City of Blaze (The Fireblade Array) (27 page)

They waited in silence while the men in the changing rooms bantered and sang, their vocalisations occasionally tempered by the sound of showering. Artemi tried not to think about a room full of soapy, naked, muscular men. At length, they began to depart. Just as she was about to enter the rooms, she spotted that one of the men was wearing a pale, blue dress.

“Oh... no,” was all she could say, and think.

The man turned round to her and grinned mischievously. The dress was stretched tightly around him, unfastened at the back.

“Any chance I could have that back? I don’t want it getting any more back hair and bum fluff on it than it already has.”

The man and his friends burst into giggles. “As you wish, my lady!” He pulled the dress off with a great deal of difficulty and then stood there naked but for his smallclothes, clearly proud of himself.

Morghiad approached the group, his face utterly straight. “Consider yourself initiated,” he said to her, then to the semi-naked man, “Go and make yourself decent.”

The bare man handed the dress to Artemi, and it felt warm enough to produce a grimace from her. He explained to her that it was traditional for new recruits to swap clothes, which really sounded very odd indeed.

Finally, she was free to shower. The kahr took up his guard of the room while she peeled off the sodden clothing. It would have to go to the laundry during a quiet hour. The cool air felt wonderful against her skin. Checking that the captain was still facing away, she stepped under one of the high shower taps and pulled the brass lever. Hot water cascaded down on her body, sluicing the sweat from her figure. Someone had once told her the water was heated in the kitchens and then pumped round the castle. However it was done, it was a marvel to Artemi.

Ablutions complete, she knocked the handle back and scraped the hair from her face. Morghiad was still facing away from her. Good. She towelled the water off and pulled on her slip and dress, rapidly realising how restrictive they were compared to her uniform. The dress did not smell too badly of men, thankfully, but the lacing was all undone. Well, she thought, if Morghiad considered it acceptable to adjust a woman’s clothing, then he could bloody-well do up her bodice ties. She moved toward him, pulled her sodden hair over one shoulder, presented her back to him and waited.

The stables filled one side of the vast entrance courtyard of the castle and stretched right through to the fountain courtyard. Covering three levels, it was mostly home to the nobles’ animals and a few of the higher-ranking officers’. The rest of the army’s horses were kept in and around the grasslands that surrounded Cadra. Familiar smells of straw and horse dung filled Morghiad’s head as he neared Tyshar’s box. The black animal poked its velvet nose over the door and snorted at him in excitement, so the kahr gave it a greeting with a rub along the length of its snout. Aside from his obvious size and strength, Tyshar was a very special warhorse indeed. He had been a gift from the kahr’s tactics instructor, Lord Caollowin, now gone thanks to his father’s dismissal of the entire advisory council. Tyshar was a blood horse, which meant that he had drunk the blood of a man while still a foal. It conferred a host of advantages which included quick healing and a long life. It also brought some disadvantages: this was most often done to the finest horses, and the resulting sterility would mean their bloodline ended with them. In addition, Tyshar had taken on some of Morghiad’s less-agreeable personality traits upon taking his blood, and he frequently snapped or kicked at anyone who was not the kahr.

This probably was not the most ideal horse for Artemi to learn on. Tyshar was too big for her to start with, but Morghiad riding out on any other mount would have aroused suspicions. The animal could do with the exercise, besides. Morghiad had sent her to the woods a few minutes earlier on a postal carriage, and with luck, she would have alighted at the right place.

He slung the smooth leather saddle onto Tyshar’s back, tied the girths and then moved to ease the bit into the horse’s mouth. It chewed vigorously at the metal, eager to go. The kahr sprung into the saddle and kicked the beast out of the stable, keeping his head low. Tyshar very nearly leapt through the opening and cantered powerfully down the ramp, sending one or two stray bales of hay into the air. Morghiad channelled the raging horse carefully between the milling people of the castle; he didn’t want to decapitate anyone today.

Outside the castle he was forced to pull Tyshar into a contained trot around a group of tradesman and their customers, but soon let the horse loose again once the road ahead cleared. As he headed for the northern gate, several passers-by stopped to bow or curtsey. It was really all very unnecessary for them to do that, especially since many of them would only recognise that he was a lord of some kind. Thankfully not many commoners would put his face to the First Heir to the Marble Throne, Lord-Captain of the Army of Calidell, Son of House Sete’an, or whatever other ridiculous title they wished to use. And he wished to keep it that way. The darkness of the city walls consumed him as he cantered through the exit tunnel, hoof falls clattering between the walls. He recalled how confused Tyshar had become when they had felted his feet for a surveillance operation. The horse liked very much to announce his presence.

The kahr needed only to give a light touch on Tyshar’s sides once they re-entered daylight, and the two of them galloped across the frozen grassland. The horse was incredibly fast on the flat, and Morghiad smiled inwardly at the rush he felt with the speed. Any other animal he would have given a gentle warm-up before the run, but Tyshar never behaved quite like that. The iced plants crunched satisfyingly beneath each hoof as the kahr reined to the left. A vast forest lay two miles distant. It wouldn’t afford a huge amount of cover at this time of year, but Morghiad knew of a secluded clearing off the main road which few other people ever visited.

The hard-packed road became churned and rough as it met the borders of the woods. Morghiad slowed his mount over the uneven ground, and commenced his search for the young woman. Frosted orange, red and brown leaves littered the woodland floor, providing a perfect match for she and her hair, should she wish to lie down in it.

The kahr drew his horse to a halt and dismounted, as he could smell the familiar scent of wisp-root upwind of him. A flurry of red hair blew around the side of a broad tree trunk, framing a pale profile that smiled at him as it turned. She had improved the control of her more extreme emotions, but still smiled too freely for his liking. Not that he didn’t like her smiles. There were just too many of them and they had become difficult to deal with. Morghiad vaulted back on the horse and held his gloved hand out for Artemi. “Give me your left hand and place your left foot in the stirrup here.” He turned the left side of the horse to face her.

“I’m supposed to get my foot all the way up there?”

“No one’s looking, Artemi,” he reassured her.

She did as she was told, hitching up her skirts awkwardly.

“Now jump so that your right leg swings over the back of the horse and grab the back of the saddle with the other hand.”

The lady looked a little apprehensive. She pushed off the ground and landed behind him with surprising grace.

“Now hold on,” he said.

“To what?”

“Me.”

Artemi slid her arms around his waist and pressed herself into his back. The sensation was oddly... pleasant.

“Looks like snow,” the kahr announced, glancing at the sky.

“Ah... yes. So it does,” came her muffled reply.

Morghiad booted Tyshar into a fast-paced walk and reined the animal into the bare undergrowth. He could feel her leaning to one side to inspect the ground beneath them. They were leaving quite an obvious trail, but would re-join another track soon, so that didn’t matter too much. The two of them rode in silence for a few minutes, listening to the occasional panicked calls of the native birds or the rustling of some hidden predator. Eventually they reached an old track, and Morghiad turned the horse to follow it deeper into the trees.

“Shall we go a little faster?” he asked.

Her arms stiffened. “Is that safe?”

Morghiad allowed himself a small smile, not that she would have seen it anyway, and then he heeled Tyshar into a soft canter that caused Artemi’s grip to tighten considerably. The weather really was unusually cold for this time of year.

After half an hour of riding they arrived at the clearing he sought, where lichen-covered stone blocks lay scattered about the edges. Some of them appeared to have the form of hands, arms or legs from an ancient statue, fragmented long ago. Perhaps it had depicted a relative of his. With Tyshar halted, the kahr instructed Artemi to dismount, which she did with elegance. The woman looked a little shaken after her ride and kept her arms tightly folded.

Morghiad dismounted beside her and began winding the stirrup straps around the metal several times to shorten them. “Take the reins in your left hand,” he instructed, “Can you reach the opposite side of the saddle with your right?”

She stretched toward it but the horse was clearly too tall.

Morghiad scratched his chin and walked over to one of the fallen stones. “Take the bridle near his mouth and bring him here, left side facing me.” This would be an opportunity to see how she could deal with Tyshar’s moods.

Artemi stepped towards the animal’s head and reached up to the ends of the reins. The horse eyed her suspiciously. She took hold of the soft leather gently and rubbed Tyshar’s nose. Amazingly, the horse nuzzled her face as if they were old friends. Artemi grimaced at being brushed against, unaware that she should have been bitten and hoofed to the floor by now. She pushed the soft nose away and stepped toward Morghiad, warhorse following in content submission. Perhaps Tyshar could sense she was a wielder as he could. That flaming hair woman wasn’t going to learn anything if she never had a challenge from a horse! He clenched his jaw and took the reins from her when she drew near.

“Climb onto this stone,” he said.

She looked at it carefully. “Don’t you feel strange when you look at things like this? Objects from a past, long-forgotten? Who will be around to speak of their meaning now?”
She didn’t remember yet. She couldn’t.

 “All things become like this eventually, do they not?”

She nodded and stepped onto the weathered masonry.

“Now take the reins in this hand again and place your left foot in the stirrup. Mount as you did before.”

She did so with grace, though it afforded the kahr a rather generous view of her sleek legs.

“Feet in the stirrups. Keep the metal beneath the ball of your foot and drop the heel. Good. That will help you keep your balance.”

He instructed her for several hours round the clearing, watching her with some amusement when she bounced awkwardly on Tyshar’s back. As with all things he taught her, she showed unusually speedy progress. After she had bounced to her sixth canter, he raised his green eyes skyward. The clouds were beginning to darken and tendrils of the afternoon’s icy winds had begun to reach into the tree tops. It was time to close the lesson. “Foot out of the near stirrup, please.”

He climbed onto the horse, behind her this time, and took the reins from her hands. They trotted and cantered back to the main road, Morghiad offering tutelage the whole way. She felt warm against him. He was glad Artemi was a woman; it probably would have been awkward riding so close to another man. He chuckled inwardly at the image. Darkness filled the woods by the time he had reached the edge of them, and though he did not want to leave her alone in the cold, he had no choice.

“Stay hidden,” he said, re-adjusting the stirrups. “Bandits tend to roam these woods. I’ll send someone for you the minute I get back to the city.” The kahr eyed the lone woman: hair tumbling over her breasts, big brown eyes looking up at him, pale skin shining in the darkness. He wheeled the horse around to face Cadra, walked forward a few paces and stopped. A sharp wind roused the dead leaves from the ground.

He couldn’t leave her there, no matter how fast he made it back. He was going to regret this. “Get up here.”

She stepped up to the side of the horse. “But if people see -”

Morghiad grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up, placing her across his knees. “Can you pretend to have an injury?”

“Would a badly broken ankle do?” The city’s poor frequently walked about with injuries their bodies were slow to heal.

“Perfectly.”

Artemi untied a scarf from her narrow midriff and wound it carefully around the top of one foot. It revealed a tear in her commoner’s dress. He really ought to find a way of paying her now that she was a soldier, though it would have to be kept off the books. Giving her coin would be awkward... but he could have some new dresses made for her in private. False injury bandaged, the kahr held her by the waist with one hand and neck-reined the horse with the other. They galloped back to the city at speed, her hair whipping by his jaw with its purr of Blaze echoes.