A few steps forward, the glimmer became shapes: the scouts’ two mounts, greenish-gray horse shapes with a sheen to their coats like that on a vultures’ wings. One of them swung its head around to regard the intruders with a yellowish eye and flared nostrils half the size of a true horse’s. In truth, its whole head was smaller than a horse’s would have been, out of proportion to the blocky lines of its body.
“They’ll grace no nobleman’s carriage,” said Amris, “but they’ll serve, if theywillserve.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Let me,” said Amris, stepping forward a pace. “Plate might be some protection against their temper.”
So it was—against the first strike, at any rate. He approached from the side, carefully judging how the horses were tied up and how far they could get around to kick. The one Amris had his eye on shifted, snorted, and laid its ears back, but acted otherwise no worse than a number of mounts he’d had in the army. It was only when he reached for the rope tied to its bridle that it whipped its head sideways and snapped at him, showing more and sharper teeth than a grass-eater would ever need.
Those teeth grazed the metal of his gauntlet, making a screeching sound that set Amris’s teeth on edge and drew a low obscenity from Darya, but did no harm to the flesh beneath. “Very well,” he said, and left the rope alone for the moment.
Darya was following him on the other side, watching what he did and how the horses reacted. “There was another Sentinel blessed by Poram,” she said, her voice lower and more soothing than the words would have required. “Could talk to animals. I never was jealous of him before now.”
“Talking might not aid us a great deal with these, no more than it does with some people.”
Quickly, Amris placed a hand on the horse’s withers and swung himself up onto its back. The saddle was made for a creature with shorter legs and of little help; he held on with his thighs as the horse snorted and bucked. Indeed, he thought, any speech from the beast would most resemble the string of profanities he’d heard from men he’d had to pull out of tavern fights, a declaration of hatred for the entire world and most especially the part meddling with them.
He felt a hair more pity for the horse, who had neither enlisted nor ordered a dozen pints of bad ale, but that changed nothing of the situation.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Darya mount the other horse, which liked the process no more than his had. He had a moment of concern, thinking of her lighter weight, but she stayed on, showing no more signs of distress than a few hissed breaths and some more muttered oaths.
As a boy, Amris had seen men break horses by the simple expedient of mounting and then staying on until the beast grew tired enough to accept the weight. Those who knew better—his first commander, among them—said it didn’t result in good mounts, but they had no time just then, and Amris wasn’t certain anything could gain these creatures’ trust. He hung on and waited.
Bad-tempered or not, thesewerebroken to saddle, and it didn’t take more than a few minutes for them to accept their fate. As Amris’s mount settled itself, snorting and blowing, he looked over at Darya. “Be ready,” he said, drawing the knife from the belt.
“On it,” she said, and cut the rope tying her horse to the tree.
* * *
Once they had the freedom to move, the horses didn’t act like they cared who or what was on their backs. It took some tugging on the reins to get them to go the right direction, but the land was an ally there: so close to Oakford, the hills were steep on either side and thick with trees, terrain no sensible horse—or sort-of-horse thing—would risk.
That didn’t make the ride pleasant. The saddle wasn’t made for human proportions: the stirrups cramped Darya’s legs, and bits of leather poked her in the tailbone. Farther down, the “horse” felt as if it’d grown extra bumps on its ribs, maybe as a defense against being stabbed or just to aggravate any human trying to ride it. The animal smelled like wine going to vinegar, too, and its natural gait was swaying and unsteady.
On the other hand, it covered ground faster than she and Amris would’ve managed walking. That was the important thing.
“And you’re both mares, thank the gods,” Darya said to her horse’s ears.
“No interest in fresh blood for the local stock?” Amris joked from behind her.
“Isen would nail my head up over the stables if I introduced this”—she waved a hand to indicate smell, sharp teeth, and all—“to his mares. And I think the farmers would come after me in a mob if their draft horses caught pregnant with this line.” She thought of the hooves and the teeth, as well as the odd bone structure. “For a start, I don’t know that a normal mare would survive.”
Amris made a sound of revulsion. Glancing back, Darya saw his upper lip curled, and he shook his dark head with considerably more disgust than she’d expected—not that the subject was pleasant.
“Much of the farm boy remains in the man,” he said after a moment. “I’d never have called us sentimental about our stock, and I’ve long since been used to their deaths in battle, but this…” Amris shrugged, his armor clanking. “It calls forth the shade of my father in me, perhaps.”
Because the mention of his father didn’t seem to sadden him further, Darya felt free to smile. “You’ll like Isen, then. Practical man, but damned if he doesn’t think our horses are worth more than our own skins. Especially the breeding stock. If Ironhide hadn’t been a gelding, I don’t know that I’d have the nerve to tell him about the loss.”
She still wasn’t eager for that conversation—or many others. Oakford itself—in the form of beds, baths, and food, not to mention being in company less attractive and less forbidden than Amris’s—sounded as good as it had all along. She’d thought about the good points, Darya realized. Conveniently, she’d forgotten, not the news she was bringing, but the ways she’d have to deliver it.
The road ahead looked less promising in that moment.
Chapter 23
In Amris’s youth, Oakford had been a cheerful bustling crossroads of a town, thick with traders and travelers and the places that met their needs: taverns, inns, brothels, smithies, and a market square full of noisy peddlers. Luxury had been the province of Heliodar in the south and Klaishil in the north, as had culture and scholarship, but for cheap goods from a distance, a night or two of merriment, or a horse of dubious origin, Oakford had been more than sufficient.
Often, he’d been able to hear the town before he’d seen the first house.
He still could, but mirth and even trading had little to do with it. Save for the white towers that had once belonged to the lord’s residence, all of the houses were hidden behind a palisade of stout logs, their ends sharpened to points, planted in a mound of earth as high as a man’s chest. At each end of the wall facing Amris, where it formed a corner with another, a tower held torches and two men with bows. Four others, armed with spear and shield, stood guard beside a gate. The road leading to it was too narrow for more than one horse to travel abreast.
