A story about Rythian of the D'Shael Horse Warriors.

By Chris Power

Hanrin laid the last turf over the cold ashes of the fire and carefully pressed it down. He combed through the grass with his fingertips until the cuts were invisible, and there was nothing to show that a fire had burned there. The caution was instinctive. He did not fear any threat from the D'Shael this far from the open plains; for some twenty miles the terrain was too rough and heavily wooded for their great horses. But cautious habits had kept him alive for the many years he'd been riding the border-marches.

There were some among the Surni who had D'Shael blood in them, but Hanrin wasn't one of them, for which he thanked his Gods. He wanted no part whatsoever with the savages and their inherent madness, unless it was to kill them. And the tidings he was bringing to the Melanvale Nine-Reden could well result in the deaths of many D'Shael. So he begrudged the time he'd had to take to rest himself and his mount. The import of the messages he carried in his head, and the tokens in his belt-purse, was heavy. But if his one remaining horse were to founder, then the delay would be far greater than the few hours spent at this camp. Now it was time to move on. The moon gave enough light to travel by. Barely.

The horse, little more than a wiry hill-pony, shifted restlessly. Hanrin marvelled that it had the energy to do that much. A gift from the Eagle Ridge chieftain, Hanrin's fulsome thanks at the time had been somewhat false, but the gelding had out-lasted his own two Surni-Tylosian cross-bred horses.

The gelding snorted and threw up its head. It was all the warning Hanrin needed to reach for his sword. Then the animal shook itself and slumped into hip-shot lassitude. After a moment, Hanrin relaxed as well. Shrugging into his jerkin, then fastening up his pack, he picked up the saddle and started towards his horse. Suddenly he stopped still, instinct tightening the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He had heard nothing and the Eagle Ridge horse still dozed.

He was being watched, he knew it. Wolves, maybe. Down-wind of the horse. Hanrin turned, dropping the saddle and drawing his sword. Nothing stirred save the wind in the trees. No branches crackled underfoot. The horse had not even started at the sound of the heavy saddle hitting the ground, which was not as it should be.

Semi-crouched and poised to defend, heartbeat quickening, Hanrin searched every shadow with straining eyes. He saw nothing that should not be there. Trees. Leaves. Branches. Shrubs. The great rock. He'd slept against it for something solid at his back, and it had seemed a trustworthy shelter. Now it glimmered pale as the birches that grew beside it, eerily painted by the fitful moonlight. Hanrin's eyes kept coming back to those birches time and again.

Slowly a shape took form between the slender tree trunks. The moon's light transmuted blond hair to silver, blue eyes to pewter; deepened to something beyond black the painted hawk wings across the man's eyes and brow. The branches cast night-dark shadows across the half-naked body, shimmered along the leaf-shaped blade of the drawn longsword. How in the God's Name had he not seen -

"Because," said the D'Shael, in accented but fluent Surni, "I did not choose to let you see. Now tell me why you are here on my land with an Eagle Ridge horse."

"Your land?" Hanrin sneered, and spat. "Do the D'Shael claim all the world these days?"

"No. What would we do with all that?" The D'Shael came forward into the clearing, moving with the controlled grace of a large cat. Tall and lean, but not nearly as tall as other D'Shael Hanrin had seen. His long hair hung loose, his face was clean-shaven and painted for battle. Young, too, half Hanrin's age. Hanrin tightened his grip on his own sword; iron against bronze, experience against youth, the odds should be on his side. The D'Shael learn the art of war at an early age, though, and this one, somewhere in his twenties, could have had ten years or more riding with a war band.

"This is the White Mare's Stone and it marks the boundary of the Shi'R'Laen D'Shael and the Surni lands. You are on the wrong side of it and with an Eagle Ridge horse. Since when did the Ridge men give their horses to Surni? Or did you steal it as you steal our land?"

"We take what we want - and hold it!" Hanrin snarled.

"Not for long, Surni, neither land nor horse. Give me an answer - where did you get that horse?"

"I'll see you in the Pits, first, demon-spawn!" Hanrin's fury was a sham. Draw the savage in and let him think anger would make his opponent careless. Hanrin feinted a blow to the man's right shoulder, changed direction with a practised flick of the wrist and the heavy blade sliced towards the unprotected gut.

Faster than he would have believed possible, the D'Shael spun away and a booted heel drove into Hanrin's belly. Watching the man's eyes - held by them - Hanrin had not seen the shift of weight and balance. The force of the impact sent Hanrin flying back landing sprawled on the turf, the wind knocked from his lungs. A foot stamped on Hanrin's wrist and his fingers spasmed open. A boot-toe hooked under his sword, flicked it well out of reach. The knife at Hanrin's belt was slid from its sheath and tossed after it.

"I am Rythian Lyre'son, called Bright Hunter, of the D'Sheolyn clan of the Shi'R'Laen," said the D'Shael formally. "Tell me why you are here with an Eagle Ridge horse?"

Hanrin did not speak. Behind him, the damned horse suddenly woke, tossing its head up, ears flattened. Two more figures lounged silently out of the trees, features marked by the black hawk wings, head and shoulders taller than the man pinning him down. One paused briefly to examine the horse, the other scooped up Hanrin's pack.

Rythian set the point of his blade at the man's bearded throat. "Tell me," he said again. The thin lips were set tight; dark eyes blazed hatred and genuine anger. The fleeting impressions he had picked up from the Surni's thoughts were swamped by the strength of his emotions. If he pushed hard enough, Rythian knew he could probably take what he needed from the man's mind, but his own head was already aching from the effort to glean the little information he already had.

The uncomplicated constructs of an animal's mind were easier to read and influence, though the more he used that particular skill on humans, the easier it was becoming. Misdirecting attention, though, was simple compared to reading hostile thoughts. From childhood he, like all the D'Shael with the gift of mind-touch, had been told that it was not possible to use the gift on humans. But Rythian could. He kept that ability well hidden. It was not a thing he took pride in - a deep instinct told him he should not be doing it, but sometimes circumstances made it necessary.

Rythian glanced briefly at his two companions. "Anything on his back-trail?" he asked.

"There's no one following him," Arun said as he opened up the pack, "no one rode with him. His trail is straight as the land allows, from the direction of Eagle Ridge to here."

"And he's ridden hard," Voran added. "His horse is not far off lame, though he's done his best by it as far as I can tell," he added grudgingly. "We'd not caught up to him if he hadn't stopped to rest the pony. Come, we've a run of twenty miles back to our own horses. Kill him and let's be gone."

"And the signal fires we saw on Eagle Ridge?" Arun said. "What of those, SwordBrother."

"Signal fires - cooking fires - festival fires. Who knows what they were?" Voran shrugged. "Could be a coincidence."

"I don't think so," Rythian said. The man on the ground looked from one to the other of the D'Shael, his eyes hard and wary.

"Neither do I," said Arun.

"Listen," Voran snapped, pulling twigs from his wild mane of red hair that fell in tangles over his shoulders, "Our noble and honoured Sun Stallion, may the Lord burn his stinking soul, told us to scout the border -"

"We are," Rythian smiled. "You're standing by one of the Mare's Stones."

"Fire take it, 'Thian! We've run - on our own feet! - for leagues on your hunch! We are D'Shael! We are horse-warriors - not runners! My feet hurt."

"You could always ride his horse," Arun suggested.

"My boots would touch the ground," Voran pointed out coldly. "And in any case, I do not take another's horse. Even if he is a Surni."

"Noble as a hero in a song," Arun snorted. "Is it any wonder I love him? Even if he has already forgotten the rumours you picked up in Whitewell. There's nothing here from Eagle Ridge," he went on, scattering the pack and its contents on the grass.

"Then we search him," Rythian said, and reached with his free hand for the man's belt-purse. Then cursed himself for his own carelessness as the man twitched a knife from up his sleeve and drove it at his stomach. Rythian blocked the blow and drove his own blade down, pushing the swordpoint through the man's neck and into the earth, feeling the bones of the spine part around the bronze.

"I doubt if we'd've got much from him," he said, stepping back to avoid the spasming body.

"A search will probably be more profitable," Arun agreed.

Arun was right. The man's belt-purse yielded up an interesting find. Voran took out a small suede-wrapped bundle and unfolded it. A stylised eagle carved from wood lay in his hand, its wings closed, talons clenched on a jagged shape that could be meant as rock. "A token for Eagle Ridge?" he said. "There's marks on the leather, as well." He laid it on the dead chest. "What do you make of it?"

The moonlight was enough to show outlines drawn in black on the pale suede. The eagle again, and each side of it two other symbols; a tree and a spoked wheel. All three were enclosed in a circle.

"The tree is the sign for the Quirinal Surni," Arun said. "So the wheel could be another tribe."

"And bound together by a circle. A treaty?" Rythian frowned. "That would make sense, given what we heard in Whitewell. Quirinvale is four days ride south of here."

"And the land between this Mare's Stone and their border is also Surni and could be this Wheel tribe," Arun continued. "It's a possibility."

"I'm convinced," Voran said with a shrug. "All you have to do now is convince the Sun Stallion. I'll wager my Mist Dancer's twin foals he won't be willing to send more scouts to the Eagle Ridge border, let alone a war band. He'd rather protect foreign caravans from landless raiders than our own lands from the Surni and Ridgemen."

Rythian wrapped the token and suede together and put them in his belt-purse. "That's one wager I won't take up," he said grimly. "We are led by a fool who cares about nothing but himself - and his pleasures."

He cleaned his sword while Arun slipped the bridle from the Eagle Ridge horse and set it cantering away with a slap on its rump. Voran picked up the dead man's sword, frowning at it. He tested the weight and balance of it, then with a shrug, he drove it point first into the ground beside the body.

Silently, they melted back into the night.