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…And the Noble Prince Aequor cried out in horror, for he knew his purpose was doomed. But he rose from his kneeling and turned his thoughts skyward. He begged his patron God Eponia for clemency: “O gentlest of Goddesses / O Great Mother / Unshackle me hence from these mortal confines / Makest me swift as the wind / With the strength of men tenthed / So that I may reach my people in time halved / and warn them of the coming danger.” And the Great Mother heard him and answered him thus: “Son of Man / Son of Gods / I free thee from mortal blood / and mortal bonds / and giveth thou divine form / suited for thy divine purpose.” And from Noble Aequor’s blood bore the first of the Great Horses, the Equus Magnus…
Excerpt from Guillaume Badeau’s translation of The Achielon Mythos Compendium, fourth edition.
They're breaking in the black stallion today. For the second time this month. The first time, the stallion had thrown every rider of even fleeting competence that the palace possessed; and then, during a moment of inattention when the grooms had been attending to one of their men’s wounds, the stallion had cleared the paddock wall in a single wild bound and disappeared. The messenger boy who'd come to deliver Laurent that particular piece of news had been nearly white with terror. It had taken the grounds staff nearly two days to track the stallion down and return him to the stables.
Strangely enough, it was the stallion who'd earned the lion's share of Laurent’s anger for that little stunt: better for the both of them had his designs for escape succeeded and he'd vanished entirely. Laurent had already thought of the precise turn of phrase he'd have used to explain the loss of Akielos' ‘gift’ to his Uncle and was bitterly disappointed to no longer have the opportunity.
“I don't think that devil can be broken,” one of the more loud-mouthed stable boys said to his companions leaning against the paddock. Laurent could hear him even from where he was standing, partially hidden under the shaded canopy of a nearby tree. He hadn't told the Master of Horses that he'd be observing the breaking today, mostly because he hadn't known himself that he was going to be in attendance until he'd looked outside one of the large windows of the west wing of the palace and seen the tiny dotted figures beginning to mill about the stables and he'd abruptly found himself amongst them.
The diversion in his schedule was not entirely out of character for Laurent. At the very least it would give Uncle's spies a moment's pause, and it was always good to keep the palace staff on their toes.
‘That devil', the stable boy had said, and the description undoubtedly fit: there was certainly nothing breakable about the stallion's massive frame, his preternaturally intelligent eyes. A horse with a temperament as fierce as his should have been tethered to a tame one for at least a week; preferably one on either side. But from what Laurent had heard, the stallion hadn't allowed anyone near him, not even to cut his mane, and the other horses shied away from him in the stables besides, fidgeting with unease every time he passed, so there was nothing for it.
If the stallion was going to break, it was going to have to be in the saddle.
“Alois, you're up,” called the Master of Horses, a stolid older man, bald as an egg with a bristly white moustache named Benoit who'd been working the stables as far back as Laurent’s grandfather’s reign.
Alois obeyed the instruction with the eagerness of a man walking to the gallows. The stallion was being held by four strong men, but that was no great assurance.
Indeed, Alois had hardly hit the saddle before the stallion sent him careening through the air and ploughing a wet trail through the paddock.
The next time, it was six men holding the stallion. Alois, who had grimly risen from the ground, his entire front blackened by filth, was clearly made of hardy stuff as he returned to the stallion's flank without a noise of complaint. On the second go around, Alois managed to dig his heels into the horse's stirrups. But that was about all he was capable of before the stallion tossed his wide neck and kicked up his hind legs, throwing Alois not into the dung but against the paddock’s wooden gate.
Alois did not make a third attempt.
Now it was a man named Grégoire’s turn, apparently an old hand at breaking horses. He lasted about six seconds longer than Alois before he too was thrown.
Another try, a different man. Another. Another. Each time, a rider went flying and the muttering of the surrounding men ratcheted higher in response, their morale steadily plummeting. It was as if the stallion could sense the men’s darkening mood; on the sixth go-around, the horse snapped at the newest contender, causing the stable hand to startle so badly he fell backwards, arms wheeling, before he'd even gotten a leg-over.
It was uncanny how much the low nickering of a horse sounded like laughter.
All at once, Laurent found himself walking forward.
“My turn, I think,” Laurent said, his voice pitched just loud enough to be heard across the paddock. Every head turned towards him in surprise, including the stallion’s, whose dark gaze swung around and pinned unerringly on Laurent, his ears pricked forward, as if he'd understood what Laurent had said. A foolish flight of fancy. The animal had merely turned towards the newest sound. That was all.
“Your highness,” Benoit said, uncertainly, as Laurent approached. “I understand that you are an accomplished rider, but if I may be so bold, this beast is unlike any other I have encountered before. I would caution against it.”
“Your concern is noted. If my skull is crushed in the attempt, you have my word your head will not be demanded in recompense. Hold him still.”
To their credit, the men held steady despite their reluctance. Laurent hauled himself up and over the black stallion’s back, catching the ends of his rein and wrapping it twice around his wrist. Idly, Laurent wondered who had been brave enough to saddle and harness the beast, and if they still had all their fingers.
Laurent tightened his knees around the stallion's flank. Oddly enough, the stallion was uncharacteristically still beneath him, his head tilted in such a way that only a single glittering eye was visible to Laurent.
There was something of a challenge in the horse's gaze, impossible as it seemed, that made Laurent's voice come out pointedly calm and steady when he said, “Let him go.”
Laurent had been prepared for the first great jolt of the stallion's rearing. There was nothing to do but endure it, and keep enduring it as the stallion tore his way around the paddock. Each heaving kick had Laurent hitting the saddle with enough force to slam his spine up and out through his neck. After a particularly spectacular buck, Laurent tore his cheek open, the coppery tang of blood filling his mouth. Still, he held on. Up and down, over and over, the stallion's hind legs were thrown repeatedly into the air. It felt as if Laurent’s shoulders could be wrenched from their sockets at any moment. And still, he held on.
The stallion let loose a furious scream, moments before he made a mad rush for the gate.
There was barely a moment for Laurent to register what was unaccountably about to happen – the stallion was going to throw his full weight against the paddock gate and crush him – a single shining moment of heart-stopping clarity to understand that there was nothing he could do about it, before someone was throwing themselves at the gate’s latch with a shout, just barely managing to fling it open, before tumbling head-over-heels out of the way.
And then, just like that, they were gone.
Distantly, Laurent could hear the panicked yelling of the grooms, swiftly receding. But nothing else felt truly real to him, spare the black bolt of lightning between his legs.
They were thundering across the fields and then, quick as a flash, through the open palace gates that the guards had raised at Laurent's approach, like they'd done a thousand times before during his almost daily rides. For the first time, Laurent cursed their attentiveness.
The city was nothing but a mad rush, the clattering of the stallion's hooves against the cobblestoned streets and the great snorting breaths from his wide nostrils the only sound, drowning out the confused shouts of the men and women going about their morning suddenly disturbed by the single-minded passage of a wild beast.
Laurent had but a moment to picture the stallion trampling some hapless merchant, the streets running red with gore, before, between one blink and the next, they'd cleared the city's limits entirely and were fast approaching the forest.
It was only then, with tears streaming down his cheeks in irrepressible streaks at the sheer force of the wind ripping across his face, that Laurent truly came to grips with the understanding that the thing he was saddled to was no mortal creature.
‘They say that the Royal war horses of Akielos possess the blood of the divine.’
That had been the esoteric little pabulum passed around the court once the stallion had been transported from the docks. The horse had certainly attempted to live up to expectations: he'd killed several handlers, Laurent knew, during the journey from Akielos; the dock hands had had to wash the stallion's forelegs clean of blood before they could transport him to the palace.
Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Laurent had sneered right along with the rest of his court at any reference to Akielon magic when he'd first been presented with the stallion – unmoved by his uncanny intelligence, his obvious indignation at his captivity. Just another superstitious mark against Akielos’s primitive, inferior culture.
He was not sneering now.
The stallion came to an abrupt halt at the very edge of the forest. Laurent was nearly hurled out of his seat and over the beast's broad head. But not quite. There came another teeth-rattling bout of rearing and bucking. When Laurent miraculously remained perched in his saddle and not crumpled in a heap twelve feet away, the stallion expelled another one of those enraged screams.
But then he went still, ears pricked, head turned towards the wooded foliage of the forest.
In the distance, there came the sound of rushing water. The river.
“Oh, you insane bastard –”
With renewed eagerness, the stallion set off once more, trees becoming a smeared blur and branches whipping every inch of Laurent’s exposed skin. There was nothing except for the great booming fall of the stallion's hooves as they tore into the earth, ripping up clumps of dirt.
Laurent was pressed flat along the stallions back by now, fists knotted so tight in the rein that his arms had gone numb.
The river was in sight, and getting closer by the second, the stallion snapping up the distance.
Laurent turned his head, put his mouth up to the stallion's flattened ear, and even though he knew it was nonsensical, nothing but pointless theatrics, he hissed, “All right, you son of a bitch. Drown me, then. I’m not letting go.”
Despite the totality of his own conviction, Laurent's heart kept pace with the horse's frenzied gait. Together, they charged into the river at full speed, mud and water spraying them both. The stallion could roll over right then and there, pin Laurent’s legs and drown him. If he does, Laurent thought, a savage wildness running through him, I’ll keep a hold on his rein until he drowns with me.
Then, at the maddening crescendo of the beast’s fury, the stallion stopped dead.
For a moment, there was nothing but the heave of barely restrained musculature underneath Laurent, the stallion's body offering about as much give as a stone statue.
But, after some interminable stretch of time, there suddenly came a great shudder of muscles untensing, the stallion's flanks quivering like the ripples of the disturbed surface of the water below.
Laurent’s heart was still racing somewhere ahead of him. Experimentally, he twitched the rein, a guiding tug towards the shore. The stallion's head remained resolutely still, his lip curled around the bit. But, after another suspended moment of shivering anticipation, he slowly began to pick his way over towards the water’s edge.
The stallion was flecked with foam, his dark coat white with salt, when they reached the shore.
Laurent dismounted and discovered, to his own vague surprise, that his legs were too weak to hold him upright. He fell backwards and landed on his ass, hard, scraping up his palms when he caught himself.
For a moment he merely sat, dizzy with adrenaline.
A memory surfaced, shockingly vivid, of Auguste teaching a younger Laurent how to safely fall from a horse.
“It's going to hurt,” he'd explained to an enraptured Laurent, “there's no helping that. You have to learn to get up anyway. Cry, if you have to; but always, always get up.”
Laurent stared out at the river, his face raw and wind-chapped, and caught his breath.
Eventually, with blind eyes and trembling arms, Laurent plucked several fistfuls of grass and forced himself to standing so that he could rub the stallion's coat dry.
The black stallion was utterly still and silent as he bore Laurent’s ministrations, his skin shivering intermittently at Laurents’s touch.
He really was a beautiful horse, Laurent thought, a little wryly. With his wild mane and his coat like pitch, as big as any draft horse Laurent had ever seen, which just made his impossible speed that much more astonishing.
Laurent stared up at the regal curve of the stallion's massive neck, the sheer straining size of him, and made himself think the creature's name for the first time:
Damianos. Damen. A horse named for a Prince.
A cruel joke – a substitute for Laurent to enact his unspent rage on, now that its true target was dead.
“Break him at your leisure.” That's how Guion had phrased it.
Laurent felt his mouth twist.
After he'd finished cleaning the stallion's coat as much as he was able, Laurent rounded the stallion's shoulder and stood facing his head. And if any part of Laurent had expected to meet the meek, broken gaze of a tamed creature, he would have been disappointed: the stallion's eyes were still blazing with a wild fury, but there was a studied consideration to them now as he looked at Laurent, a grudging sort of respect.
“Fine,” Laurent said, and he would have felt impossibly foolish talking to an animal, if indeed that were what this creature was. But he wasn't. Laurent was sure of that now. “You've made your point. You can't be broken. But unless you want to be put down like a dog with the mange, then you'd better start pretending, at the very least.”
Finally, movement: the stallion pawed at the churned up ground, flanks expanding with the force of his irritated huff. Laurent absently took a hold of his rein.
“I know you only bend to the will of Kings. And I know you have about as much love for my homeland as I have for yours; but if you want to live, then for now, you're going to have to settle for the will of a Prince. Deal?”
The stallion continued to look at Laurent with that steady, impenetrable gaze for one beat. Two.
Then, with an illustrative chuffing noise, he turned his head towards the direction they'd come from, pulling only slightly against Laurent’s hold on his rein.
Well. That seemed to be about as much tacit understanding as Laurent was going to get from a creature that couldn't talk.
Laurent swung himself back into the saddle.
Together, they began to make their way back to the palace at a far more sedate pace. When they passed through the city, Laurent made sure to smile and wave and nod at any gawkers; as if they had not come tearing through these streets not half an hour ago like an army was on their heels.
Once they'd trotted through the palace gates, Laurent could faintly hear the stable men running towards them, voices raised. They were probably expecting to find his mangled corpse. As if Laurent would give his Uncle the satisfaction of dying in such a conveniently accidental manner.
The first of the grooms to see them cried out in relief. By the time they reached the paddock, men were parting for him in silence, eyes wide, awestruck.
Benoit swore expansively at the sight of them, wrapping a steadying hand around the paddock fence as Laurent dismounted. “I’ll be damned,” he said, dropping all matters of decorum in his shock, “I didn't think anyone could break that horse. Congratulations, your Highness. He's yours.”
Laurent felt a strange urge to laugh. He flickered a glance sidelong in the stallion's direction, only to find that a simmering look was already being pointed his way.
For now, that look said. I'm yours, for now.