War Maid's Choice-ARC (55 page)

At the same time, there
was
something else, as well, an additional bond between her and Bahzell. Of course, Gayrfressa had never taken a life mate. That was unusual (but not unheard of) among courser mares, although coursers who bonded with wind riders never life-mated, aside from a handful—like Walsharno, for example—who’d lost their life mates
before
they took a rider. No one—not even the coursers, so far as Leeana could tell—knew whether they never life-mated because on some deep, deep level they were
waiting
for their rider, or if they never life-mated because they
had
bonded with a rider. In Gayrfressa’s case, though, there was that “something else.” Was it because of the way Bahzell had healed her so long ago?

And did it matter? Was Leeana worrying about it to keep from thinking about the question Gayrfressa had just asked her?

“I...didn’t want to sound like I was crying on your shoulder,” she said after a moment. “Or maybe I mean I didn’t want to sound petulant and spoiled. It’s not as if I didn’t know he was a champion of Tomanāk. And I was raised a Bowmaster—we’re supposed to understand about things like responsibility and duty. And we’re
not
supposed to whine when responsibility or duty require something from us.”

<
I didn’t notice anyone doing any whining,
> Gayrfressa pointed out a bit tartly.

“No?” Leeana chuckled. To her dismay, the chuckle sounded a little watery, and she blinked her eyes quickly. “Well, maybe that’s because I was afraid that if I
started
whining I wouldn’t be able to stop!”

Gayrfressa snorted and tossed her head, and Leeana felt the mare’s gently amused understanding almost as if a comforting arm had been laid around her shoulders. But then—

<
It’s not just being separated from him when you’re both still busy learning about each other,
> the courser pointed out. <
Not that you don’t both seem to
enjoy
the learning, of course!
>

Leeana felt her cheekbones heat. Coursers were even more devastatingly frank about certain matters than war maids, and she expected it was going to take her some time to grow accustomed to Gayrfressa’s amused perspective on her relationship with Bahzell.

<
I don’t understand why you worry about that at all,
> Gayrfressa said calmly. <
I mean, it’s not as if he didn’t understand how to—
>

“We’ll...talk about that later, all right?” Leeana interrupted a bit hastily. “That’s one of those areas where two-foots and coursers need to...take a little time deciding how—or if—to talk about it at all.”

<
Well, if you say so,
> Gayrfressa agreed equably, but not so serenely that Leeana didn’t taste the mare’s bubbling amusement. <
But it’s
not
as if he doesn’t understand how to, is it?
> she continued, and Leeana laughed and shook her head.

“Yes, he certainly
does
‘understand how to,’” she admitted, and it was true. She was still growing accustomed to the notion that by Horse Stealer hradani standards she was a tiny, delicate little thing, and at first Bahzell had clearly been afraid he might inadvertently break her. Once she’d disabused him of that notion, however, it had turned out that he “understood how to” even more thoroughly than she’d ever allowed herself to hope he might. Which, she was forced to admit, was indeed one of the reasons she was so unhappy at riding steadily away from him on this beautiful, cool morning.

<
And so it should be,
> Gayrfressa told her. <
But it’s
only
one
r
eason. And the other reason is that you’re
worried
about
him
,
not just unhappy about leaving him behind
.>

“Yes,” Leeana admitted. “I’m worried about all of the others, too, really—especially Trianal and Brandark. But I’m discovering I’m more selfish than I thought I was.”

<
That’s another two-foot attitude. It’s not selfish to worry about your other half, Leeana. And that’s what he is: your other two-foot half. Not worrying about what might happen to him would be like trying not to worry about what might happen to your right forehoof!
>

Gayrfressa was right, Leeana realized, yet it was difficult for her to admit it. War maid or not, she was the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of baronesses. Generations of her mothers and grandmothers had sent husbands and fathers and sons and brothers off to war, obedient to that drumbeat of responsibility and duty.

And too many of us never saw them come home again
, she thought.
Maybe that’s my real problem. He’s so much larger than life—a god-touched champion, the most deadly man I’ve ever known...and the gentlest. He’s all of those things and more, even if he is a blanket-stealer in the middle of the night, grumpy in the morning, impossibly stubborn, and impossibly determined to do the “right thing” however maddening it may be for the people who love him! But despite all that, I know he’s not really immortal. I know he won’t necessarily be coming home again just because of how much I love him, how much I
need
that “other two-foot half” of mine. And the truth is, that terrifies me. The thought of losing him, of feeling some cold, empty hole where he used to be...I’m not sure I’d truly have the courage to face that. Not that I’ll ever admit it to
him;
not after he tried to use that very argument to convince me I was making a terrible mistake!

She snorted in sudden amusement of her own, and felt Gayrfressa’s encouragement and affection in the back of her brain.

“I think you’re good for me,” she told the mare, breathing the resinous air deep once again. “You help me ‘put things in perspective,’ as Mother always used to say. Usually,” she admitted with a thoughtful air, “about the time I started feeling most sorry for myself, now that I think about it.”

<
So two-foot mothers do that, too, do they?
>

“Oh, yes!” Leeana said fervently.

<
Good
.>

The ground sloped downward in front of them, and Leeana automatically adjusted her seat and balance as Gayrfressa started down the slope.

<
I’m glad you spent so much time learning to ride the lesser cousins,
> the mare remarked. <
Walsharno didn’t have that advantage when
he
climbed into the saddle the first time. I got to watch, you know.
> The mare tossed her head again, this time with a whinny of laughing memory. <
He fell off a lot
.>

“He hadn’t had much opportunity to practice, you know,” Leeana said a bit primly.

<
Of course he hadn’t! Which of the lesser cousins could have carried him?
> Gayrfressa inquired pragmatically. <
Doesn’t change the fact that he looked like a bag of feed in the beginning...when he wasn’t bouncing along the ground behind Walsharno, at least.
>

“I suppose not,” Leeana agreed, lips twitching on the edge of a smile. “He’s made up for it since, though,” she added, remembering Bahzell’s graceful seat...and other things about him.

<
Yes, he has
.> Gayrfressa’s mental voice carried a possessive pride, and Leeana leaned forward to pat the courser’s shoulder. <
In fact,
> the mare continued, her voice turning more serious, <
he’s learned quite a few things
you’re
going to have to learn
.>

“Such as?”

There might have been the very thinnest edge of pique in Leeana’s two-word question. She was a Sothōii, after all. The suggestion that her equestrian skills might be wanting in any respect came perilously close to insult.

<
How to fight from the saddle,
> Gayrfressa replied with a tart snort. <
Nobody ever taught you a
thing
about that, now did they?
>

“Well, no,” Leeana admitted after a slightly huffy moment, then shrugged. “Properly reared young noblewomen aren’t supposed to even think about something as unladylike as actually
fighting
.” She grimaced as she remembered a long ago morning in Kalatha when Ravlahn Thregafressa had invited a very young Leeana Hanathafressa to “attack her” with a practice knife. It hadn’t been a very...impressive attack.

“If I’d had the good taste to be born a boy, they
would
have taught me to fight mounted before I ever got to Kalatha,” she continued. “Except, of course, that if I’d had the good taste to be born a boy I wouldn’t ever ever have had to run away to Kalatha. Which I did. Have to run away to Kalatha I mean.” She paused, trying to straighten that out in her own mind, then shrugged again. “But after I got to Kalatha, there wasn’t anyone to teach me. War maids mostly fight on their own feet, you know. We’re not very cavalry oriented.”

<
No, you’re not,
> Gayrfressa agreed in a tone of distinct disapproval.

“It wouldn’t be fair to expect anything else,” Leeana pointed out. “Not given where most of us come from. Garlahna, for example. Or Raythas. Or even Erlis. They may be Sothōii, but nobody was throwing
them
into a saddle when they were two years old, you know!”

<
I suppose not,
> Gayrfressa conceded. <
Not that that explains why they couldn’t have learned later!
>

“I suppose not.” Leeana used Gayrfressa’s own words deliberately, accompanied by a snort of purely human dimensions. “Although,” she continued more thoughtfully, “I really wouldn’t be too surprised to find out the war maids decided years and years ago that they weren’t going to put mounted troops into the field because of how much they expected all the menfolk would carry on if they did. They may have decided that was one toe they didn’t need to step on.”

<
Well,
you’re
going to have to learn how to do it
.> Gayrfressa said in a no-argument sort of way.

“Fine,” Leeana replied, a bit surprised by the firmness of Gayrfressa’s tone.

<
And you’re going to have to get rid of those silly short swords when you do it, too,
> Gayrfressa continued. <
How do you expect to reach anyone with something like that from my saddle? And we
have t
o get you a bow. You
do
know how to shoot a bow, don’t you?
>

“From my own two feet, yes.” Leeana frowned down at Gayrfressa’s single ear. “That’s not the same as using a horse bow though, you know!”

<
Oh,
don’t
I know?
” Gayrfressa shook her head in profound disgust. <
It took
years
for Walsharno to convince
him
to learn to use a bow properly. If you can call the way he uses one even today “properly,” that is!
>

“There are some advantages to that arbalest of his,” Leeana pointed out.

<
Not from a courser’s saddle, there aren’t, and a wind rider doesn’t have any business fighting from anywhere else!
>

Something clicked in Leeana’s brain, and she cocked her head, still looking down at Gayrfressa’s ear.

“I don’t think it’s going to be very easy for Balcartha to integrate a single wind rider into the Kalatha Guard,” she said slowly.

Gayrfressa didn’t reply, but she turned her head far enough she could look back at her rider, and the set of her ear was not encouraging.

“I
am
a member of the Guard,” Leeana told her firmly. “And my current term of enlistment won’t be up for another two years.”

Still nothing...aside from a slightly flatter ear.

“
I’m a seventy-five, Gayrfressa. I can’t just walk away from the rest of my platoon, you know, and none of
them
are wind riders!”

<
And none of them are my wind-sister, either,
> Gayrfressa pointed out stubbornly. <
Your place is in my saddle when you have to fight—not down there running around on those two ridiculous little feet of yours where I can’t keep an eye on you!
>

“But—” Leeana began a bit hotly, then clamped her teeth tightly on what she’d been about to say as she tasted the anxiety behind Gayrfressa’s obstinacy. And the mare had a point, she admitted to herself a moment later. She was the daughter of one wind rider and the wife, now, of another. She’d always known—or thought she had, at any rate—how completely and intimately a wind rider and his courser merged, both in and out of combat. It had been natural enough for her to think she understood, at any rate, beginning from the standpoint of the many years she’d spent learning to become one with a horse like Boots. Yet she’d already realized she’d never truly grasped the totality of a wind rider’s bond before Gayrfressa had entered her life. Not even a marvelous horse like Boots could have taught her that...or what would happen to a rider who lost his courser.

Or to a courser who lost his—or
her
—rider.

It wasn’t something any Sothōii liked to think about, and the coursers’ longer lives meant it didn’t happen as often as a rider lost a horse, but it
did
happen. More often, it was the rider who survived, if only because human lives were a bit longer, on average, even than a courser’s. But it also happened because coursers were bigger targets...and because they couldn’t be armored as well as a human. Leeana had met a handful of wind riders who’d lost their coursers, and she’d sensed the gaping wounds which had been left at the heart of them, but not until now—not until she’d felt the richness of Gayrfressa’s mind and voice in the depths of her own mind—did she truly grasp how terrible those wounds had actually been.

It wasn’t unusual for a rider to end his own life if he lost his courser, despite the Sothōii’s cultural prohibition on suicide...and coursers had no such prohibition.

“Dear heart,” she said quietly, after a moment, “I don’t know how we’re going to deal with this. We’re going to have to—I understand that now—but I don’t have any idea how.” She leaned forward in the saddle, running her hand gently over the scar reaching to Gayrfressa’s shoulder, feeling the hard, ridged line of it under the mare’s chestnut coat and shivering deep in her bones as she remembered how Gayrfress had received it. “That’s one reason you were talking about islands, wasn’t it?”

<
Partly,
> Gayrfressa admitted after a moment, her voice as quiet as Leeana’s own. <
I’m not sure I realized that when I started, though
.> She snorted again, more gently than before. <
I was actually thinking about how silly it was of you to feel like you were “leaving him behind” when he rides with you in your heart every moment, no matter where you are
.> Leeana felt her eyes prickle afresh and stroked Gayrfressa’s shoulder again. <
Still, I think you’re right—I was thinking about this, too. I understand you have obligations to the other two-foots, Sister. I know you assumed them before we’d ever even met, and I don’t expect you to shirk them. But surely the war maids can understand how our bond changes things?
>