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“Bullets have nothing to do with bad luck.”
I don’t really want to get any further into the specifics of it all. My family has a history of fucking and killing each other, both against the other’s will. Innocents and evil bastards alike lie beneath the old farm’s soils.
“So you’ve been murdering each other for a generation.”
“Oh, for generations. That’s one reason I don’t advocate breeding. My lineage is full of fratricide, patricide, filicide, sororicide, and matricide, for that matter. We’re just full of backwoods, down-home, country murder. It’s a miracle there are any of us left. Fortunately, when we’re not fighting, we’re fucking.”
“Good stock for warriors.”
He’s really not listening, is he? Men of any species rarely do in my experience.
“If I bear you a son, he has a greater than average chance of killing you one day.”
“That is the risk a king takes when he sires a son. It is also the responsibility of a king to ensure that the strongest ruler is on the throne. If my son kills me, I deserve it.”
“So you want to spend the rest of your life not being able to sleep properly for fear someone you love is about to dispatch you in your sleep?”
“How do you think I sleep now?”
I suppose it is never easy being a king.
“Why don’t you stay in the city then?”
“The city is just as dangerous. It just also happens to be boring and restrictive. There’s no room for horses. Speaking of which, it is time we stabled ours.”
At that point, we ride up over a ridge and see something which had been hidden from view by the gaping maw of the city.
“Whoa!” I make the exclamation with serious surprise, and dismount about as quick as I ever have. This is something I want to see every inch of.
There may be no room for horses outside the city, but there is a grand stable outside of it, full of the kind of horses that would make a Texas rancher cry. They’re absolutely stunning beasts, broodmares mostly, and young stock besides. I see foals trotting around beside their mothers with high heads and even higher leg action. These are proud beasts from the moment they are born, ears twitching and turning as the king’s greeting party makes its slow and orderly way out of the bowels of the earth.
Suddenly I understand why I wasn’t getting away on the wild-caught horses I kept trying to flee Equs’ men on. They’re breeding even better ones here.
“Wow.”
I jump down so I can see it all on foot. I want to run and explore every corner of this place, but I’m not a hundred percent yet. Behind me, Equs dismounts and leads his horse. His men are following at an even greater distance. I think some of them are being swallowed up in the city’s welcome offensive.
“Indeed, this is the only element of the city I enjoy,” he confesses. “These stables are the pride of Epona Prime.”
“No fucking shit they are.”
I couldn’t give less of a damn about the officials in their brightly colored robes, who are now playing trumpets and flutes in an effort to appear even more impressive as they climb the hill in the wake of their king. They are chasing him with a welcome they seem to refuse to acknowledge he’s not interested in.
“Someone should tell those bastards to stop making so much noise, they’ll scare the horses.”
“You're not wrong,” Equs agrees. “I’ll deal with them. Don’t you go too far.”
I’m not going anywhere besides inside the stable. This is amazing. Every horse girl has her dream barn, even the ones who already have their dream barn. This is a stable complex unlike any I have even been able to imagine.
I find myself walking between rows of carefully maintained pens, marveling at the well-cleaned turnout fields, and cooing over the younger foals.
It’s amazing how the needs of the animals themselves have resulted in the stables here looking very much like the stables on Earth. It's so similar in so many ways. There’s even a riding arena and another field with obstacles strewn about presumably for jumping or otherwise navigating. Amazing.
I go inside the main barn area, where they have spacious stalls. Most of them are empty because the horses are in their turnouts, but one contains a great golden mare. Not white. Not palomino. Literally fucking golden. Her coat contains the metallic iridescence you see in some rare Earth breeds, but with a yellow hue which makes her look, well, out of this world.
She must be rare, even for this planet. Most of the wild horses I saw were bays, with the occasional chestnut. Haven’t seen any paints, appaloosas, not even a real roan. This stable is where the real treasures are kept. This is the place I’d steal from if I were going to steal from anywhere.
