A Horse Called Hero (15 page)

A trail of strange water-plants clung to Scout’s legs. A strange acid smell was released from the earth. Dodo choked and half retched on the stench of it. Sphagnum. They were in a sphagnum
bog. That foreleg was in to the elbow. Dodo panicked and kicked again hard. Scout squealed. She was quivering and straining, trying to dislodge first one leg, then the other. She pulled but
couldn’t release them.

She started to wheeze, her nostrils pink and wide with fear. With an immense and sudden effort, Scout reared, almost unseating Dodo, who clung with her left hand to her mane. Scout fell,
plunging a little to the right, but she was sinking, forelegs falling, sinking deeper in, deeper and deeper in. Like a boat, she was listing in the mud, the left side of her deeper in than the
right, mired now to the elbows, in sphagnum sponge.

‘
Sphagnum lies over liquid peat
’: Hettie’s words echoed in Dodo’s head. There’d be nothing below them but liquid peat!

Scout whinnied, a shrill, gaunt warning.

Hero answered from behind.

‘Get back, Wolfie!’ Dodo yelled. ‘No – stay where you are – don’t move.’ She was paralysed by pain, nauseous with fear.
Sphagnum
. They were
caught, trapped in a swaying pool of sphagnum. ‘Wolfie – hold him back – hold him – don’t let him follow!’ she screamed, half retching with the acid stench.

Minutes passed. She must wait for Scout to regain her strength; those forelegs were still quivering, the flanks still heaving. Dodo’s ears droned with the humming of small flying things.
She looked around again, searching for she knew not what. Fifteen feet or so away, there was rush. Rush and a stunted thicket of alder and sallow. Beyond the bog, the lonely empty miles of rush
stretched away on all sides.

‘
Rush doesn’t care for the worst places
,’ Hettie always said. ‘
It likes water but prefers her roots firmly anchored
.’

She must get Scout to that thicket. Only a short distance and the ground would be firm. Trembling like a leaf, she pleaded, ‘Please . . . please, Scout . . .’ She kicked, kicked
again. Pain shot up her arms, across her chest. Scout’s neck heaved and swelled, her nostrils flared. She tried to move her forelegs, but they floundered, the mud rising above Dodo’s
stirrups, over her boots. Each attempt at movement was sending Scout’s legs deeper in.

Tears streamed down Dodo’s cheeks.

Hero pawed the ground, splashing, his neck straining forward. Dodo turned to Wolfie, saw all his strength pitted against his horse. She looked down at Scout’s flanks, saw the mud line over
the belly, and screamed, ‘She’s in to her stifles! She’s sinking – there’s no bottom, Wolfie!’

‘I can’t hold him back, Dodo – I can’t!’he answered.

Scout whinnied. Dodo heard the heart-stopping cry, heard the raw fear in its every note. Hero heard it and plunged forward, snatching the reins from Wolfie’s hands.

Dodo turned and saw his grey legs flail and flounder, saw the spraying of the black mud, the terror in his eyes, saw Wolfie, frozen with fear, thrown forward over his neck.

‘OhGod,ohGod,’shebreathed,thenshouted,‘Stay on him – just stay on him – for God’s sake stay on!’

Hero pawed the ground, his forelegs struck the air. Wolfie recovered the reins, gripped a fistful of mane and jabbered, ‘Stay, Hero – stay – please don’t move –
don’t move.’

Dodo’s body quaked, she couldn’t get her legs, her arm, to do her bidding, the pain was spreading, her frame convulsed with fitful shivering. Get the saddle off, she thought,
I’ve got to get the saddle off . . . I must get off, then get it off. She lifted her leg, yanked up the saddle flap and fumbled with the girth. One buckle – the second – both
buckles undone – now she must dismount. Slowly she leaned forward over the saddle, gently swung her leg over and slipped down, easing her trembling body into the dreadful mire. Holding
Scout’s mane, she pushed the saddle with her good arm, tipping it off and letting it fall.

Clinging to Scout, she ran a trembling hand along the ridge of Scout’s neck, down her back, scratching gently where the saddle had been.

Hero cried out, a raw, shrill scream. Scout cried back, a low bark, mournful as an echo.

Dodo started. She ran her hand feverishly up and down Scout’s shoulder . . . her withers, her neck. They were still, the trembling gone. She clutched at Scout’s head, pulled at her
mane.

‘No – no – try – please try – Scout, try – try . . . no one on your back, no saddle . . .’ She slapped at Scout’s rump, slapped at her neck,
drummed and drummed at it and pleaded.

‘Dodo! Dodo!’ Wolfie was calling.

Scout’s head was dropping. Dodo screamed to her, slapped her again with her bare hands, but Scout’s lids were drooping, her head dropping, she was surrendering, giving in, sedated by
the treacherous tropical warmth of the bog.

‘No – no no no no no, Scout – please . . . don’t give in,’ Dodo pleaded.

Scout half opened her heavy lids. The loving amber eyes gazed out dozily, blinked then closed. Dodo grabbed and pulled at her mane, crying to her, pulling at her head. She placed her hand
beneath Scout’s muzzle to lift her head but she herself had nothing to stand on, nothing to push against. If she tried to move her legs the slime was resistant and solid as sand, yet she was
sinking deeper through it.

Scout’s chin rested peacefully along the inky surface. Dodo saw that lovely head, the tender eyes, the golden mane, the golden ridge of her neck, she saw the black tide creeping, higher,
inch by inch up the swell of her belly, and she clung to Scout, Scout the faithful, tender companion of so many days, and she was nauseous with the horror of what was happening.

Somewhere, Wolfie was shouting. ‘Dodo, he can’t move – he’s not sinking – I don’t think he’s sinking but . . .’

Wolfie sounded far away and long ago. Dodo was hot and cold and quaking, one arm only with which to cling to Scout, and the slime was seeping down her shirt, seeping down her back, the warmth of
it sinister and soupy.

The crest of Scout’s neck stood in a ridge above the black, only her neck and her head were clear of the slime, but her muzzle was wide, as if smiling, her eyes closed.

‘Dodo!’ someone was screaming. ‘Please, Dodo, please come!’

The black tide was rising over the whiskery chin, over the mottled lips, seeping into the rosy nostrils. Dodo flicked away a small flying thing that had settled on the corner of Scout’s
eye, then she rested her head against Scout’s cheekbone.

Somewhere someone was still screaming, somewhere a horse was shrieking but they were muffled and blurred, still far away and long ago. Around Scout strange yellow asphodels and sundews that Dodo
hadn’t seen before, entwined in the emerald moss, like unearthly jewels. She whispered and she stroked and she whispered and stroked until Scout’s ear lay still, until all that was
there were the last strands of Scout’s forelock, floating like spun gold on the mire.

Wolfie screamed, screamed and screamed again but Dodo wasn’t moving, wasn’t answering, her right cheek and one arm lay outstretched on the surface of the peat, clutching at the
air.

He must get Hero to her, he must save Dodo. He must lead his horse forward to the place where another horse had drowned.

‘
Never break faith with a horse, Wolfie
.’ Pa’s words rattled in his head like knives. Tears slid down his cheeks, but he was kicking Hero with desperate, panicky
jabs.

‘Go on, Hero, go on,’ he yelled. ‘Go, go, go . . . Dododododododo!’

Still she didn’t answer; that arm was sinking.

‘Go on, go on, go on . . .’ he yelled again, kicking and jabbing with his heels.

Hero snorted. He lifted his head, his eyes blazed and he plunged, flaying through the mud, stabbing at it, knees high, crying out as he went.

Four paces, only four, and they’d be at her side – not ‘paces’: four rears, four plunges and they’d reach her. Wolfie kicked and screamed and kicked and screamed.
The young horse reared and plunged, reared and plunged, reared and plunged.

‘
Never break faith with a horse, Wolfie
.’ Wolfie couldn’t see for tears, for the horror and fear of it.

Wolfie pulled at the reins. Hero stopped, heaving, snorting, streaming, head high, legs testing the ground. There was solid ground beneath one hoof – beneath the right foreleg – on
the side where Dodo was. There was solid ground. Wolfie leaned out, reached for her arm, and pulled, hands slipping and losing the slimy black of her sleeve, clutching at it again, grasping her
hand, losing it, reaching, gripping, pulling the length of her arm, hand over hand, till he had her under the arm. He heaved her shoulder, her head against his knee. He turned her face towards him
and screamed as he saw the closed eyes, slapped her cheeks, and cried, ‘Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!’

Her eyes half opened then closed. He dragged her, but the mud was squelching and sucking at her and it took all his strength to lift her an inch or two up, to pull her arm across the front of
Hero’s saddle.

‘Still, Hero. Stay still, don’t move, just stay.’ Wolfie’s voice was whispery and panicked. Hero was adjusting his position, the left foreleg was carrying the weight of
the three of them. ‘Still, Hero, stay still, don’t move, don’t move, just stay . . .’ Wolfie urged quietly. He slapped Dodo again, again and again, but her face was pale,
her eyes closed and unmoving, her long hair in his hands turned to ropes of black all trailed with green. ‘Please . . . please . . . Someone come . . . someone come . . .’ he
whispered.

But there was only the primeval, tractless waste, the glistening mire, the deafening humming of small flying things.

A dragonfly rested on Dodo’s cheek, then whirred away, its wings flashing satanic green.

Wolfie whispered to Hero, he whispered to Dodo. He whispered and called, called and whispered to them both, till he had no breath, till it seemed that hours, that days perhaps had gone by.

A wild duck clattered up from a silver runnel, starting Wolfie. He must have slept. Soft, misty rain was falling, dusk and mist and bog all merging. Everything was water, the
earth, the air, were all water. He yelped, jerky with fear, shaking Dodo, finding her shoulders rigid, her face cold and damp to his palm. He called out in fear – ‘Hero,
HERO!’

The horse blinked, turned his head a fraction and calmly shifted his weight. Dodo’s hand was cold in Wolfie’s, her forehead cold, but he felt the slow, steady pulse of her heart
against his thigh.

‘Dodo, Dododododoodo!’ he yelled. ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up wake up, wakeupwakeupwakeup.’

But there was only the soundless silence, the air as still as if time were suspended. There was no sun, no sky, no dark, no distance, colour or sound, only the black mire and the thickening
grey-white air.

Wolfie’s fingers fumbled for the warm withers, frantically stroking the hair and skin of the horse that was the only clear and solid thing in the disorientating white.

Some way away there was a movement, a shape, whiter than the surrounding white, slipping thinly in and out of the luminous whiteness, phantom-like.

His mind was playing tricks, the desolate white was worse than the black of night, everything dissolved, the hag line, the sunken alder, the brown hills, all blotted out.

‘Help!’ Wolfie called, but his voice was absorbed in the muffling whiteness as in a sponge.

A rustling made him leap from his skin, the rustling of something unseeable in the weird ghost world. Wolfie shook Dodo, pulled at her hair. Hero lifted his head and snorted a belly-deep bark.
Wolfie pulled again at Dodo’s hair, shaking her, his hand falling on something metallic and cold. He grappled at the buckle, wretched and clumsy, yanking the bugle free. He blew, and blew
again, but the sound was absorbed in the spongy white.

‘HalloooooOOO!’ came a voice.

‘Help!’ Wolfie called back.

There was movement somewhere, then the same voice closer now.

‘Pinford, they’re in Pinford. Or the Devil’s Stable.’

There was silence for a while. Then, nearer now, stood a brown shadow, bending and peering.

‘Don’t move.’

Ned – that was Ned’s voice.

‘Ned!’ Wolfie screamed. ‘Ned!’ He was shaking from top to toe, his knees banging against the saddle roll. He saw a coil of rope over Ned’s arm, the shape of a rifle
under the other. ‘She won’t wake up – Dodo – she won’t wake up.’

‘Wait and don’t move. ’as the horse got solid under him?’

‘No . . . Yes – one foot, I think.’

The figure turned.

‘No! Don’t go! Don’t go!’ yelled Wolfie.

‘Wait an’ I’ll be back.’

‘Wake up, Dodo, wake up wakeupwakeup!’ Wolfie pleaded.

An age seemed to pass. Hero’s head was dropping. Tears of mist clung to the hairs of his coat. Wolfie was hoarse with whispering, he had no words left. Ned might never
come back and his own head was sinking to Hero’s neck, he and Dodo both clinging to Hero like drowning men to a crag.

Ned came with a plank. Leaving his coat and gun on the ground, he snapped off a stem of alder and slid the plank out from the hag line towards Hero. Wading out, he slid and pushed it further,
then crawled along it on all fours.

He saw Dodo’s blue lips, took a flask from his pocket and forced her mouth open, splashing whisky in. Her arms and legs jerked, her head jolted and she spluttered, suddenly wide-eyed and
shivering.

Dodo’s sight focused. She saw Ned’s white face, the red stain on the cheek, and she turned, searching wildly, reaching out her hand. ‘Wolfie? Wolfie?’ she whispered. Her
hand found his. ‘Wolfie, thank God, thank God.’

Ned took her under the arms. She screamed out in pain, but he pulled her over to the plank.

‘Broken,’ he said after a while. ‘Rib maybe. Collar bone. Arm.’ He smoothed the hair off her face, wiped the black off her cheeks and smiled at her. ‘Lots o’
bits of you broken. Aye, an’ you’re lucky to get out. So much rain, there’s bogs even where there’s been none afore.’

He crawled to the far end of the plank, then dragged it gently up on to the rush so Dodo could crawl off.

‘Get the saddle off him. Get yourself on to the plank,’ he called to Wolfie pushing the plank back out. ‘Then stay there.’