The Horse In The Mirror

by Lisa Maxwell

  Chapter 2

  Brandy found Is two days later curled up to the horse's stiff corpse. Brandy was the cleanup rider who came after the berserkers. He was supposed to be a doctor among other things, but the only medicine he seemed to know how to administer was brandy. Thus the name.

  Most of the time it didn't matter if he wasn’t a real doctor. Trainers who made a mistake with the stallion or the berserker usually died. Brandy would drink with the ones who had survived. He buried the others. He buried dead horses, repaired barns, brought new stock, and he brought news. For most of the Border Station trainers he was their only contact with the rest of the world.

  By the time Brandy found her, Is had a fever as well as a concussion. When he managed to rouse her she was not particularly rational. The dying horse had kept her warm for a while, but now it was cold and stiff. Is had been unable to get up and tend the other horses and that was all that was on her mind. Brandy had to see to them before Is would stop fighting him and let him put her to bed.

  Brandy used his horse to pull the dead horse out of the barn. His horse was accustomed to such work. The weather had been cold and the carcass was holding together well, so Brandy just kept dragging it all day. When it got dark he unhooked the corpse, retrieved his rope and headed back, relying on his horse to take him back as surely as a compass to the other horses and the feed waiting at the barn.

  Usually Brandy buried the horses. It wasn’t good to have predators around a barn area, especially this close to the Boundary. But there was too much work to do this time. The barn was a wreck. The one super-reinforced stall was almost immune to both horse and computer-augmented human berserker, but the rest of the barn was of ordinary construction. Sturdy enough for other horses, it had been like kindling to the enraged berserker. Is had been lucky that he had taken it out on the barn and not her.

  It took eight days to repair the damage. The first two days Is was too weak to get out of bed. Brandy had to help her to the bathroom and she hated him for it. She was furious at being ill, furious at the berserker and, Brandy suspected, furious at the system.

  Whenever Brandy went out he saw carrion birds circling where the dead horse lay. This close to the Boundary there might be other "things" feeding on the horse too. It hadn't been very smart to leave it above ground but it was done now.

  By the third day Is was out of bed and insisting on helping him. They used up the stockpiled lumber repairing the barn. Brandy would have to send in a wagon crew to cut more and Is wouldn't like that. She was one of the most solitary trainers he dealt with.

  Trainers were an odd lot anyway, living alone most of their lives, suspicious of people and devoted to their horses, but Brandy got on with them mostly. For some of the women his occasional visits were their only sexual contact. But not Is. Her family had been killed by marauding Blueskins when she was little and Brandy could guess how that had been. Blueskins didn't usually harm children, but they had raped her mother. Is would have seen the whole thing.

  He felt bad for Is. The Alliance could have fixed her. He knew enough about medicine to know that, but the Alliance needed her the way she was. The trainer’s life required a certain kind of toughness. They had to stay alone in these outposts facing the difficult and sometimes dangerous task of training the war horses, and then they had to face the berserkers' visits. But hardest of all they had to send the horses they loved to their deaths. They must believe those deaths were necessary.

  There wasn't any way to lie to these Border Station trainers. They saw how the berserkers treated their line horses. Farther from the Boundary it wasn't so bad. The implants hadn't caused the berserkers' brains to release their chemicals yet. But the closer they got to the Boundary, the harder they pushed their horses and by the time they were within three days' ride of the Border Stations their computer-augmented minds were picking up the magno-electric output of the stallions' specially equipped brains. From then on, rider and horse fed on each other's emotions. By the time the berserker arrived at the last stations neither rider nor horse was entirely sane.

  The rider was damn near as dangerous as the horse at that point. Brandy didn't envy the Border Station trainers their jobs. But it was too bad about Is. She would be beautiful if she'd take a care about it. When she was with her horses she radiated such vitality and caring . . . that shouldn't be wasted on horses. Brandy sometimes fantasized about her turning that look on him. But it would never be.

  As long as he stayed in his role, Is was willing to accept him. She'd talk about her horses and show him their progress, all animated and beautiful, and he'd want her so badly. But if he ever made any move, offered any hint that he'd like to change things, she'd retreat with a coldness he knew hid fear. While he played in his mind with how it would be to break through that fear and seduce her, he knew he would never try. She was one of the Alliance's best Border Station trainers and his job was to keep her that way.