AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The last I see of the mighty king Equs is his impressive mane disappearing into the dark of night, along with the equally impressive ass of his horse.
The hounds will get them though, probably. That’s what the hounds are for, I bet. They’ll just let the hounds off, and…. nope. The hounds are running away at full speed too. What a twist.
“I guess the whole breeding thing is off, is it? Asshole!” I shout after him, almost as if I’m the one who chased him off, but I can’t really take credit for that.
The gate to my enclosure is still locked. I’m still trapped. I have no idea why these small humanesque creatures have come with such fury. I don’t even know if Equs’ retreat was genuine. He barely fought at all. In fact, if I had to assess the situation in retrospect, I’d say he fucked off at high speed. Ran away with his tail between his legs.
The leader of the small human contingent steps down from her chariot and approaches the bars. It is a woman with the most elegant and yet fearsome face paint I have ever seen. It is like a more intense makeup that enhances her wild blue eyes. Her raven hair is streaked with colors and has more beads, feathers, and streamers plaited into it than any of the others. I cannot help but notice that the painting is organized in very peculiar ways. I’d almost say they look like… logos? A golden M is marked into the foreheads of several of them, and others have intricate paints in the shape of ancient technologies. I recognize some of them. Others strike a chord of some long-forgotten world. A lower case ‘a’ with an orange arrow over it. Why does that strike fear into me so?
She must be their queen. Their four-foot nothing queen. She should look amusing for being so small, but she has some serious gravitas. She looks me up and down, finding me unimpressive.
“I don’t like talls.”
“Talls? Oh. Because I’m tall. Right. That makes sense.”
“Who are you?” She speaks with strident aggression which doesn’t make me feel any safer. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, to refer to even more cliches.
“I’m Blaire. I was a captive. I am a captive.”
“Why?”
“He… Equs… he wanted me, I guess?”
Something tells me it’s best to keep this vague. These hostile attackers are very hostile. I wonder what secret aggression or superpower they have to make the warrior king run away like a little girl.
She looks me up and down again, finding me weird. She thought I was one of Equs’ people, but up close it is pretty obvious that I am not.
“What are you?”
“I’m a human. From Earth.”
The queen’s eyes brighten with a kind of excitement that I don’t understand and also don’t really like.
“Get her out of there!”
It does not take long for her warriors to follow their leader’s orders. They throw ropes over the stakes and they haul them down, the chunky ponies putting their full weight into the work of pulling until they break the pen apart.
She gestures to me impatiently.
“Come on, come on. We don’t have all night, come on!”
I am being rescued. I don’t know why. I don’t know who they are, or what they want. But I know that I don’t want to stand around and ask questions. Wherever we are going is better than where I’ve been, that much is for sure, and even if it’s worse, it’s not a pen. I have some chance of escaping both these violent, psychotic factions.
I am out of the pen in an instant.
“Who are you?” I ask the question, risking offending her for not knowing.
“We’re the ones who have the right to live in this land. We are the Eponites. We speak to the horses. We are one with the equines. Equs is an invader. He needs to be driven from every corner of this place. We hunt him, and he runs. We will give chase again shortly.”
I can’t help but smile at the idea of Equs being hounded across the country by this diminutive queen. I don’t understand why he fears them, but I am glad that he does. This is the first time I’ve seen anything resembling a vulnerability or weakness from him.
“You are our hostage,” she declares. “We will burn you to spite him.”
Wait. What?
“I don’t like that idea.”
“Of course you don’t. But this will teach him. We will take everything he values and destroy it, just as he destroyed our villages, slaughtered our stock, and hunted our herds. We will corner them, burn you, and kill them all.”
“Or, if you really want to make him angry, you could let me get back to the station and get picked up and go back to Earth.”
“If I do that, I don’t get to hear your screams and lamenting.”
