strawberry, Keira and Gypsy. I heard at least two other teams pass, but could not see them.

“We have to catch up with them.”

Do not fret—we will.

River’s plan was a good one, and in the clearings between each of the cross timber patches they caught and passed a team—first Keira and her white mare, Gypsy, and then to River’s surprise another team from her own Herd, Cali and her beautiful sorrel mare, Vixen. As she and Anjo sprinted past, River could see that Vixen was favoring a bloody left rearhock—probably another victim of trying to pass through the cross timbers too quickly.

Finally they were through the cross timber obstacle and the purple ribbons marked the trail to the left, which was a deceptively open stretch of prairie—so open that River could see purple ribbons beckoning them forward in the breeze.

“Finally! A chance to run and catch the rest of them!” River leaned in, cuing Anjo to take off, but the mare resisted. River immediately heeded her mare’s intuition. “What is it?”

Many-colored grass that should be the same.

River stood in the stirrups, studying the flat prairie before them, and seeing what the mare noticed. The late spring grasses had reached a height of about Anjo’s knees, and they should all have been a brilliant bluish-green, but in small clumps the grasses appeared shorter and were already turning summer brown.

“Gopher holes,” River said darkly. Where the rodents built their dens into the fertile dirt of the prairie they also disrupted the grasses, dislodging roots and breaking their water supply, which caused them to wilt and discolor.

If I run through them I may break a leg.

“Not if we stick to the green patches,” River said. “I’ll guide you. You pick how fast we go.”

Anjo snorted her agreement and then kicked into a slow lope—a gait that was easy for her to maintain as she changed directions according to River’s leg pressure. They loped on and River had just noticed that the sun had gone past its midday zenith and was beginning to travel down the western sky. She cued Anjo to stop, and quickly fed the mare the energy-rich sweet mash packed in the saddlebags as well as herself the apples her sister had reminded her to eat. Not long after their short break Anjo’s words echoed in her mind.

Rider and mare ahead—someone is with them.

“You look. I’m going to keep guiding you through these holes.”

Anjo cantered past. River wanted to look—to stare—especially afterAnjo said,It is Daisy and Strawberry—the mare is injured. There is a Councilmember with them.

But River steeled herself and didn’t so much as glance their way as Anjo cantered past.

“She has help. They don’t need us,” River said. “How badly is Strawberry hurt?”

Badly. They were racing through the holes.

Then Anjo wouldn’t say more, and River knew that meant what had happened was too awful for the mare to share. River pushed away her sadness. There would be time for that later—after she and Anjo were safely across the finish line.

The course curved to the right as the land lifted, becoming rougher and rockier. They topped a rise to see a ravine before them. It split the earth like a giant had taken a hatchet to the prairie, slicing into it. To the right it met a thick cross timber line, and River could clearly see thickets of goathead thistles clustered in the underbrush.

To her left the gorge spread probably a mile or so, before it tapered back down to the grassy prairie.

“Is the ravine too steep?” she asked her mare.