Madbond (6 page)

“Kor! Get out of the way!”

I snatched up my willow whip, ready to lash the mare across the soft flesh of her nose if she attacked me. Though truly, there would not have been much chance for me if she had been intent on killing me. I hoped she would be more intent on her freedom, and, as luck would have it, she was. With a shrilling neigh she leaped for the square of light that had opened in the wall of her prison. Korridun had most of the poles down, and she splintered the rest, surging out at the gallop. I trailed along, stumbling, at the end of the rope behind her.

That was my mistake, to let her get ahead of me. If I had gone out before her and kept her head turned toward me I would have had a hope of controlling her. As it was, I was only a nuisance attached to her, and she commanded the whole forward force of her body with which to throw me off. She careered wildly across the mossy rock, kicking her hind heels high into the air, bucking, throwing her head, trying to snap the rope, and I was dragged after her, staggering in a wild run on my feet at first and a moment later down, dragged on my belly, my back—only the moss saved me from being totally flayed.

“Archer, you fool, let go!” I heard Korridun shout.

“Not on your life,” I muttered between clenched teeth. My will was given over to the combat, my grip locked on the rope.

The fanged mare reared up against her headstall, almost snatching the lead out of my hands. Sprawling, I caught a glimpse of her ungainly belly and her flailing forehooves as she teetered on her hind legs—then another jolt hit the rope. Korridun. I had not known he was so strong. He flung himself against the taut line, planted his feet and pulled. Taking her off balance as she was, he nearly pulled the mare down! She came to all fours, and in half a moment she leaped away again, but it had been respite enough. I was on my feet, shortening up on the rope, and her head was toward me.

“Kor,” I panted, “thanks. Now get out of here before—”

Before he became tangled in the line. He saw the danger as plainly as I did, dropped to the rock and flattened himself as the rope passed over him, then sprinted for the nearest vantage of safety, a twisted pine, and swung himself up. The mare circled and circled around me at the dead run, still pulling against me with her neck and heavy head while I braced my heels against the rock and pulled back, knowing that if she started away from me again I would lose her. Sometimes, trying to take advantage of me, she would suddenly switch about and change directions, snatching at the rope, trying to reach it with her fangs. But the advantage was all mine, for I shortened up on the line of seal gut each time and refused to give back what I had gained, no matter how she tugged. She was streaming with sweat, wet and foamy as the sea, and for my own part I could feel the salt trickle stinging my bloodied skin, bathing me, though the day was chill. This quiet, constant battle went on for half the day, Kor told me later. I had no thought for time. The circling movement of the mare blurred my sight, dizzying me, and I had long since passed from a screaming agony of my every muscle to a sort of trance. Nor had the mare slowed much in her running that I could tell—

Without warning of any sort she turned and hurtled toward me. The sudden slackening of the rope staggered me. I nearly fell, and before I knew what was happening she was on me, her head flung up and the muscles on the underside of her neck bulging, her fangs slicing down at me, and only then did she give forth her battle scream of fury.

I had forgotten about my futile whip. Moreover, there was no time for it. I dodged—I had just that much wit left—I let the force of her charge carry her past me, and as her shoulder hit me I grasped her mane at the withers and leaped, swinging myself up onto her back. You will think that I am boasting, but I am not. There was no bravado left in me. I merely leaped to the only half-safe place left to me, the place where her fangs could not reach me, her back—and it was all slippery with sweat.

I locked my heels around her barrel and hung on to her mane. I remember she spun like a dust devil, reared and came down stiff-legged. Then I do not remember much more, which is perhaps a mercy, for the ride is all a blur of jolting motion, confusion and pain. Talu's bony spine culminated in a withers hard, jutting, and agonizingly high, such a knife edge that I felt she would make a castrate of me, or kill me—the one fate seemed as bad as the other. There were cliffs all around, and they seemed not to concern her. She careered wildly down between the lodges toward the sheer drop to the sea—I came out of my daze of pain long enough to get hold of the trailing line, jerk her head around, kick her hard in the ribs with my boots. Up the headland again we went. I could hear someone shouting something at me, some warning—it must have been Kor. But I could scarcely see for the sweat in my eyes, or exhaustion, whatever. Fearful of trampling someone, I pulled the mare's head around again. She slashed at my leg with her fangs, and I kicked at her nose. Angry, in pain, I no longer cared if she hurt me, and I kept her head pulled tight around, nearly to her shoulder—let her slice herself with those fangs if she liked. She blundered onward for a while, unable to see where she was going, and then she spun. Then—it is not clear to me whether she tangled herself in the trailing rope, or dizzied herself, or simply fell from exhaustion, but all in a moment she was down, and I was off her. Kor seemed to think afterward that I had kicked myself free so as to save my leg from being crushed, but I think that was not true. I had been losing my seat when she spun, and I think I fell when she did.

All was oddly silent for a moment. Breath knocked out of both of us, the mare and me. Then I got up, lash of pride stung me up, for I would not have Kor helping me again, and I knew he would be at my side in a moment—and in fact he was by me as I stood. I said nothing, but went to the mare and took the loose end of the leather rope down her forehead, through her mouth and around the soft part of her nose. She was starting to stir.

“Talu,” I told her, “up.” And she scrambled to her feet. I felt a secret relief that she did not seem to be hurt. She squealed and slashed at me, and I pulled the rope tight around her nose. Narrowing her eyes with pain, she stood still. The fray was over.

For the first time I became aware that there were people everywhere, watching from the lodges, from the mountain cliffs, from the safety of the trees. Korridun's people. For the first time also I became aware that the day was more than half spent. The sun was slipping toward the ocean, westward—or rather, the white spot in the haze that should have been the sun. I blinked to clear my eyes of weariness.

“I have sent someone back for a blanket for her,” Korridun said.

“What?” I mumbled, trying to jest. “You sent? You did not run after it yourself?”

“I will put it on her myself,” he said, “if you will hold her. Can you?”

I nodded groggily, hardly realizing at the time that he was risking his life for the sake of my private battle, thinking only, Folk of the Fanged Horse tribe do not blanket their horses, they think of them no more than they do of their slaves, but we of the Red Hart do not so lightly let our ponies die.

I said, “Take the water out of her pen also, or she will kill herself with drinking.”

It was in a heavy wooden trough, and he heaved it over himself. Then Birc brought the blanket. Kor took it and laid it over the mare's back, tying the comers of it in front of her chest. I came to my senses enough to watch her narrowly. “Talu,” I warned her, “don't move.” She stood with her ears flattened to her neck and her teeth bared, but she stood still. Then I led her into the pen, borrowed Kor's knife, and cut the line, leaving the headstall on her with a short end dangling. I backed away from her, holding my whip at the ready, but she was intent on working the loop loose from around her mouth and nose, and she did not attack me.

Kor set his men to work closing off the entry. They were doing a makeshift job of it, I noticed, but I was too tired to care. The mare was in no condition to break down the bars, I hoped.

“She's had exercise enough to calm her, I think,” Kor said dryly, echoing my thoughts. He had got my cloak from somewhere, and he put it around my sweaty shoulders, and his arm over it, half leading me down the headland toward Seal Hold. “We must tend those wounds of yours.”

I shook my head in vexation, throwing off his guiding hand. “Scratches!” And I went at once to my chamber, too weary to eat. He dressed the wounds anyway, blast him, but I did not know it at the time. I was deeply asleep, and I slept the day and the night away.

The next morning when I came to the room with the hearth, Istas spat at me. The others avoided me, though they did not flee. I scowled and told myself that I cared only for the food. Indeed I was ravenous, and I ate heartily.

Kor walked in with his willow basket, back from giving Talu her fish. “Is the mare lame this morning?” I asked him.

“No whit. She is in fine fettle, and far quieter than before.” He sat beside me. “And you? Are you stiff?”

I only shrugged by way of answer, for we of the Red Hart were not much in the custom of cosseting ourselves. I had been stiff and sore, more or less, since I had come to him, from the smoky weather, the chill and dampness, and—though I would not think it—from whatever had happened—before, days I could not remember.

“Will you try the mare again today?”

“Later.”

We talked for a while about Talu. Then he went off somewhere and I wandered outside. It was a fine morning, less wet than most. Tide was high. Half-grown children were fishing with dip nets made of nettle fiber. Korridun's twelve, his personal retinue of warriors, was assembling on the flat of the rock for some weaponswork. I had watched them during the days of my vigil, and I sat to watch them again. They were only nine instead of the traditional twelve, and they were all youths and men instead of being half women as was the Red Hart custom. But they fought well.

Stone knives drawn, they paired off for mock combat, leaving one standing by himself. Without much thinking about it, rather as if by instinct, I got up and went over to join them.

“I will stand the odd one a bout,” I offered.

All came to a sudden standstill, though what I had said was not so extraordinary. They crouched and stared at me, silent and very taut, though not as if in fear, or not entirely, for they did not shrink away from me.

“Bout?” I proposed, speaking more slowly and simply, thinking that perhaps they had not understood me. “Your rules,” I added. Indeed, if they were at all afraid there was no reason for it. Such practice was only for agility and skill, and no one needed to be hurt. I did not see much fear in them. Their faces were like masks. Though I thought I saw a trace of something I had not expected: contempt.

We stood tense and silent for too long a time. I could not think what to do. They were not going to meet me or even reply to me, and I could not with much honor walk away.

“I will stand you a bout, if you like,” came a quiet voice from behind me.

I turned, knowing already who it was. Kor, of course. There he stood, straight-faced, swinging a bag coarsely woven of sea grass. Then he set it down and pulled out of it a couple of small leather shields, offering one to me.

I put it on without a word. It galled me to once again accept his help, but I had no choice. To refuse his friendly challenge would have been discourtesy.

“Do you use a skullcap?”

“No.”

“No more do I.” He reached into the bag again. “I have your weapon here.”

A hubbub went up from the men standing by. I glanced round at them in surprise, and when I looked back to Korridun he faced me with an immense, shining knife laid across his open palms.

Shock like a spearhead went through me, and a peculiar pain.… No one had ever seen such a knife. Hilt and blade, the weapon was made of something that was neither flint nor blackstone, wood nor horn nor shell—my small hairs prickle yet at the memory of that moment and that blade. Very smooth, very sharp, nearly as long as my arm, thrice as long as any knife of flint or obsidian could ever be! And shining the color of the sun. Wondrous, like a weapon in a dream. In the pommel glimmered a stone, a round stone as darkly yellow as upland poppies, more polished than any river pebble could ever be, with depths that seemed to glow.… It was not the strange stone that frightened me, but the blade, the long and shining blade, frightened me so that I staggered at the sight of it. I was terribly afraid of it, more frightened than made sense, and, what was worse, something in it called to me as if it knew me. A dark call, that, an eerie recognition. Yet I had no mindful memory of the weapon.

“My king, you have gone mad!” one of the men blurted. It was Birc.

“I think not.” Korridun came a step closer, offering me the great knife, and his eyes were intense, deep as the glowing stone. I felt my senses reeling, spinning away into blackness, and I blinked and shook my head to clear it.

“It is yours,” Kor said, taking my gesture for refusal.

“I—how can that be? I have never seen—”

“It is yours, or at least you brought it here with you. Take it.”

There was a hint of command in his voice, at once delighting and vexing me. I wished to defy him—but I needed worse to defy my own fear. I reached out, annoyed that my hand shook, and took the thing by its strange, smooth hilt. It would make a heavy, unwieldy weapon, I thought—and then I hefted it, and found to my terror that the balance was soaring, superb, the blade only aided by its own weight. I stood with the uncanny thing lifted toward the sky, and Korridun brought out of his bag a sham knife of similar length, a copy rudely hacked out of wood. So that was how he had spent some of his time, the days past.

“My king, you cannot!” It was Birc again, pleading, and other voices joined with his.

“Nonsense. I am in no danger. The rules of the match protect me.”