The man grinned at that and laughed. “Well, I’m the owner of the horses,” he replied. “And for my sins Talbot’s put me in charge of rounding up whatever comes out of the woods. Now, I don’t know if Edmund is aware of this but pigs don’t herd worth a damn. Nor do deer. And I’ve only this dozen riders, none of whom has ever tried to herd with horses. But if you’re looking for the ‘horse master’ I guess that’s me. Kane,” he said, sticking out his hand.
“Herzer Herrick,” Herzer replied, sticking out his.
“This is Alyssa my wife,” he said, touching the shoulder of the blond woman next to him. She was thin and wiry with a friendly, sun-weathered face. She too stuck out her hand.
“What can we do for you?” she asked in a furry voice.
“I’ve ridden before,” Herzer replied. “I was training in reenactor combat before this happened,” he added waving his arm around.
“Virtual reality?” Kane asked dubiously.
“Enhanced,” Herzer corrected.
“Oh, so you know how to ride a horse,” the man laughed broadly. “Not just think you do.”
“Well, I’ve ridden,” Herzer corrected. “A bit.”
“Did you fight on horseback?” the horseman asked. “Or just ride a bit?”
“I was starting training in cavalry combat,” Herzer admitted. “But it was… tough.”
“Yeah, that it is,” Alyssa said. “Everybody thinks it’s easy until they try.”
“Well, what’s say we try you out on one of the boys,” Kane said looking at his wife. “One of mine I think?”
“Oh, yes,” the woman replied. “Mine could take him, but he’s more suited to yours.”
“What’s this ‘yours and mine’ thing?” Herzer asked as Kane led him to a nearby shed.
“We brought both our herds down,” the man explained. “Mine are Hanarahs and hers are Arabs. Do you know the difference?”
“I’ve seen them,” Herzer said, gesturing at the herd.
“The Arabs are the little ones and the Hanarahs are the big ones,” Kane said with a nod. “Do you want to know the rest?”
“How much?” Herzer said with a chuckle. “Lately I feel like my brain is getting overloaded!”
“Been in the familiarization program?” Kane asked, opening the door to the shed. Inside, saddles were hanging on boards that thrust out from the walls, and on the back wall was a series of pegs from which hung bridles and reins. Under the reins was a pile of blankets. The room had an odd, musty odor composed of old leather and horse sweat that was not unpleasant but definitely strong.
“Yes,” Herzer said simply, taking the saddle that was thrust at him. He noticed that it had a high back and a low front. He had used similar saddles in his training, but with a higher front. He had no clue what the different parts were named except for the stirrups.
“Well Arabs are a very old breed. They’ve never been genegineered,” Kane explained. “Nobody knows exactly where they came from but they were distinguished by being light of body, very human oriented, extremely fast and with great endurance. They also are missing one vertebrae which gives them less of a tendency to get ‘swaybacked.’ ”
He grabbed a blanket and piled it and reins on Herzer’s arms. “There, all set.”
“Okay.”
“There were originally basically two strains of horses, hotbloods and coldbloods, with me so far?”
“Yep.”
“Hotbloods come down to Arabs. Coldbloods were found in Ropasa and were heavier bodied, relatively slow horses. They got bred up for size in the preindustrial period and worked well as cart horses and the like. But for a good cavalry horse you have to have speed and agility. So at some point, they started breeding Arabs into them and came up with a third strain called ‘warmbloods.’ ”
“Hanarahs?” Herzer guessed as Kane led the way back outside.
“Hanarahs are warmbloods of a sort. But no matter how they worked, some of the qualities of Arabs just never took in warmbloods, notably the lack of that one vertebra. And they’d tend to get horses that were fast or had good stamina. Or if they were fast with good stamina, they were very delicate, had to have the right foods, that sort of thing.”
“Hanarahs are genegineered,” Herzer said definitely.
“Not quite from the ground up but pretty damned close,” Kane admitted. “Incredible stamina, better than Arabs really, very friendly, damned protective, fierce to enemies and gentle as a lamb to a child. They’re blindingly fast, can live on practically anything…”
“Superhorses,” Herzer said, putting his saddle on the top of the corral fence.
“Not quite, but as close as the designers could get,” Kane said. “I guess we’ll find out how well they did.”
“Are they sentient?” Herzer asked. They looked at least on the close order.
“Not hardly,” Kane snorted. “What a dumb idea. As if any sentient being is going to let someone ride on their back day in and day out. And if they don’t, and you coerce them, what’s that?”
“Slavery?” Herzer guessed.
“Got it in one,” Kane said. “Sentient horses. Give me a nice, not too dumb, nonsentient horse any day. So you can’t talk with it, big deal. It also doesn’t talk back. More than balances out, trust me.”
“They look like the kind that I rode in my training,” Herzer said.
“Probably were. Well written scenario if so.” Kane put his fingers to his lips and whistled a complex arpeggio. At the sound the young chestnut that Herzer had seen tearing around the pasture came running in a broad canter, dodging through the herd like a gymnast.
“Oh, goody,” Herzer said. “Now you’re going to give the newbie the unrideable horse.”
“Not at all,” Kane said seriously. “That’s a stupid trick; we can’t afford any more injuries than we’ve already had. Diablo is gentle as a lamb.”
“Diablo?”
“Look, we’ve got nearly sixty horses to name, you run out.”
He leaned forward and stroked the horse on the muzzle, then gave it a small treat.
“They like people,” Kane said. “But getting them to come to you requires some incentive. Especially since this one’s smart enough to see the saddle and know what’s coming.”
“He doesn’t like to be ridden?”
“Would you like a hundred kilos or so thrown on your back?” Kane said, expertly slipping in the bridle. “You could probably ride him with a hackamore, but we’ll start with the bridle.”
He brought the horse out of the pasture, having to slap back two others that tried to bolt for it, and led it around to where the saddle sat.
“Go ahead and saddle him up while we get ready,” Kane said. “There are a couple of other people who haven’t had much recent experience and we were all going out for a trail ride to get broken in again.”
“Uhmm…” Herzer temporized looking at the horse. It looked back at him with a decidedly intelligent expression that seemed to say “Oh, My God. I’ve got a Newbie.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to saddle one,” Herzer admitted.
“Let me guess,” Kane said with a laugh. “They always appeared fully saddled and with their barding on?”
“Yep.”
“Paladins. There ought to be a bounty on them. Okay, no problem. But watch so you’ll know the next time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Herzer returned to the corral tired and sore. The trail ride had turned out to be far more involved than simply riding along in a group chatting. They had started off that way and had taken the horses for a long tour of the area, including a ride through Raven’s Mill. Then, apparently with Myron’s permission, they had spent some time pushing his small herd of cattle around and attempting, with mostly laughable failure, something called “cutting out.” Using only the horses, they were supposed to pick one member out of the herd and move it away from the rest. Supposedly, in the really old days, this had been so regular and common as to be without notice. Not so here. The cattle would hardly break up when the horses approached and when they did start running they tended to stay together. Trying to get into the herd and push a single individual out turned out to be nearly impossible for most of the riders. The exceptions were Kane, Alyssa and, strangely, Herzer.