Horses!

by Gardner Dozois

  "Three thousand five hundred," said Prxbens.

  "Three thousand five hundred? Can he fly, too?"

  "Three thousand eight hundred and not a denarius less!"

  "What, does a whole family come with him, eight strong boys?" asked Vegetius.

  "Four thousand," said Prwbens.

  "Done!"

  "Done," said Prebens, crossing his wrists three times and spitting, "and done!"

  Decius was smiling as they had him write up his own bill of sale.

  They decided to move Chiron nearer town as they received word Nemo Prorsus was on his way across the Hellespont. Vegetius and Muccinus went out to help him close up his cave, stacking stones across the entrance all one afternoon.

  He was to stay in one of the outbuildings in an olive grove owned by Vegetius' uncle, Verbius Mellarius the rhetorician.

  "Excuse me," said Chiron. He backed up, lifting his tail and dropping a pile of road apples on the path. "I usually don't do that so close to home, but I'm leaving. And my stomach's not what it used to be."

  After they sealed the cavern off fairly well, they began to ride downstream as the sun went down. Chiron took a long last look back.

  "If these were the olden days," he said, "I'd ask one of the Cyclops to keep an eye on the place for me."

  A few minutes later, Decius Muccinus looked at Chiron and began to laugh.

  "So this is the famous Mr. Chiron, eh?" said Nemo Prorsus, a squat thick man with a Greek beard. He wore trousers in the eastern fashion and a leather tunic covered with brass spikes. He was bald as a melon. "Glad to meet a real centaur. I once fixed up a mermaid and sold it to the Prince of Parsi, but this is the closest I ever come to a real mythical creature."

  "I'm no myth," said Chiron.

  "Think you can do it, Nemo?" asked Decius.

  "That's Mister Nemo to you, slave boy!" He studied a moment. "Yeah. But it's gonna take all your master's money. Have him give it all to me."

  "Why are you talking about me in the third person?" asked Vegetius.

  "I didn't start this," said Nemo Prorsus. "Yeah, gov, I can do it, but you'll have to give me near all your money and go along with everything I say. Whatever's left over we can split. Bargain?"

  "Done," said Vegetius, sighing.

  "Done," said Prorsus, crossing his wrists three times and spitting, "and done."

  "It'll take about three days to get everything cooking. I suggest we all lay pretty low," said Prorsus.

  "There's one thing I'd like to do before we leave. If Vegetius is paying," said Chiron.

  "I suppose I am," said Vegetius, sighing again.

  "I'd like to visit a lupercalia."

  "Sonofabitch!" said Prorsus. "You're what, a million years old or somethin'? A lupercalia, no less!"

  "I used to go all five ways when I was young," said Chiron. "But that was long, long ago. I'd like to go, just once, again."

  "Sonofabitch!" said Nemo Prorsus. "Come on, Mr. Vegetius! Let's give the old guy a real treat. I know a place, way out in the sticks, where nobody cares what comes and goes. No offense, Mr. Chiron!"

  "None taken."

  So in the early morning hours they took him to a brothel by the back ways, and then into a stable by the front door, then back to the brothel again. Several of the women had several rides. Everyone became drunk and agreeable, the night became a warm blur. The women covered Chiron with flowers and sequins; one, a Greek girl named Chiote, poured libations of wine and perfumed oils in his hair and mane.

  The next day no one at the lupercalia remembered much of

  what happened, or whether it had or that they only dreamed it; some illusion caused by the edicts of the new Emperor, perhaps some psychic slippage to an earlier, simpler time.

  "Well," said Prorsus, when he woke up with matted eyebrows and a dry mouth in the olive grove the next morning. "Time to get to work. Shell out the loot."

  First he bought sixteen horses.

  Then he found eight old men, solitary worshippers of Bacchus, and asked them if they could ride a horse in a straight line. Then he made them prove it. He promised them all the wine they could drink each night as long as they could ride the next morning, and free passage back to Byzantium, if they chose it, or could remember where they were from, or why they should go back whenever they got wherever it was.

  "But . . . but . . ." said Vegetius. "The money!"

  "An empty purse contains nothing but the seeds of failure," said Prorsus. "We made a bargain. Your centaur wants home. He's giving you something in return. You're giving me something—your complete trust and your cash. True?"

  "Well, yes."

  "Then let me do my job," said Prorsus, and pulled more sesterces out of the bag.

  Then he went out and bought an elephant with one tusk.

  He had draped two white blankets over the pachyderm's sides, tied on with rope. Prorsus took a paint brush, and in a fairly good hand painted:

  VIDE ELEPHANTOS HANNIBALENSIS

  on each side with an arrow pointing backwards.

  "Not very good Latin," said Vegetius.

  "Good enough for these garlic-eating yahoos!" said Prorsus. "The first rule is, when you're hiding a marvel, give them something else to gawk at!" He put down the paint brush.

  "Besides," he said. "Anyone who thinks he's going to see some six hundred-year-old elephants deserves to miss a centaur or two."

  He winked and left to see about the Imperial Post Road permits.

  "Here goes nothing," said Muccinus, naked and sitting on the elephant's head.

  It was the first morning of the westward trip. They were nearing the first village on the road toward Phillippi and Dyrrhachium.

  "Put your lungs in it, you old farts!" yelled Prorsus from his blue-painted horse up ahead.

  The eight old men sat up as straight as they could on their horses. Two of them had bagpipes, two had trumpets, two serpentines which curved around them to rest on the backs of their saddles, and the other two flailed away at drums.

  It wasn't music, it was an atrocious noise. The elephant almost ran off the road. Muccinus steered it back by kicking it behind its right ear.

  Vegetius, wincing, could imagine Apollo, Orpheus, and Harmonia throwing themselves off Olympus in suicide at what was being done in their name.

  All the people ran out of their houses, stood in the road, made way for them.

  They began to cheer and yell as the blatting entourage came even with them. Prorsus, wearing a headdress of purple ostrich feathers, gave them a sweeping blessing with his arms.

  All eyes were on the elephant. It trumpeted, drowning out the cacophony ahead of it for a second or two. It drew even with the middle of the village. Heads turned back toward Byzantium, peering. Most of the villagers were still looking that way when the noisy column drew out of sight around a curve in the post road.

  None had noticed that in the middle of the eight old mounted men was another old man, his hair and beard now cut short, his hair combed to hide his pointed ears, who played no instrument and looked neither left nor right.

  At one town, Vegetius saw Prorsus proved right. It happened on the edge of a large crowd where he rode. As they drew even with the applause, a child pointed to the mounted musicians.

  "Look Mater," said the girl, "that man in the middle is half-horsey."

  The woman picked the child up by the hair and shook her. "Learn not to lie, Portia," said her mother, never taking her eyes off the elephant.

  "I can't believe it," said Vegetius. "Two and a half months gone by, halfway to the Pillars, and no troubles!"

  "These is strange times," said Prorsus, putting more wood on the fire. "Nobody knows what to expect with a new Emperor sittin' on the throne like it was a pot. They don't know which way to jump. They're all just waiting for the other caliga to drop." They were camped off the road near Aquilia in Noricum. The old men were already drunk or asleep. Chiron lay nearby, his human part asleep on a flat rock, his equine body folded under him. Now
and then a long low sound carne from his chest.

  "This trip's been pretty easy. Company's better, anyway," said Prorsus. "I've had some tough jobs, with real scuzzes to work with. I once stole a quinquireme from Ephesus and sold it a week later in Sardis, and nobody ever saw it."

  "Wait a minute," said Decius. "Sardis is overland from Ephesus. There aren't any rivers or canals connecting them!"

  "It was for a bet," said Prorsus. "Some jobs is just easier than others, I guess."

  So it went through Mutina and Trebia in Gallo Cisalpina, Dertona in Liguria, where the roads often became crowded, and missing entirely the dead backwater of Italia itself, through Augusta Taurinorem, Massilia and Narbo Martius in Narbonensis, down the long chest of Tarraconensis, past Novo Carthago on the shore of the Mare Internum, and along the coast roads, passing south of Hispalia in Baetica to the Gates of Hercules.

  They were on a hill overlooking a small seaport. Across to the southwest was Mauretania, emblazoned with the sunset.

  "We're here," said Vegetius to Chiron. "Now let's get you home."

  "We'll have to hire a ship."

  "So it is Africa we go to!" said Decius Muccinus. "Not really," said Chiron.

  "Then for the god's sakes, where?" asked Vegetius. "Out there," said Chiron, pointing to the sunset.

  "What! There's nothing out there!"

  "There's another land. The land centaurs come from. And horses."

  "How the Dis did you get here? You didn't have ships!"

  "We walked. It was colder then. The ocean was lower then, and more land stuck out. Of course, we came the other way, through Asia. I'm taking you by a short cut."

  Whistling a tune, Prorsus started down the hill.

  "Where are you going?" asked Vegetius, beside himself. "To find passage back for the drunks and to find a boat that'll get him home," he said, jerking his thumb toward the centaur. "What! What!"

  "He hasn't lied to you yet, has he?" asked Prorsus, over his shoulder.

  Vegetius ran down to a cork tree and gnawed at the bark, tears streaming down his face. After a while, he felt better.

  "Sorry," he said to Chiron. "It's been such a long trip. I thought it almost over."

  Chiron put his hands on Vegetius' shoulders. "Soon," he said. "Soon, you'll have the book. Soon I'll be home. It had to be this way. If I would have told you in Smyrnea, you would not have come. And you would have remained a bitter old man the rest of your life. And I would die in Thracia, so far from my homeland."

  "I'm just tired."

  "I, too," said Chiron. "More than you know. Let's make camp. No more masquerades. No more processions. Let the world gape. I'm going home."

  They boarded a ship next midnight and set sail westward. Prorsus had sold the elephant to a merchantman captain returning to Nyzantium in exchange for passage for the old men. They had said their goodbyes the evening before boarding.

  When dawn broke on the ship in the Mare Atlanticum, it became very quiet. The crew saw the centaur and kept its distance.

  "When do we put north or south?" asked the bosun, expecting a turn starboard toward Hibernia, or port to the Wild Dog Islands.

  "We don't," said the captain. He reached into the poop cabin and pulled out a bag half his size.

  He kicked at it.

  It jangled.

  "Hear that?" asked the captain. "The bag talks!"

  "That it does," said the bosun.

  "What does it say?"

  "It says west by northwest by the stars, sir!"

  "Just what it said to me."

  For two weeks the sea had been still and flat as a sheet of lead, without a cloud in the sky.

  The sail was furled. The sailors' hands were raw with rowing toward the westering sun.

  "It used to be much easier to sail there for a while, or so I'm told," said Chiron. "There used to be a big island out here in the middle, though they charged an arm and a leg for a port call."

  During the last week they had lightened the load as much as possible. Now there was nothing left but food, water, the money bags and some extra canvas on board. Still the hours of flat calm dragged by.

  Vegetius, Prorsus and Muccinus took turns at the oars, and Chiron stood helm though there was very little need to steer.

  The sun came up abaft them every morning, and set before them each evening, and it seemed they had moved not at all.

  They awoke to find themselves, the captain and bosun at one end of the vessel and the crew at the other. No one was rowing. The oars were shipped.

  "Well," said the captain. "What is it?"

  One of the men stepped forward. "We've been without wind for seventeen days now. We row all day and night. We get nowhere."

  "There's nothing for it but to put our backs in and hope for wind," said the captain.

  "We could turn back." There were grumbles behind him from the others.

  There was a consultation with the passengers. "Out of the question," said the captain. "We're more than halfway there." "Says who?" yelled someone.

  "Say I, and I'm captain."

  "Well, then," said the crew's leader. "We could lighten the load."

  "What's that?" asked Prorsus, suddenly taking an interest in the proceedings.

  "You know what I mean, governor," said the crewman, nodding his head sideways. "Why don't we put the horsey over the side?"

  "Quite right!" said Prorsus. He grabbed the sailor by crotch and tunic and pitched him over the railing. The man coughed and floundered in the glassy water.

  "Next!" said Prorsus. "I figure three more make up for my friend Chiron here." He opened his arms in a wrestler's invitation. "Weight's weight."

  No one came forward.

  "Toss him a line," said Prorsus.

  They pulled the wet and straggling sailor back aboard.

  "Do we understand each other?" Prorsus asked the assembled sailors.

  "Aye aye!" they said in one voice.

  As if by some propitiatory magic, a dancing line of water moved toward them from the east. It caught up to and passed the ship. The frill of mane on Chiron's back fluttered and a cool breeze blew into Vegetius' right ear.

  "Well, hell and damn!" yelled the captain to the crew. "Don't you know wind when you feel it? Unfurl the fonkin' sail!"

  The canvas came down and filled, the ship groaned and jerked ahead, bearing them away from the morning sun. The sailors, among them the wet one, joined in "Old Neptune's Song."

  The shoreline was broken by trees and clearings. Here and there shaggy humped shapes grazed, some few stopping to watch, then returning to their forage. They looked like wisents only they had smaller horns.

  Chiron turned to the ship.

  "Fishing should be good all up the shore," he said. "Won't take long to replenish your stores. Good water, too. Follow the warm water north, then follow east when it turns. You'll end up in Britannia or Hibernia. You know them, captain?"

  "I'm half tindigger," he said. "I paint myself blue once a year when the mood overcomes me."

  Chiron laughed, then coughed, a hard wracking series of them. He leaned the upper half of his body against a tree, steadying himself with his right hand. Then he straightened and turned to walk away.

  "Goodbye. Goodbye, horsey. So long Mr. Chiron," they all yelled from the ship.

  "Wait! Wait! The Hippiatrika!?" yelled Vegetius.

  Chiron turned. "In the cave. On the table. The two unopened scroll tubes. Thank you, Renatus Vegetius. I will remember you always."

  He turned then, lifted his tail, his regrown hair and beard streaming in the wind like a white banner, and broke, for a few paces, into a canter, and disappeared through the nearest stand of trees, heading westward.

  A yell of exultation and homecoming, of surrender and defiance rose up, startling some of the browsing creatures. Then it, too, like the drumming hoofbeats, echoed and died away westward.

  "Back water and up sail, you sea hogs!" hollered the captain.

  In the three years of life rema
ining to him, P. Renatus Vegetius returned home, retrieved the books in the cave, and incorporated the Hippiatrika into his great work on the diseases of mules, horses and cattle, the Mulomedicina.

  Decius Muccinus, free and married, had twin sons whom they named Aurem and Renatus.

  Nemo Prorsus became the Christian Bishop of Sardis.

  On his deathbed, Renatus Vegetius looked around his room at his sisters and their husbands and children, at his newly freed slaves, and at what few friends as had not preceded him in death.

  About the only thing he regretted was never getting to hunt lions from a chariot in the wet marshlands of Libya.

  He remembered one sunny day on a far shore half a world away, and the cry of happiness that had drifted to him out of those woods.

  What was killing a few old lions compared to what he had done?

  He had helped a tired old friend get home.

  Vegetius was still smiling when they put the coins on his eyes.

  The Boy Who

  Plaited Manes

  by

  Nancy Springer

  Here's a strange modern fairy tale, delicate and pastel-colored as a dream, but with a core of ice and iron, that suggests it's dangerous to assume that a specialist can only do that which he is best known for doing . .

  Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Nancy Springer now lives in Pennsylvania with her family. One of the most prolific fantasists of the 1980s, her adult novels include The Silver Sun, The White Hart, The Sable Moon, The Black Beast, The Golden Swan, Wings of Flame, Chains of Gold, Madbond, Mindbond, Godbond, The Hex Witch of Seldom, and Apocalypse. Her novels for children and young adults, many of them about horses, include A Horse to Love, Not on a White Horse, They're All Named Wildfire, Red Wizard, Colt, and The Friendship Song. Her short fiction has been collected in Chance: And Other Gestures of the Hand of Fate.

  * * *

  The boy who plaited the manes of horses arrived, fittingly enough, on the day of the Midsummer Hunt: when he was needed worst, though Wald the head groom did not yet know it. The stable seethed in a muted frenzy of work, as it had done since long before dawn, every groom and apprentice vehemently polishing. The lord's behest was that all the horses in his stable should be brushed for two hours every morning to keep the fine shine and bloom on their flanks, and this morning could be no different. Then there was also all the gear to be tended to. Though old Lord Robley of Auberon was a petty manor lord, with only some hundred of horses and less than half the number of grooms to show for a lifetime's striving, his lowly status made him all the more keen to present himself and his retinue grandly before the more powerful lords who would assemble for the Hunt. Himself and his retinue and his lovely young wife.