Clive Lewis: The Horse and His Boy

Aravis said nothing, but Bree at once said, “Shasta, don’t display your ignorance. They’re always married at that age in the great Tarkaan families.”

Shasta turned very red (though it was hardly light enough for the others to see this) and felt snubbed. Aravis asked Bree for his story. Bree told it, and Shasta thought that he put in a great deal more than he needed about the falls and the bad riding. Bree obviously thought it very funny, but Aravis did not laugh. When Bree had finished they all went to sleep.

Next day all four of them, two horses and two humans, continued their journey together. Shasta thought it had been much pleasanter when he and Bree were on their own. For now it was Bree and Aravis who did nearly all the talking. Bree had lived a long time in Calormen and had always been among Tarkaans and Tarkaans’ horses, and so of course he knew a great many of the same people and places that Aravis knew. She would always be saying things like, “But if you were at the fight of Zulindreh you would have seen my cousin Alimash,” and Bree would answer, “Oh, yes, Alimash, he was only captain of the chariots, you know. I don’t quite hold with chariots or the kind of horses who draw chariots. That’s not real cavalry. But he is a worthy nobleman. He filled my nosebag with sugar after the taking of Teebeth.” Or else Bree would say, “I was down at the lake of Mezreel that summer,” and Aravis would say, “Oh, Mezreel! I had a friend there, Lasaraleen Tarkheena. What a delightful place it is. Those gardens, and the Valley of the Thousand Perfumes!” Bree was not in the least trying to leave Shasta out of things, though Shasta sometimes nearly thought he was. People who know a lot of the same things can hardly help talking about them, and if you’re there you can hardly help feeling that you’re out of it.

Hwin the mare was rather shy before a great war-horse like Bree and said very little. And Aravis never spoke to Shasta at all if she could help it.

Soon, however, they had more important things to think of. They were getting near Tashbaan. There were more, and larger, villages, and more people on the roads. They now did nearly all their travelling by night and hid as best they could during the day. And at every halt they argued and argued about what they were to do when they reached Tashbaan. Everyone had been putting off this difficulty, but now it could be put off no longer. During these discussions Aravis became a little, a very little, less unfriendly to Shasta; one usually gets on better with people when one is making plans than when one is talking about nothing in particular.

Bree said the first thing now to do was to fix a place where they would all promise to meet on the far side of Tashbaan even if, by any ill luck, they got separated in passing the city. He said the best place would be the Tombs of the Ancient Kings on the very edge of the desert. “Things like great stone bee-hives,” he said, “you can’t possibly miss them. And the best of it is that none of the Calormenes will go near them because they think the place is haunted by ghouls and are afraid of it.” Aravis asked if it wasn’t really haunted by ghouls. But Bree said he was a free Narnian horse and didn’t believe in these Calormene tales. And then Shasta said he wasn’t a Calormene either and didn’t care a straw about these old stories of ghouls. This wasn’t quite true. But it rather impressed Aravis (though at the moment it annoyed her too) and of course she said she didn’t mind any number of ghouls either. So it was settled that the Tombs should be their assembly place on the other side of Tashbaan, and everyone felt they were getting on very well till Hwin humbly pointed out that the real problem was not where they should go when they had got through Tashbaan but how they were to get through it.

“We’ll settle that tomorrow, Ma’am,” said Bree. “Time for a little sleep now.”

But it wasn’t easy to settle. Aravis’s first suggestion was that they should swim across the river below the city during the night and not go into Tashbaan at all. But Bree had two reasons against this. One was that the river-mouth was very wide and it would be far too long a swim for Hwin to do, especially with a rider on her back. (He thought it would be too long for himself too, but he said much less about that). The other was that it would be full of shipping and of course anyone on the deck of a ship who saw two horses swimming past would be almost certain to be inquisitive.

Shasta thought they should go up the river above Tashbaan and cross it where it was narrower. But Bree explained that there were gardens and pleasure houses on both banks of the river for miles and that there would be Tarkaans and Tarkheenas living in them and riding about the roads and having water parties on the river. In fact it would be the most likely place in the world for meeting someone who would recognize Aravis or even himself.

“We’ll have to have a disguise,” said Shasta.

Hwin said it looked to her as if the safest thing was to go right through the city itself from gate to gate because one was less likely to be noticed in the crowd. But she approved of the idea of disguise as well. She said, “Both the human will have to dress in rags and look like peasants or slaves And all Aravis’s armour and our saddles and things must be made into bundles and put on our backs, and the children must pretend to drive us and people will think we’re on pack-horses.”

“My dear Hwin!” said Aravis rather scornfully. “As anyone could mistake Bree for anything but a war-hors however you disguised him!”

“I should think not, indeed,” said Bree, snorting an letting his ears go ever so little back.

“I know it’s not a very good plan,” said Hwin. “But I think it’s our only chance. And we haven’t been groomed for ages and we’re not looking quite ourselves (at least, I’m sure I’m not). I do think if we get well plastered with mud and go along with our heads down as if we’re tired and lazy—and don’t lift our hooves hardly at all—we might not be noticed. And our tails ought to be cut shorter: not neatly, you know, but all ragged.”

“My dear Madam,” said Bree. “Have you pictured to yourself how very disagreeable it would be to arrive in Narnia in that condition?”

“Well,” said Hwin humbly (she was a very sensible mare), “the main thing is to get there.”

Though nobody much liked it, it was Hwin’s plan which had to be adopted in the end. It was a troublesome one and involved a certain amount of what Shasta called stealing, and Bree called “raiding”. One farm lost a few sacks that evening and another lost a coil of rope the next: but some tattered old boy’s clothes for Aravis to wear had to be fairly bought and paid for in a village. Shasta returned with them in triumph just as evening was closing in. The others were waiting for him among the trees at the foot of a low range of wooded hills which lay right across their path. Everyone was feeling excited because this was the last hill; when they reached the ridge at the top they would be looking down on Tashbaan. “I do wish we were safely past it,” muttered Shasta to Hwin. “Oh I do, I do,” said Hwin fervently.

That night they wound their way through the woods up to the ridge by a wood-cutter’s track. And when they came out of the woods at the top they could see thousands of lights in the valley down below them. Shasta had had no notion of what a great city would be like and it frightened him. They had their supper and the children got some sleep. But the horses woke them very early in the morning.

The stars were still out and the grass was terribly cold and wet, but daybreak was just beginning, far to their right across the sea. Aravis went a few steps away into the wood and came back looking odd in her new, ragged clothes and carrying her real ones in a bundle. These, and her armour and shield and scimitar and the two saddles and the rest of the horses’ fine furnishings were put into the sacks. Bree and Hwin had already got themselves as dirty and bedraggled as they could and it remained to shorten their tails. As the only tool for doing this was Aravis’s scimitar, one of the packs had to be undone again in order to get it out. It was a longish job and rather hurt the horses.