Page 5 of Seducing the Sorcerer
Fenn bit back a retort. Wasn’t worth it.
His back was crawling as if the gazes of the crowd were trailing across him like tentacles. Time seemed to fold and he was trudging through a hot morass of shame, reliving a hundred other humiliating moments, all the way back to the day he’d walked out of prison twenty years ago and heard the whispers in the street.
As he reached the first bend in the road there was another ragged cheer. He nearly dropped the bundle right there in view, just to show them. But about a half-mile in the distance was a stand of pines. He could sleep there tonight and the sacking might actually come in handy. To his surprise, it didn’t smell bad. No mustiness or mould. There was not even a whiff of smoke about it. It carried the aroma of hay, a sweet alchemy of meadow grass and summer sun.
He found a place under the pines that was hidden from the road and laid the sacking out. The body would be his bed, the head a makeshift pillow. He lay down, closed his eyes and fell into the stupor of one who is so tired he cannot sleep. Images flickered through his head: the poisonous green water in the ditch, the parched brown fields, the dry earth of the trench, and the smug odious face of the young man with the leather jerkin.
And he remembered the cruel bright burst of hope at the idea of being given a horse. He’d have brought it here, to this shady place. He’d have rubbed it down with a handful of dried grass, given it a good scratch on the withers. Most horses liked that. He still carried a hoof pick; his single remaining possession. He’d have checked the creature’s cracked old hooves for stones. He’d have seen it had no ticks or fly-eggs stuck to its belly and legs. He’d have spoken softly and its ears would have pricked towards him. He had no feed to give it but he might have scrounged it something. It might have licked the salt from his hands. It might have nosed his chest. And it would have had that scent; that glorious, rich, heady scent of horses, that would have taken him, briefly, back home.
Something heaved beneath him, as if the ground were shaking. Oh Gods, what now? Earthquake? Cave in? Was he never to be allowed to sleep? With a grunt, he rolled over, forcing his stiff legs into a crouch. The sun was nearly gone but there was light enough to see that the sacking horse was moving. Could some burrowing animal have chosen just this place to come up?
He tugged one of the horse’s legs to pull it clear but it seemed to kick in his hand. The sacking humped and fell back to reveal a symbol on the horse’s chest: a rune, glowing blue, shaped like an unstrung harp. He dropped the leg as if it had burned him. The sacking heaved and jerked. The horse raised its head, red-stained tongue flapping. It was getting to its feet. It was coming alive. It was—
Magic.
Fenn’s gut gave a vicious twist. Magic was dangerous. Unchancy. Probably evil. It was a tool of princes and politicians and men like Morgrim who meddled where they shouldn’t.
This was why they’d been so desperate for him to take the horse. Gods, but he had to get away.
He backed a few stealthy paces, turned and fled north along the road.
He ran for as long as he could, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. To his lasting relief, the dusty road remained empty in the twilight. The horse wasn’t following. All the same, he maintained a shambling jog-trot. The land became wilder and less flat. No farms, no fences, just rough ground, lightly wooded here and there. After a couple of miles, he came to a trickle that had once been a river. What luck! Couldn’t running water stop magic? And he could drink.
He splashed across the shallow ford, gulped down a few handfuls of water and washed his sticky face. Then he hid in some bushes, sweating, surrounded by midges, catching his breath and trying to listen over the murmur of the water for...for...what did a cursed horse scarecrow sound like anyway? Would it whinny? Would its fraying sackcloth hooves clatter on the road?
Darker blue shadows gathered under the trees and the sky glowed a pale lemon yellow. Fenn’s breathing slowed. The sweat dried on his back. The horse was gone, thank the Gods. He crept from the bushes, drank deep. The road was still empty. He was safe.
He stood, turned, and almost walked into the horse.
Its sketched-on charcoal eye stared at him, flat and expressionless as the eye of a shark. The rune on its chest gleamed blue and its tongue was black in the twilight. It had gone ahead and circled back. It was following. And no wonder he’d not heard it coming because the creature had no hooves. Not even sacking ones. Its legs ended in frayed nothingness and it seemed to hover an inch above the road.
Fenn swore, backed away, lost his footing and sat down in the ford. He scrambled up, casting about for stones to throw when it came at him.
It blinked and suddenly its eye seemed milder, kinder, more like the eye of a real horse. It cocked its head at him and walked in a small circle. It had jerky movements like a marionette, though even as he watched they became smoother. It stopped, tilted its head the other way. It had a wall eye and it was angling its head to try to watch him with an eye that gazed backwards.
In spite of everything, his pounding heart was slowing, his tense shoulders relaxing. Because the creature was just so...so...silly. Its demeanour was so gormless and so startled, as if it were astonished by its own existence. It looked a barmpot of a horse.
Fenn took a step towards it and it pranced like an excited dog and walked in another tight circle. He sidled over to the bushes and ripped off a long branch. The creature was ridiculous. He was not afraid. But it still felt good to have a weapon in his hand.
“Out the way!” He brandished the branch at it.
It waltzed sideways, jerkiness gone, legs billowing like streamers caught in the wind. It was so un-horse-like and so comical that in spite of everything a wild laugh rose inside him. He swallowed it down and edged past, along the road.
The horse stayed put, looking over its shoulder at him with a coquettish air. Perhaps he need only command it. It was magic, after all. Perhaps that was what it was waiting for.
“Off with you,” he said. “Go on. Go home. To the farm.”
The horse stood there, wall-eye staring at nothing, tongue flapping. Fenn backed away a little further. It did not move. He backed further still, until a bend in the road hid it from view, then he turned and jogged off again, tossing the branch away.
But what was that, shining in the roadway in front of him?
It wasn’t—
Aye, it was. The glowing rune. The horse.
Fenn stopped. He would not panic. He was too old and too tired for that. And for all his legs felt weak, he was not scared. His heart was pounding from all this rushing about, that was all. He was afraid of no horse, not even an uncanny magical one. It was irritating. Nothing more.
He walked up to it, slow but certain, as he would have approached a real horse, and put a hand on its neck. It was like touching a sack of wool: solid, dry, neither warm nor cold. The horse allowed it, shifting its legs slightly but making no move to bite or kick or run. In fact, it nosed his shoulder and blew air out of its nostrils in a friendly way. It stood seventeen two, broad-beamed and strong, a good mount for a big rider or one with a long way to go. Fenn took a handful of its tattered mane and pulled, cautiously at first, but then with more confidence as it took a step with him and then another.
