milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

hektor,
river tam

(no subject)

What River did earlier: pace the lakeshore slowly, studying it. Walking the bounds, as they say. She's had two years and more to learn every inch of this land, but she doesn't seem to tire of it. From the thoughtful, focused scrutiny she gives her surroundings, one might think that she's seeing something in them no one else does, or one might think that she has a reason to be patrolling. Perhaps both.

That was earlier.

Now, she's slipped under the fence and up onto the top rung to mount a patient Boukephalos, and she's guiding him with her knees (or, perhaps, not guiding him at all) as she fastens the pasture gate behind them.

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Hektor has had more than enough today of sitting and studying, as important as he knows it to be. There were not so many written words in all the world, so far as he knew; the book has more than the harpers who come to the city..

For now he is outside, looking for something he can better understand. Hanging on the fence that rings the corral should do that well enough, he supposes.

River doesn't use bride or saddle; not by preference, and never with Boukephalos. She doesn't ride him for long enough hours to make tack a kindness to both of them, and he's well-trained enough to take his cues from tiny shifts of knee and heel and weight.

It's hard to tell -- it always is -- to what extent River's guiding the great black stallion, and to what extent she's only balancing on his back and letting him chose his own path. But she sits straight and slim and relaxed, and Boukephalos' neck is arched and his tail is flagged, as together they round the corner of the fence.

The horse is worth watching; so is the girl. The Amazons of Pontos ride bareback, he's heard, but he has never seen it done. Especially not with such a horse.

One would have to have three Guardsmen, not less, to pry him from the fence and away from the sight.

River's head is tipped back, and she smiles up at the sky. Boukephalos snorts, and quiets again at the brush of fingertips against his withers.

River's smile barely changes, when she glances down to direct it at Hektor instead of the clouds.

Hektor lifts a hand in greeting, but no more than that. One does not disturb a sight like that.

There is no one alive who could convince him at the moment that he is not looking at at least one child of Poseidon; perhaps two, at that.

Boukephalos picks his way closer. He rolls a gimlet eye at the boy, but with someone on his back he'll do no more than that without a signal.

"Old soul," River says softly to the stallion's mane, and one of his ears flicks back. "You remember the fields."

Hektor props his chin on his folded hands, watching how the horse moves. Not even the bronze stallion he's been ordered to tame is nearly so large; and he can see, for all that he has only a child's experience, how much the horse is holding in check. Or how much River holds in check, merely by being there.

"He knows you," says Hektor. "Likes you well, I think."

The smile River casts him is quick and sunny, and makes her whole face shine.

"He's my friend."

The boy nods solemnly. "It must have been something," he says, "to win him over to you so."

"He chooses," River says with a small fond smile, and runs her fingertips over the crest of the stallion's muscular neck.

"Every time. Not my job."

Hektor considers this, watching the great beast.

It was not really an idea he had thought of before.

"Listen," River says, smiling a little with head canted sideways. It's not quite clear if she means that for general horse-training advice, or if she hears something interesting now.

The only sounds are the breeze, and the waves lapping, and the hum of insects and birdsong, and snatches of a drinking song drifting over from the Black Pearl.

He listens, for the moment at least.

It occurs to him that the horse given his father has come through more miles than he knows how to count, across deserts and plains and through the wildest mountain country in all the world. All that time he's been led by a handful of men only, and heard only such sounds as travelers do in the places where the road is scarcely trod once a year.

And now he is surrounded by every sound, and every smell, of the greatest city north of Babylon.

River glances sidelong at Hektor.

And her face warms, just a little more.

Boukephalos stands quietly; stallion or not, restive or not, he's been trained to peace and war and small royal children, and he knows his job when he's carrying a rider.

He is going to have to work at night, at least at first. That is the only time the Palace grounds are quiet enough, and he cannot take the horse away from the city until they are more used to each other.

With a shiver like a man coming up from water, Hektor looks up to River. "I should have done that before, I think," he says.

"You can." It's soft, and warm, and perhaps approving.

"Hear with his brain."

"But how," Hektor begins; then he stops. It is not, perhaps, so very different from what the man Roberts says, who wrote the book; Roberts says that he brought the horse Shy Boy out of the wilderness by speaking the horse's language, so he must have listened for it first. For certain the man made no claims of any god's blood or power.

"Right now," River murmurs, while Boukephalos pricks his ears at the paddock.

"You can. Wait for all the opportune moments."

Hektor chews the inside of his cheek a little, thinking; he shifts himself on the fence before nodding once. "All right," he says. "I think I can do that."

River just smiles, warm and small, half at Hektor and half at Boukephalos.

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