And he was, slowing as he approached, calling to the mares, who whuffed their lack of interest.
“Oh, alet,” Hirianthial whispered. “A king among stallions, surely.”
“We think so,” Saul said, grinning.
“Is he gentled?”
The Hinich made a so-so gesture. “He came out of a vat like the rest of them, so he’s used to being handled. But he’s got a personality of his own. He doesn’t tolerate much.”
Hirianthial slid off his mare, handing the reins absently to Saul, and cautiously approached the jewel in the grass. Such a proud, clean head, with small ears. And the eyes: dark, pellucid and very definitely regarding him. His aura trailed off him like an extension of his bright mane: wild and smelling of high fields and sunlight.
The Eldritch was never sure at what point he began touching that sun-warmed skin, but he found his brow resting against the muscled neck and felt the nudge of a curious muzzle.
“Well, look at that,” Saul said, hushed. “He likes you.”
“And I am honored,” Hirianthial murmured, meaning it. And addressed himself to that aura, asking permission and receiving it he knew not how, but he pulled himself on the stallion’s back and whispered: Run!
Could a horse laugh? Kumiss bolted and took him along, took him on purpose. Hirianthial bent close to his neck, white mane wrapped in white hands, and the wind stung water from his eyes and whipped his hair back from his temples. And for an endless breath, there was nothing for him but the feel of the barrel rising and falling between his legs, the drum of hoofbeats impossibly swift, and the banner of the aura that streamed into his and carried all his careworn memories away.
The stallion slowed to a trot and then a walk, strolling back to Saul with head high. He stopped to allow Hirianthial to dismount and nuzzled the Eldritch, lipping the edge of his tunic.
“I... have never seen anything, anything like that,” Saul breathed.
“He is a peerless individual,” Hirianthial agreed, setting his hand on the stallion’s withers and then letting it fall away. “Ah, Saul. What a gift—”
But the Hinichi wasn’t looking at him. Was in fact looking past him, and was still doing so when an arrow bit his thigh and his mare shied. The horse Hirianthial had been riding bolted down the trail, and Saul fought to keep his from following. Another arrow smacked the ground in front of his mare’s hooves and she reared; this time not all his frantic commands kept her from racing after her herdmate.
Hirianthial reached for a sword and discovered he didn’t have one anymore, felt a moment’s intense disorientation. A world where people were attacked with arrows was one where he had a sword and a duty to use it. He flung himself around as a group of riders pounded toward them. Eight... ten... twelve of them, armed. How could a colony this young have criminals already? He could have handled five or six of them on his own, but not double that number. If Saul could bring help....
He asked forgiveness for the insult and leaped onto Kumiss. The stallion spun and then fled... in the opposite direction.
Follow me, he commanded the bandits, his outrage and worry blowing into the words, spreading them open like an explosion. He had no idea how badly wounded Saul had been, nor whether he had the training or weaponry to take on twelve opponents. He had to distract them until the Hinichi was out of reach. Follow me!
Some of them were trying to separate from the group. Looking over his shoulder, furiously shaking the hair out of his face, he willed them to return. Look at me, he urged them. Look at the stallion I’m on. This is what you want. His hand curled into a fist as Kumiss raced away. Come and get us!
For a heartbeat he thought he’d failed...
And then they drew together and gave chase.
“Now,” he whispered to Kumiss, letting the wind tear away the words—he knew the stallion could hear them in their commingled auras, feel it as a reckless bravado, as a challenge to their pursuit—”Now, we shall be canny and swift. Show them your heels!”
The one thing he feared did not come to pass: no arrows sang past them. He frowned as he bent close over Kumiss’s neck. They had shot at Saul, not at the mare, though crippling the mare would have afforded a better chance at preventing the Hinichi from summoning help. And... they had used arrows. Who in the Alliance used arrows—other than the Eldritch, with their impoverished technological base? Who were these people?
Their weapons might be poor, but their mounts were not. Hirianthial let Kumiss choose their course; they couldn’t outrun the raiders, so their only hope of escape involved the stallion knowing the terrain better than they did. As the horse fled up remote trails over the hills, Hirianthial allowed himself to believe they might have a chance, and this he did until he felt the auras billowing into his consciousness from ahead of them.
“Back!” he cried. “Back—”
But it was too late. More riders poured from the trail above them, and Kumiss caviled, turned... and was confronted by their pursuers. Mostly human, but a scattering of Pelted faces—he couldn’t tell species with their heads wrapped against the sun. Now that they’d slowed, several of them had raised their short bows again.
Hirianthial slid off Kumiss’s back, heard the saw of arrow against bowstring. No one loosed, though.
“Look at this,” someone said with a laugh. “We came for one stud and found two.”
Laughter. He did not like the way it felt in his mind: like knives, and the minds intent on his too focused by far. Now that they were close he could tell that they wanted Kumiss... and he didn’t think they’d be inclined to leave him alive to warn the Kesh where his prize stallion had gone.
His hand ached for a sword, and there was no sword.
There was, however, a knife.
Fifteen riders, and just one of him.
“Not a human?” one of them said.
“No,” said the first, coming closer. “So he’s not one of us, for all he rides like one.” He grinned. “A foreigner. The Rekesh will like that.”
A second man laughed. “The Rekesh will like him for more than his foreignness.”
They spoke Universal. They spoke of ‘us.’ With instincts honed by centuries of heartbreak and betrayal, Hirianthial knew he had somehow stumbled onto a family quarrel. And there was no quarrel as vicious as the one between family.
His knife was in his boot. He flexed his fingers.
“We’ll have to take him with us,” the second man said. “A matched pair for the Rekesh. White stallion, white man.”
“White stallion, white mare, you mean,” the first said, and grinned at Hirianthial. “Come along quietly, prize. You don’t make trouble for us, we won’t bruise up your pretty hide.”
Reese had freed him, God and Lady bless her...had taken him on as supercargo when she’d learned that hiring him as a doctor would have entailed swearing the ethical oaths that barred him from harming others. She hadn’t liked his admission that he would treat his enemies as well as his friends, given the quality and quantity of the enemies she’d observed him to have thus far.
The raiders came closer, closer... one more step. Hirianthial drew the knife and gave himself to the fight, to instincts older than any of the people who sought him. He did not hold back.
“Fine, aren’t they?” the Kesh said as Reese studied the blankets in the small outdoor market that had started coming together after the worst of the afternoon heat had passed.
“They are pretty,” she said, fingering the tassels. “A little small, though. Are they for babies?”
“For the backs of horses, actually,” the Kesh said, much to Reese’s lack of surprise. She tried not to be peevish at how horse-crazy these people were. “We weave and dye them ourselves, though. We could do larger ones, if you think them marketable.”
Reese frowned at the blanket. It had the inevitable horses running in stylized rows along the edges. “Did you really come out here with no plan?”
“Captain?”
“A plan,” she continued. �
��Most colonies have an idea of what they’re hoping to export, and get that up and running as soon as possible on landing so that when merchant traffic starts coming through, they’ll have something to sell to finance the expansion of their colony. As far as I can tell, you don’t have anything you’ve thought of selling. You came here to make horses and... what? Close off contact entirely with the Alliance?”
“Not precisely.” The Kesh leaned forward to stroke the tassel she’d just released. He was a little too close to her for comfort, close enough for his shoulder to brush hers... but he didn’t seem to notice her at all. “But to minimize contact with it, certainly. We just didn’t realize...”
“Realize what?” Reese asked, trying for a calmer tone.
He smiled, a slight smile on long lips. “It is hard to pull free from one’s family. Have you noticed, Captain?”
“Maybe,” she muttered.
“The Pelted know that lesson,” the Kesh continued, his eyes distant. They were hazel, she thought: greenish in the light. “They learned it from us, didn’t they? We should know better, you and I, Captain. Humanity could write volumes on the difficulties of isolation, and the dangers of turning one’s back on society.”
This sounded a lot more serious than a lack of an import/export plan. It sounded, in fact, like nothing she wanted to be involved in. Perhaps she should just ask him about the liquor directly and leave—
“REESE!”
Her shoulders tensed and her head flew up, the beads at the end of her braids smacking her jaw. Sascha was running down the street, leading... a horse? A horse with a body on it?
“Saul!” the Kesh cried, and rushed toward the Harat-Shar. Reese followed, heart racing. Had they managed to find trouble here, in the middle of nowhere?
“Sascha!” she said. “Pirates??”
“Not unless pirates use arrows,” he said, panting. He stumbled to a halt as the Kesh went to the horse, put his arms around Saul’s slumped body and slowly drew it off. The Hinichi was barely conscious, and his leg was drenched in blood, grown sticky and dusty.
“Sascha,” Reese said, her stomach falling. “Where’s Hirianthial?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked at the Kesh. “They went riding and he never came back. It was at least two hours ago that they left...”
“Kumiss,” the Hinichi whispered.
The Kesh froze. “No.”
“Kumiss—”
“Raiders!” the Kesh cried. He hauled his man up into his arms and said to Reese, “I need to take him to a healer. Then we can talk.”
“Raiders?” Sascha asked, bewildered. “Here? Where’d they come from?”
“We’re following you,” Reese said. “You can tell us what the bleeding soil this is about on the way. And you can start with where my crewman is.”
“If we’re lucky, the raiders took him with Kumiss,” the Kesh said. “If we’re not...” He glanced at her. “Then he’s dead on the slopes somewhere.”
“If he’s dead,” Reese said. “I’ll kill you myself.”
“Boss,” Sascha began.
“Captain—”
“No,” Reese growled. “No excuses. This is your damned colony. It’s your responsibility not to have raiders. Raiders with... with arrows, for soil’s sake! Arrows? Arrows! Who the hell uses arrows anymore?”
The Kesh was striding down the street with Saul over his shoulders. “It’s a long story—”
“So start talking!”
“Half the colony defected,” he said bluntly.
Reese missed a step, then scurried to catch up with him. “What?”
“We came here to be nomads, to follow the herds,” the Kesh said. “The deal was that we’d have one town and we’d take turns living in it, doing the work. But when we got here, there was an... argument. About the division of labor.”
“So half of you took off for the hills and... what? Started killing the other half?” Reese demanded, aghast.
“Not killing. Stealing.” The Kesh sighed. “They steal the horses as we make them. Get that door, please, Captain.”
Reese waved the door open for him and he disappeared inside. She stopped at the threshold, heart beating wildly. When Sascha joined her, she said, “We did not spring Hirianthial from jail, flee all over the Alliance with pirates on our tail, save him from that crystal mind-sickness and then risk him arresting a drug lord just so he could die on a backwater colony world because the natives are having a fight about who gets to play with the horses and who has to work like normal people.”
Sascha rested a hand on her shoulder, and after a moment she set hers on his. She was shaking; she hadn’t realized it until he touched her.
“We’ll find him, Boss,” he said. “He’s too tough to die easy.”
“You sure of that?” she asked. “He seems pretty frail to me.”
He snorted. “Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
Hirianthial woke when his body hit the ground. It had been centuries since he’d fallen off a horse, so he thought he could be forgiven his disorientation. Unlike his more youthful self, however, he was bound... and gagged. The knots were unforgiving, and had been tied so zealously they seemed more an attempt at bondage than detainment.
If he wasn’t mistaken, he also had a cracked rib. Maybe two? They had beaten him severely when they’d finally taken him down. That they hadn’t slain him outright was a minor miracle, since he’d had no such compunctions. He’d left at least four dead bodies that he was sure of, and with no remorse that he could discern. The fine mores he’d learned in ethics courses in civilized universities had no place among barbarians, and he did not miss them.
His captors were talking now, and not in Universal. Ordinarily he would never have considered reading their minds, but his options were limited and he needed information.
/”...should just leave him here. If we take him with us, we have to feed him and keep him from killing anyone else.”/
/”Are you crazy? If we leave him here, he’ll find some way to return to them—”/
/”So kill him and be done with it.”/
/”Then they’ll find the damn body. Unless you want to ride back to the herd and leave it there? They’re probably already on their way.”/
/”Well I don’t want to carry him. What if he wakes up and finds some way to kill me? You keep carrying him.”/
/”My horse is tired.”/
Hirianthial tried not to find the situation humorous; while they argued he dared to open his eyes, just enough to look. The bandits were grouped around him, and all the horses were there if he was counting correctly—not something he was entirely sure of, given the distraction of his injuries—and some of them were being led, not ridden. There were bodies slumped in those saddles and, he saw, tied there, if less creatively than he’d been.
Kumiss was also present, with a rope around his neck. His aura blazed like the corona of a sun: bright flares of impatience and indignation, more powerful than any of the humanoids. If there was a way for him to reach the stallion, they could probably make another attempt at escape...
But one of his captors was hauling him up onto his horse. He thought about pitching himself over the other side, but didn’t think his ribs would appreciate the impact.
“/This is for hell,/” the one gripping Hirianthial’s wrists said, and with that hold forced far too much of his mind onto the Eldritch’s: anger, disgust, a sweat-streaked miasma of violence and fear. “/We should just push the body over the nearest cliff.”/
/”He’s for the Rekesh,”/ said the one Hirianthial decided was the leader of this particular party. /”He can make the judgment, and the kill.”/
As his newest captor shifted in the saddle, something pressed against Hirianthial’s ribcage. He made no noise, but the man holding him down felt the change in tension anyway. /”He’s awake!”/
/”Is he?”/ The leader urged his horse closer and balled his fist in Hirianthial’s hair, forcing his face up. “So, the butch
er awakes. Well, you will lie quiet, mare, or the beating we gave you will be nothing compared to the beating we will. Understood?”
Hirianthial met his eyes and said nothing. When the raider shook his head by the hair, he closed his eyes and suffered it, but held his silence.
“I will assume that’s a ‘yes’,” the raider said. “Because you don’t want to know what ‘no’ will feel like.” He glanced at Hirianthial’s captor and said, /”Any wrong move, you say so.”/
/”Any wrong move and I might already be dead!”/
The raider was still; then with a movement so abrupt Hirianthial had no chance to defend against it, punched the Eldritch in the ribs. The world swam with black smears that grew despite his urgent attempts to evade them. As he lost consciousness, he felt more than heard the greasy satisfaction of the bandit leader: /”There. Solved your problem. Let’s go, before they catch up.”/
“You’re telling me they’ve stolen a horse,” Reese said over the table.
“Not just ‘a horse,’ captain,” the Kesh said, agitated. “Our prime stud.”
“A horse,” Reese repeated. “They shot your assistant and stole my crewman over a horse?” At his expression, she held out her hands. “Look, never mind why. If the animal’s so important, tell me you can find it.”
“We do have him chipped,” the Kesh said. “And we can follow him. We’re assembling a party now.”
“All right, good,” Reese said. “I’m going with you.”
“Boss, are you sure—“
“I’m going with them,” she said to Sascha. “I’ve been rescuing him for most of a year, dammit, I’m not going to stop now.”
“Of course you can come, Captain,” the Kesh said. “The party’s assembling outside.”
Reese jogged after him, expecting dangerous-looking men and women with sparrows and palmers. She’d never seen Alliance riot-gear, but she had seen Fleet in the middle of a fight, so she was familiar with at least some of the high-tech toys. To find the search party throwing saddles onto the backs of horses—“You have got to be joking. You’re going to ride after them? Don’t you people have something that can fly?”
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