Chapter Nine: Horse

Reading time: 12 min

If you are a new subscriber, you may wish to start at the beginning.

After a morning scrubbing laundry in the river, my reward was to join Aric and his steward Antisthenes on an outing beyond camp. Aric and some of the kara had been away the past few days on raids. I’d stayed behind with Bornon and the novice boys studying the ancient art of sword-dancing. I relished the rigors of training but also welcomed some rest. Today, we would ride northwest with a small party into the uplands, searching for deer in the early evening. 

I’d just stuffed my gloves in my belt, taken down my goryt, and added arrows to my quiver when a guttural bellow rose from the direction of the pasture. “What is that awful noise?” I asked in horror, already knowing the answer: it was a horse’s anguished cry.

“Tiranes captured a stallion from the wild herd last night. He and some other men have been trying to break him all morning.”

I ran beyond the circle of tents and wagons to see the source of the commotion. Sure enough, a gathering of men stood around a light bay who’d been haltered and lashed to a post. They’d hobbled him, though that did little to prevent him from bucking off the rider clinging desperately to his back.  

“They’re never going to break him that way,” I said to Aric, who had walked up beside me.

“No?”

“They might wear him down. Get him to submit for an hour, a month, a year. But one day, he’ll turn. A horse broken like that can never be truly trusted. They should turn him loose.”

“They’ll kill him first.”

Not if I could help it. I marched to where the beast stood tied and called out to the man with the rope in his hands, Tiranes. “Let me have a turn. I want to try.”

Though Tiranes was vazarka, apart from the perpetual curl to his lip, there was nothing remarkable about him that I could see. A wiry man with dirty blond hair and a deep scar on the bridge of his nose, he refused to even turn and look at me when he spoke. “Heh, you think you can break him?” 

“I know I can.” 

“Bullshit,” Tiranes said. “We’ve all tried. You’ll get your taste tonight. Let us have our sport in peace.” 

“Afraid I’m right?” 

“He’s not even fit for the fighting arenas. He’d kill you.”

“What’s it matter to you?” 

“It doesn’t. You wanna kill yourself, it’s not my problem. But Aric won’t like it.”

“Ask him.” I glanced back to where I’d left Aric to see him standing with his arms folded across his chest. “He’ll agree. I want a turn, like the others. If he kills me, you all get a good laugh. But if I ride him, he’s mine.” 

He paused to consider my offer. “All right, then. Suit yourself. Looks like someone’s gonna get broken today after all.” 

Tiranes looked back at Aric, who waved his hand in acquiescence if not exactly approval. His confidence in me was heartening, as always.

“And just what makes you think you’ll be able to break him,” Rathagos asked, “when none of us could?” He’d been attempting to help Tiranes with the horse and had a fresh lump growing on his low brow to show for it. It made him look even more brutish.

“I only asked to try. I’ve trained all my father’s best horses.”

“And riding the Bastarnai king’s finest steeds makes you a breaker of wild horses, does it?” Rathagos punctuated his statement with a thrust of his twig-whiskered chin.

“Wild or captive makes no difference,” I said. “Horses are horses.”

“Horse training is hazardous work. It’s not fit for a lady.”

It amused me what a tenuous thing gallantry could be, and I often wondered just who it sought to protect. Back home—in secret and openly—people called me “stable girl,” “groom,” and most charmingly of all, “horsefucker.” I wore those names like a mark of honor—an armor. And they could hate me for it all they liked, but I was a horseman, and that was all I ever wanted to be. Partnership with a powerful, unrestrained creature brought mankind deep into a primal dance with nature. When harmonious, nothing was more sublime. When transgressed, nothing was more brutish. The noble horse was a great appraiser of man’s character, which is why so many went to such pains to break the proud creature in body and spirit—to spare themselves the truth.

I approached the sweating horse tied to the post gently, eyes lowered in truce. He had a burnt ochre coat, long black legs, a thick black mane and tail, and a crooked stripe running down his long, sharp face. His flanks heaved, and his nostrils flared as he rolled his eye and turned his ear to me, but he stood square and firm on all four legs.

Bound to a post by a rope halter, his front legs were hobbled. Rope burns cut into his neck, fetlocks, and above his hocks. Raw and oozing, they drew flies. Dried sweat whitened his neck and back. A thin, tight cord like a noose gelded him. No wonder the poor creature was ready to fight. All morning, they said, he’d been tied and whipped, hobbled and mounted. He’d battled, bucking, rearing, throwing his whole body to the ground to rid himself of his riders. Man after man took his turn, trying to wear him down.

I admired his rebellion. It’s easier to submit to force and fear, and tyrants don’t celebrate the will; they lay siege to it. This was a fierce and brave creature, indeed.

They called him Vatra after their god of obstruction—a name usually spoken like a curse. As I approached, his neck arched and ears flattened to create an elegant arc from nostril to wither, like a serpent ready to strike. I came slowly at his shoulder, outside the range of feet and teeth, and gently touched his tense and sweating neck. As I stroked his neck, his expression softened, but he remained wary.

“No more stalling,” Tiranes said. “Time to ride.” He and Rathagos moved forward with a lariat.

“No, don’t,” I said, motioning them away.

“Second thoughts? I told you she was all talk.” Many of the men laughed.

“I’m going to untie him. No ropes. No hobbles.”

“That’s madness. He’ll get away.”

“He won’t,” I said, untying his lead rope from the post. “We’re going inside the wagon fort.”

Inside the ring of wagons and tents was a circle about thirty paces across. The hearth where we dined stood at the center. With the entrance closed, the wagons made a high wall around the circle’s perimeter from which nothing could enter—or exit. The horse would be corralled inside with me. I took the doeskin gloves from my belt and slipped them on as the men gathered around to watch.

Once inside the clearing, I unfastened his hobbles. Stepping back, I allowed him to run to the end of the long rope tied to a simple rope halter. I stood quietly at the center and watched him run, remembering what freedom felt like. Free for the first time all day after having been lashed to a post and tortured, he tore away and let loose with a series of bucks and shrieks, galloping madly around the perimeter of the space.

When he’d got all of his bucks out, he settled and began to investigate his surroundings. Blowing out through his nose and flagging his tail high as he pranced past, he was shy of the tents and the noisy men, and so his interest gravitated closer and closer toward me, the quiet human who stood at the center. He came gradually nearer, picking at tufts of grass, snorting at the ashes in the hearth, knocking over a cauldron and spooking himself. Few animals are as curious—or downright nosy—as horses.

Finally, he approached me. Then retreated. And approached again. I stood still and let him decide if I was trustworthy. Letting him come to me. Soon he came close enough to sniff at me. When he didn’t spook, I spoke quietly to him and let him smell my hands. Then touched his shoulder softly until he no longer flinched. Then I began to stroke his neck and scratch his withers with my fingertips. With his lip, he ruffled my hair.

He balked and bolted in short bursts a few times. But I let him flee from me and gently reeled him back in, petting and speaking to him. Though anxious, he soon quieted. He walked briskly, and forward motion seemed to comfort him, so I used the rope to keep him on a small circle around me, always staying just behind his shoulder to keep him from turning.

When he had settled, I gently applied pressure to the rope, asking him to bend his head and neck toward me, and then released it. Just enough to turn his eye to me. As he relaxed and stretched, I gave him more rope to make the circle wider, continuing to loosen his tense neck with the rope. I kept speaking to him to accustom him to the commands of my voice. “Walk,” “trot,” “halt.” Soon enough, he stretched out his frame in a long, easy walk. Then I clucked and asked him to trot, swinging the end of the rope toward his tail, and he moved around me in an easy jog on the full circle and shook his mane. He was a fine specimen once he settled. Tiranes would be loath to lose him, I mused to myself with a smile.

When I reeled him in on a smaller circle, he lost speed. I stepped in front of his shoulder, and when I said “halt,” he came to a quiet stop, letting me approach to stroke his neck and rub his mane. He touched his soft muzzle to my cheek.

Suspicion, intelligence, and a great desire for tenderness lay beneath his fierceness. Horses want only to understand their purpose and what’s expected of them so that they can go through their days without confusion or pain. To do their work and retire at the end of the day with their companions and a full belly. They want to be good, not because it’s right, but because it makes life tolerable. Maybe, in the end, that’s all “good” is.

Working slowly, patiently, it all took an hour or two. The men watched quietly as I worked, mainly at a walk. Stopping him often to stroke his neck and speak softly to him.

I looped the other end of my rope through his halter to make reins. He stretched his neck down for another rub, and I lay across it, patting him. He didn’t flinch, so I then lay my body across his back. Still no reaction. I swung my leg over and sat upon him, keeping my chest low to his withers and rubbing his neck. Around the circle, the men—even Tiranes and Rathagos—were silent.

I sat up straight. “Walk on,” I said, and Vatra walked a tiny circle, led by the rope reins and halter. “Halt,” I spoke to him, and he stopped in his tracks. I slid from his back, patted his neck, and let him rub his sweating face on my caftan.

In the silence of the onlookers, we walked to face Aric, who stood mute and indifferent, his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw set, his narrowed eye fixed on us.

I held the reins out to him in an offering of peace.

He eyed me up and down. “Keep them. A deal is a deal: Vatra is yours. But, tomorrow, you teach this to me.”

The Hellene emptied the basket of fuel bricks into the fire as we made ready for bed. The scent of burning grass filled the room. 

“We’re running low on fuel,” he said to Aric and ducked out of the tent.

Aric waved him off and chuckled to himself as he unbuckled his goryt and hung it on the peg above his bed. Then he turned to me.

“That was an impressive trick today,” he said.

“It’s no trick.” 

“Where did you learn to handle horses like that?”

“My father had a lot of horses through his stables,” I said, placing my saddle against the wall behind my pallet. “I always felt for the ones too wild or sensitive to be ridden—they suffered terribly and eventually became food. So, I would take them on.”

“Why would you bother?” He shrugged off his caftan and folded it neatly beside his pallet.

“And do nothing?”  

“Maybe some are better off as food.”

“I’ve begun to wonder if you’re right. It’s unkind teaching animals to trust us.”

He stopped undressing and turned to face me. “How do you mean?” 

“I’m fair with them. So they forget their wariness.” I hung up my warbelt beside his. “But when they leave me, the next man won’t be so kind. It feels like a cruel deception.” 

“At least they know some kindness in this life,” he said, pausing to peel off his tunic. I looked away. “Which is more than most get in this world. Perhaps, having taught them to do their duty and be reliable, others will find no cause to show them unkindness. Is it not the same with children?”

It was possible. Though, I never much counted on the goodness of people. But I hoped, for their sake, he was right. “How would you normally break in a young horse?”

“Me? I take a colt into the river, where the water is deep as its chest, and the current is strong. Then I mount it against the current and hold it there until it stops fighting me, letting the water do most of the work. When it submits, I ride it to shore.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? What if the horse panics and you are swept away by the current?”

He shrugged. “I can swim. And then I find out early which are the untrustworthy horses.”

I had to admit there was a grim sort of pragmatism to it. Any horse that would rather scuttle itself in a river than be ridden probably wasn’t worth much out here.

“Why didn’t they just do that with Vatra?”

“Maybe because the river is low with the drought. Or because, though they are my brothers, they are fools,” he snickered, and I laughed louder than I should have. He cocked his head and looked at me, his brow scrunched in bemusement. “You love them.”

“Horses? They’re honest. To have two minds, two wills, two forms—and somehow unite them toward a single purpose. Only the pure heart of the horse makes this possible.”

“You don’t believe humans capable of this?” 

“A human who is kind and fair to a horse or a dog can rely on that animal’s partnership for life; can the same truly be said of men?”

“Then, you trust no one?” 

“Do you?” 

He chuckled. “I’ve never heard anyone say the things you do.”

“You must think I’m mad.”

He chewed his lip and squinted at me. Then smiled inscrutably as he drew his sword and nicked his arm before laying it between us. “I think you’ll drive me mad.”

---

Chapter Ten: Swords

---