"I've ridden before," Herzer replied. "I was training in reenactor combat before this happened," he added waving his arm around.
"Virtual reality?" Kane asked dubiously.
"Enhanced," Herzer corrected.
"Oh, so you know how to ride a horse," the man laughed broadly. "Not just think you do."
"Well, I've ridden," Herzer corrected. "A bit."
"Did you fight on horseback?" the horseman asked. "Or just ride a bit?"
"I was starting training in cavalry combat," Herzer admitted. "But it was. tough."
"Yeah, that it is," Alyssa said. "Everybody thinks it's easy until they try."
"Well, what's say we try you out on one of the boys," Kane said looking at his wife. "One of mine I think?"
"Oh, yes," the woman replied. "Mine could take him, but he's more suited to yours."
"What's this 'yours and mine' thing?" Herzer asked as Kane led him to a nearby shed.
"We brought both our herds down," the man explained. "Mine are Hanarahs and hers are Arabs. Do you know the difference?"
"I've seen them," Herzer said, gesturing at the herd.
"The Arabs are the little ones and the Hanarahs are the big ones," Kane said with a nod. "Do you want to know the rest?"
"How much?" Herzer said with a chuckle. "Lately I feel like my brain is getting overloaded!"
"Been in the familiarization program?" Kane asked, opening the door to the shed. Inside, saddles were hanging on boards that thrust out from the walls, and on the back wall was a series of pegs from which hung bridles and reins. Under the reins was a pile of blankets. The room had an odd, musty odor composed of old leather and horse sweat that was not unpleasant but definitely strong.
"Yes," Herzer said simply, taking the saddle that was thrust at him. He noticed that it had a high back and a low front. He had used similar saddles in his training, but with a higher front. He had no clue what the different parts were named except for the stirrups.
"Well Arabs are a very old breed. They've never been genegineered," Kane explained. "Nobody knows exactly where they came from but they were distinguished by being light of body, very human oriented, extremely fast and with great endurance. They also are missing one vertebrae which gives them less of a tendency to get 'swaybacked.' "
He grabbed a blanket and piled it and reins on Herzer's arms. "There, all set."
"Okay."
"There were originally basically two strains of horses, hotbloods and coldbloods, with me so far?"
"Yep."
"Hotbloods come down to Arabs. Coldbloods were found in Ropasa and were heavier bodied, relatively slow horses. They got bred up for size in the preindustrial period and worked well as cart horses and the like. But for a good cavalry horse you have to have speed and agility. So at some point, they started breeding Arabs into them and came up with a third strain called 'warmbloods.' "
"Hanarahs?" Herzer guessed as Kane led the way back outside.
"Hanarahs are warmbloods of a sort. But no matter how they worked, some of the qualities of Arabs just never took in warmbloods, notably the lack of that one vertebra. And they'd tend to get horses that were fast or had good stamina. Or if they were fast with good stamina, they were very delicate, had to have the right foods, that sort of thing."
"Hanarahs are genegineered," Herzer said definitely.
"Not quite from the ground up but pretty damned close," Kane admitted. "Incredible stamina, better than Arabs really, very friendly, damned protective, fierce to enemies and gentle as a lamb to a child. They're blindingly fast, can live on practically anything."
"Superhorses," Herzer said, putting his saddle on the top of the corral fence.
"Not quite, but as close as the designers could get," Kane said. "I guess we'll find out how well they did."
"Are they sentient?" Herzer asked. They looked at least on the close order.
"Not hardly," Kane snorted. "What a dumb idea. As if any sentient being is going to let someone ride on their back day in and day out. And if they don't, and you coerce them, what's that?"
"Slavery?" Herzer guessed.
"Got it in one," Kane said. "Sentient horses. Give me a nice, not too dumb, nonsentient horse any day. So you can't talk with it, big deal. It also doesn't talk back. More than balances out, trust me."
"They look like the kind that I rode in my training," Herzer said.
"Probably were. Well written scenario if so." Kane put his fingers to his lips and whistled a complex arpeggio. At the sound the young chestnut that Herzer had seen tearing around the pasture came running in a broad canter, dodging through the herd like a gymnast.
"Oh, goody," Herzer said. "Now you're going to give the newbie the unrideable horse."
"Not at all," Kane said seriously. "That's a stupid trick; we can't afford any more injuries than we've already had. Diablo is gentle as a lamb."
"Diablo?"
"Look, we've got nearly sixty horses to name, you run out."
He leaned forward and stroked the horse on the muzzle, then gave it a small treat.
"They like people," Kane said. "But getting them to come to you requires some incentive. Especially since this one's smart enough to see the saddle and know what's coming."
"He doesn't like to be ridden?"
"Would you like a hundred kilos or so thrown on your back?" Kane said, expertly slipping in the bridle. "You could probably ride him with a hackamore, but we'll start with the bridle."
He brought the horse out of the pasture, having to slap back two others that tried to bolt for it, and led it around to where the saddle sat.
"Go ahead and saddle him up while we get ready," Kane said. "There are a couple of other people who haven't had much recent experience and we were all going out for a trail ride to get broken in again."
"Uhmm." Herzer temporized looking at the horse. It looked back at him with a decidedly intelligent expression that seemed to say "Oh, My God. I've got a Newbie."
"Yes?"
"I don't know how to saddle one," Herzer admitted.
"Let me guess," Kane said with a laugh. "They always appeared fully saddled and with their barding on?"
"Yep."
"Paladins. There ought to be a bounty on them. Okay, no problem. But watch so you'll know the next time."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Herzer returned to the corral tired and sore. The trail ride had turned out to be far more involved than simply riding along in a group chatting. They had started off that way and had taken the horses for a long tour of the area, including a ride through Raven's Mill. Then, apparently with Myron's permission, they had spent some time pushing his small herd of cattle around and attempting, with mostly laughable failure, something called "cutting out." Using only the horses, they were supposed to pick one member out of the herd and move it away from the rest. Supposedly, in the really old days, this had been so regular and common as to be without notice. Not so here. The cattle would hardly break up when the horses approached and when they did start running they tended to stay together. Trying to get into the herd and push a single individual out turned out to be nearly impossible for most of the riders. The exceptions were Kane, Alyssa and, strangely, Herzer.
The Arabs, which two of the men and one of the women were riding, seemed to take a strange delight in herding the cows. But with the exception of Alyssa, none of the others could get a single individual cut out. Alyssa was able to control her mount well enough, using mostly knee control and shifting weight, to manage the feat at least once. Kane, likewise, was able to control his mount to do the work.
In Herzer's case, he swore Diablo was prescient and, like the Arabs, the young stallion seemed to enjoy the herding. All that Herzer had to do was get him pointed at the right cow and let him do the work.
After a sweat-soaked hour of running cows around-Myron came over while it was going on and remarked that they'd probably run a month's grazing off the herd-they headed back to the corrals. But the day wasn't over. They rode, mostly at a canter, bac
k to the corrals and had a light lunch. Then Kane produced implements for a sport he called "Cowboy Polo" and broke them into two teams. The object of the game was using long mallets to strike an inflated rubber ball about a third of a meter across and drive it from one end of the massive pasture to the other, then through a small "goal" designated by two fence posts.
They played that for the rest of the day, changing horses twice although never people, and by the end of the day Herzer was exhausted but satisfied. He had played on Alyssa's team and while they had lost, four goals to Kane's team's six, he had scored three of the goals.
Again Diablo, who had played almost half the game, seemed to have a knack for running down the balls. It was like the chase game with the cows in a way. In the brief intervals between "chukkers" Kane had explained the genesis of the game. Supposedly it had been invented by the ancient Mongols and the original "balls" had been severed human heads. He also said that the usual "ball" used was about the size of a human fist. Having mis-hit the much larger ball any number of times, Herzer had as much disbelief in that as the human head story.
He had fallen off, been "unseated" as Kane put it, only once and had remembered to fall as "bonelessly" as possible. His prior combat training had come to the fore permitting him to turn the fall into a roll.
"You need to get right back up," Kane said, riding over. "If you fall off and you don't get right back up, you'll have one hell of a hard time riding again, ever."
Herzer shook his head to clear it and then nodded. "Get right back up. I'll remember," he said muzzily.
When he got back up the replacement for Diablo had been patiently waiting, cropping at some of the sparse grass on the recently cleared field. So he had remounted and gotten back in the game.
However, at the conclusion, he wasn't sure he ever wanted to see a horse again. Unfortunately, he desperately needed a bath and to have his clothes washed. And while riding over to the baths was an unpleasant prospect, walking over was about the only thing worse that he could imagine.
Kane had told them to go get a bath and to take a horse if they wanted to. Obviously the intent was not only to get the smelly, sweaty group cleaned up but to get them some more practice riding, so Herzer reluctantly walked over to the corral after the last chukker and whistled up Diablo.
The horse looked at least as uncertain about being ridden as Herzer felt about riding, but he soothed the animal with scratches and finally got the saddle on and adjusted. Riding over was very unpleasant but when he thought about walking he had to admit that riding was at least shorter.
There were at least six others headed over to the baths at about the same time. All the other riders, however, were reenactors who were old friends of Kane and Alyssa. While they didn't deliberately cut Herzer out of the conversation most of it was so "in" that he couldn't even keep up with the names so he just rode along in silence, nursing his various hurts.
At the baths he gladly handed his now dry but crusty clothes over to the ubiquitous Darius and headed for the baths. He had parked Diablo around the corner on a long enough lead that he could crop some grass and when they got back the horse was due for a good feed and a roll.
He scrubbed hard in the cold water of the showers and then nearly screamed when the hot water struck his raw spots. But the pain quickly subsided and as the heat penetrated all his abused muscles it induced a pleasant euphoria that lasted for some time. By the time he felt he could drag himself out of the bath it was dark and the kitchens were nearly closed. He got his clothes, trotted down on Diablo-sensibly riding high in the stirrups to protect his abused bottom-and got some of the last of the scraps. After that he rode back to the corrals, fed his horse, brushed it down, got it a good feed, put away his gear and staggered off to the building designated as a bunkhouse. He found his basket in the dark, rolled out his fur and was asleep practically before he could get his boots off.
* * *
"Edmund," Sheida said, appearing in his office as the town council filed in the door.
"Sheida, we're busy here," Edmund said. "Could you just call me or something? Maybe, just once, leave a message?"
The rest of the council stopped, shocked, at the sight of him chewing out a council member but Sheida just nodded in sympathy.
"I'm starting to forget that people don't split," she sighed, stroking the image of her flying lizard. "I'm sorry, Edmund."
"What is it this time?" he asked, still exasperated.
"I've freed up enough energy to have virtual meetings for the constitutional convention and more important, for the writing of the first draft. I want you to be on it."
"Great I'll slide that in my free time between figuring out how to feed three thousand people and defending them from raiders."
"Is it that bad out there?" she asked, frowning.
"McCanoc is back," he growled. "He burned Fredar."
"Oh," she said, shaking her head. "I don't know how that one passed me by. But it's not the first by a long stretch."
"Nor will it be the last," Edmund agreed. "And we may be next."
"Do you know his current location?" she asked. "He has come up. at a higher level lately."
"No, somewhere west of Fredar on the plains presumably," Edmund said. "When is this meeting?"
"When would be convenient?" she asked, looking around and nodding at the council members. "Sorry for taking your time."
"No problem."
"Quite all right."
"Tomorrow evening?" he asked.
"Eightish?" she said, glancing in the distance. "That will. work. See you then," she added and vanished.
"To have the power." Deshurt said.
"I wouldn't want her headaches," Talbot responded. "Okay, if you'll all grab a seat, the first order of business is another crack at the banking code."
"Rachel," Daneh called as her daughter was heading out the door of the infirmary. It had been a long day at the infirmary, it was late and Rachel was due some time off. But she had put this off long enough.
"Yes?" Rachel said.
"Could I talk to you for a minute?" Daneh asked, waving at her office. "It's not. I just need to ask you a question."
Rachel furrowed her brow quizzically but followed her mother into the office.
"You've been talking to more people than I have," Daneh said, when the door was closed. "One of the things that should be done about the women who were raped is they should talk about it."
"I wasn't, Mother," Rachel said, looking at her with a frown. "Or. do you want someone to talk to?" she said with a worried tone.
"Well, yes, but not you, dear," Daneh said with a chuckle. "I was wondering if you knew. anyone who might want to talk."
Rachel thought about it for a moment and shrugged. "Yes. That is, I know some girls who. had a bad time on the trip. I haven't tried to draw any of them out about it. Should I?"
It was Daneh's turn to frown in thought but then she shrugged. "Talking about it is very important for healing. But what I was wondering was, could you ask some of them to maybe meet me in the evenings? One of the important things I learned from Bast is that. there are odd thoughts and feelings that are lingering presences of the rape. I think it's about time that some of us who have had that experience share it with each other and start to try to. heal."
"Oh," Rachel said. "I'll. see what I can find out."
"Thank you," Daneh replied with a smile. "Do you have any idea how much you have changed. grown, since the Fall?"
"Sometimes I feel a thousand years old, if that's what you mean," Rachel sighed.
"You know," Daneh said, leaning back in her chair. "I'm your mother. We can talk about things other than work."
"It's okay, Mom, really," Rachel replied. "It's nothing as. big as what you have to work through. Just the same problem everybody has. I keep wishing that it would all go back the way it used to be, you know?"
"Yes, I do," Daneh said, sadly. "Do you ever whisper 'genie' to yourself? I know I do."
"Someti
mes," Rachel replied with a nod. "Sometimes when I can't get to sleep I just imagine that we're all back the way we used to be." Her face worked for a moment and she shook her head. "I hate this world. Sometimes I wish I'd never been born!"
"Don't wish that," Daneh said, shaking her head. "I love you and the world would be a sadder place if you weren't in it. Know that. It's okay to grieve for what we've lost. But don't wish you hadn't existed. You have a long life to live and there is still joy to be found. Friends to cherish and love. Maybe even a boyfriend, hmmm? Edmund and I would like a grandchild some day."
"I'm a little young for that, Mother," Rachel said.
John Ringo - Council Wars 01 - There Will Be Dragons Page 40