John Ringo - There Will Be Dragons

“Hanarahs are genegineered,” Herzer said definitely.

“Not quite from the ground up but pretty damned close,” Kane admitted. “Incredible stamina, better than Arabs really, very friendly, damned protective, fierce to enemies and gentle as a lamb to a child. They’re blindingly fast, can live on practically anything…”

“Superhorses,” Herzer said, putting his saddle on the top of the corral fence.

“Not quite, but as close as the designers could get,” Kane said. “I guess we’ll find out how well they did.”

“Are they sentient?” Herzer asked. They looked at least on the close order.

“Not hardly,” Kane snorted. “What a dumb idea. As if any sentient being is going to let someone ride on their back day in and day out. And if they don’t, and you coerce them, what’s that?”

“Slavery?” Herzer guessed.

“Got it in one,” Kane said. “Sentient horses. Give me a nice, not too dumb, nonsentient horse any day. So you can’t talk with it, big deal. It also doesn’t talk back. More than balances out, trust me.”

“They look like the kind that I rode in my training,” Herzer said.

“Probably were. Well written scenario if so.” Kane put his fingers to his lips and whistled a complex arpeggio. At the sound the young chestnut that Herzer had seen tearing around the pasture came running in a broad canter, dodging through the herd like a gymnast.

“Oh, goody,” Herzer said. “Now you’re going to give the newbie the unrideable horse.”

“Not at all,” Kane said seriously. “That’s a stupid trick; we can’t afford any more injuries than we’ve already had. Diablo is gentle as a lamb.”

“Diablo?”

“Look, we’ve got nearly sixty horses to name, you run out .”

He leaned forward and stroked the horse on the muzzle, then gave it a small treat.

“They like people,” Kane said. “But getting them to come to you requires some incentive. Especially since this one’s smart enough to see the saddle and know what’s coming.”

“He doesn’t like to be ridden?”

“Would you like a hundred kilos or so thrown on your back?” Kane said, expertly slipping in the bridle. “You could probably ride him with a hackamore, but we’ll start with the bridle.”

He brought the horse out of the pasture, having to slap back two others that tried to bolt for it, and led it around to where the saddle sat.

“Go ahead and saddle him up while we get ready,” Kane said. “There are a couple of other people who haven’t had much recent experience and we were all going out for a trail ride to get broken in again.”

“Uhmm…” Herzer temporized looking at the horse. It looked back at him with a decidedly intelligent expression that seemed to say “ Oh, My God. I’ve got a Newbie.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know how to saddle one,” Herzer admitted.

“Let me guess,” Kane said with a laugh. “They always appeared fully saddled and with their barding on?”

“Yep.”

“Paladins. There ought to be a bounty on them. Okay, no problem. But watch so you’ll know the next time.”

Herzer returned to the corral tired and sore. The trail ride had turned out to be far more involved than simply riding along in a group chatting. They had started off that way and had taken the horses for a long tour of the area, including a ride through Raven’s Mill. Then, apparently with Myron’s permission, they had spent some time pushing his small herd of cattle around and attempting, with mostly laughable failure, something called “cutting out.” Using only the horses, they were supposed to pick one member out of the herd and move it away from the rest. Supposedly, in the really old days, this had been so regular and common as to be without notice. Not so here. The cattle would hardly break up when the horses approached and when they did start running they tended to stay together. Trying to get into the herd and push a single individual out turned out to be nearly impossible for most of the riders. The exceptions were Kane, Alyssa and, strangely, Herzer.

The Arabs, which two of the men and one of the women were riding, seemed to take a strange delight in herding the cows. But with the exception of Alyssa, none of the others could get a single individual cut out. Alyssa was able to control her mount well enough, using mostly knee control and shifting weight, to manage the feat at least once. Kane, likewise, was able to control his mount to do the work.

In Herzer’s case, he swore Diablo was prescient and, like the Arabs, the young stallion seemed to enjoy the herding. All that Herzer had to do was get him pointed at the right cow and let him do the work.

After a sweat-soaked hour of running cows around — Myron came over while it was going on and remarked that they’d probably run a month’s grazing off the herd — they headed back to the corrals. But the day wasn’t over. They rode, mostly at a canter, back to the corrals and had a light lunch. Then Kane produced implements for a sport he called “Cowboy Polo” and broke them into two teams. The object of the game was using long mallets to strike an inflated rubber ball about a third of a meter across and drive it from one end of the massive pasture to the other, then through a small “goal” designated by two fence posts.

They played that for the rest of the day, changing horses twice although never people, and by the end of the day Herzer was exhausted but satisfied. He had played on Alyssa’s team and while they had lost, four goals to Kane’s team’s six, he had scored three of the goals.

Again Diablo, who had played almost half the game, seemed to have a knack for running down the balls. It was like the chase game with the cows in a way. In the brief intervals between “chukkers” Kane had explained the genesis of the game. Supposedly it had been invented by the ancient Mongols and the original “balls” had been severed human heads. He also said that the usual “ball” used was about the size of a human fist. Having mis-hit the much larger ball any number of times, Herzer had as much disbelief in that as the human head story.

He had fallen off, been “unseated” as Kane put it, only once and had remembered to fall as “bonelessly” as possible. His prior combat training had come to the fore permitting him to turn the fall into a roll.

“You need to get right back up,” Kane said, riding over. “If you fall off and you don’t get right back up, you’ll have one hell of a hard time riding again, ever.”

Herzer shook his head to clear it and then nodded. “Get right back up. I’ll remember,” he said muzzily.

When he got back up the replacement for Diablo had been patiently waiting, cropping at some of the sparse grass on the recently cleared field. So he had remounted and gotten back in the game.

However, at the conclusion, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to see a horse again. Unfortunately, he desperately needed a bath and to have his clothes washed. And while riding over to the baths was an unpleasant prospect, walking over was about the only thing worse that he could imagine.

Kane had told them to go get a bath and to take a horse if they wanted to. Obviously the intent was not only to get the smelly, sweaty group cleaned up but to get them some more practice riding, so Herzer reluctantly walked over to the corral after the last chukker and whistled up Diablo.

The horse looked at least as uncertain about being ridden as Herzer felt about riding, but he soothed the animal with scratches and finally got the saddle on and adjusted. Riding over was very unpleasant but when he thought about walking he had to admit that riding was at least shorter .