Shaman's Crossing (The Soldier Son Trilogy #1)

Dewara gave a grudging nod. Then he said, “Her name is Keeksha. You tell her name before you get on, she knows obey you. You don’t tell name, she knows you are not allowed. All my horses are so. This way.” He turned to one of the other taldi. “Dedem. Stand.”

The beast he spoke to put his ears forward and came to meet Dewara. The Plainsman mounted the round-bellied stallion casually. “Follow,” he said, and slapped his animal on the rump. Dedem surged forward, leaping out in an instant gallop. I stared in surprise, and then copied him, giving Keeksha a slap that set her in motion.

For a time, all I could do was cling to Keeksha’s mane. I jolted and flopped about on her back like a rag doll tied to a dog’s tail. Every time one of her hooves struck the ground, my spine was jolted in a different direction. Twice I was sure I was going to hit the ground, but the mare knew her business better than I did. She seemed to shrug herself back under me. The second time she did it, I abruptly decided to trust her. I shifted my weight and my legs, swaying into her stride, and suddenly we moved as one creature. She surged forward and I felt that we almost doubled our speed. Dewara had been dwindling in the distance, headed away from the river and into the wastelands that bordered my father’s holding. The land rose there, the rocky hillsides cut by steep-sided gullies prone to sudden flooding during storms. Wind and rain had carved that place. Spindly bushes with gray-green leaves grew from cracks in the rocks carpeted with dull purple lichen. The hooves of his mount cut into the dry earth and left dust hanging in the air for me to breathe. Dewara kept his horse at a dead run across country where I never would have risked Sirlofty. I followed him, sure that soon he must rein in his mount and let the animal breathe, but he did not.

My little mare steadily gained on them. As we entered rougher country, climbing toward the plateaus of the region, it was harder to keep them in constant view. Hollows and mounds rumpled the plain like a rucked blanket. I suspected he was deliberately trying to lose me, and set my teeth, resolved that he would not. I well knew that one misplaced step could break both our necks, but I made no effort to pull Keeksha in, and although her sides heaved with her effort, she did not slow on her own. She followed the stallion’s lead. Her rolling gait ate up the miles.

We were climbing, in the almost imperceptible way of the Plains. We emerged onto the plateau country. The flats gave way to tall outcroppings of red or white rock in the distance. Scattered trees, stunted and twisted by the constant wind and the erratic rains, offered clues to watercourses long dry. We passed a disconnected towering upthrust of crumbling stone like rotted teeth in a skull’s jaw or the worn turrets of the wind’s castle. Hoodoos, my father called them. He’d told me that some of the Plainspeople said they were chimneys for the underworld of their beliefs. Dewara rode on. I was parched with thirst and all of me was coated with dust when we finally topped a small rise and I saw Dewara and his taldi waiting for us. The Plainsman stood beside his mount. I rode Keeksha down and halted before him. I was grateful to slide from her sweaty back. The mare moved three steps away from me and then dropped to her knees. Horrified, I thought I had foundered the beast, but she merely rolled over onto her back and scratched herself luxuriously on the short, prickly grass that grew in the depression. I thought longingly of my water skin, still slung on Sirlofty’s saddle. Useless to wish for it now.

If Dewara was surprised that I had caught up with him, he gave no sign of it. He said nothing at all until I cautiously asked, “What are we going to do now?”

“We are here,” was all he replied.

I glanced about and saw nothing to recommend “here” over any other arid hollow in the Plains. “Should I tend to the horses?” I asked. I knew that if I had been riding Sirlofty, my father’s first admonition would be to look after my mount. “A horse soldier without his horse is an inexperienced foot soldier,” he’d told me often enough. But Dewara just wet his lips with his tongue and then casually spat to one side. I recognized that he had insulted me, but held myself silent.

“Taldi were taldi long before men rode on them,” he observed disdainfully. “Let them tend to themselves.” His expression implied I was something of a weakling to have been concerned for them.

But the Kidona animals did seem well able to care for themselves. After her scratch, Keeksha heaved herself to her feet and joined Dedem in grazing on the coarse grass. Neither seemed any the worse for their long gallop. Had I put Sirlofty through a similar run, I would have walked him to cool him off and then rubbed him down thoroughly and given him water at careful intervals. The Kidona taldi seemed content with their rough forage and the grit they had rubbed into their wet coats. “The animals have no water. Neither do I,” I told Dewara after a time.