Mandy Retzlaff - One Hundred and Four Horses

There are ten kilometers between here and Biri Farm, but the mist is low and I can hardly see the end of the field in front of where I stand. Pat should have been back by now. I shift nervously. All he had to do was get back onto Biri, rope up the horses, and lead them to the safety of Avalon. There was never any question, I knew, of leaving our horses behind. They are the horses of our friends, the horses of our neighbors, horses we have promised to protect. Some of them have been with us since the very beginning. Others joined us along the way. Many have already been driven from their own homes, attacked with spears or pangas —knives—or abandoned on farms as their owners fled. They are our responsibility, and we are all that stands between them and long, drawn-out deaths from cruelty and neglect.

I hear movement behind me. Knowing that it is my mother, come out to make a fuss over her daughter—even though she is well into her seventies, she will always make a fuss—I turn around, preparing to tell her that everything is fine.

“Any sign?”

I shake my head.

“They won’t be long,” she promises, though she can hardly know. “It’s a long trek with seventy horses.”

I close my eyes. When I open them again, at last I sense movement. It seems only that there is something out there, yet everything around me is black. All the same, something tingles up and down my neck. I am certain now: there are different textures in the darkness.

“Mum?”

“What is it?”

“It’s them …” I whisper.

Slowly, the shapes appear out of the darkness. At first they are like ghosts. It is only when I move forward, willing the ghosts to come to life, that those shapes begin to have definition. First, a man, a groom, trailing a long rope behind him. Then, a horse, bobbing contentedly forward, wearing a halter but no saddle. Then, more horses alongside, each with a lead rope dangling from its halter. One, two, three, four, five … The procession continues into reaches of darkness I still cannot see.

“Is Pat with them?” asks my mother.

I cannot see my husband yet, but still I nod.

They weave along a track between fields of irrigated wheat, disappearing behind reefs of low gray mist and then coming back into sight. I know how many horses there will be, because I know them all by name. We have seventy-one now, but before long there will be more. Some days, the phone does not stop ringing. All across this once-proud nation, farms are being abandoned; farmers are fleeing, but in their wake are the animals they cannot take with them.

Then, at last, I see Pat. He is moving on the far side of the herd.

He is holding a lead rope in his hand—though, in truth, he does not even need that. The young mare he is leading, though a new addition to the herd, will do whatever he asks. The tallest and proudest of all our horses, she stands seventeen hands high, an aristocratic dun mare with beautiful black points and eyes that positively shimmer with keen intelligence. Shere Khan is the self-appointed queen of the herd and, like the queen that she is, helps Pat guide horses and grooms to safety.

There is an old German proverb, one I sometimes imagine Pat’s great-grandfather might have used. Set a beggar on horseback , they used to say, and he’ll outride the devil .

We have to outride the devil, that much is true—but watching the herd walk onto Avalon Farm, I wonder how long we can stay in the saddle.

“I see you’re back,” I say when Pat comes closer, not wanting to tell him how worried I’ve been.

“All of us.”

Damn him, but he is almost grinning.

“Well?” I ask. “What now?”

Pat makes as if he is thinking about it. Behind him, the half-Arabian Grey and our daughter’s mare, Deja-vous, are grazing the long grass, but even they must have some idea of what is going on all around us.

“We’ll do what we always do,” Pat says. “We’ll make a plan.”

TEN YEARS EARLIER Contents Cover Title Page One Hundred and Four Horses A family forced to run The horses they had to save An epic journey to freedom MANDY RETZLAFF Copyright William Collins An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2013 Text © 104 Horses Ltd, 2013 The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Cover photographs (posed by a model) © Lara Wernet/NA/Novarc/Corbis (woman and horse); Panoramic Images/Getty Images (tree). A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green Source ISBN: 9780007477555 Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780007477579 Version: 2014-08-22 Dedication This book is dedicated to all our beautiful horses, and especially to those no longer with us— may their spirits run free . Epigraph Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll outride the devil. —GERMAN PROVERB Prologue Ten Years Earlier Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Mozambique Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Epilogue Picture Sections About the Publisher