Lena, so the disapproving proctor said, had closed herself in her room again and wasn’t speaking to anyone. Mags couldn’t tell if the proctor disapproved of him, of Lena closing herself off from everyone and half-starving herself because she was unhappy, or felt he was to blame for her behavior. Maybe all three.
Right now, less than a candlemark to sunset, Mags was standing on the stone bridge over the Terilee River, watching the water rush by beneath him, and wondering despondently if drowning hurt very much. Drowned people looked peaceful. Well, except for the staring eyes.
:Yes,: Dallen said, interrupting his morose thoughts. :Yes it does. Very much.:
He sighed. :Cain’t find nothin’ quick or thet doesn’t hurt. Them flyspeck ’shrooms hurt a lot too. And so does water iris. There ain’t no cliffs ’round here t’ toss myself off, they closed up Bell Tower so ye cain’t throw yerself outa there, on’y th’ Palace towers’re tall ’nuff, an’ no chance me getting’ inta one’a them towers... :
:Stop that,: Dallen ordered, desperately. :Don’t talk like that. You aren’t going to drown yourself or throw yourself off a tower or eat poison. You are my Chosen and we have each other. We will get through this.:
Right now he was so far from imagining how they would that not even Dallen could persuade him. :Ye heard? They’re talkin’ ’bout Black Companions again. An’ ’bout Black Heralds. Ev’ crazy idea they had afore, they got goin’ now, an’ people’re startin’ t’ think ’bout takin’ ’em all serious. Someone’s even floatin’ the ideer that there’s some kinda second soul’r somethin’ in me, an’ it’s hidin’ behind me an’ controllin’ me an you. People are listenin’. An’—:
He couldn’t go on. And it wasn’t as if Dallen wasn’t already aware of this. What Mags knew, he knew, and he probably knew a lot more than Mags did. In fact, he was starting to spend an awful lot of time by himself in Companion’s Field, as if even the other Companions were starting to doubt him and his Chosen.
:Ye’d be better off w’out me,: he said dully. :Go Choose someone else. Ain’t nobody’d miss me, and plenty’d be happy t’ get rid’a a big problem. An’ I know damn well ye kin Choose agin, specially if I’m so bad rotten. It’s all right there i’ those Archives an’ Reports I been sortin’ through.: He felt his throat closing up. :Hellfires, I’m startin’ t’ believe all them stories.:
:Don’t be ridiculous! You are not bad! Look at everything you’ve done; it was all to help people!:
:Reckon Bear ’n Lena’d argue wi’ ye.:
:Exercise,: Dallen said desperately. :We need something to take our minds off this. The Kirball field will be empty. Let’s take the fastest run we can over that. A hard workout, the sort of thing we can’t do with the team.:
Mags was about to object, then sighed. He just didn’t have the will to fight Dallen on this. It wouldn’t help anything, but it wouldn’t hurt anything either, and it might exhaust both of them enough so that their minds stopped spinning in the endless circle of “we have to prove we’re innocent, but it hasn’t happened yet, so how can we prove we’re innocent, but we have to prove we’re innocent . . .” Mags was irresistibly reminded of the poor Lunatic’s mind, and how it kept going round and round the same cycle of words.
Aye an’ mebbe tha’s what makes me snap an’ kill the King. That would be an irony of monumental proportions—that the very suspicion and hostility that was being heaped on him was what would cause him to lose his mind and turn into some sort of insane killer. So the people that were the ones convinced he would do this thing in defiance of all logic and past behavior would be the very ones to make him into the monster that would do it in the first place. He thought about trying to put that to someone in authority—
But who? Nikolas had vanished, the King certainly wouldn’t see him, Herald Caelan was only the head of the Collegium, not someone who had any sort of say in what went out outside it. And anyone else would likely laugh at him, or think that this was yet more evidence of his unstable—or evil—nature.
Well, being exhausted would not be bad. And although there was no way he was going to go into the Collegium and take a hot bath afterwards, it was just warm enough to do the same thing in one of the Field ponds without freezing to death. Plus if he put a hot brick in his bed to warm it up, the combination of being chilled from the bath and the exhaustion and getting into a warm bed would put him right to sleep.
Mind, that would do nothing about the nightmares. He hadn’t had a night that was free of them since all this started. And the last of Bear’s nightmare potion was long gone. Even if anyone else at Healers’ Collegium had known how to make it, the question was whether he was going to trust them enough to drink something they’d concocted. Bear was very popular among the Healers, and while they might have some qualms about his skills, they had none about his personality, and very little about his right to be here. They probably all blamed him for not using his influence on Nikolas too.
So would he trust something that had been made by someone who wanted to punish him?
Prolly not. They’d be as like t’ give me somethin’ that made the nightmares worse. Or jest somethin’ t’ give me a bellyache.
But he’d heard worse ideas than Dallen’s. :All right. But it’s gettin’ on t’ twilight. It’ll be hard for ye t’ see. I don’ want ye to hurt yersel’, strain a tendon or summat. That’d jest be the end. Team’d never forgive me.:
Dallen’s mind-voice was full of relief. :All the better to simulate, oh, a battle that’s going long, a sneak attack by the enemy on our camp, or—oh, something else going wrong around twilight. I’ll be able to see well enough. Besides, we know that field like I know my stall; we could probably run it in a night of moon-dark.:
:All right,: Mags agreed reluctantly. :I’ll come saddle ye. If’n thet’s what ye really want.:
He left the bridge and trudged down to the stable, and selected a saddle and bridle from among Dallen’s neatly-stored tack. It should be neatly stored. He’d spent enough time cleaning, mending and putting it away today. He didn’t actually saddle Dallen so much as strap on a very light riding pad, meant to keep Companion and Chosen from chafing each other, and as close to riding bareback as you could come. And, as usual, the special bitless bridle, light and well worn and comfortable as bridle made of ribbon for him.
Dallen was impatient, and instead of walking, they galloped down to the Kirball field, where already the setting sun was turning things a bright red-gold. There was no one there, not even one of the groundskeepers. This, of course, was exactly what Mags wanted. No one around. He relaxed a very little. Not much, but a little.
:Is there a particular route and obstacle set you want to take?: Dallen asked, dancing in place to loosen up his hocks and warm up his muscles.
:Yer choice,: Mags replied, settling himself in Dallen’s saddle, in the one place in which he still felt at home. :You were the one that wanted t’ do this, so, you figger out what ye wanta do. I’m jest the baggage.: He hunched himself down low over Dallen’s neck, and rested part of his weight in the lightweight stirrups so that he could shift it at a moment’s notice.
The instant that Dallen sensed he was ready, he gathered himself and launched himself at one of the goals as if he had seen a starting flag go down. Mags shifted his weight smoothly as Dallen dodged imaginary foes and headed for the goal at his top speed.
He didn’t gallop up and down the ramp, either; he repeated the move that had won them the North flag, making a huge, straining leap for the top of the goal, managing to scramble up it anyhow as Mags shifted his weight practically over the Companion’s neck, whipping around on his hindquarters and leaping back down again.
From there, it was a high-speed scramble over the hillocks of “the bad side.” Mags kept in tune with him, shifting his weight to assist as they plunged toward the other goal. Dallen glanced to the side; Mags felt the turn coming. Dallen pivoted to the right, jumped down into a gully and scrambled up the other side like a goat. At the top he le
apt into the air and did the sort of kick-out that he would do if there were soldiers right behind them. Warhorses did this sort of thing too, but they had to have the signal from their riders. Companions didn’t need signals because they could think, but they did need to be perfectly in tune with their Chosen so that the human wouldn’t fall off or otherwise botch the maneuver.
Mags rode it out as easily as if he was sitting on a chair.
When Dallen came down again, he flung himself at top speed at the ramp, galloping up to the top and back down again, then wheeled and did it again, wheeled and did it a third time, coming to an abrupt halt on the top of the goal where the flag would be. There he reared and hopped forward three steps, flailing with his forehooves the entire time—nasty strokes that would bash in the face and helm of anyone foolish enough to be in front of him. Mags clung to his back like a burr, and with a mad leap they were off again.
This time it was a bit of steeplechase, with Dallen running neck-or-nothing at every obstacle in the field, and vaulting it cleanly, no matter how wrongly he came at it. They zig-zagged over the field that way, ending up back at their start, where he leapt and releapt the highest hedge in the field, a bit of brush that had been there long, long before this section of the grounds had been made into the Kirball field. He was over and over it four times like a goat or a rabbit, then wheeled as neat as you please and made for the boundaries.
This time it was a straight run along the fences, so close that Mags’ leg brushed the wood. Not that there were no obstacles here—no, there were ditches and gullies to leap or scramble through, those wretched hillocks to negotiate, bits of fence and hedge to get around or over. But this was good practice for war as well as Kirball. Horses didn’t like fences, and running along one had the strong potential of making them spook, or at least nervy.
The only things that there weren’t here on the Kirball field, things that you might find on a bad piece of ground, were big boulders. Even the goals were made of stuff that looked like stone, but wasn’t. This was because accidents happened, and a horse or a Companion running full tilt into rock would be dead, and maybe Rider or Trainee with him. There was turf, there was dusty dirt and mud and soft sand, but there was no rock anywhere in the field, except for pebbles in the bottoms of the gullies. And even those were softened by sand.
The full circuit of the boundary they went, and Dallen was just fully warm now, with maybe half a candlemark or more of this in him. Mags was sweating, but somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that Dallen had been right, that this was exactly what they needed to do to get their minds clear, at least for a little bit.
The last light of the sun was gone, and the blue dim of twilight on them. Mags felt Dallen decide for a gully scramble, taking the field as he had before, but the “low road” rather than the high, running through the ditches and gullies instead of leaping them. Dallen wheeled and made for the nearest, which was barely big enough to fit them. Mags felt the walls of the ditch brush his legs, and made himself even smaller on Dallen’s back.
Up and out of the ditch, and then down into the next, along it for three lengths until it ended and then up and down into a twisting bit of natural run-off gully with better sides but worse footing.
Dallen gathered himself, leapt and came down again in a third ditch, scrambled along it and scrambled out again at the end.
He wheeled, intending to execute an uphill leap and scramble, taking an obstacle the opposite way from what was intended, starting low and ending high. It was a mad maneuver for a horse, only slightly less mad for most Companions, but Mags knew this of old, and was ready for it.
And a blow to his mind knocked all sense and all preparation out of him.
It was a scream of incredible rage, hate, loathing—a howl that was only mental, but nevertheless it was like a dagger through the eyes.
Mags’ mind had brushed up against something murderous, so vicious it was like a swipe of razor-sharp claws across his mind. He cried out without meaning to, and the thing was gone, but the damage was done. Dallen had been caught and thrown off in mid-stride; he came down wrong on his leap, blundered and slipped, felt himself toppling, felt Mags about to go head-first into the ditch where he would surely break his neck.
Mags felt the jump go wrong, felt Dallen falling out from under him, knew he was not balanced at all, could not get his balance and saw his own death coming at him too fast to stop.
Then Dallen somehow flung himself over sideways. Mags found a balance-point, instinctively kicked himself free of the stirrups and tumbled off to the side.
Just as he heard the terrible double crack of both of Dallen’s forelegs breaking, and felt as well as heard Dallen’s scream of agony. He convulsed. Dallen, thank the gods, was paralyzed by the pain.
He screamed too, mentally as well as physically, dropping all his shields and shrieking a mindless call for help.
He scrambled on hands and knees to Dallen and weeping, sat on Dallen’s shoulder so he wouldn’t thrash, clasping his hands around the breaks to make sure they didn’t get worse. He could feel the bones grating under his hands, but they hadn’t broken the skin.
And meanwhile, he screamed for help, again and again, until his mind felt as raw as his throat. Dallen was voiceless now, mentally as well as physically, paralyzed by the pain, his sides heaving and his breath wheezing through clenched teeth.
This was a killing injury for a horse; any horse that had broken both legs like this, unless he was extraordinary indeed, would be put down. They’d done that to one of the mine ponies once, even though Master Cole was a man who would have—and did—work his ponies until their hooves were worn down to the frog and their hocks and knees were as swollen as ripe squash.
Finally, after what must only have been a few heartbeats, but felt like an eternity, rescuers swarmed the field. A flood of lanterns poured down the hill from the Collegia, people shouting at one another to “get this” and “bring that.” They leaped the fence and completely overran the two on the ground, shoving Mags carelessly off Dallen. He stood up and was further shoved off to the side, and kicked when he didn’t move fast enough.
Healers were there first, and in moments had shunted much of Dallen’s pain away, blocking the part of his mind that felt it. When the pain had been eased, they grabbed his forelegs in the light of the lanterns, and the bones were quickly aligned properly and roughly splinted to keep everything in place.
Mags shut down his shields, hugged himself, and shivered, weeping without any shame. All he could think about was Dallen, and how this surely was all his fault. He should have been smart enough to see this was a bad idea . . .
His eyes poured hot tears; he could scarcely breathe, his chest hurt so much. He would have given anything to take the last candlemark back.
More men came running, bringing a huge pieces of wood and metal, and more lights. Once they could see, they assembled an enormous frame of beams and bars and pulleys, while the Healers continued to keep Dallen eased. Some of the rescuers dug under Dallen’s body to slip a sling under him, then bit by painful bit he was hoisted up until there was no weight resting on his legs at all and he dangled from the frame like a trussed chicken in a market.
Now two of the huge, patient horses that hauled enormous carts were brought up; they normally towered over Dallen by a good four to six hands. His sling was fastened to their harness, so that they carried his weight; he was let down off the frame so that they carried him between them, like two men carrying an injured fellow between them on a stretcher. They moved off; Mags followed, speechless with grief and guilt.
Behind them, the men disassembled the frame as quickly as they had put it together. The sound of hammers followed them up the hill.
They made their way, step by painful step, toward Healer’s Collegium. It took another eternity, and every step was as painful to Mags as if he walked on knives, as if it was his legs that were broken, and not Dallen’s.
He wished that they had been. He wished wit
h all his might that Dallen had not saved him.
:No... : came the gasping mind-voice feebly. :... was worth it... :
But this was all his fault! He knew that going that hard and fast over the course was bad enough by day, and yet he had agreed to it! And it had been his mind that the Other had brushed against! He was too open, it was his fault, he must have let some shields down without realizing it. It was all, all his fault, and he could never say he was sorry enough to make up for this.
Limping, bruised, and bleeding heavily from a cut on his forehead, Mags followed, ignored by everyone intent on getting Dallen safely into his stall in a special small area at Healer’s Collegium, a little stable especially for injured Companions who were too badly hurt to be in their own stalls.
When, after an agonizingly long time, they finally reached the stable, it was to find the waiting stall already prepared. There was another sling arranged on the rafters above the stall, one with a pulley so that Dallen could be let down from time to time to sleep on his side. But now he was transferred to this sling, the big, patient horses were led away, heads nodding with each step they took. Healers swarmed over the Companion, properly setting his legs, then encasing them in strips of cloth dipped in plaster wound around and around them so there was no way for the broken bones to move. Then a bottle was thrust between Dallen’s teeth and he raised his head, head and neck trembling, so the contents poured down his throat. Then he set his chin down into a second sling so that his head didn’t have to dangle and let the drugs take over.
And slowly, for the first time since Dallen had Chosen him, Dallen’s Mind-presence faded from Mags’ mind, leaving only a vague and undefined something in the back of his head.
Mags curled up in a miserable heap on the straw in Dallen’s stall, crying silently. Dallen hung from the sling like a lifeless chunk of meat, and only the slow heaving of his sides and the vague presence still like an echo in the back of his mind gave him any indication that Dallen was even alive.
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