That Way Lies Camelot (16 page)

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Well beyond earshot of the fracas in the kitchen, Trionn ran as a man might when driven by whips. Wherever he went, the cats in their turn fled his presence. Uncannily choosy by habit, they recognized precisely what the gypsy caller's gift had wakened in him. A horse had been wrested from her spell by his bidding, and of humans with such powers they were chary. Trionn knew pain beyond words. The dependable warmth of the cats' companionship was lost to him, reft away by an afternoon's longing that in ignorance, he had never known to fear.

In his passionate wish to keep the stallion wild, he had never guessed that desire by itself could afflict him. He raged to admit what the cats knew, and the dogs by their mindless fawning: that the caller's talents had been somehow thrown awry by his meddling. The taint of her mystery had touched him. He did not know if the fluke could be reversed. Though his lungs ached and his muscles burned, he pressed on in useless exertion. For the inevitable outcome had not altered. The kennelman was promised a carcass, and the huntsman's arrow must fly. However far Silverdown's scullion drove his body, the vision pursued and harrowed him. Still, he saw blood in the grass, the scream of the stallion's dying an echo that resounded through his mind.

Dusk found him crouched on the rise above the meadow, his forehead cradled on crossed wrists. He had decided to break down the gate, a desperate act that would ultimately not solve anything. Loose, the dun stallion was a liability. He would steal mares from all but the sturdiest paddocks, and kill any fool who interfered. In the end, he would be chased down. The archer's shot would take him, but in the open, as he ran in all his pride and splendor.

If Silverdown's scullion escaped the fury of the horse he resolved to set loose, what should befall him at the Lord's hand for presuming such interference defied imagination. In his misery over the desertion of the cats, Trionn did not care. His fretting over the stallion's fate had long since destroyed his peace; the pain of spirit he already suffered could hardly be made any worse. All that remained was to endure until the darkest hour before moonrise.

The birds quieted, and the crickets began their chorus. Above the small sounds of the night, Trionn heard the bell that summoned the field hands to supper. Past the bog he saw the glimmer of candles wastefully alight in the Lord's hall. The feast went on regardless, the gypsy's failure with the stallion no impediment to the pleasure of those highborn guests still in residence. Yet the thriftlessness of Silverdown's Lord was of little concern to Trionn. Now that he had firmed his course of action, the stillness as the stars brightened lent him a measure of peace. The Lord's riders were fanned out across the countryside in search of the vanished gypsy; patrols on the estate would be light, and widely spaced.

The gloom deepened. The breeze carried snatches of Enith's laughter. The Lord's page could be heard shouting curses at the cook, while in the gatehouse, the captain berated a dozing sentry. The cobbled yard between lay empty, most of the household settled inside at their supper. Trionn chose his moment. Sweat chilled on his body as he rose and crept downhill through mown grass toward the stallion's pasture. From a pile of cut brush left by the laborers who cleared the fields, he selected a stout branch of oak. He stripped off the bark and twigs, then hastened on toward the gate, nailed shut ever since the forgotten proclamation that the stallion might live undisturbed.

No one stopped him; no rider emerged to cry challenge. Trionn moved in fixed purpose, too numb to acknowledge his trepidation. The gate loomed ahead, a barred silhouette against a starlit expanse of open grass. He shot his branch home between the heavy planks and the post, snatched a quick breath, and threw his shoulder into prying.

The nails were well rusted. The ones nearest the oak branch groaned and loosened, while the others stubbornly stuck fast. Dry, weathered wood resisted the strain with a crack. The stallion could not help but be drawn by the noise. Horses were curious by nature, Trionn knew; he desperately shoved all the harder, digging his toes into dew-drenched grass to keep his stance from slipping. At best he had a space of seconds before the stud cried challenge. His neigh would draw the Lord's riders. Did they catch the scullion at his meddling, they would kill him, cut him down without trial as a horse thief.

Never mind that the stud was a rogue, and the only one wronged might be the kennelman. Luck might sour for him, since as a runaway, the dun was as likely to be slain on some other noble's demesne, with the carcass claimed as spoils in compensation. The kennelman would beat any scullion till he bled, when he learned who had cheated him of fare for his hounds.

Trionn jammed his hip into the prybar until sweat stung his eyes like tears. 'Go,' he grunted to the groaning, giving nails. 'Go!'

The rusted steel proved oblivious to pleading; heavy oak might split, but resisted breakage. Trionn thumped his fist on the gate in frustration, then set his branch to the base of the panel and hurled himself into fresh effort.

He shoved, his sinews straining in agony. The lower boards gave way in a shower of jagged splinters. Trionn shifted his prybar, any moment anticipating the rapid-fire pounding of hooves, followed up by the bone-cracking punishment of an angry stallion's teeth. He was taking far too long. Every second his struggle lasted wound his nerves to the edge of snapping. Dizzy before he realized he was inadvertently holding his breath, Trionn jerked, dragging the next nails from the post with a force fueled by terror. He needed a rest but dared not pause as he confronted the final plank.

Something bumped his shoulder. Startled, Trionn emitted a yelp that silenced the crickets. His pry branch dropped, thudding into the ground. The stud shied back on his haunches with a snort.

Horse and boy regarded one another, each one poised to run.

Trionn licked his lips. Panic held him rooted before the gapped boards of the gate. His thoughts raced with his heartbeat. Should he bend to retrieve his branch, the stud would strike and kill him; turn and flee, and he risked a ripping bite that would cripple him for life. Should he escape with the gate just half broken, his resolve would end in bleak failure.

The dun stud stamped in the starlight. His ears flicked and he shook his neck, his mane spattered like ink down his crest. He snorted again and took a tentative, interested step forward.

Trionn watched, paralyzed, as the horse shoved the loose boards with his head.

'Dear God,' the scullion mouthed, astonished. Then his startlement faded as he noticed the horse's manner held no fury. A charged, unnatural shudder left him trembling to the soles of his feet.

The stallion shouldered his neck between the gap and snuffled the sleeve of Trionn's shirt. He lipped the cloth, and snorted again, messily wet in his inquisitiveness.

'Dear God,' Trionn repeated, this time in a choked off whisper. His every assumption had been wrong. After all, he had not bidden the stud to assert his own savage nature; not a bit. In his colossal, scullion's ignorance, he had done worse, in fact overturned the gypsy woman's spell with a binding entirely his own.

The dun stallion that had been a killer now answered only to him.

Blindly Trionn bent, groping through dew-drenched grass for the branch he had dropped in his terror. Shaken to cold sweats, he loosened the final boards of the gate, while the stallion lipped at his hair, and blew gusty breaths in his ear. The huge creature eyed him through tangled strands of forelock as the last few nails gave way. Trionn yanked down the battered boards. 'Go!' he urged, his face averted, that he need not be tormented by the absolute trust the powerful stallion placed in him. 'Get out of here!'

The stud obliged by standing still.

'They'll kill you!' He waved his hands. 'Run!'

A bony head banged his elbow.

'Oh, be off,' Trionn cried. He stumbled back in a flummoxed fit of frustration. Never in his ugliest nightmare had he thought to guard against an assault by the mad stallion's friendliness.

Unfazed by human foibles, the horse followed, his nostrils widened in a companionable snaffle that stopped just short of a nicker. As briskly as the boy whose unwitting call had touched him could back away, the stallion strode after, unhurried, but unshakeable in equine determination. Trionn belatedly understood that short of outright shouting, or a blow to the nose with a stick, nothing would drive the stud from him. The noise of his outcry would certainly bring investigation from the riders; and any blow he might strike would now be an unthinkable betrayal. The horse was no longer wild, nor tamed to any touch but Trionn's own. His dilemma over the stallion was compounded.

Bonded as he was to the horse, it was inconceivable to leave him loose to be hunted and butchered for dogmeat.

Trionn sat in the meadowgrass, glaring morosely at his boots. They were worn at the toes, unsuited for the miles of wear he was now going to have to require of them. The already tired leather would rot off his feet by wintertime, and where could he steal or beg enough coin to pay for the stallion's upkeep? Such worries were moot if he failed to hide such a distinctive and costly animal from discovery by the Lord's patrols.

The rising moon already glimmered through the trees. No time remained to restore the gate and formulate a reasonable escape. Shoved again by a warm nose, then tickled about the ears by the inquisitive stallion's lips, Trionn cursed. The horse raised his head as if puzzled.

'Well, I don't know what to do,' Trionn said aloud, more words than he had used in one breath for the better part of a month.

In the end, he settled for walking. The great dun paced at his heels with no more shame than a dog might show, adoring a master who had kicked him.

'You were wild,' Trionn accused bitterly. 'You liked it that way, remember?'

The horse only snorted, wetting the back of his neck.

The path beyond Silverdown's back thickets stretched away through an expanse of tenant farmland. It was dusty, left rutted from the passage of the costermonger's carts that would rattle to the market before dawn. Now, when the field-hands were sleeping, and most nobles sipped wine in the comfort of candle lit halls, the way was empty, a silvered ribbon twisting away toward lands that Trionn had never dreamed of seeing. He was hungry, tired, and lost outside his corner in the kitchen where the pots and the washtub waited. He brooded as he walked, while the stallion grazed the verges, then trotted between mouthfuls of snatched grass to keep up.

At intervals he would nudge Trionn, or playfully nip at the boy's sleeves. To turn around, even once, was to acknowledge the creature's magnificence. The full impact of what had gone wrong at the moment of the gypsy witch's call left an ache of inconsolable frustration.

'
I'm
the last person you should trust to look after your fate,' Trionn cried, exasperated.

He crossed a plank bridge, the boom of the stallion's hooves at his back a disturbance that shattered the stillness.

A rustle from behind the span, and a half-seen, fitful movement, caused the stallion to shy back. He arched his neck, ears flattened, then feinted with bared teeth toward what he saw as a threat. Startled silly, Trionn gaped as what looked like a bundle of rags extricated itself from the undergrowth.

The moonlight revealed a small woman, her manner decidedly vexed. 'By my mother's blood! It was you who turned my call!' The fury on her oval face was justified.

'Why in hell's name did you do it, boy? My reputation's thoroughly ruined.'

The stallion screamed and struck. Quicker than he by a hairsbreadth, the gypsy hopped the rails of the bridge, still carping. 'Call him off, idiot. Before we're noticed, and find ourselves cut down for stealing.'

Mistrustful of words, Trionn gave a shrug, palms up.

The woman snapped back an obscenity in the gypsy language of the hills. 'You've got uncommonly strong talent, for a boy who doesn't have the faintest idea what he's doing.' Her acid commentary cut off as she ducked beneath the bridge to avoid the enraged stallion's strike. As teeth lunged for her wrist, she dropped out of reach and landed mid-stream with a splash.

'Lay your hand on him,' she instructed, annoyed as if she had just turned her ankle on a stone. 'The horse will feel your touch, and sense through you that I mean no harm.'

Trionn feared to approach the whirling mass of equine nerve and muscle that could, and had, killed men outright. But the clatter as the horse rampaged across the bridge span demanded immediate reaction. He steeled his nerve, reached out, and was startled yet again as the stallion anticipated his movement, and seemed at one with his intent. The creature settled back on all fours, curved his neck, and lipped at Trionn's fingers.

From the far side of the bridge, bedraggled and wringing wet, the gypsy woman shouldered out of the briars on the river bank. She regarded the mismatched tableau presented by the awkward, diffident boy and a stallion bred to carry princes. Her eyes turned absorbed and thoughtful, while the moonlight glinted off the water that dripped from her rags like a fall of thrown diamonds.

'You're exceptionally gifted with animals,' she mused. 'I expect you also know how to ride?'

Trionn cast her a look of mortified affront, and the stallion snorted warning in concert.

The gypsy witch shook her head, and busied herself wringing muddy water from her skirts. She sighed at last and straightened. Trionn received a long look that chilled his flesh, and set his knees to trembling.