Sheri Tepper - Grass

Well, they stopped us there, too. Marjorie looks at me the way she looks at Tony. As though I’m a boy. And when have I ever had the chance to be anything else…

Mother. Mother. You shouldn’t be out here at all. Oh, Mother, do you really think this pays back for Dimity…

Tony thought: Let’s get this over with and go home. If I die, I die, but if I don’t die, let me go home. Let’s leave these people, these crazy bons, let’s go! Let me go through this hour, two hours, whatever it takes, then we’ll go, I’ll go, somehow. Let’s get it over with. If I die…

Rowena thought: Dimity. For Dimity. For Emmy. For Stavenger. For my other children, dead so long ago I’ve almost forgotten their names. For all of you. For all of us.

Sylvan. Oh, Sylvan. Whatever happens, remember that I love you, I love you all…

Don Quixote thought: She is riding. Trust her. Trust what she does. And listen, all of you. Listen for the voices.

At the foot of the hill they were separated from the Hippae at the tunnel entrance only by a few deep pools and a screen of foliage. Only Rigo rode all the way down, measuring the distance at a mental gallop. Then he turned back, summoning the others to a line that seemed an appropriate distance from the bottom. They wanted the slope of the hill to aid them, but there had to be space to turn along the hillside without being forced into the sucking pools at its foot. Silently Rigo checked his lance while the others did likewise, then began rattling the butt of his lance on his buckler, screaming insults at the same time. “Hippae fools. Mock horses. Stupid beasts.” Not that they understood what he was saying, but they could pick the intent up from his mind.

“Genocides,” shrieked Marjorie at the top of her lungs. “Ingrates! Malicious beasts! Curs!”

“Oh, wah. wah, wah, wah,” screamed Tony, making as much noise as he could but incapable of thinking words.

“For Dimity,” cried Rowena. “For Dimity, Dimity, Dimity.”

“Cowards,” trumpeted Sylvan. “Cowards. Animals. Peepers. Migerers. Muddy migerers with no more honor than a mole.”

The Hippae came out of the screening brush in a rush, then stopped while those on the hill fell silent. The humans had expected Hippae. They had not expected them to have riders. Foremost among them was a great gray mount bearing someone they all knew on its back. “Shevlok,” breathed Rowena. “Oh, for the love of God, my son.”

“It’s not Shevlok,” Sylvan spat at her. “Look at his face.” The face was a mask, empty as a broken bottle. There was nothing there. “You’re fighting the beasts, not the riders,” trumpeted Rigo. “Remember that. The mounts, not the riders!” He kneed El Dia Octavo into a trot. Behind him the others did likewise, falling into a diagonal line so that each would have room to charge and turn without endangering the ones behind.

Rigo counted as he rode. There were ten of the Hippae. The one bearing Shevlok’s body was to the fore with three others beyond to Rigo’s right. Well and good. The one in front would take the brunt, and better Rigo to attack that one than to expect the bon Damfels to do it. The other Hippae riders — who were they? He risked a quick glance. Lancel bon Laupmon. Three of the bon Maukerdens: Dimoth, Vince, and one whose name he had forgotten. He didn’t know any of the others, or he didn’t recognize them. The faces didn’t look like faces at all. They had been transfigured into something merely symbolic. Something wholly possessed.

He was only a few feet from them when he felt them pushing at his mind, erasing his intent. He howled, the howl driving them out, away. He flicked the trigger to turn on the knife and signaled Octavo for a slow, collected canter. The gray Hippae reared high, and Octavo ran toward it, then turned to the right without hesitation as Rigo clipped off its front feet with the fiery lance. It hadn’t expected that! One. One, screaming, but down!

Octavo stretched his stride and galloped along the hillside, running swiftly as three of the Hippae came up from the swamp and tried to intercept him from the left. Cursing, Rigo lifted the tip of the lance from under his left arm, brought it across and anchored it in his right armpit, then stretched out his left arm to hold the lance perpendicular to the line of Octavo’s movement. The humming flame caught the first interceptor low across its shoulders. Leg muscles severed; it fell as the other two screamed and turned away. Two.

Sylvan was behind him, Her Majesty flying in the face of the Hippae, swift as a bird. He saw Rigo shift the lance and shifted his own almost simultaneously. The object was to get the creatures moving in pursuit, he reminded himself. Not necessarily to kill them yet. Now, if possible; eventually, yes, but not necessarily now. He jabbed the lance toward a green-mottled Hippae and heard it bellow in angry pain. Then he was past. He cast a quick glance across his shoulder and saw the green monster coming after him. Good. Well and good. He pointing the lance in the direction he was moving and leaned forward to whisper soft words in Her Majesty’s ear. They were words he had whispered to lovers in time past. He saw nothing incongruous in urging Her Majesty on with them now.

Rowena was behind Sylvan, copying his tactics a little too late to make the wide turn he had made. It was only when her lance had chopped into the throat of a shrieking mud-colored creature that she remembered they had to flee. Millefiori had already decided it was time. Wheeling on her hind legs, she set out in pursuit of the other two while the mud-colored monster staggered behind them, screaming, being rapidly outdistanced by two other, uninjured Hippae.

Three, Marjorie thought to herself. Three down. Four in pursuit of the three horses, two of them at least slightly wounded. Three waiting for her, and for Tony. Little Tony. White-faced. The way he always got when he rode. Fearful. Not thinking about it.

“Anthony!” she screamed in his ear, “Follow me!”

She thumbed the lance on, sighted a line of travel that would take her in front of two of the remaining Hippae, The third one was hanging back, as though for an ambush. “Watch that one,” she cried, pointing to the mottled wine-colored beast half screened by the trees.

Tony cried something in answer, she couldn’t tell what. Then Quixote was crossing the path of the two, both charging at her, necks twisted to one side to bring the barbs to bear. She flipped the lance to her left as the others had done and raked them with the blade. Screams. Bellows. She turned Quixote up the hill and around.

Tony. He was facing the final Hippae, his lance dipping and swirling, the beast staying well back, out of range. Tony was too close. If he turned to flee, the other would have him!

She looked behind her. The two she had touched were not badly hurt. Surprised into inaction for the moment, but not badly hurt. She had touched their necks, not their legs. She pulled Quixote up and back, wheeling on his hind legs. “Come on,” she cried to Quixote, riding directly at the monster confronting Tony. Beyond the beast was a patch of level ground.

Her heart was hammering so loudly that she could hear only it, nothing else, a pulse in her ears that drowned out the fall of hooves. She took the lance in her left hand, held it loosely. They came closer. “We’re going to jump,” she told Quixote. “We’re going to jump over him, boy. Over him.” Then there was no time to say anything. Quixote’s haunches gathered under him; they were high, high over the monster’s back and the lance was pointed down, down and back, then they had landed on the other side.

They were on a tiny island, only large enough for Quixote to stop on, stop and wheel and jump once more, back over the pool to the solid hillside. Tony was there, looking stupidly downward at the recumbent, slavering Hippae with the severed spine while two wounded ones stalked toward him.