Читать книгу The Mountain's Call - Caitlin Brennan - Страница 13

When the hour was up, it was not Kerrec who came to fetch them but a young man somewhat older than they. His grey coat was edged with a thin band of lighter grey, and the badge on his cap showed a horse dancing against the rays of the sun. He named himself a cadet captain, and let them know that he was four years past his Calling.

He led them briskly through a confusing variety of halls, corridors, courtyards and alleyways to a square of grass surrounded by the inevitable grey stone walls. Kerrec was waiting there, and grooms with horses.

One of the Called behind Valeria groaned. He had voiced the disappointment they all felt. These were not white stallions but common bays and chestnuts. To add insult to injury, as Paulus observed in a clearly audible mutter, they were all either mares or geldings.

“These mounts are lent to us by the School of War,” Kerrec said after they had formed their line in front of him. “They will administer the simplest of the tests. Each of you will choose a horse, then groom, saddle and bridle him. Stand then and wait on further orders.”

Some of the Called were relaxing and smiling. Valeria was much too suspicious for that. She had seen a white shape in the shadow of the portico, and felt Petra’s eyes on her and the rest. This test was not what it seemed.

There were twice as many horses as candidates. Paulus went straight to the tallest, whose coat was like a gold coin and whose mane was a fall of white water. He was even showier than the hunters’ horses outside of Mallia. He was also sickle-hocked and camped out behind, and that lovely big eye was as dull as dirt.

The others were slower to choose. Embry hesitated between a pretty sorrel and a plainer but steadier-looking bay. He chose the bay, with a glance at Paulus that told Valeria he had seen the point of the test.

Valeria made herself stop watching the others and make a decision for herself. Iliya had taken the ugliest of the horses, a hammerheaded brown mare whose eye was large and kind. She was well built except for the head, with a deep girth and sturdy legs. Valeria might have taken her if Iliya had not got there first.

The rest of the horses varied in size and looks, but for the most part they were alike in quality. As she debated the merits of one and then another, she could not help noticing that Batu stood apart from the others with a look almost of terror on his face.

She slipped from the line and went to stand beside him. “You haven’t seen much of horses, have you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “The Call when it came was a terrible shock. I should never have listened to it, but it gave me no choice. Do you think, if I leave now, it will let me go?”

“Don’t leave,” she said. “It wanted you. It must have felt you were right for it, even if horses are strange to you. Is there any one here that makes you feel righter than the others?”

He started to shake his head again, but then he stood still. His eyes narrowed. “That one,” he said, pointing with his chin at a stocky dun. “That feels…” His eyes widened. “She says—she says come here, don’t be a fool, don’t I know enough to listen when someone is talking to me?”

Valeria laughed. “Then you had better go, hadn’t you?”

He hesitated. “But I still don’t know—”

“She’ll tell you,” Valeria said.

The mare shook her head and stamped. Her impatience was obvious. Batu let go of his uncertainty just long enough to obey her.

The mare would look after him. Valeria turned back to her own testing. She was the last to choose. The others were already busy with brushes and curries and hoof picks.

She would do well to take her own advice. One horse on the end, another mare, looked as if she had been waiting patiently for the silly child to notice her. She was a bay with a star, stocky and cobby. If she had been grey, Valeria would have taken her for one of the white gods.

We are not all greys. The voice was as clear as if it had spoken aloud. There was a depth to it, a resonance, that shivered in Valeria’s bones.

Horses never stooped to words if they could avoid it. The fact that the mare had done so was significant. Valeria bowed to her in apology and deep respect. She could feel Petra’s approval on her back like a ray of sun. This was his mother, and she had chosen to be included with the common horses. It was unheard of for the Ladies to do such a thing, but they did as it best pleased them.

The mares had distinct preferences in grooming and deportment. Valeria knew better than to argue with them. When the mare’s coat was gleaming and her mane and tail were brushed to silk, the groom who had held her brought a saddle and a bridle. She was even more particular about those.

If this had not been a test and therefore deadly serious, Valeria would have been enjoying herself. She even had time while grooming and saddling to watch the drama at the other end of the line, where Paulus was discovering that he really, truly was not an imperial duke here.

He had stood for some time, holding the golden horse’s lead, until he realized that none of the grooms would respond to his glances, his lifts of the chin, or even his snaps of the fingers. The one assigned to his horse had brought a grooming box and left it. Eventually it dawned on him that he was expected to groom his horse himself.

He drew himself up in high dudgeon. Before the words could burst out of him, he caught Kerrec’s pale cold eye. Something there punctured his bladder to wonderful effect.

Valeria was dangerously close to approving of Kerrec just then. Paulus struggled almost as badly as Batu, but he struggled in silence. Batu, she noticed, was listening to his mare, and while he was awkward and often fumbled, he did not do badly at all. Paulus paid no attention to his horse’s commentary, such as it was. The horse truly was not very bright.

At last they were all done. The horses were groomed and saddled, with the would-be riders waiting beside them. Kerrec walked down the line, pausing to tighten a girth here and tuck in a strap there. When he came to Paulus, he arched a brow at the groom. The man came in visible relief and, deftly and with dispatch, untacked and then retacked the horse.

Paulus’ face went red and then white. When the groom handed the reins back to him with the bridle now properly adjusted and the saddle placed where it belonged, he held them in fingers that shook with spasms of pure rage.

Batu did not have to suffer a similar ignominy. Apart from a slight adjustment of the girth, Kerrec found nothing to question. The dun mare flicked a noncommittal ear. She was a good teacher and she knew it.

Valeria was the last to be inspected. She held her breath. Her stomach was tight.

Kerrec slid his finger under the girth and along the panel of the saddle. He tugged lightly at the crupper, which won him a warning slide of the ear from the mare. When he reached for the bridle, she showed him a judicious gleam of teeth.

He bowed to her and stepped back. Valeria found that gratifying, though it would have been more so if he had shown any sign of temper.

He seemed already to have forgotten her. “Now of course we will ride,” he said. “One by one and on my order, you will do exactly as I say. Is that understood?”

Several had been ready to leap into the saddle and gallop off. They subsided somewhat sheepishly.

“Valens,” said Kerrec. “Mount and stand.”

Valeria started. She had been expecting to be called last as before. Naturally he had seen how she relaxed for what she expected to be a long wait, and had done what any self-respecting drill sergeant would do.

She scrambled herself together. He was tapping his foot, marking the moments of the delay. Even so, she took another half-dozen foot-taps to take a deep breath, center herself, and get in position to mount properly. The bay mare stood immobile except for the flick of an ear at some sound too faint for Valeria to hear.

Valeria mounted with as little fuss as possible, settled herself in the saddle, and waited. As usual Kerrec gave no sign of what he was thinking. “Walk,” he said.

The test was simple to the level of insult. Walk, trot and canter around the grassy square in both directions. Turn and halt, proceed, turn and halt again. Dismount, stand, bow to the First Rider. Return to the line and watch each of the others undergo the same stupefyingly simple test.

Iliya, who was third to ride, was already bored with watching Valeria and Marcus. When he was asked to canter on, he accelerated to a gallop and then, just as his horse would have crashed into the wall, sat her down hard, pivoted her around the corner, and sent her off again in a sedate canter. His grin was wide and full of delighted mischief.

“Halt,” said Kerrec. He did not raise his voice, but the small hairs rose on Valeria’s neck.

The hammerheaded mare stopped as if she had struck the wall after all. Iliya nearly catapulted over her head.

“Dismount,” said that cool, dispassionate voice. Iliya slid down with none of his usual grace. His knees nearly buckled. He caught at the saddle to steady himself.

“Return to your place,” Kerrec said.

Iliya’s face had gone green. He slunk back to his place in the line.

After that no one tried to brighten up the drab test with a display of horsemanship. Even Paulus followed instructions to the letter.

He was the last. When he had gone back to his place, Kerrec sent them to the stables to unsaddle, stall, and feed their horses. They were all on their guard now, knowing that every move was watched. It made them clumsy, which made them stumble. To add to the confusion, the horses responded to the riders’ tension with tension of their own.

Marcus tripped over a handcart full of hay that Cullen had left in the stable aisle, and fell sprawling. Cullen burst out laughing. Marcus went for his throat.

Cullen reeled backwards. His hands flailed.

Almost too late, Valeria recognized the gesture. She flung herself flat.

Embry was not so fortunate. He had paused in forking hay into his horse’s stall to watch the fight. The bolt of mage-fire caught him in the chest.

Valeria tried from the floor to turn it aside. So did Iliya from the stall across from Embry. They were both too slow.

Embry burned from the inside out. He was dead before his charred corpse struck the floor.

Marcus rolled away from Cullen. Cullen stood up slowly. His face, which had seemed so open and friendly, was stark white. The freckles stood out in it like flecks of ash.

“Someone fetch the First Rider,” Paulus said. His voice was shaking. “Quickly!”

Valeria was ready to go, though she did not know if her legs would hold her up. The backlash of the mage-killing had left her with a blinding headache. When she tried to get up, she promptly doubled over in a fit of the dry heaves.

Someone held her up. She knew it was Batu, although she was too blind and sick to see him.

Kerrec’s voice was like a cool cloth on her forehead. That was strange, because his words were peremptory. “All of you. Out.”

Batu heaved her over his shoulder and carried her out. She lacked the energy to fight. By the time she came into the open air, she could see again, although the edges of things had an odd, blurred luminescence.

Batu set her down on the grass of the court. Dacius was doing the same for a thoroughly wilted Iliya. Paulus stood somewhat apart from them, as if they carried a contagion.

It was a long while before Kerrec came out of the stable. Two burly grooms followed. One led Cullen, the other Marcus. Their hands were bound, and there were horses’ halters around their necks.

Dacius’ breath hissed. Iliya and Batu did not know what the collars meant. Paulus obviously did. So did Valeria.

She watched with the same sick fascination as when Kerrec executed justice on the man who tried to rape her. Just as she had then, she was powerless to move or say a word.

Master Nikos rode into the court through one of the side gates. A pair of riders followed him. Their stallions were snow-white with age and heavy with muscle. They walked like wrestlers into a ring, light and poised but massively powerful.

The Master halted. The riders flanked him.

There was no trial. There were no defenses spoken. Only the Master spoke, and his speech was brief.

“Discipline,” he said, “is the first and foremost and only rule of our order. It must be so. There can be no other way.”

He raised his hand. The grooms led the two captives to the center of the court and unbound their hands.

They did not move. Valeria saw that they could not. The binding on them was stronger than any rope or chain. It was magic, so powerful it made her head hum.

The riders rode from behind the Master. As they moved off to the right and the left, the stallions began a slow and cadenced dance with their backs to the condemned. The steps of it drew power from the earth. It came slow at first, in a trickle, but gradually it grew stronger.

The two on foot, the one who had killed and the one whose loss of discipline had caused the other to kill, began to sway. Their faces were blank, but their eyes would haunt Valeria until she died.

The end was blindingly swift and blessedly merciful. The stallions left the ground in a surge of breathless power. For an instant they hovered at head-height. Then, swift as striking snakes, their hind legs lashed out.

Both skulls burst in a spray of blood. Not a drop of it touched those shining white hides. The stallions came lightly to earth again, dancing in place. The bodies fell twitching, but the souls were gone.

The stallions slowed to a halt and wheeled on their haunches to face the stunned and speechless survivors.

“Remember,” said Master Nikos.