Oathblood

by Mercedes Lackey

  Well, they’re right, but we have more than one trick up our sleeves, don’t we? she replied, just as amused as Warrl.

  The next day proved the truth of what Warrl had heard. After Tarma reassured the foals that today would be just like yesterday, and Jodi and Beaker coaxed the young geldings into their harness and plows, the first of the “hard cases” was brought out, rearing and kicking. It took two men to hold him, one on either side, and even then he wasn’t what Tarma would have considered to be “under control.”

  Jodi took one look, and turned around and went into the stable, but before Lord Kemoc’s men could do more than begin to chuckle at her “cowardice,” she had returned, with Graceless and Hopeless in a very special triple harness.

  “This lad has a lot to unlearn,” Tarma explained, as Jodi and Beaker replaced Lord Kemoc’s two men—and Warrl rose up out of the shadows beside the stable to approach the horse from the front. Never having seen a kyree, the horse started and tried to shy, all of its attention on the possible threat and none of it on Jodi or Beaker. As Warrl slowly stalked toward the horse, it backed up willingly, and before the gelding knew what was happening, it was between Graceless and Hopeless. Quicker than thought, Jodi and Beaker buckled the gelding into the harness and Beaker took up the reins as Jodi stood aside.

  Warrl turned and loped away, out of sight, and the gelding woke to its situation. Predictably, it immediately tried to kick and rear.

  Graceless and Hopeless didn’t nip and didn’t kick—instead, they leaned. They were heavier than the gelding and a half a hand taller, and as they leaned toward each other, the gelding was held immobile between them. They remained that way until he stopped fighting, then they shifted their weight again, freeing him.

  He seemed very surprised and unsure of what to do; Jodi clucked to the two mares, and they moved forward a few steps, bringing the gelding perforce with them. Now he resumed his bad behavior—and they leaned into him again. A little harder this time, squeezing a bit of breath out of him.

  Jodi took the three into the yard and put them through the same paces as before, while Beaker watched. The Valdemarans didn’t watch, they stared, with their mouths dropping open.

  Tarma took the opportunity to get Lord Kemoc aside. “What’s the hardest case you have?” she asked.

  “A gelding that stood at stud for a while, and thinks he’s still whole,” Kemoc replied, mopping his brow with a cloth.

  “Bring him out,” she told him, and went to get Hellsbane and Ironheart.

  The chestnut gelding in question needed four men on him; squealing and sweating, he fought every inch of the way.

  Bad, or just angry and confused? I can’t tell. There was always a percentage of horses in an inbred line like this that were just—crazed. The only way to tell for certain would be to work him with Hellsbane and Ironheart.

  “Turn him loose in that yard,” she said, pointing to a smaller, ring-shaped exercise yard. The men looked at her as if she was crazy herself, but did as she asked.

  The gelding entered the yard kicking and bucking, and soon had rid himself of every bit of harness except his halter. That was fine with Tarma; she didn’t want anything getting in the way. She let him run and buck in circles for a while to wear himself out; when he finally stopped, so drenched with sweat he looked black, she whistled softly to the two warsteeds, and calmly walked into the yard while the stablehands hissed in surprise.

  As she had half expected, the gelding charged her; it was a sham charge—though if she’d turned to run, he’d have chased her right out of the yard. Instead, she stood her ground with the warsteeds on either side of her, and he stopped short, snorting with surprise.

  “Now, my lad,” she said calmly to him, “you’ve been allowed to get away with a lot of bad habits, and we’re going to civilize you.”

  He snorted and danced at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, arrogance in every line of him. You can’t tame me! his attitude said, as plain as if he could speak. I’m a Stud! I’m a King! I can do anything I want!

  Then his attention turned to the warsteeds, and his nostrils flared, taking in their scent. They weren’t in season, but that wouldn’t matter to a gelding who thought he was still potent. His ears came up, and he arched his neck. Mares! said his body language. Girls of my dreams! Don’t I impress you? Aren’t I wonderful? I’m a Stud! Come over here, and I’ll show you just how Studly I am!

  Ironheart yawned, Hellsbane snorted in contempt. Both looked to Tarma.

  “He needs taming, ladies,” she told them in Shin ‘a’in. “Go give him his lessons.”

  Ironheart shook her head and ambled forward, with Hellsbane half a length behind. Both of them were a full two hands taller than this would-be stud, and correspondingly heavier, but what mattered to the gelding was that they were mares.

  He curveted toward Ironheart, dancing sideways, quite clearly intending to mount. But he kept an eye on her teeth, just in case she took a notion to bite him. Much to his shock, she neither bit nor allowed him to mount her; instead, she sidestepped, neatly maneuvering out of his way.

  More determined now, he pursued her, which was exactly what she wanted. After a few feints, she had him positioned right where she wanted him—between herself and Hellsbane.

  At that moment, Hellsbane closed in before he could move out of the way, sandwiching him between the two warsteeds as neatly as if he’d been harnessed there.

  Graceless and Hopeless could not have maneuvered a loose horse like this, but warsteed mares were quite used to handling herd-studs this way when they got out of hand. This was the way they kept their would-be mates in line when they weren’t in season or didn’t particularly care for their hopeful mate. This was just as well, given the training that warsteeds had in combat. If they hadn’t been able to handle unwanted mates in a nonviolent manner, there would be serious damage done every spring.

  This was what Graceless and Hopeless had been trained to do with a harnessed horse. They themselves were of Shin‘a’in breeding, but from a small herd dedicated to producing working farm horses, a herd carefully preserved as one of the warsteed foundation lines. When problems showed up in a warsteed breeding herd, the stallion was put to one of these mares, and the resulting offspring bred back into the warsteed herd. They weren’t as intelligent as the warsteeds, and certainly not as surefooted and quick, but by keeping this herd of foundation-stock intact, the Shin‘a’in prevented some of the problems that came with heavy inbreeding.

  When the gelding found himself wedged between the mares, he was astonished. How did this happen? said his ears and head. What’s going on here? I’m a Stud! And he tried to struggle loose.

  Ironheart flipped an ear. Oh, really? said her attitude, and just as Graceless and Hopeless had done earlier, she and Hellsbane leaned toward each other.

  But they were not just trying to immobilize this importunate young fellow, they were going to teach him a lesson. They squashed him between them so hard he couldn’t move at all.

  Not that he didn’t try, every hair on his body erect with indignation. You can’t do this to me! I’m a Stud! I’m your Master! You were born to serve me!

  Hellsbane twitched her nose. I don’t think so, said her ears and tail, and she leaned harder.

  In short order, the warsteeds had the gelding squashed so firmly between them that they had shoved all the breath out of him, his eyes bulged like a fat frog‘s, and his hooves no longer quite touched the ground. They let him hang there for a moment, then took some of their weight off him, allowing him to drop down between them.

  He stood there, panting, his head drooping, and quite clearly trying to figure out what had gone wrong. By now the yard was ringed with spectators, all of them holding their breath to see what would happen next.

  The gelding tried to get away twice more; twice more the warsteeds squashed all the air out of him. Finally, he gave up, and stood between the mares with his head dropped down to his knees. Now it was Tarma’s move.

&n
bsp; She approached him with a bridle and bit in her hands; when he saw the hated bridle, his head came up and he tried to rear.

  But the mares wouldn’t let him. Once again they closed in on him, not leaning, not yet, but making it very clear that if he acted in a way they didn’t approve of, they would.

  Tarma approached his head with the bridle. He tossed his head out of the way. The mares leaned, just a little, then let their weight off him. Tarma tried again, patiently, until once again, he gave up, and she was able to get the bit between his teeth and the bridle on him.

  Now was the trickiest part; getting the harness on. She went back to the railing of the yard and collected it, then gave Hellsbane a handsignal. The mare moved out of the way, and the gelding eyed Tarma warily, but with new respect. It was evident now to him that Tarma was a member of the herd, not just one of those annoying two-legs. More than that, by the way that the others were obeying her and cooperating with her, she must be the lead-mare! This was a concept that left his poor head spinning.

  Tarma walked calmly up to him, and laid the harness on his back, just as Beaker had done with the younger gelding. He, of course, immediately shook it off. She did it again, he shook it off again. She put it back on for a third time, and his head snaked around to snap at her.

  Tried, rather, because before he could move, Ironheart had the back of his neck in her strong, yellow teeth, and gave him a good, hard bite. He squealed and tried to kick, but Hellsbane nipped his rump first.

  He was every bit as intelligent as Lord Kemoc had claimed for the breed; this time, he didn’t try to bolt, or bite—he stood there, shivering and thinking.

  Tarma laid the harness over his back; he left it there. She buckled it up; he let her.

  And now she did something he would never have expected; she praised him, got out a soft cloth and wiped him down, scratched all the places where sweat had collected and dried, and which were itching him like the sting of a horsefly. Had he ever been praised and petted before?

  Probably not, she decided, judging by the way he started and jumped, then rolled back his eye to look at her with utter bewilderment. But he liked it, oh my yes! He liked it a very great deal, leaning into her scratches, and even rubbing his nose against her tunic.

  Spoiled rotten and too full of himself, but not mistrained, she decided with satisfaction. This won’t take long at all.

  She took the harness off him, and the bridle, and let him loose for a moment, then approached him with the bridle again. Of course he wasn’t going to let her put it on him now that he’d gotten rid of it! But the warsteeds were ready for that, and quickly had him neatly sandwiched between them again, and this time it didn’t take nearly as long to get him bridled and harnessed.

  By the end of the day she had him pulling a plow, harnessed between her mares. If he shirked and didn’t take his share of the load, they squashed him. If he tried to run away with the plow, they squashed him. If, however, he behaved himself, Tarma was there with a word of praise.

  She was concentrating so hard on handling this horse that she completely forgot about her audience, and when she brought the gelding back in to be put up in his stall and fed, the stablehands treated her with a respect verging on awe. “We’ll have to work him between my mares for a few days,” she told Lord Kemoc, “But after that, he’ll go all right for you this spring, and Beaker and Jodi will be able to train him to saddle and sell him afterwards—which I gather you weren’t able to do before.”

  Lord Kemoc could only shake his head in wonder.

  She and Beaker and Jodi worked with Lord Kemoc’s horses for a week before all of them were working properly in harness. By the end of the third day, Lord Kemoc had voiced delicate hints about their employment status, and by the end of the week, he and Jodi and Beaker had successfully concluded negotiations that gave them equal pay and status with Lord Kemoc’s Weaponsmaster. Tarma was completely satisfied at that point; the worst of the horses had learned proper behavior, and with Jodi and Beaker in charge, from now on the foals would never have a chance to learn bad habits. The Ashkevron horses should be the most sought-after in the Kingdom.

  She and Hellsbane and Ironheart rode into the gates of their own home just as the spring rains began to break up. Jadrie rode up to meet her on her own sweetly-tempered little mare, full of spirit and impatient to be off to the Dhorisha Plains for summer holiday. Over dinner that night, Tarma had the whole family in stitches over the story of the poor, squashed gelding with his eyes bulging like a frog’s.

  Kethry wiped away tears of laughter from her eyes with a napkin. “So Jodi and Beaker are safely ensconced, and Lord Kemoc’s horses are all going to behave themselves from now on? I’d say that was a successful ending to your assignment! But you still haven’t told us what you said to the Valdemarans to explain your training techniques—”

  “Well, they probably still think it was magic, Greeneyes,” Tarma told her with a chuckle. “But what I told them was the truth.”

  “And what was that truth?” Jadrek asked.

  Tarma grinned. “That it was just the proper application of peer pressure.”

  Oathblood

  Here is where I’ve gotten to put together a bit of what life is like at the schools, and why the partners aren’t rolling in gold when their reputation should ensure that they get plenty of clients. Better quality than quantity, as Tarma would say. I’m assuming that the pupils all go home in the summer for a long vacation that corresponds with the growing and harvesting seasons, and take a briefer vacation over Midwinter Holidays, if they live near enough to make it feasible. Obviously, for this story, all of them did.

  Tarma watched her two favorite pupils enter the ring—a simple circle of paint on the floor of the salle—with a critical eye. The first, a blonde whose hair was confined in a tail and bound with a bright blue headband, stood about even with Tarma’s chin, but the second, whose dark mane was plaited in two braids wound severely around her head, was even shorter. It wasn’t often that Jadrie faced off against an opponent smaller and younger than she; at the age of twelve, Kethry’s eldest daughter was more likely to find herself paired with Tarma’s oldest pupils, two and three years her senior and correspondingly taller. Jadrie was by no means an extraordinary fighter by Shin‘a’in standards, but she was quite good, and she had been tutored by Tarma from the time she first evidenced an aptitude and interest in warrior-training. That had been at the tender age of four—though naturally she had not been given weapons, even practice weapons, until she was eight and had already demonstrated steadiness and responsibility by taming and training her first horse. Most of Tarma’s pupils never had the benefit of such early training, so Jadrie was naturally far in advance of even some much older than she.

  Kira was the exception to that; her father, the now-Archduke Tilden, King Stefan’s former Horsemaster, gave his children access to some surprising teachers. At the age of three, on the sound principle that taking lessons with a former entertainer would be play rather than work, Kira and her twin sister had gotten a retired professional acrobat and contortionist as a tutor, and at six, along with the usual schooling, lessons given by a professional dancer had been added. At eight, on her own initiative, Kira had begun training with her father’s Weaponsmaster, and now, at ten, she and her twin were here, with Tarma, Kethry, and Jadrek.

  But Kira and her twin Merili were both extraordinary children, each in her own fashion.

  They were not identical twins; in fact, if they had not been born at the same time, their father often joked that he would have suspected his wife of some infidelity. Ash-blonde Merili was as delicate and feminine as her mother, but with her father’s eyes, although in Merili the expression was of sweetness and utter innocence—Kira was tough, wiry, tall for her age, with straight brown hair and eyes of an incredible violet that had never appeared in either family to anyone’s knowledge.

  But unusual things happened in their family; Tilden had seen more than enough not to worry about inconsi
stency in hair and eye color. Shortly after Kethry and Jadrek had wed, Tilden had married a former bodyguard, who, despite her frail appearance, had more than once broken the necks of assassins with her bare hands. Her early training had begun with acrobatics and dance; hence, she had seen to it that her daughters had at least that much in the way of physical schooling.

  But Kira had something more than mere training; she was a prodigy, the kind of student every teacher prays to have once in his or her life.

  Merili was a graceful dancer and loved the art, was already an accomplished needlewoman, was fascinated with languages and had a strong interest in herbalism. She couldn’t have been more unlike Kira, but the bond between them was unbreakable; and where her twin went, there she was. So when the Archduke enrolled Kira in Tarma’s school for would-be young warriors, Merili had come along. She worked out in physical exercises with her sister and the rest of Tarma’s students, studied nonmagical courses with Kethry’s students, and continued other studies with Jadrek, getting as fine an education here as she would with her private tutors. Tilden had already had several marriage offers for her, but Merili had already met the eldest son of the Queen of Jkatha, and the two had formed an early attachment so strong that many suspected it to be a lifebond. What with the Archduke’s holdings already lying on the Rethwellan-Jkatha border, and the King of Rethwellan wanting very much to strengthen ties between the two countries, the match seemed an ideal one. So although a formal betrothal had not been announced, it was very, very likely that Prince Albayah would wed Merili as soon as both came of age.

  “And I’ll go as Merili’s bodyguard,” Kira always chimed in, whenever the subject came up.

  It seemed to Tarma that there could be no better solution to the Archduke’s surfeit of girl-children. There was one older than the twins (already making a name for herself as a scholar) and three younger, one of whom was likely mage-talented, though at the tender age of three it was difficult to say how talented.