The Emperor's New Pony (16 page)

“Why?”

“Because you… you made me…”

Ranin reached up and took one of her perfect little breasts in his hand, sucked the nipple into his mouth, and heard her whimper loudly. The rest of the fillies were at evening exercise, so Edera could let her noises go a bit. Part of him could not wait for the moment he knew was coming, when the emperor would tell him to mount her in the ring, since then, and from that point on, Edera would be able to scream the way Ranin knew she wanted to, and the way truly he wished to hear her do—that she would scream in pleasure as he had made her scream with pain when he whipped her in the arena promised a final proof of his mastery of his beautiful princess.

“And I will make you come now, girl.” He put his hand down behind her and rubbed firmly at the ring of her bottom, and Edera gasped. Then he gave her a sharp spank on her right cheek, and then another on her left. At the same time, more and more quickly, he bounced her on his knees.

Edera gave the sharp strangled cry that meant she was coming, and he returned his fingers to her bottom hole as she did, so that her whole body spasmed against his, as he kissed her and kept bouncing her until he found his own release a few moments later.

“Perhaps that’s my favorite, my lord,” Edera whispered. “I can’t decide.”

* * *

Imperial standard horsemanship had evolved over the hundred years between Qol the Conqueror’s formation of the knights’ regiment in the imperial legion and Qolnar the Defender’s formal proclamation that the knights’ duty included ‘maintaining all due precision in their chivalry.’

The proclamation had led, as such things did, Ranin knew well, to a long, slow scramble among the military bureaucracy to codify what ‘precision’ meant. By the time Auner the First had founded Amidia, the system, which was still practiced in the knights’ parade ground, a quarter mile from the palace down the processional avenue, was fully codified.

Thus Ranin and Edera both knew how to perform, upon his charger and her palfrey, all the movements that made up the tests of imperial standard—rather, to be precise, they knew how to help their highly trained horses perform those movements. Now that Edera had mastered the human versions of the gaits, as taught to the imperial fillies by Master Morqan, she would be able with relative ease to perform each movement by herself, with Ranin standing by marking time with the training whip.

But the Amidians, with their hot Aurian blood, had dispensed entirely with the learning of the twenty-four tests of imperial standard, of which the last eight constituted the third level the emperor wished Edera to attain, if Ranin were to be master and stage the race. This aspect of imperial standard was entirely intellectual, and required a kind of mental discipline that Ranin found unpleasant as well as difficult. It seemed to him like it subjugated his mind to imperial ways as nothing else in Maq had been able to do. To master the tests required thinking like an imperial, having a mind full of letters and numbers. Those letters and numbers seemed to lower like a thick haze between Ranin and the crystalline mountains of his home.

Watching them at work, day after day in the ring reserved for them, Morqan would say to Ranin as their ways crossed, to and from the tack room, under his breath, “You can’t defeat him unless you understand him.”

Ranin had to bite his tongue not to reply, “I think I could cut his head off without understanding him.” Morqan referred to a different kind of victory—the only kind of victory available to Ranin, given the misfortune that had befallen Amidia. Ranin had no Amidian knights to lead in the quest for freedom—all he had was the power he had demonstrated, it appeared, to Qartin’s satisfaction in the arena: to win the minds of the imperials. And Morqan must be correct that even if it was hot Aurian blood that cast the spell on those imperial minds, only a thorough understanding of the letters and the numbers could allow him to speak to them in ways that would persuade.

As the weeks stretched on, and he led Edera through the first eight tests, which were for squires just beginning a military career and involved very simple combinations of movements and only four of the forty-eight ring stations, Ranin came to respect Morqan’s words. He did not think he could ever feel the affection for imperial standard that the knights of the Maqian legions seemed to profess, but he could see how the regimented habit of thought that had shaped the
Manual of the Imperial Standard Horsemanship
could lead to skills required for holding onto an empire.

Chapter Eighteen

Not many fillies learned any of the imperial standard tests. No filly had ever passed all twenty-four tests. Ranin kept telling Edera that if she could learn all twenty-four, the harness work for the chariot race would be simple. Edera believed him, but she knew that her Amidian sisters had not learned the same precision movements she had learned.

“You’ll be the leader,” Ranin assured her. “All they’ll have to do is follow your gait.”

Still, it seemed cruel to her, when all she wanted to do was lie in Ranin’s arms with his cock inside her. Whenever he made her go back and do a test again from the beginning, she thought to herself that it would all be worth it if the emperor did what they expected of him, and Edera got fastened to the mounting saddle after passing the final test, so that Ranin could fuck her senseless.

Four weeks to learn the first sixteen tests. Twelve more to learn the final eight, every one of which was at least twice as complicated as the sixteenth. Four months as a working filly, with a tail in her bottom all day and all night except for the daily wash-down, which she had come to love above everything except fucking Ranin.

Four months of wanting Ranin all the time, and lying in her stall at night pushing thoughts of him away by thinking about single twists, double twists, reverse twists, back walks, front walks, and high trots. Not to mention reciting to herself the forty-eight stations of the ring, where the tests could make a filly stop, twist, reverse twist, and trot to the next station, where she would double twist and canter back. That could happen three times in a row, after which she would have to slow walk to a different station, lift her right foot no more than six inches from the ground, twist twice with clear definition between the twists, and go back to repeat the same combination three more times.

Really, the strangest thing was not how difficult it was: the strangest thing was that her body actually did learn the tests. That was Ranin’s doing, for he knew how to work such things into Edera’s very sinews. Rubbing her down in her stall after exercise, soothing her aching muscles before—if she had been good—he soothed her aching cunt, he would say, over and over, “Let it happen. Let your mind go. Your mind can bring you to the station, but it can’t tell you what to do there, really. Trust me, and my rhythm.”

When she tried to consider all his words seriously, they didn’t all make sense, recalling everything he said, but they helped. She begged him to let her read the manual, but he resolutely refused. “You don’t need all those letters and numbers in your head. You just need me.” The fifth or sixth time she begged him, he pulled her over his lap on the training stool and spanked her around her tail, which was a truly unique and uncomfortable feeling, and that was that.

He spanked her that time, and only a very few other times in the four months it took them to be ready to go through the tests in the imperial ring. The most severe of the other times came about when she tried to help with the rebellion. As she passed close to him, moving from seventh station to fifteenth station at a canter, she whispered, “Qartin and Haq are talking.” She had seen them deep in serious conversation on the far side of the left ring, and she thought Ranin would be grateful that she was paying attention, but she knew instantly how much trouble she had gotten herself into, for his brow darkened, he pursed his lips, and touched her flank up extra hard with the training whip when he moved her from fifteenth back to seventh.

After that exercise session, at the wash-down, he used her mouth extra hard while he scrubbed her back and rump with the sponge on the stick—which did not bother Edera at all, because she loved the feeling that he would take his pleasure without any reference to her comfort, and she especially loved sucking his cock while bound on the cross-ties between the posts. He dried her without any encouraging words or nice pats on the bottom, though, and so she knew she was in for it.

Back in her stall, he put his mouth against her ear, and said in a voice less than a whisper, “Don’t
ever
try to do that again. I want you to know
nothing,
so that you are safe, whatever happens to me. Do you understand, filly Edera?”

Tears streaming down her face, she nodded.

Ranin sat on the stool and pulled her down roughly, and pulled her tail out without warning, making Edera cry out. Then he started to spank her, very hard and very fast. Edera felt herself relax into her punishment and the pain of it, and go limp from the beginning, accepting Ranin’s guidance and loving him for it even while he reddened her backside thoroughly, and made it burn so that she felt she could not bear another spank, though another one always seemed to come. Oh, how she sobbed, and she knew it was her own fault, and that all her wonderful chancellor wanted to do was keep her safe.

At last he lifted her up and gathered her into his lap, the safest place in the world, even though they were in a stall of the imperial stables of Maq. “Hush,” he said, stroking her hair. “Hush, my love. I have promised that I will always keep you safe, and I mean to keep that promise, even if I have to spank your bottom red every day from now until we are finally away from here forever.”

“I’m sorry,” Edera sobbed into the rough fabric of the homespun tunic. Her bottom felt sore against the leather of his breeches, where she felt the hardness she knew so well. She could not help smiling every time she thought of the way punishing her got him so hard: it seemed like the ultimate proof of his love and desire for her. “Fuck me?” she whispered.

“No, my love,” Ranin replied. “You are being punished.”

She started to cry, and he to stroke her hair again. “Soon though?”

He laughed at that, and she felt her love well up at the way his chest shook. “Yes, my love. Soon.”

* * *

Then came the day Ranin said, when he came to her stall to get her for evening exercise, “Today is the trial.”

“What?”

“Fillies do not speak, filly Edera,” Ranin said severely. He gave her a sharp slap on her backside. Edera yelped and bit her lip in anxiety. Her hands came up in little balls as if to ward off the awful, unexpected news.

Ranin looked into her eyes, and she saw nothing but kindness. She felt her body relax. “Let’s get you into harness,” he said. He seemed to relent a little, as he bridled her and fastened her harness. “I need you on your very best form today, sweetheart. Yes, I have known for several days. I did not wish you to worry, and so I am telling you now. I know you can do it. Don’t think. Let your body do what I have trained it to do.”

And she knew she could do it. Ranin led her on the short lead out the big door and away from the stable block out into the vast yard, straight toward the imperial ring where, she noticed with a quiver in her loins, a mounting saddle stood just to the side—for afterward?

She knew she could do it. Except for twenty-three. She had never got twenty-three right. At the very end, there were three twists at the thirty-seventh station, a trot to the forty-first, two twists, a canter to the thirty-eighth, three reverse twists, and then a last walk to the center to bow out, as the finishing movement of every test was called. Edera
always
forgot that the twists at the thirty-eighth station were reverse twists. Something about the relief of finishing what Ranin had told her was generally considered the most difficult test, since the twenty-fourth was simply a sort of reprise of the very first test with all the movements expanded the same way, made her lose focus. Ranin had tried everything to get her to remember, including a spanking, to no avail. Now she could think of nothing else.

The emperor stood leaning over the balcony, in the very same way he had when he had made Ranin ride Edera those months before—before the arena, and the love and the hope. Next to him were Master Morqan, Lord Qartin, and Lord Haq.

“Are you ready, Goodman Versal?” he called down.

“Yes, your imperial majesty,” Ranin said, unhooking the lead from Edera’s collar and tucking it into the pouch he wore on his hip.

“I hope you won’t mind if Lord Marshal Haq and Lord High Steward Qartin help me judge your filly’s progress, as well as Master Morqan, of course?”

“Not at all,” Ranin said, bowing low.

Lord Haq spoke next. “The emperor has laid upon us the duty of judging whether filly Edera meets standard five of the manual.” Edera thought she saw, just for a fraction of a second, a look of dismay cross Ranin’s face.

“If she does,” the emperor said, “you, as Master Versal, will fuck her upon the mounting saddle after this demonstration. If she does not, Lord Haq will fuck her, and you will go to the dungeons.”

And Lord Haq would realize that her cunt was no longer virginal, while she and Ranin could pretend that he deflowered her—they had even laughed together about how they would do it, when the moment finally came.

Whatever standard five was, she could do it. She could do it, and she
would
do it, if she could just remember the reverse twists at the end of test twenty-three.

“Alright, sweetheart,” said Ranin, stepping back and raising his training whip, a smile on his face. “Let’s show them what Amidians can do.”

Really, almost all of the twenty-four tests were as easy as a canter through the hills on her favorite palfrey now. Whoever had composed them had been laying down a system to guide the imperial knights into ever higher levels of complexity. At first there had seemed no rhyme or reason to them, when she had started to train, months ago, but with every passing day more of the wit that lay hidden in the sequences and combinations had come through to her.