Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (23 page)

             
Blizzard gained on him, still faster in the straightaway. Hooves beat the hard-packed earth like some mad drummer. Both stallions screamed as they approached the next tower and the next turn.

             
This time the sun beat right on the corner, the shadow from the tower well before the turn. There would be slop. Bill urged his mount to the inside, forcing Little Storm’s tail into Blizzard’s path. The white horse had to slow and take the outside, coming up on the slop at a dead run.

             
At the last second Bill pulled up on the reins, slowing his horse in the shadow of the second tower. Blizzard shot past him, caught unawares in a wash of little mud puddles and loose earth. Bill and Little Storm took the turn at a respectable canter while Blizzard and Lupus went wide, sliding and flinging mud, Blizzard dropping to his flank in the slop. By the time they recovered, Bill and Little Storm were forty yards down the wall.

Bill held the lead through mud and slop as they pounded along the south wall, straining for the next tower and the next turn.

             
Damn!
Bill swore to himself. Past the tower he saw the southern gate, and a line of people gathered before it. His advantage would be lost if he had to pick his way through, and he would just be clearing the way for Lupus and Blizzard to follow at a dead run.

             
When they drew nearer, Little Storm saw them, too, and screamed his challenge. Horses reared, people scattered. Wolf Soldier guards with pikes pushed the crowd back from the gates, as if they expected this to happen and knew what to do. This probably hadn’t been Lupus’ first race around the wall, Bill decided. But then, how could he be caught unawares by the slop?

             
Some animal like a goat or a large dog leapt into the path that they cleared and laid down. Men and Uman shouted orders at it, then out ran a pair of children, who threw their bodies across it.

             
No way could Bill hope to stop in time. Bill bore down directly on them, kicked with his heels into Little Storm’s barrel and yelled, “Hya!”

             
The horse leapt into the air and sailed over the three of them. He landed with a ball-jarring thud on the other side, the horse barely missing a step as it plunged on. Just seconds later, he heard another “Hya!” and a thud when Blizzard had to do the same thing.

             
Another corner tower came next, clear now over a mile from the gates. Bill didn’t need to see it to guess it would be pure slop this time. The sun would be against the city walls. Little Storm had taken the last turn sound, Bill crouched down lower to the horse’s neck, his cheek and eyes in its mane, and he gripped the reins close. Pressing to the inside and listening to the drum of hooves on the earth, he entered the sunshine by the tower, waiting for that steady, hollow thud of his horse’s hooves to turn into more of a ‘thunk,’ when the soft earth changed to mud and slop.

             
The ground would be hardest by the wall, where fewer people would walk. Bill reined back just a little as he took the turn, Little Storm’s hooves flinging mud and water, coating him in earth.

             
Little Storm finished the turn, Blizzard flying past him once again, breaking the turn out wide. Now Bill ran down the straightaway pounding down the length of the wall, to his west rolling hills stretching out to the horizon, blanketed in winter hay.

They ran for miles, Blizzard pressing Little Storm but not making the push that would give him the lead.
Finally Bill saw another gate two thirds of the way down the wall, horses being exercised outside of it. The stables would be here. Lupus’ cry of “Hya, Blizzard!” told him they’d come to the final stretch.

             
Bill whipped the horse’s barrel with the reins. Little Storm screamed and pulled forward, pounding toward the stables. Bill bounced in the saddle, the pain in his back and shoulders, his feet and hamstrings extreme. “Come on, Little Storm!” he urged his mount, leaning into his neck, whispering into his ear. “Come on! Run!”

             
Blizzard screamed his challenge. Little Storm lowered his head and bore down. The ground whipped past them in a swirl. The winter wind bit mercilessly at his face and eyes.

             
Men and horses scattered from before the gate. Two mares reared, the handlers struggling with their reins. Little Storm thundered on, Blizzard pulling up along side him.

             
They passed the gate together. Bill could argue he had beaten the Emperor, but he would never be sure, and that hadn’t been the point of it. He sat back, the air cold on his face and beard. He’d been sweating like crazy in the cold. He knew he’d be sick tomorrow.

             
So
worth it.

* * *

              The wagon trundled into the royal stables. Melissa sat quiet, the older children at her feet, thinking her own thoughts while Shela nursed and Glynn pouted.

             
“This is a very smooth ride,” she said, finally, in Uman.

             
She had been on a hayride. Even on asphalt the wood and steel wagon wheels amplified every bump and twig.

             
“Yonega Waya’s invention,” Shela said. “He calls it ‘take the bumps,’ a steel pipe inside another steel pipe, a spring inside of that.”

             
“Shock absorber,” Melissa said in English. She knew the term because they’d blown out in her wreck of a car. Then in Uman, she added, “That makes sense.”

             
The wagon stopped, the door swung open. They all waited politely for Shela to be the first to leave.

             
“No, you go first,” she said to Glynn. “I want to finish. The Emperor won’t be long.”

             
“M’lady,” Glynn said formally. She rose and exited the wagon. The kids scrambled after her.

             
“I hate her,” Shela said in English. “I can’t stand Uman-Chi, but she is worse den most.”

             
“They seem to think very highly of themselves,” Melissa said. She didn’t know how much was safe to say.

             
Shela nodded. “Dey used to run everything before my husband came,” she said. “Now dey just hate ever’thing.”

             
Melissa nodded. It jibed with what they’d seen of them.

             
“Mama! Mama!” the two older children stuck their heads back into the wagon.

             
“Yes, my darlings,” Shela said in Uman.

             
“Papa’s coming, and grandfather is riding with him on Little Storm!” Lee said.

             
“They’re coming
fast
, mama!” Vulpe said. “I think Little Storm is going to beat Blizzard.”

             
Shela’s eyes widened and she scrambled through the wagon door with a breast exposed, her baby almost forgotten in the crook of her arm. Melissa might be eager to see them, too, but she didn’t intend to flash the world to do it.

             
She exited the wagon and Nina already held the whimpering Chawny. Shela fought her bodice closed and moved as fast as she could to the gates on the other side of the stables. The children already waited there, Glynn with them.

             
Vulpe and Lee leapt up and down with their little fists in front of them. Wolf Soldiers and Men and Uman in varying finery formed a circle near the children, wary not to step in their way. Some had already begun to shout.

             
“Bother!” Shela said, and stopped. She waved her hand in a wide sweep before her, and the air shimmered. The center of the city wall seemed to vanish, to be replaced by the image of Bill on black Little Storm and Lupus on white Blizzard.

             
Melissa ran up along side Shela, and helped her with the laces of her gown. They both watched the wall as the two men raced.

             
“I can’t believe it,” Nina said. “No horse is as fast as Blizzard.”

             
Melissa knew what she saw, and that turned out to be Bill grinning like a ten year old, urging his mount on, and a look of determination on Lupus’ as he raced to catch him.

             
“There, you see?” Shela said. “Blizzard is catching him. This will be very close.”

             
“Very close,” Melissa agreed, as they cinched up the last of Shela’s laces.

             
“Your man keeps a nice seat,” Shela said, nodding appreciatively. “Keeps his arms in, leans forward. I think he is tired, though. See him bouncing?”

             
“Hasn’t ridden in long time,” Melissa said.

             
“Ah, look—Lupus catches him!” Shela announced. Melissa nodded. They ran neck and neck, Little Storm perhaps an inch or two ahead, as they vanished from Shela’s image on the wall and raced past the gates.

             
The men roared a cheer, the children leaping in the air. Being males, they fell to the inevitable arguing and the exchange of bets.

             
And, past them, in the plains grass, did Melissa see those serpentine eyes again? Could it be a trick of the sun? She couldn’t tell for sure. However, she saw a swish of grass where no wind blew, and she watched something like a whisper through the winter hay move away through the city. Once again, there and not there.

             
“Come with me,” Shela ordered her absently, and lifted the front of her skirts up to race for the gates. Melissa shook her head to clear it and followed the Empress. They arrived just as the men turned their horses around.

* * *

“Wow,” Lupus said.
“You’re in trouble, Mountain.”

             
“I am?”

             
They trotted back to the gates, both horses snorting, their heads bobbing. Little Storm’s whole body quivered—or could that be Bill’s?

             
“You forget where my wife is from,” Lupus said.

             
“Andoran, yes?” Bill said, ready for the bad news now.

             
“Yuh, huh!” Lupus said. “Do you know how I got her?”

             
“Melissa told—oh, I get it,” Bill said.

             
Of course! They traded Shela to Lupus for Blizzard’s stud service. “She is going to want this horse. Well, it is yours, after all.”

             
“Where’d you get that idea?” Lupus asked him.

             
“What?”

             
Lupus smiled and looked forward. “Man needs a horse in this world,” he said.

             
“Your Imperial—” Bill began.

             
“Skip it,” Lupus said in English. He turned and looked at Bill. “You know how many couldn’t tame that stallion? A lot, that’s how many. I put you on him to see how long you would try to stay on. There you went and freaking solved the problem.

             
“That’s your horse. You earned him.”

             
Bill didn’t know what to say. “Um—thanks,” he said.

             
“You’re welcome,” Lupus said. “But don’t go thanking me too soon. Everyone is going to want that horse now. I can breed more—rest assured, I will. Be a hell of a lot easier to take it from you than me.”

             
Bill nodded. “Hey, while we’re alone,” he began.

             
“Kids calling you grandfather?” Lupus interrupted him.

             
“Yeah.”

             
“Heard it. They are dying for grandparents. They can’t have mine and barely see hers—that’s a long story.”

             
Bill nodded. “Okay,” he said.

             
“Let them call you grandfather, alright?”

             
Bill nodded again. “I've been missing my grandkids, anyway,”             

***

              J’her and the three Wolf Soldiers rode up to the stable gate just as Lupus and the Mountain returned to it. The Empress and the new woman already waited there with Glynn and the royal family.

             
Karel of Stone remained on the back of the carriage with Xinto of the Woods. J’her sent the guards to take charge of Xinto, under direction of Karel.

             
Karel would know how to keep a man that dangerous.

             
“Don’t tell me you won,” J’her said to the Mountain.

             
The old Man smiled. He dismounted, wincing as his feet hit the ground, and J’her imagined he heard joints actually creaking.