Raptor (29 page)

“Thank you for the good news, Centurio,” said Wyrd. “I was delaying the departure of Thorn and myself only until I heard how the reprisal raid had gone. Not that I expected anything less than total success from you and your men, Paccius. In fact, I had already celebrated in anticipation of it.” Again he gingerly felt of his forehead. “Now I shall delay our departure only until I have fully recovered from that.”

I asked Paccius, “But what of the charismatic Becga?”

He said indifferently, “That one is dead, too.”

“By a Hun’s hand—or a Roman’s?”

“By my own hand,” he said to me, and then said to Wyrd, “As you instructed, Uiridus. It was done quickly, and the eunuch did not suffer.”

“You instructed?” I demanded of Wyrd. “But you agreed that Becga was only an innocent victim of circumstances.”

“Not so loud, urchin,” said Wyrd, wincing. “And you forget that it was
you
who volunteered a victim. Calidius would never have forgiven us the insult to his pride if we had let his grandson’s impersonator live—perhaps even someday to
boast
of having done that impersonation—and the impersonator being a contemptible charismatic whore.”

“Slaying him to soothe the legatus’s feelings,” I said heatedly, “seems unnecessarily cruel to the contemptible Becga.”

“It was not
cruel!”
snapped Wyrd, his own loud voice also making him wince. “You know what that creature’s life would have been like if it had lived. Now slaváith, and let us proceed to the unctuarium.”

Wyrd was right, I had to admit, and I obediently followed him into the bath’s interior. It was I who had said “substitutus,” and thereby started Becga on his way to death. Even if it had been only the male half of myself that did the deed, then it was unbecoming of me now to feel any twinge of feminine guilt on that account—or to indulge in any feminine grieving over it.

I remembered having taken comfort in the realization that my being a mannamavi conferred one enormous benefit: that I need never have to love any other person, of whatever sex, and never have to endure all the miseries that loving entails. But now I realized another thing: if I was immune to the torments that accompany every such weakling emotion, I should have to learn to quell or at least ignore the discords and contentions that might arise between the male and female halves of my nature.

Very well, I said to myself, I
would
be glad that I had not known Becga well enough or long enough to have risked any sentimental attachment to the child. I
would
abjure any responsibility for his death or any regret about it. I
would,
now and always, take full advantage of my being Thorn the Mannamavi—a being uninhibited by conscience, compassion, remorse—a being as implacably amoral as the juika-bloth and every other raptor on this earth. I
would.

We continued on from Basilea still together, myself and Wyrd the Forest-Stalker, the Friend of Wolves, the Carrion-Maker. His own peregrinations during that time tended eastward, the direction I was going, toward the lands occupied by the Goths. And since I had no reason to
hurry
to get there, and since I was forever learning something new and useful from the wise old woodsman, I was more than content to continue in his company and travel at his pace.

During the weeks after we left Basilea, most of Wyrd’s teaching dealt with the care and management of horses and the finer points of horsemanship. As I soon learned, I had not yet learned much about riding a horse. My one outing on Velox had all been done either at a walk or at a stretch-out gallop, and any novice can easily ride at those gaits. When now Velox introduced me to the trot, I was extremely glad that I had no testicles between me and the saddle. Wyrd showed me how to post—rising and sinking in the saddle in time to the motion of the horse—and that made the trotting gait considerably less jolting, but still I wondered how a normal man equipped with testicles could endure it. And, as I continued to learn from Wyrd, the owning and keeping and riding of a horse required of me much more than just strong and callused thighs and the knack of posting to the trot.

He said, “Remember, urchin, that the gods of nature never intended a horse to be anything but a horse, untamed and free and masterless. The animal’s size and shape make it appear to have been
designed
by nature to carry a rider, but it was not. When you are astride it, you are really only a parasite burden on the creature. Therefore, you must not let the horse ever suspect that you are just a parasite. You must cajole the horse into accepting you as a partner—and the dominant partner.”

So, because Velox was sometimes coyly and friskily averse to being put to work in the early mornings, Wyrd showed me how to humor him into submission. I was to stand close to the horse, gently scratching his withers—while softly, tunelessly whistling to him—then gradually scratching up along the root of his mane to his poll, by which time he was quite amenable to being bridled and saddled and mounted. I learned also to correct Velox every time he showed a trace of disobedient impudence, rather than put up with his skittishness ten times and then lose my patience at the eleventh. “Because,” Wyrd told me, “your single display of ill temper will spoil the good temper of any horse.”

On another day Wyrd said, “Remember, urchin, have your horse shod with rimshoes if you are going to do much traveling over rocky ground. But traveling on earthen ground as we are doing, leave him always unshod, and he will be your best sentry and watchman. If someone steals upon you, the horse will feel the vibration in the ground long before you can hear the footsteps or see the person approaching.”

On another day, Wyrd and I were both riding at an easy walk, myself in the lead, through a dense but very ordinary forest, and the sun was near to setting, when suddenly my Velox gave a vaulting bound that left me sitting in midair. My juika-bloth, though it had been dozing on my shoulder, also leapt so that it stayed in the air—which of course I did not. I landed heavily on my rump on the ground. The horse stopped a little farther on, as abruptly calm as it had been abruptly energetic, and turned its head to regard me inquiringly. The juika-bloth looked down at me accusingly, as it circled overhead, and Wyrd, drawing rein, hoarsely laughed at me.

“What did I do wrong
now?”
I said plaintively, rubbing my bruised backside as I got stiffly to my feet.

“Nothing,” said Wyrd, still laughing. “But, by the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew, I will wager you will be more alert in the future. Look you, urchin, at that one lone stray beam of the sun shining low across the path. Remember that a horse will always try to hurdle such a sunbeam, because it looks like a barrier in his way. Also, I think it is time we started you in practice at jumping.”

So, in the days thereafter, whenever we came upon a fallen tree lying in a suitable position, Wyrd would put his horse over it, then have me do the same with Velox—first over slender fallen saplings low to the earth, then over thicker boles higher off the ground. But almost every time I tried, Wyrd would scold me:

“Ne, ne, ne! At the moment the horse launches into the jump, you must lean well back in the saddle. That takes your weight off his forequarters as they lift.”

“I will try to do better,” I promised.

And I did try, leaning back at every jump, until Wyrd finally approved of my form. But the jumping still felt awkward to me—and I sensed that it felt so to the horse as well. So we went off at times to a distance from Wyrd, and practiced in private, and I tried different modes of sitting while we leapt hurdles both low and high, and finally I hit on a way of jumping that felt to me more comfortable and graceful, and it seemed preferable to Velox, too. When we had rehearsed that to smoothness, I demonstrated it for Wyrd.

“What is this?” he said, with mixed puzzlement and annoyance. “You are leaning
forward
to jump. Very bad form, that.”

“Ja, fráuja, if you say so. But it seems to free Velox to launch himself with a much more powerful thrust of his hind legs, with my weight off them. And also my bending forward at that precise moment seems to give him greater momentum.”

“Vái!” cried Wyrd, reeling in mock astonishment. “For some two hundred years, the Roman cavalry has been teaching recruits and horses how to jump properly, but you know better, eh?”

“Ne, fráuja, I do not pretend to know anything. But I can
feel
somehow that it works better, both for myself and for Velox.”

“Vái! You speak for the horse, too, eh? Perhaps that abdicating parent who left you an orphan was a centaur, eh?”

“All I can tell you is that I seem to have a kinship of feeling with the horse, just as I have always had with my juika-bloth. In some way, we know… without the need of words…”

Wyrd regarded me levelly, then shifted his gaze to the eagle on my shoulder, then to the horse I sat on. Then he shrugged.

“Well, if it suits you better. And your Velox. But only you two. May I be damned to Gehenna if I should change a lifetime’s habits at my advanced age.”

One other time I challenged Wyrd’s rules and his reverence for the long-standing traditions of equitation. Under his tutelage, I was playing at combat on horseback, whacking with my short-sword at various enemy bushes and trees while Velox capered and plunged and danced at my direction.

“That is the way!” Wyrd shouted. “Now the backhand stroke! Remember, you can make your horse do a complete right-about within its own length and at a full canter! Sit him hard, urchin! Now the flank cut! Now the disengage! Well done, urchin!”

“It would be… a lot easier,” I said, panting from my exertions, “if one had some bracing… for the feet… to help one stay astride…”

“That is what thighs are for,” Wyrd said. “Your own have lengthened and strengthened just in the time I have known you.”

“Still…” I said, thinking. “If there were some way to hold the feet from flapping about…”

“Since the beginning of time, men have been riding without any such thing, and riding well. You must master the art and cease your quibbling.”

But again I went off in private and made some tries at invention. I remembered how I had ridden the old draft mare around St. Damian’s barnyard, churning milk into butter. I had then had thighs that were neither long nor strong, but I had kept my seat on the animal’s broad back by tucking my feet under the milk panniers slung on either side. It would be impractical to make a war-horse wear panniers, and it would look ridiculous, but if I had
something
under which to tuck my feet… Then I remembered how, in the Balsan Hrinkhen, I had employed my belt rope to give me the friction that enabled me to climb limbless tree trunks…

“Now what?” Wyrd said grumpily when I came proudly to demonstrate to him what I had finally devised. “You have
tied
yourself onto your horse?”

“Not quite,” I said, preening. “See? I took three of our stout pack ropes and braided them into a very thick rope, and then tied that around Velox just forward of his ribs, so it will not slide back, and tied it not too tight, but loosely enough to allow me to slip my feet within it on each side—and behold, fráuja! The friction holds me as firmly here as if I sat in a chair with my feet on the floor.”

“And what,” Wyrd asked, with sarcasm, “does your horse tell you—without words, of course—regarding his own opinion of this clumsy contrivance? How does he like having the rope’s huge knot down there behind his forelegs?”

“Well, I grant that the knot is bothersome. I try to keep it up here at his withers, but it keeps shifting around and down. Except for that, I do believe that my being lodged securely here pleases Velox more than my slipping even a little in the saddle whenever he changes pace or direction.”

“Lodged securely, are you? I have seen the Alani horsemen try some such rope trick to coddle their feet, and I have seen them regret it. Just wait, urchin, until you are once unseated by an opponent’s blow, and that harness drags you head-down all over the landscape.”

“Then I must endeavor,” I said smugly, “not ever to let myself get unseated.”

Wyrd shook his head as if in deprecation, but partly too, I think, in admiration, for he said, “You may get many opportunities for such endeavor. You look so quaint that every passing Goliath may wish to test your mettle. But ride as you will, urchin. And I will show you how to splice that rope instead of tying it, to eliminate that cumbersome great knot.”

“Velox will thank you, fráuja,” I said warmly. “And so do I.”

Of course, I learned about things other than riding and horses during my travels with Wyrd. During our first summer together, when we were riding through some terrain only patchily wooded, under a gray sky as heavy and hot as a woolen blanket:

“Do you hear that call, urchin?”

“I hear only a crow. In that farther treetop.”

“Only a crow, eh? Listen to him.”

I did, and heard “Caw! Caw! Scraw-aw-awwk!” It sounded rather more deliberate than a crow’s usually indiscriminate cawing, but it told me nothing, and I said so.