But there was one good thing that also passed in silence, for Aerin was too proud, for different reasons, to mention it: the specific muscular control and coordination of learning to wield a sword finally sweated the last of the surka out of her system. It had been two years since her meeting with Galanna in the royal garden.
Tor and Aerin’s meetings on the farthest edge of the least used of the practice fields also gave them an excuse to be together, as they had always been together, without having to acknowledge the new restraint between them, without discovering that conversation between them was growing awkward.
Aerin knew that Tor was careful not to use his real strength when he forced her back; but at least, as she learned, he had to be quick to keep her off; and strength, she hoped, would come. She was growing like a weed; her seventeenth birthday had come and gone, with the tiresome pomp necessary to a king’s daughter, and the stiff courtesy inspired by an unsatisfactory king’s daughter, and she was far too old to be suddenly growing taller. Not that she minded towering over Galanna; Galanna’s perfect profile, when seen from above, seemed to beetle slightly at the brows and narrow slightly around the eyes. Aerin also had hopes that she would outgrow the revolting Kisha and be given a real horse.
A real horse. She began to have to close her lips tighter over her determination not to mention horses to Tor. A mounted man’s strength was his horse—or a mounted woman’s. But if she asked Tor to teach her to fight from horseback he would have to admit to knowing how much it meant to her, that it was not only an amusing private game she was playing; and she knew he was troubled about what they were doing already. His curious silence on the cause of her eagerness to learn told her that; and he could still read as many of her thoughts as she could of his.
Chapter 6
TALAT GREW FIT and shining: He was always a little short with the right hind when she mounted, but it took less and less time for him to work out of it. She rode him without gear for weeks, while the saddle and bridle shed oil all over the inside of her wardrobe, for she found herself superstitiously reluctant to use it—as if something would be spoiled, or a gift would become a duty, once tack officiated over their rides together. “I suppose even the pleasantest convalescence must come to an end someday,” she said to him one evening; and the next day she brought all his gear and her boy’s sword out to the pasture. He sniffled them all over, slowly and then with enthusiasm, and danced with impatience while she tacked him up, till she pounded on his shoulder with her fist and yelled at him to behave.
He moved off proudly and obeyed each command at once; and yet she found the jingling of the various bits and buckles annoying, and the reins took up too much of her hands and her concentration. “How does one deal with a sword and these thrice-blasted reins?” she said to the small white ears. “There must also be a way to hang the rotten thing so it doesn’t bang into you when you’re not using it. I carry the reins in my teeth—and accidentally strangle myself in them—and meanwhile I can’t shout blood-curdling war cries of Victory! and For Damar! to bring terror into the hearts of my enemies, with my mouth full of reins.” As they stood, she pulled the sword from its scabbard and swung it experimentally just as Talat turned his head to snap at a fly on his shoulder, and the sword tangled itself in the reins till Talat could not straighten his neck again, but remained with his head bent around and one reproachful dark eye fixed on his rider, and the blunt blade snuggled along his cheek.
“Ah, hells,” she said, and yanked the sword free. One rein parted. Talat stood, either waiting for directions or afraid to move; the short end of the cut rein dangled a few inches beneath his chin, and he ducked his head and grabbed it, and chewed it thoughtfully.
“We did just fine without,” she said furiously, dismounted, tore the bridle off and dumped it on the ground, holding her unwieldy sword in the other hand like a marauding bandit. She remounted and dug her legs into Talat’s sides—harder than she meant for the saddle skirts muddled her. Talat, delighted, set off on his first gallop since the day he was wounded; and Aerin had wrought better than she knew, for he had the strength and stamina now to gallop quite a distance.
He tore across his pasture. Aerin failing to collect either her wits or her stomach, which seemed to be lying back on the ground with the bridle; and then she discovered that just as the saddle had made her misjudge how hard to squeeze, so now its bulk made it very easy for Talat to ignore her as she tried to tell him to stop by sitting heavily on his back. The fence loomed up before them; “Oh no,” moaned Aerin, dropped her sword, and grabbed two handfuls of mane; and they were up and over. The take-off was a lurch, but they came down lightly, and Aerin discovered that while her ex-convalescent was still disinclined to stop, he was willing to listen to her legs again; and eventually the circles got smaller, and the gallop more like a canter, and finally when she sat back he came down docilely to a walk.
But his head and tail were still up, and he reared suddenly, and Aerin frantically clutched him around the neck. He neighed, and struck out with his forelegs. Aerin had seen him do this years before, when her father rode him, for war-horses were trained to do battle as well as to carry their riders into it; and she had seen them and others of the cavalry on the practice fields, and at the laprun trials. But it was a lot different, she found, when one was on the horse performing.
“Shh,” she said. “If someone notices we’re out here, there will be trouble.” Talat bounced stiff-legged once or twice and subsided. “And how am I supposed to get you back into your pasture again, dimwit?” she addressed him, and his ears flicked back for her voice. “The gate is right under anyone’s eyes watching from the barn; and there’s always someone in the barn.” His ears twitched. “No, we will not jump back in.” She was shaking all over; she felt that her legs were clattering against Talat’s sides.
She turned him back toward the far side of the pasture again, feeling that anything was better than being seen; and they made their way to the place where Talat had made his leap. Aerin dismounted. “You stay right here or I’ll chop your other three legs,” she told him. He stood still, watching her, as she clambered cautiously up the low rock wall and the wooden rails above it. She cast around a few minutes, and found her discarded sword; came back to the fence and began banging the end of the top rail with the hilt till it slid protestingly out of the post and fell to the ground. The other followed. Aerin examined her blisters grimly, and wiped her sweating face. Talat was still watching her intently, and had not stirred a hoof. Aerin grinned suddenly. “Your war-horse training is no joke, hey? Only the best carries the king.” He wrinkled his nose at her in a silent whicker. “Or even a third-rate first sol, now and then.”