“Use your instincts.” Onua watched the field as she spoke. “You have to make your own authority with the trainees. Not that I think that will be a problem. Just keep an eye out. Remember they have to pick two.”
“One for morning, one for afternoon,” Sarge added with a grin.
It was one thing to say “Make your own authority,” another to start doing it. For the moment Daine watched. Most trainees met the ponies cautiously or easily, depending on their natures. A mouse-gray mare twined about Evin as if she were a cat.
Looking for Miri, she saw trouble. Some of the more wicked animals had gone to torment the girl, who was plainly scared. Stopping an arm’s reach from her, they frolicked, showing more tooth and hoof than was necessary.
This won’t do! Daine thought, jumping into the meadow. She bore down on the mischief-makers with a scowl, Cloud following like a lonely dog. “Stop that!” she ordered. “What would your mas say if they saw you acting bad? Shame on you! Scat—and don’t come back till you’ve learnt manners!” The ponies shook their heads, looking properly ashamed, and fled.
“If she wanted to be a Rider, she ought to know how to ride,” a female voice muttered. Daine looked for the source, but none of the nearby trainees met her eyes.
“At home only lords or couriers ride,” Miri explained, shamefaced. “I’ve been practicing. It’s just—there’s so many, and they’re so frisky.”
Daine put a hand on her shoulder. Her new friend was solid, muscular, with a love of life she could almost feel. “Look—there’s some you’ll like.” She pointed to a cluster of ponies milling around a tree in the open meadow.
“I’d have to go through the herd,” the older girl whispered.
Daine stuck her hands in her pockets. “See how you kept to the fence, because you’re shy?”
“I didn’t think ‘shy’ was the right word,” Miri confessed.
“Hush. Those ponies are nice, but they’re shy too. If you want to meet them, you have to do the walking. They’re just animals. They can’t know you’ve kept to the fence because you’re shy.”
“It can’t be worse than sailing through a storm,” Evin said from nearby.
“I only did that once.” Miri looked at the herd and the shy ponies, swallowed—and walked forward. Daine and Cloud followed her to the tree.
“Here, boy.” The pony Daine beckoned forward was a gelding, his body hairs a mixture of black and white, his mane, tail, face, and socks black. “I want you to meet someone.” The pony sidled around until he was behind Daine, peering at her human friend. “This fellow is what we call a blue roan. We came south together.” Daine looked over her shoulder. “Come out here and meet Miri. If you ask nice, she might give you an apple.”
The roan’s ears pricked forward at the word apple. Carefully he emerged from behind Daine to approach the older girl.
“He’s beautiful.” Timidly Miri offered him a fruit. Within seconds it was gone and he was inspecting her pockets for more. Daine instructed, “Now blow in his nostrils, gentle like. It’s how you get acquainted.”
“It seems rude to me.” Miri obeyed, and giggled when the blue returned the courtesy. “You know, they aren’t as scary as I thought.”
“Animals are easy to understand,” Daine told her. “You just have to know how to talk to them.”
“You talk to them like they really are people.” Miri smiled as the roan leaned into her hands.
“Don’t say it’s like I have magic,” Daine said. “I hear it all the time, and it makes me crazy.”
“Depends on what you mean,” Miri commented. “The sea’s full of magic, but we can’t use it like the Gift. It isn’t the same. My uncle is a wave-speaker—he swims with dolphins. He talks to them, whole conversations. Have an apple,” she told a tan mare who had come near. The pony took one daintily. Soon they were breathing into each other’s faces.
“Walk with them a bit,” Evin suggested, joining them. The reins he held belonged to the mouse-gray mare and to a tall stallion, a cream-colored beauty with a white mane and tail. “Daine, what do you think?”
She went over both. Evin had chosen well: they were tall for ponies, which meant they would suit his long legs. The stallion was a showy, life-loving fellow, reflecting the Player’s extravagance of character. The mare was smitten with him, matching the sweetness that lay close to Evin’s bones.
“You got lucky,” she said when she was done. “This pair will do anything for you, if you handle them right.”
Evin grinned. “I’m glad you approve.”
Another trainee called her for help, a redheaded youth named Padrach. She gave it to him, then to another. Before she knew it the afternoon was done, and the trainees were taking their new mounts to the stables for grooming. Daine, Onua, Buri, and Sarge helped then too, though Daine couldn’t see how she could ever be comfortable telling a twenty-year-old man he was missing spots on the pony he was grooming.
She did try it: “Excuse me, trainee—what did you say your name was?”
Blue gray eyes twinkled at her over his cream-colored mare’s back. “I didn’t. It’s Farant.” His blond hair curled thickly over his head, almost matching the pony’s in color.
“Thank you. Trainee Farant, you’re missing spots.”
“Not at all, sweetheart. I’m just combing too fast for you to see.”
“Trainee Farant, you’re missing spots!” Sarge boomed just behind Daine. She thought later she actually might have levitated at that moment—certainly Farant had. “Next time the assistant horsemistress tells you something, don’t flirt—correct it!”
He moved on, and Daine pressed her hands against her burning cheeks. Farant leaned on his mare and sighed. “Yes, Assistant Horsemistress. Right away.” He winked at her and went back to work.
Daine went to Sarge as the trainees were finishing up. “Sarge, I—”
He shook his head. Daine thought if he leaned against the stable wall any harder, it would collapse. How did a human, without bear blood in him, get to be so large? “Not your fault. These city boys see you, you’re young, sweet-lookin’”—he winked at her—“they’re gonna try to take advantage. If they can’t keep their minds on the job after I’ve had them two weeks already in my patty-paws, then I ain’t been doing my job right.” His grin was wolfish. “But that can be fixed.” Seeing her openmouthed stare, he asked, “Something the matter, my lamb?”
She closed her jaw. “No, sir. I just never met nobody like you.”
“And if you’re lucky, you won’t again,” muttered Buri, passing by.
After the stables there was a bath, a hot one. Bathing with other females in a tub as large as a pond would take getting used to, Daine thought, but at least she had plenty of soap and shampoo.
r /> Dressed in clean clothes, she went to the mess hall, where Evin and Miri waved for her to join them. She noticed there was much less talk than at lunch. Afterward, the trainees cleared and scrubbed the tables, and Kuri went to the head of the room. Buri and Sarge were moving a map of Tortall into place behind her as she laid bundles of plants onto the table before her.
“Tonight it’s medicinal herbs,” she told them, and the trainees groaned. She smiled. “That’s not so bad. Remember, last week I was teaching you how to sew your own cuts—without anything to numb the pain.”
Daine saw Onua slip out the back, and followed. “Do I have to stay?”
“No, indeed not. You aren’t a trainee. You can help me unpack.”
That sounded like something she could get her exhausted muscles and brain to do. She followed Onua up the stairs to her room. “Do they have to study all the time?”
She sat on the bed while the K’mir opened her packs. “Clothes in a pile by the door. Don’t get up—just throw them. Packages on the bed next to you. Hand me scrolls and papers.” Daine hoisted a pack onto her lap and went to work. “Well, they have to get their book learning now, while they’re here. They won’t have much time, once we head for the summer training site. You’ll like the one this year: Pirate’s Swoop.”
Daine’s face lit. “Lady Alanna’s home?
“The very same.”
Returning to the subject on her mind, she asked, “What do they study? The trainees?”
Onua numbered the topics on her fingers. “Poisons, medicines, edible plants. Tracking and hunting, all terrains. Reading maps, drawing them—maps here are a lot more accurate, now that Riders help draw them. Battle tactics. Weapons and hand-to-hand combat. Teaching combat and tactics—they show villagers how to protect themselves. The ones with the Gift have to learn all they can do with it. Veterinary medicine. I think that’s most of it.”
“And they learn all this?” the girl asked, shocked.
The K’mir laughed. “They do their best. They have to. At the end of fall they go to groups in the field to start their trial year. If they survive, and most do these days, they’re assigned a permanent group. Why? Were you thinking of going for a Rider after all?”