by Guy Antibes
His legs were wobbly, and he collapsed to the ground. “I am sick.”
Demeron could feel Amble’s worry. “I can’t help you,” she said. “I don’t know how. Did you eat something you shouldn’t?”
Over there by that rock,” he pointed with his snout.
She walked over and looked at the grass mixed with weeds. She yanked a mouthful and brought it over to Demeron and deposited it by him.
“You ate the weed with the pink flowers, didn’t you?”
“I did?” Demeron said. He looked at the weeds, the focus of his eyes came and went. He put his head down. “I did. I was too tired to leave it out,” he said. “It smells wrong, doesn’t it?”
Amble raised her snout in agreement. “It certainly does. What am I going to do with you?”
“Carry me to Deftnis?” he said. He smiled inside, hoping she would pick up on his joking.
“In your dreams. How can a horse get on another’s back? Stop thinking like a human for a moment.”
Demeron smiled inside. “You’re thinking like a human, so don’t get on me.”
She tossed her mane. “It’s a curse the Shinkyans gave us,” she said.
“Right,” Demeron said.
His belly began to complain, and he quickly rose to unstable feet and bowed his head as his belly disgorged its contents. Demeron shook his head and staggered to the spring and drank a lot more water. He had never felt so bad in his entire life.
Could he die before he reached Deftnis? His body shook, and he could feel his coat load up with sweat. He vaguely remembered Amble licking off the foam. Demeron couldn’t fail, could he?
The rest of the afternoon repeated the same sequence over and over.
Demeron could sense that Amble felt worried.
Later in the day, he rose up for some more water. “I’m getting better,” he said. “My body is rejecting the weed.”
She looked at the pile of what used to be in his stomach. “That’s quite a rejection.”
That was a better comment. Demeron’s belly seemed to have settled down.
“We can stay here,” Amble said, laying down next to him. “Maybe you’ll be better in the morning.”
Demeron woke before dawn. He could feel the warmth of the other horse, but he realized he didn’t need it. He carefully got to his feet and drank more water. A wave of weakness reminded him of the sickness of the previous day.
He had let weariness affect his judgement. Demeron couldn’t let that happen again. He walked through the area, exercising complaining muscles, but they didn’t cry out in anger as much as they had the previous day. Cry out in anger, he thought. Maybe Amble was right; he was being too human.
Dawn brightened up the meadow enough for Demeron to eat selectively, like he should have. His appetite wasn’t normal, but his belly kept the feed in.
Amble’s head rose. “Are you all right?”
“I think I’m better than all right. How about you?”
“Now I know how human healers feel after they have treated their patients,” Amble said.
She walked over and smelled him. “You even smell better.” Amble stuck out her tongue. “I had to wash my tongue a few times before I slept.”
“Thank you,” Demeron said. “I wondered if it was you taking care of me.”
“You owe me,” Amble said. He detected the feigned petulance in her voice. It sounded like human female.
“You may have all that I own.”
She raised her snout and flapped her lips in laughter. “I’ll take it, for now. But I may claim more in the future.”
“It’s time to resume our journey,” Demeron said, heading north again.
The sun felt good, warming up his black coat, while they walked on in silence. Demeron felt a connection with Amble that he had never felt with a horse before. He wondered if she had a similar feeling. He tried to put it into human words and came up with a few candidates, but the one he liked best was trust.
Demeron felt that Amble would never desert him while he was sick, and that was trust. He felt the same way about her. It was similar to his bonding with Pol, but something different, something that still gave him a good feeling.
~
The land began to rise and fall, and finally the valleys became ravines with steep sides. The vegetation thinned, and Demeron could sense Amble slowing down.
“Are we heading in the right direction?” Amble said.
“North. We are further north every day,” Demeron said as they crested a rise and looked out over a green valley. A river lazily ran through the rock-strewn bottom. “Water and feed.”
“At last,” she said. “I don’t know why I am following you. I should just head west and find a farmer who will take me in.”
Demeron looked at her. “You are smarter than that. Find a farmer? What will a farmer do with a Shinkyan mare? Are you going to plow? Will you drag a cart of grain behind you and take it all the way to a marketplace? Is that what you want?”
“Well…” Amble turned her head towards the ravine.
“Come with me where you can bond with a magician again. You can learn new things and live an exciting life. We are a good team, right?”
“What horse wants to live an exciting life?” she said.
“This horse does,” Demeron took a deep shuddering breath. “We were bred to work with magicians, people who could talk to us, and now it seems that all you want to do is be tied up in a ramshackle stable because you are too smart.”
Amble blew out her lungs and let her lips flail in the wind. He could sense the uncertainty that she felt. “Your ideas are dreams. Horses shouldn’t dream.”
“Shouldn’t or refuse to,” Demeron said. “Enough of this. I’m thirsty.”
They descended and began to feed on the tall, drying grasses on the valley floor. Demeron noticed the hoof prints. Many of them were not shoed.
“Wild horses have been through here,” Amble said.
Demeron lifted his snout and took in a deep breath. “Horses in the wind. They aren’t far. Should we communicate with them? Maybe you can stay with a herd,” Demeron said.
He knew his temper had risen during his conversation with Amble. He shouldn’t have been so harsh. At least she had stuck with him this far. Her presence had made his trip much more pleasurable, even if she had exhibited a defeatist attitude. He wondered if she was right, and Demeron was by far the exception. He probably was, he admitted.
Amble found a swath of wild grain and called Demeron over. They feasted on the sweet-tasting kernels for a while until he could hear hoofbeats in the distance.
Suddenly they were surrounded by a herd of over two hundred horses.
A dark-brown and white Shinkyan stallion, smaller than Demeron, trotted over to them. “What are you doing here?”
“Feeding and drinking.”
The horse snorted. “This is our territory. You are eating our forage. Leave us.”
“Can’t we stay for a bit?” Amble said. “We’ve traveled all the way from Tishiko.”
“Right,” the brown and white stallion said. Demeron smelled disbelief in the horse’s voice.
“It’s true,” Demeron said. “We’ll rest in this valley for a few days, and then you can have it all to yourselves.”
“There are other valleys all the way to the Shinkyan border. All are in our territory.”
Demeron didn’t like this horse’s attitude. “What makes it your territory, other than the fact that you stand on land that no horse owns?” He walked right up to the other horse and bumped him with his body. The other horse had to fight to stay on its hooves.
“Our leader will be back in a few days, and then we will see how brave you are.”
“We will stay and talk to your leader, unless we get tired of all your prancing,” Demeron said.
The other horses had gathered around them during the confrontation. He heard whisperings of dissatisfaction with the current leader. He noticed that all the horses were Shinkyan or
part Shinkyan.
“You don’t accept normal horses into your herd?”
“Of course not. They only take water and feed and don’t contribute to the herd.”
“Contribute what?” Amble said. “What do you contribute to the herd?”
Demeron liked the spirit in her voice.
“I keep them in line while our leader is away.”
Demeron found that he didn’t like the arrangement, while he listened to snippets of complaints from the other horses.
“What does your leader provide the herd?”
The horse’s mind went blank. He couldn’t give Demeron an answer.
Amble had wandered through the herd and trotted up to Demeron. “The leader is the horse that defeats all the others.”
“Like a wolf pack leader?” Demeron said.
“Yes,” the acting leader said. “Our leader has defeated all the other horses. All the mares are his.”
Demeron wondered if all horses had instincts to belong to a herd. He certainly didn’t. His allegiance was to Pol Cissert, and to an extent, Amble.
“I’m going back to feeding,” Demeron said, even though he had eaten enough, he wanted to talk to some of the other horses to learn what motivated them.
The herd spread out and began to feed. A mare casually walked close to Demeron. She eyed the temporary leader some distance away as she dipped her head to take a cluster of grass.
“Do you intend to lead the herd? You are an impressive horse for one so young. Maybe you can do things differently.”
Demeron lifted his head. “Differently?”
“I lost a foal last spring to wolves. Our leader makes us run away from the wolves. Foals and the lame can’t keep up with the herd and are left as wolf food. Many of us think there are other ways to keep us safe.”
“Like fighting the wolves?” Amble said, walking over. “We fought four of them not long ago.”
“And you defeated them?” Demeron smelled the mare’s disbelief.
Amble nodded her head. “We did, but not without pain and effort. You can see we bear the scars of battle.”
The mare lifted her head with a clutch of grass and looked at their coats. “You both do,” the mare said. Demeron sensed wonder in her voice. “Can you teach us?”
“We can tell you what we did. A pack of wolves can’t defeat a herd of horses, if you protect the most vulnerable.”
“My foal was vulnerable,” she said. Demeron sensed the pain in her thoughts.
The brown and white trotted up. “What are you talking about? Leave these two. They are not to be talked to. They are not part of the herd.”
Demeron watched the mare obediently follow the stallion away from them. The stallion nipped the mare on the hindquarters, and she bolted away.
“Perhaps we are where we don’t belong,” Demeron said. “I’m not experienced with living in a herd. Maybe it is natural for the old and young to be left for wolves. There is a human word, culling. I heard it talked about in a stable on a farm in Boxall not long ago. It’s something that humans do with farm animals. I don’t see much of a difference, except the leader is doing the culling.”
Amble bumped into Demeron. “Perhaps a horse that is sick, or old, or lame. Would you want me to leave you if wolves attacked you when you were sick? I don’t think so. Life isn’t fun for a horse that can’t get around, but foals? They have their whole life ahead of them.”
Demeron hadn’t thought very deeply about it. In fact, until he left South Salvan, he hadn’t really thought that deeply unless Pol asked him to. He wondered if Amble had. Perhaps it was because she was a mare.
“Did you ever have any foals?” he asked.
Amble just looked at him and projected a bleak feeling. That was all Demeron needed to know. She hadn’t led a very happy life, something quite unlike Demeron. He observed the herd and let their emotions flood into him.
Pol had always been talking about patterns, so he tried to classify the feelings around him. He closed his eyes and found spots in his mind. They moved! He opened his eyes and found that the spots corresponded to the horses milling around. He closed his eyes again and wondered if the spots were colored to reflect their emotions.
Amble’s was violet, like a faded lilac. None were as bright as Amble’s, but he would have to think about this. Could he be turning into a magician? He hadn’t talked about his experience very much with Amble, but now that they were stopped for a few days, Demeron vowed to recall what pieces of thoughts and words Pol had said regarding patterns.
Patterns represented the current state of things. Magic was used to tweak, the word Pol used, the patterns. Magic meant disrupting or changing the patterns. He would have to practice using magic while they rested.
Demeron could picture things. Was that a way to make a pattern? The shield that he created was a copy of what Pol had done. He pictured the shield, and it appeared. So there had to be intent involved. Magic didn’t just happen.
He mulled over the concept. He tried to talk to Amble about it, but she didn’t believe him, it seemed. Demeron wasn’t ready to demonstrate. He remembered the old human’s magician light. He wondered if he would be able to create one to light his way in the darkness. There were lots of things he could try, and quite suddenly he felt the loss of his magician friend, Pol.
The brown and white stallion directed the herd towards the other side of the valley as the sun set. Demeron and Amble stayed where they were.
“So what do you intend to do?” Amble said.
“Sleep,”
“No. What will you say to the leader?”
Demeron snorted. “Goodbye. They don’t want us here, so we leave. We’re headed to Deftnis, anyway.”
Amble turned away from Demeron. Her emotional spot had turned a dull orange. Demeron didn’t know what that meant, but he doubted if it meant anything good.
Morning came quickly, and the herd still stayed on the other side of the valley. From where Demeron stood, there wasn’t as much forage over there. Amble and he continued to feed and rest.
The push north into Finster might be more taxing. Demeron hadn’t quite recovered from his illness. Once they were in the Empire, Demeron knew the land would smooth out, and they could travel faster.
The herd seemed nervous in the afternoon after Demeron awoke from a brief nap.
“What has happened?” Demeron asked Amble who had nestled herself in some thick grass.
“I think their leader has returned,” she said. “Look.”
Demeron turned his gaze to the herd and saw a contingent of five horses trotting across the valley towards them.
“You’d better get up,” Demeron said. “They might not be coming for a friendly visit.”
“Wolves in horsehides?”
Demeron nodded at the expression.
The contingent trotted up and stood some distance away. Amble and Demeron closed the gap.
“What is your intention?” a white stallion, nearly Demeron’s size, said.
“We are passing through to the Empire in the north. The valley looked like a pleasant place to rest,” Demeron said.
“I want you out of here, now,” the stallion said.
“When we are ready.”
A brown horse with a shaggy coat walked midway between Demeron and the herd. Demeron recognized him as the quickened Shinkyan he had met in the forest when he came down the mountains from South Salvan.
The leader, the white stallion, looked back at the brown horse. “You know him?”
“I do. We met weeks ago when I first came to Shinkya.”
“He said you fought wolves, but your wounds are still fresh.”
“We fought another pack some days south of here.”
The leader paused for a bit. “And you survived?”
“Of course. Fighting is never pleasant, but the outcome wasn’t in doubt. It isn’t if you put up a good enough effort. If your hoof connects with a wolf, it hurts them.”
“I want you out o
f the valley by sundown,” the leader said.
Demeron felt the anger and resentment from the other four horses that surrounded the leader. He wondered if the leader always had a lot of help from the other horses. The brown and white snorted at Demeron just before they left.
The brown, shaggy horse, Seeker, stood and watched the leader pass him before he proceeded to Demeron.
“You stood up to him,” the horse said.
“Why not?” Demeron felt the underlying fear in the horse that wasn’t there when they met in the mountains not that long ago. “Is he that scary?”
“The five of them are bullies. We arrived last night, and they haven’t let me feed. They go on raids to build up the herd. I approached them, thinking they might be friendly.”
Demeron could see splotches of blood on Seeker’s shaggy coat. The leader and his bullies were obviously unfriendly. “You can feed here,” Demeron said.
The shaggy horse took a few mouthfuls of grass. “You are making a mistake, if you stay.”
“I don’t intend to stay,” Demeron said. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow, if Amble is ready.”
Amble looked at Demeron and at the shaggy horse. “You shouldn’t leave, yet,” she said.
Demeron could sense an emotion that he had never detected in Amble before. He closed his eyes and looked at her spot. It had turned a brighter orange.
“They are smarter and just as mean as wolves. What if they fight just like I do?” Demeron said.
“How do you know that?” Amble said. “We fight as a team. They won’t know how.”
He looked at her with new eyes. “You want to fight the whole herd?”
“Not the whole herd. We just need a few more horses, and we can take them on,” Amble said. “I don’t like them, and from what your friend just said, I like them even less. They don’t deserve to be masters.”
“What masters get to be masters because they deserve it?” Seeker said. “Mine didn’t.”
“We can change things. I’ve seen you change things, Demeron. You’ve given me hope. I didn’t even know what it was before you saved me from that pen in Tishiko,” Amble said.
“Pen in Tishiko? You made it to Tishiko?” the shaggy horse said.