Mouth dry, heart hammering, he leaned forward. ‘Oh, run! Run, you, oh run…’
The horse thundered beneath him, but it seemed so slow, the beast labouring. The scene jolted up and down, side to side, and he thought of Gripp, and Haral and the others. He thought of that scream, and wondered from whose throat it had erupted. He thought of dying, cut down from behind. He could hear a horse running behind him, catching up impossibly quickly. A whimper escaped him and he felt hot urine in his crotch, seeping down the inside of his thighs.
He didn’t turn as the horse caught up, instead ducking down.
A moment later and the beast rushed past. Haral’s own horse, riderless, its flanks black with spilled blood and lumps of gore.
Orfantal looked back — but he was beyond the bend and not even the wagons were in view. He saw two riders emerge, reining in to watch him flee. A moment later they set off in pursuit.
The nag was labouring, breaths gusting harsh and loud. Haral’s horse was already twenty paces ahead. Desperate, Orfantal looked round. The sunken flats to either side formed a basin, but one edge was closer than the other — to his right — and he saw the fringe of an old stony shoreline, and then the ragged broken hillsides rearing up beyond. There were paths up there, places to hide.
Orfantal slowed his horse, and then pulled it down from the road. He glanced back to see the two riders drawing closer, their swords out.
The nag stumbled on the rocky slope, righted itself with a snort. Orfantal kicked it forward. The clay underhoof cracked and gave way, miring the horse in the thick mud hiding beneath the crust. The animal dragged itself clear, pushed on at Orfantal’s frantic urging. Lunging, pitching, the nag fought onward.
They were halfway across when the horse sank down to its belly, lurching helplessly, head tossing, eyes rolling. Crying now, the tears half blinding him, Orfantal dragged himself free of the saddle. He looked back to see the two riders reined in at the roadside, watching his progress. In a flash he realized that neither dared venture on to the clay.
He worked his way clear of the sucking mud, rolled on to his side.
The nag had given up its struggle and looked across at him with dumb misery in its weeping eyes. He could see that it had sunk down now halfway up its shoulders at the front, and deeper still at the back. Its whole body trembled and flies swarmed its mud-spattered hide.
He crawled away, still weeping, his face smeared. He had killed his horse, his noble servant. He had betrayed the beast, as only a master could.
But I’m not the betrayer — it’s not supposed to be me. It was never supposed to be me!
His weight was as nothing on the hard-packed clay crust. He made his way across it towards the pebble-studded old bank. Reaching it he straightened and looked back.
The riders were leaving, heading back up the road — and from beyond the bend two columns of thick, black smoke lifted into the sky, and Orfantal knew that his companions were all dead. Haral, Gripp, all of them. A disbanded unit, fallen into banditry and murder — but no, even that did not make sense. Those skins on the wagons were valuable. Bandits would not set them alight.
His gaze fell back to the nag.
The back end of the animal was now beneath the mud, and he could see how it struggled to breathe.
Orfantal ventured back out on to the clay, retracing his route.
When he reached the nag only its head and neck were visible. The crying left him weak, but he managed to throw his arms around that neck, holding on tight. The hide was hot and slick, almost on fire with life, and he felt the nag’s cheek settle against the side of his head, and he wept so hard he felt as if he was emptying his own soul. His wails echoed back from the cliffs behind him.
The mud touched the underside of his left arm; he felt his elbow plunging into soft coolness. The neck muscles strained and the nag lifted its head, nostrils opened wide, air gusting out in a long stream. But it had no strength with which to draw a breath inside — the weight of the clay against its ribs was too vast. As the exhalation dwindled, he felt the nag shudder, and then begin to sag, the muscles relaxing and the head settling on the clay. The horse’s eyelids dipped down half over the lifeless eyes, and stayed there.
Orfantal dragged his arms from the mud. With the nag’s death, the anguish left him, and in its place was a vast hollow, a numbness that made him feel small.
Truth cared nothing for stories. The real world was indifferent to what people wanted to be, to how they wanted everything to turn out. Betrayers came from everywhere, including inside his own body, his own mind. He could trust no one, not even himself.
He faced the broken rocks and started crawling.
