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But these riders are expecting him to do that. They have no fear of his flashing hooves, his snaking neck, or even the sharp canine teeth that wild horses have developed, used primarily for ripping rivals apart.
They don’t care about him. They want me.
While he’s distracted rearing and pawing and putting on his display, a looped rope snakes across the distance between us. It’s got great form. A perfect throw. If we were back on Earth, these guys would make damn good cowboys.
My admiration stops when that rope wraps unerringly around me and brings me crashing to the ground. Falling off a horse hurts like hell at the best of times. This is not the best of times. I land on my ass and thighs, rolling to try to break some of the impact, but being wrapped in alien hemp makes it hard.
Having fallen off isn’t even the worst of my problems. I’m now on the ground, and that’s where the stamping hooves are, dancing back and forth around me. It’s a lie that horses won’t step on a prone human. Horses will step on whatever the hell they need to step on if it means doing what they want to do.
I roll out of the way just in time to avoid having my face stomped in by the stallion I’d caught, only to find myself under the hooves of another horse. These fucking asshole idiots are going to kill me by trying to catch me.
There’s a loud sound. Like a gunshot, but not. I can’t see what it is, but it scatters the horses. My stallion has had enough of this bullshit and takes off at high speed, abandoning me to my captors.
Six shirtless male aliens dive for me as if I might somehow fly away, a dozen blue and gray hands grabbing at me as I kick and writhe on the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yell the question, even though it’s perfectly obvious what they’re doing. They’re capturing me. Tying me up. They’re trussing me like a chicken, and now they’re putting me on the back of one of their horses as if I’m some kind of cargo to be transported.
Not one of them says a word to me, or to each other, for that matter. It’s like being captured by a group of sexy long haired alien mutes. Wait. Did I just think they were sexy out loud? They’re appealing in a generally shirtless and aggressive way. They’re also very alien. They wear leather pants, but nothing else. They have a kind of fur sort of like a beast that doesn’t really have a whole lot. The only comparison I can think of is a horse’s summer coat. It’s very fine, very short, and quite dense. Their faces are sort of human in general outline, but the size and shape of their features are not human at all. They have very large eyes, which are very dark, but you can still see the outline of their eyeballs really in that weird way you can with, well, horses. There’s a lot about these aliens which reminds me of horses.
I try yelling and screaming and kicking and just generally making a fucktonne of noise. Maybe I can spook them, or their horses, and cause enough chaos to get away in.
It’s a good idea, but it doesn’t work.
The rider who has me on his horse reaches back with his crop and slaps it across my hindquarters hard enough to make me shriek. He doesn’t tell me to be quiet. He makes me be quiet with a cured leather lash that seems unnecessarily harsh for the mounts they are riding. I have the feeling that those whips, worn at their waists, are not designed for horses at all.
What this complete alien stranger with the furry abdominal plane and the constantly flexing back which moves in time with the agile rocking and rolling of his hips, doesn’t know, is that I can tolerate a hell of a lot of pain.
I scream even louder and try to drum my legs in a disturbing way. I really don’t want to hurt the horse or scare it for that matter. But a little spook or a fresh buck would certainly come in handy right now.
But neither of those things happens. I stay firmly on the back of the horse, in spite of the fact that any decent horse person will tell you that you don’t load the hindquarters if you give a shit about the animal. I am relatively lightweight compare to the size of the horse though, and it has no trouble carrying me and its rider across dusty plains, tossing up dirt into my face with every beat of its charging hooves.
Cursing does nothing. Screaming does nothing, except invite the sprayed filth further into my open mouth. So I stop both and simply fall grimly silent, hoping for the best, but feeling the inevitability of the worst.
