Mathin reached out to her, pulled her face toward him, and kissed her on the forehead. "The kiss of luck," he said. "You have no sash-bearing father or mother to give it you. Go as the Daughter of the Riders. Go."
She turned away. Innath was sitting his big grey stallion just behind her. He smiled at her, a friend's smile. "Be of good courage, Daughter of the Riders."
The morning was already hot, and the plain offered no shade; the ring of Hills seemed to hold the heat like water in a bowl. Harry found the man in red, and gave him her name; she thought he looked at her sharply, but perhaps he looked at all the laprun candidates sharply. He nodded and gave her a white rag to tie around her arm, and sent her off toward a milling mob of nervous horseflesh and even more nervous riders. She looked at them critically; there were some fine horses here, but none could outmatch her own mount, and very few could come near him. There was one big dark bay that caught her eye; she was ridden by a boy in blue who carried his shoulders and head well. Harry wondered what the other riders thought of the one in the maroon sash on the big golden chestnut.
There was little conversation. There were those who gave their names to the red man and joined the ever-increasing throng here at the City end of the plain; the rest—the audience, she supposed—crowded behind barriers she could not see, that stretched from the feet of the red man's horse to the far side of the plain. Around Harry, some of the trials riders moved their horses in fidgety circles, just to avoid standing still; some looked down at themselves often, as if checking to make sure they were all still there. Harry twisted strands of Sungold's mane between her damp fingers and tried to keep her teeth from chattering. There was the dull murmur of horses' hooves, and the rush of their breathing, and the squeak of leather, the hush of cloth; and the sun overhead gazing down. To try to take her mind off the trials for a minute, she looked up, searching for some sign of the City, some path to its gate, and saw nothing but rock. It's right before my eyes and I can't see it, she thought, and had a moment of panic. Tsornin, who could read many of her thoughts by this time, flicked one ear back at her: Stop that. She stopped.
Shortly before midmorning the trials began. First their weapons were taken away from them and replaced with flat wooden swords; and Harry discovered that she was much fonder of her own sword than she had previously supposed. Everyone else was settling helms on heads, so she fumbled hers loose from its straps and tied it on. It felt heavier than usual, and she didn't seem able to see around its cheek pieces clearly. Then the riders were divided into twos, threes, fives, eights. In these little groups they galloped hard to the end of that highway between spectators, wheeled, and came back. They met twos, threes, fives, eights rushing to meet them, swerved and collided; riders rolled in the dust, and horses bolted. She was not one of the former, nor Tsornin the latter. Neither was the young man in blue on the bay mare. She had a little trouble holding Tsornin back to the pace of the others; he was not over-pleased with crowds, but he did as she asked since she asked it. Those that remained mounted at each sweep galloped down and back again and again; and with each charge another obstacle had appeared along the highway that must be leaped or climbed over: a wall of rolled-up tents, stacked together; a fence of tentpoles; a banked heap of small stones with scrub piled on top. The first flecks of sweat broke out on Tsornin's shoulders as he gave her the slight heave she needed to hook a boot around a neighboring ankle and toss a rider to the ground.
There was a little troop of twenty left mounted when the last charge ended. Harry looked around her, wondering how many had been thrown or hurt; she guessed there had been several times twenty in the beginning. A few minutes passed while the uneasy twenty walked their horses, and breathed deep, and waited. Then it was the spectators who came toward them, huddled once again at the City end of the plain; some of them were mounted, and all were carrying long wooden poles. What? thought Harry; and then a pole descended on her helmeted head, and the horse in front of her stumbled and fell at Sungold's feet. Sungold leaped over the thrashing legs as carelessly as if they were blades of grass. Harry began laying about with her wooden sword. A pole thrust itself under her knee and attempted to remove her from her saddle. Sungold switched around on his forehand, giving her her balance, and she broke the offending pole with the hilt of her mock sword. She began to feel hot and annoyed. Sweat matted her tunic to her body, and her leather vest squeaked with it. The burning sunlight tried to push her out of the saddle even as the poles in human hands did. What is this nonsense? She used the flat and butt of her silly wooden stick and Tsornin reared and stamped and hurled himself forward. She broke a few more poles. She felt Mathin's grin pulling at her own lips. Someone thumped her sharply in the shoulder with a pole, but once again, as she lurched, Sungold slid sideways to stay under her; and she gave that pole a back-handed chop and saw it spin away from its wielder.
Tsornin leaped over another fallen horse. She saw abruptly that the audience hemmed the trials riders in; if one of them pushed too near the edge of the crush, he was set on with particular ferocity and turned back. She noticed this with interest, and began determinedly to get out; but there were several hundreds to twenty—and only a few of the original twenty were still mounted.
She began to feel that tide of anger she remembered from the day she had unseated Mathin—she caught somebody by the collarbone and knocked him off his horse with his own pole—and she felt that she would escape. Tsornin was backing up, mostly on his hind legs. Then he spun round, came down—one more whack with her wretched wooden blade; the hilt gave an ominous creak, but it didn't matter; she was … out.
The red man gave a shout. It was over.
The crowd dispersed instantly, as if the red man's shout had broken a cord that tied them all together. There were several loose horses standing clear, looking embarrassed for having behaved so poorly as to lose their riders; and several limping figures separated themselves from the others and went toward them. Harry sat where she was, the hot tide ebbing, leaving just a trace of headache behind, watching the others pass around her like grains of sand sifting around a boulder. She saw Mathin from a distance; he carried a pole across Windrider's withers and there was a shallow cut over one eye that had bled down his cheek. She saw none of the other Riders.
She squinted up at the sky. The Hills were black with shadows, but the sky was hard blue and she could feel the heat beating up again from underfoot. In the quiet—for, as it had been this morning, no one spoke and even the horses seemed to step softly—the heat seemed almost audible. She set Tsornin to walk himself as cool as possible. She patted his neck and dismounted, that they might walk together; he was sweating but not distressed, and he shook his head at her. She reclaimed her sword from the kysin, who saluted her. He had not saluted the laprun rider just before her.