“Well ridden!” came from behind her, but she had no attention to spare. His earlier exertions hadn’t tired the red horse, and he was pulling her arms out. The leaders were nearer now, as Tiger thundered on, lunging against the reins, and his next jump put him even with the first of the field. Heris knew she should be holding him back . . . but excitement sang the last remnants of doubt out of her bones. She had not felt this exultation since—she pushed that away. Now—this horse, this field, this next jump—was all that mattered. All in a clump they raced, angling across the field after the hounds, to jump a sharp ditch. . . . Someone fell there, but Tiger had carried her over safely.
Ahead was another rockpile, to which the fox sped, and into which it vanished. The hounds swarmed over it, clamoring, but they were not diggers and the fox had found a safe lair. Heris got Tiger slowed, then circled him until he walked; he was wet and breathing hard, but clearly not exhausted. Nor was she; she hoped they’d find another fox and do it again. She could have laughed at her earlier mood: boring? This? No. It was all Cecelia had promised.
The huntsmen set to work to call the hounds back and get them in order. Meanwhile the rest of the blue hunt rode up. Some she had met, and some she hadn’t, all now willing to speak to her and tell her how well she’d done.
“I didn’t really,” she said to the third or fourth person who came up to her. “I got lost, then the horse seemed to hear something—”
“But that’s wonderful,” the woman said. She had one wrist in a brace, and Heris realized it was the same one she’d seen at dinner. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, and you actually caught up. Most people, once they’re lost, spend the whole day wandering around without a clue, or give up and go home.”
“Which hill were you on?” one of the men asked. Heris looked around, but had no idea. The jumbled landscape looked as confused to her as a star chart probably would to these people.
“It was near the beginning,” she said slowly. “There was a track through woods, then a creek, then a lot of tracks straight up the hill. . . .”
“The Goosegg? You got here in time for the final run from Goosegg?” Now they seemed even more impressed. Heris wondered why. She thought of asking but shrugged instead.
“Tiger did it,” she said. It was true, anyway: he had known where to go, and he’d taken her there without any serious bruises. They liked that, she could see; Cecelia had told her that horse people expect riders to praise horses and take the blame themselves for errors.
For a time, nothing much happened; the hounds stood panting, tongues hanging out; some of them flopped down and rolled. Riders stretched, or took a swallow from flasks in the saddlebag. A few dismounted, and disappeared discreetly behind the rockpile. Horses stood hipshot, or walked slowly around as their riders talked or drank. A few stragglers appeared, one by one, on lathered mounts, but perhaps a third of the field had disappeared. Heris wondered if they were going to look for another fox—it was still morning, by the sun.
When the hunt moved again, it was both calmer and more businesslike than the morning’s first action. Heris felt the difference as a sense of purpose, as if a ship’s crew steadied to some task. First the huntsman took the hounds down the field, toward a patch of woods near a stream—this one, Heris noted from the hillside, widened to a pond at one point. Riders rechecked girths and stirrups; those who had dismounted got up again, and those who had been chatting stopped. Someone Heris didn’t yet know put to her eye a most untraditional military-issue eyepiece; Heris wished she herself had had the wit to get one; that lucky soul would be seeing whatever she looked at in plenty of magnification and perfect lighting. She could see fleas on the fox’s coat, if a fox came out.
Then the hounds found another trail. At the first peal of the horn, Tiger trembled; Heris steadied him, but didn’t hold him back to the rear of the group this time. Steadily, without haste, the field moved toward the call at a brisk trot. This time no one in front of Heris had a refusal at the low wall and ditch . . . nor did she . . . and they trotted on through the woods, lured by the hound song and the horn. Behind her, the bulk of the field stretched out.
Out of the woods: she could see the scarlet coats ahead, the hounds now fifty meters in the lead across a field. Tiger wasn’t pulling as badly, but her sentiments were with him, now; she would like to have charged at the next field as fast as he would go. It had become more than the physical delight of riding over fences at speed; it was a hunt, and she wanted to be part of it. Now she could admit it to herself—she had not felt this completely alive, this exultant, since she’d commanded her own ship in combat. And that had been tempered with grief and worry, knowing that she risked her crew, people who trusted her. Here, she risked only herself; she had no responsibility for the others. No wonder people liked hunting . . . but she had no more time to think about it, and that, too, became part of the pleasure.
That run, her first full run, remained a confusion in her mind, when she tried to tell Cecelia about it. Field and wood and field succeeded each other too rapidly; she had to concentrate on riding, on steering Tiger around trees and readying herself for the fences, walls, ditches, banks that came at her every time she thought she’d caught her breath. It felt as if they’d been riding all day—a lifetime—when she heard the hounds’ voices change, heard the huntsman yell at them, and realized that they’d caught the fox, out in the middle of a vast open bowl between the hills, with a little stinking marsh off to one side. This time Tiger was willing to stop; she sat there panting and hoping she would not disgrace herself by slithering off his back to lie in a heap on the ground.
Breath and awareness came back to her even as the rest of the field came up. “You can ride,” said the woman with the wrist brace, again beside her. “Don’t tell me it’s all that horse; I’ve ridden him myself.”
In the hunting frenzy of Lord Thornbuckle’s establishment, Ronnie saw his companions change. Buttons, who had been growing perceptibly stuffier over the last year, became a proper son of the household, and took over the red hunt without complaint. He seemed almost a parody of his father, despite the difference in looks. Sarah simply vanished; when they asked, Buttons looked down his nose and muttered something about wedding preparations. Ronnie wished he had such a handy excuse. The others had to undergo evaluation by the head trainer—a humiliating experience, Ronnie thought. Raffaele rode better than he’d expected; though the trainer complained about her form, she never fell off, and was passed to the blue hunt after only a week’s review. He and George and Bubbles, though, were stuck with two daily lessons.
Ronnie hated the lessons; they spent nearly all the time at a walk or trot, with a sharp-voiced junior trainer nagging them about things Ronnie was sure didn’t really matter. The trainer wasn’t nearly as hard on Bubbles; he figured that was favoritism toward a family member. Afterwards, on the way back to the house to swim or play chipball, Bubbles would critique his lesson again, in detail. When he finally burst loose and told her she had to be as bad, or she wouldn’t still be having lessons too, she slugged him in the arm.
“I could ride to hounds any day of the week, you idiot. I’m babysitting you two. It wouldn’t be fair to make you stay in lessons by yourselves, Dad said.” She glared at both of them. “You ought to be grateful, but I don’t suppose you are.”