Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) by Robert Brady

creative.”  Then he took off.
         No horse born on Earth ever galloped so fast.  I clung for dear life, my thighs on his barrel with my knees bent, my fingers in his mane, my back as straight as I could keep it and my heels back against the softness of his stomach.  I tried to balance the sword I had been forbidden to lose in one hand.  I’d ridden bareback before (thank God, which one I don’t know) so I knew how to adjust my weight to the moving animal.  The sword must have made me look like a charging knight or a complete idiot.
         His muscles rippled like snakes under a bed sheet beneath me.   The stallion’s power almost radiated from him.  His hooves beat the sand like a drum.  I wondered after several minutes of just trying to stay alive that he hadn’t tried to buck or roll on me.  I had all I could do to keep my breathing adjusted so that I could catch gulps of the passing wind as he ran on.
         It had to be over an hour later before he slowed even marginally, switching from an all-out gallop to a loping canter.  Still he pounded on, following the shoreline.  My legs were cramping from holding onto him, my groin and stomach aching, my fingers stiff on the sword and in his mane and losing their hold on both, my shoulders burning.  Because I had no way to stop him I tried to tune it out, watching the terrain, looking for some change or indication of civilization, but I saw none.
         There’s something about riding a huge horse which is entirely different from normal ones.  A horse is a powerful animal – a stallion especially.  Riding him, you learn to move with him, to be one with him – sometimes, I think we’ve given up something of our humanity when we left horses for cars.  Even while I still dwelled on my encounter with War, on the pain, on the fear of being here, not knowing what I had to do next, not knowing what would become of me, I found release in that ongoing ride, that powerful animal surging across the plain beneath me.
         For a while, I thought to myself that, with him on my side, I had a good chance of accomplishing whatever it was I had to do. 
         The shore had turned more toward the west and I could see some sort of change coming up, either a river flowing from it or just a bend in the shoreline. 
         As we approached, he finally slowed to a walk.  Now I saw a river mouth flowing south from the lake and that the ground had become hilly.  I also saw a little scrub grass that the horse would likely want.  The sun had fallen past the apex; we must have been running for four hours or more.  It amazed me – I couldn’t guess how far we had come.  With such animals for their mass-transit, the civilization here would advance strangely.  Commerce could develop more quickly than industrialization and countries become more far-reaching as distances could be traveled more quickly.  The stallion was lathered now and would likely need a rest.  I wondered if I could make a bridle from my shirt for him when he slowed to a stop.
         “ Kak dila ?” I heard, and saw no one speaking.
         “Huh, what?” I asked.
         A tiny man in steel sleeves and shoulder pads, carrying a huge mace, stepped out from in front of the panting stallion.  He had steel-gray hair down past his shoulders, including a beard tucked in his belt, and a pointed steel cap.  He looked at me curiously, then at the stallion, and then at the sword in my hand.  His bushy black eyebrows pulled down over his eyes as he pointed at it. “ Kak etot, Sentalskovich? Lo vista ot sevadstni Voinu! ”
         I shook my head and the horse shied a little.  If he took off again I would seem like I was running away.  I wanted to talk to this man and I doubted that he waited here alone.  I didn’t want to find out that a stand of archers had me targeted from over some nearby ridge.
         At the mention of Voinu, however, a buzzing had started in my