‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ Gerontos said. ‘Does Hwilli have a sister or a friend who might –’ He let the words trail off.
Rhodorix grinned at him. ‘She doesn’t, not one who’s our kind of people.’ He let the smile fade. ‘But she’s mine, Gerro. I know we’ve shared women before, but not this time.’
‘Well and good then. I just asked.’
‘Naught wrong with asking.’ Rhodorix bit off a mouthful of bread and ate it while he thought. ‘She has a friend named Nalla, though, who’s a bit of a spark in tinder, if you ask me. She might find a different sort of man interesting, like, if you can ignore the ears.’
‘I’ll ask Hwilli if I can meet her, then. It’ll let her know that it’s not her I want to bed.’
‘Very gallant of you.’ He grinned again and reached for an apple. ‘How is the leg, by the by?’
‘Healing, she says, and fairly fast as these things go.’
‘Good. You’ll be riding again by winter, or so I hope.’
Eventually Gerontos managed, with the aid of a crutch and with Hwilli’s help as well, to hobble out down to the terrace to teach beside his brother, though generally Rhodorix and one of the men carried him back up again. The forty men under their instruction learned to handle the captured mounts in a much shorter time than Rhodorix had been expecting, not that any of them turned into splendid riders in a fortnight’s work.
The difficulties lay in the mount and dismount. Eventually the guardsmen all learned how to leap onto the wooden horse, but their nervousness communicated itself to the real horses, who usually refused to stand and hold for the practice. Until they could mount, the men would never learn anything else about riding, so Rhodorix reluctantly agreed to a set of wooden steps, such as the kitchen servants used to reach the nets of onions and apples, the smoked pork and other such preserved foods that hung from the kitchen’s high ceilings. Rhodorix made his men pay for the device with jests and shaming remarks that made them struggle all the harder to learn.
On a sunny day turned cool by a crisp wind, Prince Ranadar himself and his retinue came down to watch the riding practice. Skipping along beside him was his little son, Berenaladar, or Ren, as he was usually called. Through Andariel and the crystals, Ranadar asked Rhodorix to show him what ‘this riding thing is.’
Rhodorix whistled for Aur, the name he’d given his chosen horse, who trotted out of the herd at the command and joined him. His previous Meradani owner had trained Aur well; Rhodorix had spent many a morning learning what his new mount could do. When Rhodorix surreptitiously tapped the gelding on his off-fore, Aur bent the leg and seemed to bow to the prince. Ranadar smiled, and Ren clapped his hands with a laugh.
‘I want one of those, Da,’ the child said.
‘You shall have one when you’re older,’ Ranadar said. ‘Now hush!’
‘Begging the cadvridoc’s pardon,’ Rhodorix said, ‘but he’s of an age when he should be learning to ride. The younger, the better, honoured one.’
Ranadar considered him with a twisted smile, then shrugged. ‘Very well, perhaps we’ll both come have some lessons with you. Show me what this all entails.’
Rhodorix saddled and bridled Aur, then leapt into the seat and caught the reins. He walked the horse down to the end of the terrace to let it warm its muscles, then trotted back. He dismounted, made Prince Ranadar a bow, then turned to the guardsmen.
‘Saddle up, lads!’ Rhodorix said.
The men rushed off to fetch their horses, since none had yet trained them to come when called. While they struggled with the tack under Andariel’s supervision, Rhodorix lifted young Ren to Aur’s saddle and told him how to sit properly. The boy’s catslit eyes, lavender like his father’s, widened with delight at the sensation of being up so high on horseback. He followed every instruction Rhodorix gave him, then repeated every move on his own. If we live long enough to teach the lads, Rhodorix thought, the People will be as good as we are with horses.
The presence of their rhix and cadvridoc made the guardsmen even more nervous than usual. Several of them refused to use the wooden steps, but the first man to try the leap put too much spring into his jump, overbalanced on the saddle pad, and slid off to fall in a heap. His horse snorted, danced, and very nearly kicked him. He got to his feet, his face as red as a sunset, and stared at the grass to avoid looking the prince’s way until Rhodorix sent him and his mount back to their respective herds. A second man and a third tried and failed. The entire guard unit turned hang-dog, standing heads down with humiliation.
‘Ye gods, that looks difficult!’ Ranadar said. ‘Here, let me try.’
Andariel protested in a flood of words that Rhodorix couldn’t follow, not even with the crystal, but the prince laughed and insisted. Rhodorix brought Ren down from Aur’s saddle.
‘This is the best trained horse in the lot, honoured one,’ Rhodorix said. ‘He’ll stand still for you.’
On his first try the prince very nearly managed the leaping mount. In fact, Rhodorix suspected that if he’d wanted to, Ranadar could have got himself onto the saddle, albeit in an ugly flurry of arms and legs and clutching hands. Instead, the prince made a great show of sliding off and falling into the grass. He laughed and picked himself up before anyone could rush forward to help him.
‘Very difficult,’ Ranadar announced. ‘Don’t feel dishonoured on my account, men.’
The guardsmen cheered him. Rhodorix felt utterly stunned. He’d never seen a man of authority, not Devetianos nor Rhwmanos, voluntarily shame himself for the sake of the men who served him.
On a wave of good feeling all round, Ranadar collected his retinue and his son and left the guardsmen to their practising. Rhodorix watched them as they walked uphill. He’d finally found a leader worth dying for, he realized, someone with ten times the honour of a Vindex or even a Brennos.
At the end of the day, when they returned to the fortress to let the men care for their mounts in the newly built stable, Rhodorix and Andariel discussed the various problems that the lesson had shown them.
‘If we ride to battle, then dismount,’ Andariel said, ‘how are we going to get them mounted again after the fighting’s over?’
‘It’ll be worse yet if they’re unhorsed during a retreat,’ Rhodorix said. ‘You’ll have to leave them behind. They’ll never manage to remount a panicked horse.’
‘We don’t have enough men to leave anyone behind.’
‘Well, then, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s all very well to provide a set of wooden steps here in the fortress, but we can’t carry those with us to battle.’
Andariel sighed and considered the line of saddles perched on a railing. Crystals in hand, the two men were standing in an improvised tack room, part of a storehouse that the prince’s servants had roughly converted to a stable. The saddles were much like those Rhodorix knew from the homeland, simple leather pads with a cinch that went over a heavy saddle blanket.
‘Carry the steps with us?’ Andariel said eventually. ‘That gives me an idea. What if we hung a step of sorts from the saddle itself?’
‘What?’
‘I’m thinking of the rope ladders that lead up to the catwalks on the walls. What if we put straps down on each side of the saddle with loops for a man’s foot to go into?’
Rhodorix grinned in sheer admiration. ‘That just might work splendidly, once we got the horses used to the device. Stick your foot in the loop and swing your free leg over.’
‘Just so. I’ll go to the armoury and ask.’
The People knew their craft work. One of the prince’s armourers delivered a saddle with the new idea attached the very next