To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  As Gorbel stalked past the Randir, they called out sympathetically to him. One named Simmel put his arm around the Caineron's shoulders and shook him playfully.

  Mmm, thought Jame, remembering her uncle's ill-fated Randir crony, Roane. Whenever there was trouble, there seemed to be a Randir somewhere behind it, pushing.

  In the crowd by the rail, she saw a thick coil of gold wrapped around a cadet's neck. The Randir seemed to feel Jame's eyes and glared back, one hand rising to caress the triangular head that rose from her collar to meet it. So. The Shanir had gotten her snake back, apparently uninjured. Good.

  Was it really possible for an entire house to go rotten? Some Randir randon seemed all right. Others . . . she remembered the Tempter and the calculating, alien darkness that had seemed for a moment to peer out through her eyes. The Commandant had said that she was back, but Jame hadn't yet encountered her, nor did she wish to.

  The Falconer's merlin swooped over the square with a scream, then wheeled toward the upper window of the mews where his master awaited him. Simultaneously came the belling of distant horns.

  "They have the scent!" cried several voices. "Hurrah!"

  Riders swung into the saddle and took the boar spears handed up to them. Archers strung their bows. Hounds yelped and pressed eagerly against the hall doors, black tails whipping in excitement. The doors opened. They surged through, down Old Tentir's hall, and out into the growing dawn. Swift feet and hooves followed.

  Cadets leaned over the rail to watch them go, cheering, but then fell silent as the tumult of the hunt faded into the distance. Gorbel threw down his spear.

  After that, it seemed quite prosaic to go in to breakfast with another round of lessons ahead.

  II

  However, it turned out to be a day of distractions.

  Whatever the class, the cadets' attention kept turning to the hunt. For a long time, snatches of it could be heard in the distance—the bell of hounds, the sound of horns—borne on a shifting wind. The rathorn colt, it seemed, was keeping close to Tentir, playing hide-and-seek with its pursuers. In this, it was no doubt helped not only by the Riverland's odd topography but also by the disruptions caused by the recent weirdingstrom and quakes, which between them had displaced large chunks of the landscape, some as far south as the Cataracts.

  Perhaps, some whispered, it could even use the folds of the land as the Merikit did.

  Others laughed at this, but uneasily: no one knew for sure how the northern tribesmen could pop up wherever in the Riverland they chose. Some, like Lord Caineron, welcomed the odd native hunter as good sport, to be hunted in turn. Others remembered the fate of Kithorn and kept watch especially against the autumn cattle raids, but it did little good.

  We are strangers here, Jame thought, not for the first time, and the land doesn't welcome us.

  She and her ten were on their way, finally, to the day's last lesson.

  The previous three had been exercises in confusion, with whole files of lancers tripping over each other's weapons, arrows loosed at random (except for Erim's, who couldn't seem to miss if he tried), and an irate strategy instructor dismissing half his class mildly concussed for inattention.

  Harn had finally emerged and bellowed that the whole college had better settle down or, by Trinity, he would work off their fidgets with a punishment run the likes of which they had never seen and probably wouldn't survive.

  Gorbel, bound for the same lesson as Jame, was still seething: "God's claws, I can track down that brute if anyone can. I'm the best hunter at Restormir except," he added hastily, "for Father."

  While his cronies assured him that this was true and Jame's ten bit their tongues under Brier's stony gaze, Jame unhappily considered the rathorn. The Riverland wouldn't be safe for her, or at least as safe as it had ever been, until he was dead, but what a terrible waste!

  Here was their classroom, a large chamber on the ground floor of Old Tentir, where they would practice with some of the more obscure weapons in the Kencyrath's armory. Jame stopped short on the threshold, her ten piling up behind her. Hanging on a rack were suits of protective leather armor, face-guards, and beside them, in pairs, heavy gauntlets tipped with steel claws.

  Their instructor was a dark Brandan who looked as if he had had entirely too much experience with the wicked blades behind him. Indeed, one puckered eyelid drooped over an empty socket while three seamed scars ran parallel to it slantwise across his face.

  "The Arrin-thar," he announced, gesturing to dangling weapons. "You see the intended connection with the lethal claws of the Arrin-ken, also with occasional rare Shanir. Find the pair that suits you best."

  Alone among the excited chatter of her classmates, Jame fumbled through the swinging scythes, hoping desperately that none of them would fit.

  "Here, lady," said the instructor, and thrust a pair at her. "These were made for a Kendar child—as playthings, no less—but you have hands almost as small." He pulled on his own and flexed their articulated fingers. Clink, clink, clink. "Well, Jameth?"

  Jame stood holding the gauntlets in her own gloved hands, feeling numb, then nauseous.

  "My name is Jame, ran, not Jameth." She gulped. "And I think that I'm going to be sick."

  "Not good enough." He flipped down his face guard. "Defend yourself."

  And he sprang at her.

  She dropped the gauntlets.

  The next moment passed in a blur of action, two figures at the heart of it leaping, striking, withdrawing.

  The instructor looked down at his shirt—he hadn't bothered to don body armor against a novice—and watched it fall apart in five long gashes. The hairy chest beneath was similarly slashed, and the cuts just beginning to bleed.

  Jame backed into a corner, hands gripped tightly behind her.

  ". . . sorry, sorry, sorry. . ."

  The randon stalked after her, cadets scattering before him.

  "Show me."

  White faced and miserable, she held out her hands. He stripped off the gloves and examined her fingertips. Then he pressed her palms to make the ivory claws extend.

  Gorbel's moon of a face appeared at the randon's elbow, wide eyed and goggling.

  "Oh, how splendid!" he breathed, and then, as his friends pushed up behind him. "I mean, how grotesque. Father always said you were a freak."

  For this, he got the randon's elbow casually jabbed into his eye and retreated, swearing.

  "You'll need special training to use these properly," said the instructor in a matter-of-fact tone, releasing Jame's hands. "Gloves aren't a bad idea, though. Take note, all of you: always keep a weapon in reserve, the more unexpected, the better. D'you have clawed toes as well . . . er . . . Jame? Too bad. They can be useful. Now, on to practice."

  The rest of the session passed in a daze for Jame. Wearing armor against the others' inexperience, encumbered by her own, she countered their flailing attacks automatically, initiating none of her own. Nor did it help that the instructor kept watching her, although he said nothing. At last the class was over and the cadets dismissed.

  Outside the room, Jame almost ran head first into the Randir Tempter. All the more startling, the woman wore a heavy veil across the lower half of her face. She stepped aside without speaking, but the lines around her dark eyes shifted as if she smiled, unpleasantly: Why should I interfere? You will destroy yourself soon enough.

  Jame had meant to slink back to her attic, but word of what had happened preceded her.

  Timmon was waiting on the boardwalk. "From all the ruckus," he said, "I thought you must at least have sprouted fur and fangs." When he craned to see her hands, she presented them to him with a defiant glare, nails out. "Now these," he said, examining them, "are quite elegant. Just the same, you'll have to be careful how you use them in bed."

  Jame realized that her ten had bunched up behind her, watching and listening, Vant with distaste, Brier without expression, the others obviously fascinated.

  "Do you mind?" she snapped at them. A
s they reluctantly departed, she rounded on the Ardeth. "As for you . . ."

  Timmon also retreated, throwing up his hands in mock surrender. "Keep 'em sheathed! I'm off too. And sleep well tonight, Lordan of Ivory," he called after her as she stalked away. "I'll see you in your dreams."

  At the door of the Knorth barracks, Jame paused, hearing a babble of voices within: "Did you hear. . ."

  "Did you see . . ."

  "Oh no."

  "Oh yes!"

  Sudden silence fell as she stepped over the threshold. Nearly everyone was there, back from the last lesson, and all had turned to stare at her. Instinctively, she thrust her hands behind her back. Her movement broke the spell. At least half the room rushed at her, shouting questions:

  "Oh, lady, can we see? Rue says they're five inches long" ("I did not!" Rue protested from the back of crowd) "and as sharp as knives!"

  "Did you really make cat's meat of the instructor?"

  "We knew you were a true Knorth!"

  "Oh please, lady, show us!"

  And, hesitantly, Jame did, flexing her long, black gloved fingers, the ivory nails, honed to lethal points, sliding out of their sheathes.

  "Oooh!"

  "So that's why the king post in the attic is all scratched up!" Rue exclaimed, suddenly enlightened.

  Jame bolted up the stairs.

  In her own quarters above, she leaned out the hole in the roof to gulp down cool mountain air, to wonder if, after all, she was going to be sick.

  But here came Jorin, trotting across the floor, greeting her as if she had been gone a year. She sank down against the wall, gathered up as much of the ounce as would fit into her lap, and pressed her face into his rich fur. His purr shook them both, or perhaps not his purr alone.

  "Shanir, god-spawn, unclean, unclean!"

  Words shouted at a frightened child with bloody fingertips and nails. No: claws. Hide them. Chop them off. But too late: Father had seen. So much hate, such loathing for who and what she was.

  Worse, Tori felt the same way, on a gut level perhaps inaccessible to reason. Father had trained him well, even as he had rebelled against that legacy of hate.

  She, too, had rebelled, over and over again . . . but she had never quite lost the sense that it was all her fault. The claws. The rejection. Everything. That lesson, too, had sunk in deeper than reason.

  Now Kendar who previously couldn't look her in the face had been avid to see what she had kept hidden in shame all her life. True, some had expressed horror. But not all. Not even most.

  She remembered Marc's easy acceptance of her . . . deformity. Perhaps he was more typical of the Kendar attitude than she had thought. "We are many," the Randir Tempter had said, speaking of the Kendar Shanir, "and we are proud."

  Jorin stretched backward over her arm, bracing himself with a paw against her cheek. She took it, feeling the warm, thick pad, the hidden menace. Press here, and out they came, hooked and sharp. Jorin took back his paw and began to groom it, pausing to crunch on the tip of a nail.

  The most natural thing in the world.

  No. It wasn't the same . . . or was it?

  She cupped his sleek, golden head with her ivory nails. He leaned back into them. There. Scratch there.

  All her life, she had mistrusted her own judgment, depending instead on that of Kendar like Marc, like these cadets, like Brier.

  But her brother's feelings still mattered. Dreadfully.

  And there was far more to her Shanir nature than ten embellished fingers. As yet, Tentir had no exact knowledge what it had on its hands.

  Below, the dinner horn sounded.

  Had so much time passed? Apparently. Her stomach rebelled at the thought of food, but she couldn't hide here forever. Jame pushed Jorin off her lap and soberly went down to a meal for which she had no appetite.

  III

  I must be dreaming, thought Jame.

  She had expected to fall asleep with difficulty that night—after all, one's life didn't turn upside down every day—but now she barely remembered falling into bed.

  Not this bed, though. The attic offered nothing so soft nor such silken sheets, deliciously cool on bare, bruised skin. Eyes still closed, she stretched luxuriously, like a cat, and found that her hands were bound above her head.

  . . . be careful how you use those claws in bed . . .

  Her eyes snapped open. Surely, this was a dream. Curtains of red ribbons surrounded her, rippling, whispering together. More ribbons bound her wrists, but loosely as if to say, Relax. Blame us if you must, but enjoy what you can't prevent. Truly, is it so bad to be a woman?

  There was a flaw in that logic—probably several—but Jame found it hard to think clearly over the seductive suspiration of silk on silk. Anyway, did it matter what happened in a dream? And this felt so very, very good . . .

  The ribbons parted. Timmon stood over her, naked and smiling. "I promised you some fun," he said.

  Abruptly his expression changed. "Oh, no. Not again."

  He seemed to go flat, and then his image separated into long strips . . . no, into more ribbons, fluttering in futile protest.

  Through them stumbled someone else. A spare body wired with muscle and laced with scars, black hair shot with white, silver-gray eyes . . .

  Brother and sister stared at each other. "Oh no!" they said simultaneously, and Jame woke with a start in her attic loft on rough blankets, alone.

  What a strange dream, she thought as her pounding heart slowed. Even for me. Especially for me. Oh well.

  She curled up again in her scratchy nest, but this time sleep eluded her for a long, long time.

  IV

  Dawn came at last, but no word from the hunt. The distant sounds had faded under a leaden, over-cast sky. Not even the keen eyes of the Falconer's merlin, circling above, could pierce the clouds that mantled the lower slopes of the Snowthorns.

  After assembly, Gorbel again demanded that he be allowed to lead out his private pack of hounds, and again he was denied. Simmel led him off, whispering in his ear with a twisted smile that the Caineron did not see.

  The Danior Tarn also begged for permission to join the hunt with his Molocar Torvo and also was denied, but more gently. The old hound gave a cavernous, nearly toothless yawn and fell asleep at his master's feet.

  When Jame's ten set out to do their stint in rebuilding the quake-broken outer walls, she was told to stay behind. It occurred to her, watching them go, that she hadn't been outside Tentir since the rathorn attack at the river, that the class schedule had deliberately been changed to keep her in. The college was a large place. Nonetheless, she suddenly felt cramped and restless.

  Having nothing else to do, she took Jorin and went in search of Harn Grip-hard.

  On the way, she ran into Timmon, arm in arm with a Kendar girl of his house.

  "Have any good dreams last night?" asked Timmon. "Because I didn't. At first. Then I remembered Narsa here, and the rest of the evening was quite jolly."

  He toyed with a lock of the girl's dark hair as he spoke, glancing sidelong at Jame. It occurred to her that he was trying to make her jealous.

  "Play your games, then," she said, lightly. "I wish you joy of him, cadet."

  Timmon blinked at her and the girl glared, clutching his arm even more tightly.

  Jame went her way, annoyed to find that she was vaguely, fleetingly jealous. But, after all, he hadn't been all that impressive naked, even in a dream.

  . . . anyway, not compared to that other lean, neatly muscled body tempered by hardship and battle, those beautiful hands that wore their scars like elegant lace-work gloves, those silver-shadowed eyes . . .

  Stop it, Jame told herself crossly. Things are complicated enough already.

  At length she found Harn in the subterranean stable.

  A commotion drew her to the southernmost row of stalls, hard against Old Tentir's foundation. Over shouts of warning rose the eerie shriek of a terrified horse, followed by a series of crashes. Edging closer, Jame saw a
large, piebald horse in its stall, on its back, with all four hooves in the air. She burst out laughing. Harn turned around and boxed her on the ear, hard.

  "It isn't funny," he said.

  The blow sent her reeling. Rage surged over shock and she came back at him, claws out; but his expression, impatient and preoccupied, stopped her like a dash of ice water in the face:

  Not now.

  The horse began to thrash again. A flying hoof smashed through wood, caught, was wrenched free. The animal kept rolling back against the wall and pausing to pant, its pale belly heaving. Then it lashed out again.