Blood Ties (28 page)

“Not endless,” Bramble protested over an ale that night in the tack room in the stallion’s stable block, sitting where they could both see Acton’s head poked out over his stall. “Spring to midsummer. You won’t get mares coming into season later than that.”

“Well, all right,” Gorham admitted. “He gets to rest in autumn and winter. But he’ll need it by then! I’ve got twelve booked in for him already, not counting our own seven.”

Gorham had built the stallion block big and beautiful, hoping that one day there’d be more than one stallion to house there. The spring wind was always from the east, so they’d put it easterly and well away from the foaling boxes and the mares’ stalls, with the width of the breeding pens in between, and a stand of fragrant trees and plants for good measure. Gorham didn’t want his carefully constructed stable kicked to bits by a stallion determined to get to a mare.

Acton’s bright eyes watched them and his ears pricked forward to listen to them talk. His blond mane shone in the lantern light and his coat was as glossy as an hour’s currying and combing could make it. Bramble had sung and whispered to him the whole time and could feel him settle in to the sound of her voice as she did, could sense his satisfaction in being groomed and later, the security of the routine. He might not like being bridled or ridden, but he enjoyed the benefits of human contact. He was too intelligent for his own good, the silly git, she thought, and was surprised to find how much affection she already felt for him.

In the months that followed, that affection grew. She never tried to ride him. Now and then, when Gorham saw how easily Acton came to her whistle, the whistle they used to call all their horses from the field, he hinted at her riding him in a chase. But she sidestepped the suggestion each time. She was happy to groom and lead him, bring him to the mating yard and calm him down afterward, and play games with him. But she felt, down deep in her bones, that if he were ever ridden, something would die in him, and something in herself, as well. Winning a chase, for Acton, would be a dishonor.

Gorham saw it, and sometimes, heading home to Maude, back to the four walls of his townhouse and the responsibilities of the town council, he was glad, too, to know one creature that had refused to be tamed. Acton, he thought, hadn’t been gentled, or broken; he just liked Bramble, as all horses did, and went where she went and did as she suggested because he liked to please her. Anyone else, even Gorham, got a swift kick or a sharp bite if they tried to lay hands on him. You couldn’t call that tame. So Gorham kissed Maude good evening and went off to his council meetings, but the wildness of Acton lay under his breastbone, sometimes a comfort, sometimes a source of restlessness, and he never tried too hard to get Bramble to ride the stallion.

Bramble developed a lucrative sideline: buying cross-grained, human-wary animals — biters, buckers and bitches, as she called them — and working them until they were safe with children on their backs. Sometimes it took a long time, but it was worth it. She sold them only for children, and only then if the child came to her to be taught to ride and look after it. She took half the profits of that and, as always, a quarter of the profits of the other training she did for Gorham.

She worked, she trained, and she chased. She won the first Spring Chase for three years straight. She’d been glad that the honor of hosting the race went to a different town each year, so she hadn’t had to go back to Sendat and risk meeting Leof. She knew that he had taken part in other chases, but he had never raced against her again. Had never even come to watch. She told herself that she was glad of it, but wondered if it meant that he hated her. Her memories of him were so mixed: warm and funny and gentle, and then cold and sharp as his sword. She avoided thinking about him by concentrating on whatever work was at hand.

She trained the roan as usual through winter to be ready for the first Spring Chase, but the week before the entry money was due, she sought out Gorham in the tack room. She stood uncomfortably, fidgeting with a bridle, until he turned around and raised his eyebrows at her.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s the roan . . .”

“Mmmm?” Gorham sat on a bale of straw and looked at her steadily. “What’s the matter with him?”

“I’m not sure whether to ride him in the Spring Chase or not.”

His eyebrows almost climbed off his face. “Why not?”

“He’s lost speed,” she said reluctantly. “He doesn’t feel as fit as he should be.”

“He won the last two chases all right.”

“They were poor fields. They were mostly youngsters, entered for the experience. The good horses aren’t put up against him anymore. He didn’t have to try very hard.”

Gorham pulled at his nose and then looked up at the roof, calculating. “He’d be, what, thirteen now?”

“I don’t know exactly, but around thirteen, maybe fourteen, I think, by his teeth.”

He nodded. “Well, you can’t expect him to race forever. Your decision.”

She reassured herself: the roan was fit enough, she was worrying unnecessarily, she should give him the chance. She was particularly nervous about missing the Spring Chase, the one where she had been reborn, and she wished that he’d lost fitness in the middle of the season. If she stopped chasing altogether, would she lose herself? It seemed more likely, somehow, if she missed the Spring Chase. She couldn’t bear the thought of that fog descending on her again, of looking at the world through cloudy glass forever. So she paid the entry fee and prepared the roan for the race, trying to believe that he would be ready for it.

The Spring Chase was in Pless this year, and as the riders gathered for the start, Bramble felt nervous, sensing something was wrong. Then, as the caller signaled them forward to the start line, the roan stopped. He just stopped, as he had that day in the road outside Gorham’s farm. She clicked her tongue and squeezed her legs against his sides, but he didn’t move.

Bramble jumped off and moved to his head. He turned away from the start and faced toward home.

“What is it, lad?” she asked, as she had asked then. He looked her back in the eye and unlike that day, he was not calm, but restless, flicking his mane, flinging his head up. She put her hand on his neck and felt him quiet down. When the roan had decided to stop at Gorham’s, she had accepted it and had now lived his choice for years. But this . . . She felt fear under her breastbone, the threat of emptiness and death. Without chasing, it might come back. At that moment, she was sure it would, sure that she would descend, once again, into the fog she had escaped from. She couldn’t face it.

“Please,” she said.

He let out a great breath through his nostrils, not really a neigh, but a sigh, then turned back to face the start.

It was a strong field and they got away to a quick start. The Kill was the young son of a nearby farmer, who spent every afternoon that he could sneak away from his work at Gorham’s, begging to be taken on as an apprentice. He knew every inch of the terrain and had planned his route to get the most out of both horse and rider. It was the toughest course she had ever ridden, and by the approach to the third jump Bramble knew the roan wasn’t up to it. He was trying hard, but each jump was an effort, and he had lost the surge back to racing speed after the jump. He began to fall behind.

She had no experience riding in the middle of the pack: they had always led. Bramble found herself jostling for position, trying to see ahead over the other riders, making guesses about the best line to take through a jump. She and the roan were both unsettled. By the fourth jump they were lying fifth, and Bramble was figuring out a safe way to drop out of the race without being trampled by the pack.

The Kill led them at a knee-breaking pace down a half-wooded hillside and soared over a shallow stream that had cut deeply into its banks. There were rocks on the streambed, sharp and unforgiving. The horse in front fell as the bank collapsed beneath it, and the roan had to leap over it as well as the stream. It was a jump that in the past he could have taken with moderate effort.

He took off, but he didn’t have the power to get all the way across the stream. For a moment he hung suspended over the gap, then fell heavily, turning as he hit the ground, to shake her off his back, kicking out behind and twisting so she didn’t fall under him. She heard his head thwack into one of the rocks and reached for him, but the fall and the current in the stream threw her away. She crawled back against the flow, heedless of the pack jumping over her and thrashing up the farther bank. The noise was deafening, but she moved in a bubble of silence until she reached him and heard his rasping breath.

His head was covered in blood and his ribs were clearly broken, the bones piercing the skin. The stream was flowing red below them and his breath was coming harder and harder. She sat in the streambed and took his head in her lap. He stared up at her with resignation and nuzzled her in between bouts of coughing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, over and over. The roan’s breath became harsh, settling into the death rattle that meant the end was coming. Bramble put her head down on his to share every shake and shudder. When the shaking stopped, her whole body registered it. She raised her head slowly and looked at him, then gently closed his half-open eye.

She knew that it was her fault. She had known he wasn’t fit enough to chase, but had forced him to, out of fear. She had given over to a fear of herself as she would never have to a threat from anyone else. She had sacrificed the roan. Betrayed him.

She was ready, she thought, to pay the price of betrayal. She felt numb, and welcomed the numbness. Then, all at once, her feeling came back. She saw the spring twilight ending with a haze of gold and lavender in the sky. She was aware of it, aware of every dust mote in the air, of the rough streambed beneath her, the texture of the roan’s hair, roughened by sweat, under her fingers, the smell of horse, of blood, of leather. She saw the ripples in the stream glow and darken as the sunlight faded. She had passed beyond shock, she thought, to a state where everything seemed alive and full of clarity, full of meaning . . . If only she could understand it. But there was nothing to understand except the dead weight on her lap, and nothing to feel except shame and grief.

Gorham was standing on the bank with a few of the other riders. She eased her way from under the roan’s head, but couldn’t just put it down under the water. She knew that it was ridiculous — he was already dead. He wouldn’t drown, wouldn’t even feel the water closing over his head — but she still couldn’t do it. Gorham came to her aid by removing the saddle and placing it under the roan’s head.

Then he guided her to the bank and hugged her. She endured it, as she endured the other riders’ pats of sympathy on her back. She didn’t deserve sympathy.

Some of the riders brought shovels, and together they pulled the roan out of the water to a grave they had dug while Bramble had sat oblivious in the stream. She resented that, resented the blisters on their hands that should by rights have been hers, but she endured that loss, too, because a killer can claim no rights over her victim. She allowed herself to hold his head, though, as they dragged him out of the stream, and she filled in the grave herself, shaking her head when the others tried to help. “Come back with Maude and me tonight,” Gorham said, but she shook her head and walked back to the cottage alone.

She sat without moving all night, remembering her betrayal. She intended to sit there forever. Looking back later, she realized that she had survived only because Gorham had pulled her out of the cottage the next morning and thrust a newly born foal into her arms. The warm, wriggling body dragged her attention back to the present. She started to cry, then let the foal go to raise her blistered hands to her face, and smelled the roan again. It was the last time she would know that scent.

Bramble worked through the spring foaling and the summer presentation of mares to the stallions. She worked silently, for the most part, and Gorham let her be. Maude tried a few times to “cheer her up a bit” but eventually realized that she couldn’t, and left her alone. Through every day and most of every night, while her hands were busy, her mind went over every moment of her time with the roan, and every moment of his death. For three years she had clutched to the chase to protect her against the fog, against the knowledge that she should have died in the chasm, and for three years the roan had joyfully partnered her. Now it was over.

One day, in autumn, as the wild geese flew over, she suddenly remembered the demon’s curse:
Born wild and died wild. Not fit for this young man. Thou wilt love no man never.
That had seemed a terrible curse to her then, and feasible after the chasm. But she had come back to life and, even with the roan’s death, life showed no signs of deserting her. There was no fog, no clouded glass. She felt everything sharply, saw everything vividly. She wished she didn’t.

Thinking of the light going out in the roan’s eyes, she was reminded of the warlord’s man’s face as he fell, and was ashamed, suddenly, of killing him, and ashamed of not feeling worse about it when it happened. It was as though she hadn’t really understood death before — had never felt its finality. Its eternity. Grief and guilt fought for space in her and both won.

She needed . . . something. Not just to take the Road again. Not just to face her fear of that hollow space within her. Something else. She needed forgiveness. But from where? The two she had injured were both dead. Then she remembered the pilgrims she had met at Sandalwood.

She would go to the Well of Secrets. A real pilgrimage, this time: a pilgrimage to seek forgiveness and absolution. As soon as she had made the decision, she felt better. Just as grief-stricken, just as guilty, but better. She wept again for the roan, gently, and fell asleep.

She left the next day, after a long hour with Acton in his stall. He was getting older, too, had come into his full strength. His sons were adding to the stud’s income, now. Gorham had three of his get, from different but equally well-bred mares, and another stallion from Golden Valley: the stallion stable block was finally full.