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The terrain is treacherous here. I wouldn’t cross it even if I had a mule, but this horse knows how to pick her way down the slate banks. She has a technique of sliding which is unsettling, but works. At her flank, her baby follows her lead, performing all the same actions on a miniature scale.
I can’t be unhappy with the foal here. She’s not a tiny baby, but she’s all angles and joints and excitement. Every few steps she nuzzles her mama, as if to make sure she’s still there. And whenever we slow, she does a quick check for milk.
The mare was probably already drying up when she was caught, and now she will definitely be dry. Stress and having a foal removed does that to a horse.
“Sorry, baby,” I murmur as the foal nuzzles my leg with confusion. She's a brave little thing, just like her mother. “Don’t worry. Your mama’s here now, and she’s never going back to that pen.”
Two
Blaire
I hear hoofbeats. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and the king himself is still behind us. They’re gaining. Again. Even over vast distances, and we with a huge head start. I don’t know how they’re doing this. Changing horses out, maybe? Thrashing the ones they have at full speed? Probably.
What I know is that the mare is going to be a lot fucking faster without me and that they don’t really want her. They want me. By staying on her back, I’m weighing her down and slowing her. I’m making her foal and her risk capture, something I suddenly consider to be the worst thing in any world.
So I make a decision. A really fucking stupid decision. I dismount at speed, and for the third time, or is it the second, I end up tumbling over rough ground. I look like a fucking mess. I am a fucking mess.
I have been running so long there’s nothing left. The mare is gone, along with her baby, and I take some solace in that. I did something for a horse before I died. I owe all horses more than I can really explain.
Again, dozens of hands land on me, grab me, pull me up, and start trying to bind me. I fight so fucking hard, but it does nothing. Sometimes you’re just out of luck and out of energy and just… out. But that doesn’t mean you can’t bite an alien or two.
“Stop.”
This is the first time I have heard the voice of the stallion king. It is deep and it is even. It is calm and it is steady. And it is absolutely imbued with the most perfect authority I have ever encountered.
He came after me himself.
Interesting.
I feel myself becoming calm, even though my life is in danger. Tight grips loosen. I am left to stand on my own, no easy feet after hours of rough riding.
The king dismounts from his horse and approaches me. He’s a really fucking big dude. Broad-shouldered, and so massively muscular. He’s not wearing much in the way of royal finery, but there’s no mistaking him for a commoner, even among his most impressive warriors. He has an energy, the kind that makes you understand why olden time people used to prostrate themselves before their kings. I seem to end up on my face in the dirt any time he is around for my own reasons. Right now, I’m on my feet, but just barely. I don’t remember the last time I was this fucking exhausted.
“If you’re going to kill me, just make it quick,” I half-beg, half-sigh. I kind of don’t give a fuck anymore. I knew that coming out here would be dangerous in one way or another. More than one person I knew said I must have a death wish. But they’ve been saying that for years.
The king reaches out and touches me. His touch is different from all the other rough touches which I have been forced to endure of late. Where they grabbed and poked, his hand meets the underside of my chin in almost a caress. He lifts my face to meet his eyes.
I don’t like looking at him. The way he looks at me makes me quiver in a very dangerous way. He affects me chemically. He makes the soft inner parts of me get even softer. I take a deep breath to try to calm myself. It doesn’t work.
“I believe you did not know that you were breaking my law. News travels slowly off Epona Prime. You do not have the way of a brazen criminal. You have the way of an excellent horsewoman. That horse you rode threw every one of its would-be riders. You stayed mounted until you chose to dismount. And you remounted. Very well done.”
I am flattered. And terrified. And I’m blushing and I might just giggle, but I think I’m too scared for that. My emotional state is like a wild beast, bucking and rearing inside my body, making me a complete mess in his hands.
