by AM Kirkby
***
Master had both his horses well trained now. He'd made Standfast less stolid, Flighty more reliable, and though they were never going to be thoroughbreds, they both had the authentic energy of the great racer. He'd trained for stamina, but now he pulled them back to a shorter distance, pushing them all out for speed. He worked them both together, vaulting from one to the other in mid-gallop, riding bareback and bridleless and controlling them only with knees and heels, and a slap of the hand against the neck to turn them.
There were games for funerals, and games for triumphs - though those were few, now that the cities no longer fought each other, but were joined in confederation - and then there were the games for the greater feasts, the harvest feast and the midwinter and the summer fires in honour of the hidden gods. He had a month till the midsummer games, and he felt it wasn't quite enough, but he trained hard, and the general had relieved him of all his duties, except for his studies and the horse training.
He couldn't win the main race, he thought; neither of the pair was quite good enough, and the nobles could afford better horses, faster, taller and longer-striding too, which counted for something. But in the two-horse race, practice was more important than talent or birth; jumping from one horse to the other, watching for the other horse's stride, waiting for its quarters to move, catching it right at the bottom of its gait so that you came down to meet its rising. He had a chance at this race, and if he won it, there'd be more games to compete in, in other cities, and perhaps a sponsor for a chariot. He dreamed of driving his chariot in the games at Clevsin; but dreams, like horses, had to be held on a tight rein.
The week before the games, he took the horses out to a patch of marshy ground, and ran them in the soft, feeling their legs sluggish, hearing their heavy breathing. That was something the general had taught him; work them in mud, swim them in the water, build the muscle and the endurance. Then when you run them back on the good ground, they'll be faster. But it was Rasce who told him to do it secretly; “Cover them in mud,” he'd said, “and they'll look like carthorses. You've got an advantage there. Laris's boy's got a good chance, but every time he takes that flashy pair of chestnuts out, there's someone watching him.”
He wasn't innocent any more, though. Rasce's advice was sound; Master didn't want his opponents knowing how he trained. But he knew Rasce was having a bet on him, too; there was that horse involved that he'd been trying to buy all year, a cobby, deep-chested black stallion that rumour said the lucumo was interested in.
Despite his best attempts at secrecy, though, the last day of training, he became aware there was someone watching him. It started with an uneasy feeling between his shoulder-blades, like when you hear your name, or think you do, in a crowded room, or when late at night you hear a rustle of leaves somewhere that no one should be. He deliberately didn't turn to look, but raced the horses along the flat ground by the stream, out and back, out and back, turning as tightly as he knew how, not stopping. Once, he caught the sight of what might have been a tussock of spiky grass, except he knew there was no grass there. Next lap, it was gone again.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two laps. He slowed the horses to a walk, to the slowest walk he could pull them back to, asking them to walk deep, their necks arched and heads tucked in, to cool down. He still had that uneasy feeling. As they approached the middle of the track, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was barely audible even to him, but they stopped immediately; he could feel the one he was riding rest the foreleg it had picked up, the hoof poised delicately on edge. The other horse shivered, twitched its tail once, and was still.
“You can come out now,” he said.
He wasn't surprised to see Rasce straighten up. He knew from that mission in the Faliscan borders that Rasce could wriggle like a snake through the grass. But he hadn't expected to see the general, too, running a hand through his bushy hair to clear the dust and grass stalks from it. The general smiled in that slightly forced, glum way people have who know they are in the wrong, and still hope to get away with it.
Master vaulted off his horse, landing lightly on his toes, letting his knees bend and his body dip before he straightened up.
“Like what you see?” he asked. The general shrugged.
“Dirty bloody carthorses?” Rasce said, and spat, and then burst out laughing.
But on the way back, as they walked together like three peasants coming back from the fields, the general leant towards Master, and tousled his hair.
“Y'know,” he said, and paused a moment; “I'm fond of you, m'boy.”