Robin McKinley - The Hero And The Crown

“I would not want to have to kill one,” Teka said sincerely. Teka, maid and nurse, maker of possets and sewer of patches, scolder and comforter and friend, who saw nothing handsome in a well-balanced sword and who always wore long full skirts and aprons.

Aerin burst out laughing. “No, I am not surprised.”

Teka smiled comfortably.

Aerin ate several of the mik-bars herself before dusk fell and she could slip privately out of the castle by the narrow back staircase that no one else used, and into the largest of the royal barns where the horses of the first circle were kept. She liked to pretend that the ever observant men and women of the horse, the sofor, did not notice her every time she crept in at some odd hour to visit Talat. Anyone else of the royal blood could be sure of not being seen, had they wished to be unseen; Aerin could only tiptoe through the shadows, when there were shadows, and keep her voice down; and yet she knew she was simply recognized and permitted to pass. The sofor accepted that when she came thus quietly she wished to be left alone, and they respected her wishes; and Hornmar, the king’s own groom, was her friend. All the sofor knew what she had done for Talat, so the fact that they were being kind by ignoring her hurt her less than similar adaptations to the first sol’s deficiencies did elsewhere in the royal court.

Talat had been wondering what had become of her for almost two days, and she had to feed him the last three milk-bars before he forgave her; and then he snuffled her all over, partly to make sure she was not hiding anything else he might eat, partly to make sure she had in fact returned to him. He rubbed his cheek mournfully along her sleeve and rolled a reproachful eye.

Talat was nearly as old as she was; he had been her father’s horse when she was small. She remembered the dark grey horse with the shining black dapples on his shoulders and flanks, and the hot dark eye. The king’s trappings had looked particularly well on him: red reins and cheekpieces, a red skirt to the saddle, and a wide red breastplate with a gold leaf embroidered on it; the surka leaf, the king’s emblem, for only one of the royal blood could touch the leaves of the surka plant and not die of its sap.

He was almost white now. All that remained of his youth were a few black hairs in his mane and tail, and the black tips of his ears.

“You have not been neglected; don’t even try to make me think so. You are fed and watered and let out to roll in the dirt every day whether I come or not.” She ran a hand down his back; one of Hornmar1 s minions had of course groomed him to a high gloss, but Talat liked to be fussed over, so she fetched brushes and groomed him again while he stretched his neck and made terrible faces of enjoyment. Aerin relaxed as she worked, and the memory of the scene in the hall faded, and the mood that had held for the last two days lightened and began to break up, like clouds before a wind.

THE YOUNG AERIN had worshipped Talat, her father’s fierce war-stallion, with his fine lofty head and high tail. She thought it very impressive that he would rear and strike at anyone but Hornmar or her father, rear with his ears flat back, so that his long wedge-shaped head looked like a striking snake’s.

But when she was twelve years old her father had gone off to a Border battle: a little mob of Northerners had slipped across the mountains and set fire to a Damarian village. Something of the sort happened not infrequently, and in those days Arlbeth or his brother Thomar attended to such occurrences, riding out hopefully and in haste to chop up a few Northerners who had stayed to loot instead of scrambling back across the Border again at once. The Northerners knew Damarian reprisals were invariably swift, and yet always there were a few greedy ones who lingered. It was Arlbeth’s turn this time; and there had been more Northerners than usual. Three men had been killed outright, and one horse; two men injured—and Talat.

Talat had been slashed across the right flank by a Northern sword, but he had carried Arlbeth safely through the battle till its end. Arlbeth was appalled when at last he was free to dismount and attend to it; there were muscles and tendons severed; the horse should have fallen when he took the blow. Arlbeth’s first thought was to end it then; but he looked at his favorite horse’s face, with the lips curled back from the teeth and the white showing around the eye: Talat was daring his master to kill him, and his master couldn’t do it. Arlbeth thought, If he is stubborn enough to walk home on three legs, I am stubborn enough to let him try.

Aerin had been one of the first to run out of the City and meet the returning company. They were slow coming home, for Talat had set the pace, and while Aerin knew that if anything had happened to her father a messenger would have been sent on ahead, still their slowness had worried her—and she felt an awful fear squeeze her belly when she first saw Talat, his head hanging nearly to his knees, put three legs slowly down one after the other, and hop for the fourth. She only then saw her father walking on the horse’s far side.

Somehow Talat climbed the last hill to the castle, and crept into his own stall, and with a terrible sigh, lay slowly down in the straw there, the first time he had been off his feet since the sword struck him. “He’s made it this far,” said Arlbeth grimly, and sent for the healers; but when they came to corner Talat in his stall, he surged to his feet and threatened them, and when they tried to pour a narcotic down his throat, it took four of the hafor and a chain twisted around his jaw to hold him still.

They sewed the leg up, and it healed. But he was lame, and he would always be lame. They turned him out into a pasture of his own, green with chest-high grass, cool with trees, with a brook to drink from and a pond to soak in, mud at the edge of the pond for rolling, and a nice big dry shed for rain; and Hornmar brought him grain morning and evening, and talked to him.

But Talat only grew thin and began to lose his black dapples; his coat stared and he didn’t eat his grain, and he turned his back on Hornmar, for Hornmar was taking care of Arlbeth’s new war-horse now.

Arlbeth had hoped Talat might sire him foals; he would like nothing better than to ride Talat again. But Talat’s bad leg was too weak; he could not mount the mares, and so he savaged them, and turned on his handlers when they tried to prevent him. Talat was sent back to his pasture in disgrace. Had he been any horse but the king’s favorite, he would have been fed to the dogs.

It had been over two years since Arlbeth had led Talat home from his last battle, and Aerin was fifteen when she ate some leaves from the surka. While they had been trying to breed Talat, Aerin had been turning corners that weren’t there and falling downstairs and being haunted by purple smoke billowing from scarlet caves.

It began with a confrontation with Galanna, as so much of Aerin’s worst trouble did. Galanna was the youngest of the royal cousins, but for Aerin, and she had been about to turn seven when Aerin was born. Galanna had become quite accustomed to being the baby of the family, petted and indulged; and she was a very pretty child, and learned readily how best to play up to those likeliest to spoil her. Tor was nearest her in age, only four years her elder, but he was always trying to pretend that he was just as grown up as the next lot of cousins, Perlith and Thurny and Greeth, who were six, seven, and ten years older than he was. Tor was no threat. The next-youngest girl cousin was fifteen years older than Galanna, and she, poor Katah, was plain. (She was also, very shortly after Aerin’s birth, married off to one of the provincial barons, where, much to Galanna’s disgust, she thrived and became famous for settling a land dispute in her husband’s family that had been the cause of a blood feud for generations.)