B3Ch59- A lordly gift (Patreon)

The first of the dead were sitting up by the time Harold came down off the rise.

They woke up slow and stupid, blinking at the snow, one man patting himself down for a wound that wasn't there while his file-mates stood over him and howled. An optio walked the line with a wax tablet, toeing each body and calling a name, and every time one groaned and rolled, he made a mark and went to the next.

One of the fallen came up swinging at nothing. "Where — where's the — did we hold? Did we hold the line?"

"You fell over, Blaise." His Optio hauled him up by the collar. "You all fell over. Whole front rank, down like a sack of turnips. Most embarrassing thing I've seen in my life."

"...I don't feel stabbed."

"Did you not just hear me? You weren't stabbed."

Hooves came down the column at a canter, and Harold turned to find Fitch swinging off a tall gray before it had fully stopped, Lady Maren riding in easy behind him. The horses were about as tall as a Clydesdale from Earth and just as wide, and the one Fitch was riding was even larger.

Fitch landed, caught himself, and then just stood there looking at the field of groaning legionaries like he wasn't sure anymore it had been a good idea.

"My lord. I — that is—" He wiped a palm down his coat. "You're not. You're not angry, right? The Colonel bet me the Legion could hold me off and I just had to prove he was wrong."

Harold let him hang a second.

"Lord Fitch, how many members of the Legion did you just take out?"

"...The whole front, my lord. And a flanking cohort. Few hundred at least. Probably a few more." He said it to Harold's boots.

"And nobody got hurt."

"No, my lord. Finn checked the potions twice, and we — we ranged it so the horses never closed. Nobody got trampled, and I made sure to stay out of range of your archers. I'd never risk your—"

"Good," Harold said, and let the grin come up. "Because that was the best thing I've seen in a while. Very happy with you and Finn."

Fitch's whole face changed, and the widest smile he had seen on the young man appeared.

"He's been sick over it three days, my lord," Maren said from the saddle, unbothered. "Wouldn't eat this morning."

"I was not—"

"You gave me your breakfast."

"...I wasn't hungry. And it's ok to be nervous about it, ok." He looked slyly over at Harold. "It was pretty funny though."

Harold just snorted while Hale walked up on the far side and over at the pair of them. He pointed two fingers at Fitch. "Guess I owe you a drink."

"That was the deal," Fitch replied happily. "I'll take some of the dwarven brew I know you brought along."

Hale glared at him and grunted as he walked off.

"Walk me in," Harold said. "I want to see what you've built out here. We can let the good Colonel handle the Legion."

They went on foot, Fitch leading the gray that lovingly walked next to him. The horse kept leaning over and trying to eat his hair, and Fitch would turn and scratch his cheeks each time. It was obvious he cared deeply for the horse.

Maren was walking her own mount, who was black as night and just as large as the one next to Fitch. Where the other one was looking to be loved on, this horse wouldn't let anyone else get close to him and would attempt to lash out at anyone who approached until Maren turned and cooed at it, calming the horse down.

Harold eyed them both as they walked and approached Lord Fitch's town. The horses were called Elderbred and were one of the few half-monstrous horses within the human sphere. Fully grown and nurtured, the horses could run for days. Some of the more purebred ones could even gain an amount of mana they used to empower themselves. They were the perfect warhorse, but they did all manner of jobs in the past. He planned on buying a large number of them from Lord Fitch and Lady Maren and testing a variation of the potions he used on the eagles.

He wanted to increase their strength and purify their bloodline while not increasing their size. The two horses here were already about twenty-three hands high. They were massive horses, and it showed. The ground shook as they charged, and their past charges were famous for shattering formations.

The guard spread out loosely around them, and Elroy and Jenkins made a game of antagonizing Lady Maren's horse until she stopped calming him down and allowed him to snap a kick toward Jenkins, launching him twenty feet back. The horse's ears shot straight up, and he swore he could see the horse start to prance a little as it walked next to Maren.

Jenkins stumbled his way back while everyone laughed at his misfortune, and Parker muttered about stupid games and stupid prizes. The dent in his chest piece would need a blacksmith to work out.

Fitch found his voice the moment the talk turned to the herds.

"That's the home herd, out past the east pens — near seven hundred head now." He was walking backward to face Harold, every nerve gone the second he had something to show off. "When your people first helped me get set up, I had maybe thirty I could call broken in. The trick I picked up in the trial, it's—you don't break them, exactly; you sort of convince them. There was this herd-lord, a stallion, and once I had him the rest just—"

"Fitch," Maren said, exasperated.

"—right. Point is, the herd runs on the lead horse. Get the lead horse, get the whole herd, and I've kinda copied that as we gathered more herds. The head stallions would fight to be the new head of the herd when we gathered multiple of them, but they would sort that out themselves."

Maren turned and looked at him while walking backward. "We encouraged it after he learned the method to break them in. Getting the head stallion kinda convinced them all."

She glanced lovingly back at Fitch, who was still looking at Harold, oblivious to the look.

Past the first of the pens, a cook-fire burned under a lean-to, a broad woman working a griddle over it for the horse crews coming off shift. She'd watched Maren's stallion boot Jenkins into the snow, and she was still laughing about it when they came even with her.

"You," she called to Jenkins, flipping a round of flatbread. "Kicked clean into next week, and the first thing you do is come sniffing at my griddle. I respect it. Copper a piece."

"...do you take credit?" Jenkins tried.

"Do I look like a bank?" She had two wrapped and pressed into his hands anyway. "Eat. You're too skinny to insult my cooking properly."

Harold caught the Earth vowels under it. "Where's home?"

"Ohio, before all this." She flipped another round and tipped her chin out at the snow, the plains, the twenty-three-hand horses drifting past the rail. "Some mornings I still can't believe where I woke up. But my boy's got steady work with the crews, and Lord Fitch has done well by the people here." She shrugged. "You take the good days where they come, my lord, and we were pretty nervous about him when we saw how young he was when we all arrived here. But I tell you, he was the first one out there killing the monsters and making it safe for all of us." She took the time to flip the griddle. “And we are all happy he has thrown in with you, my lord. We have seen the forums. Chaos out there.”

“Thank you for your approval, Mrs. Randall,” Fitch said dryly.

The wall came up ahead, and it was imposing enough that he would be nervous about sending the Legion to attack it. The base of the wall was all sunken stone; a massive earthwork rose above it while a large ditch surrounded it. Good stone was scarce around here and had to be hauled north from his mountains or south from the Blackjaws. So it was used for the squat towers every hundred yards with a ballista snout poking out through the crenels.

Maren stopped at the foot of one and laid her palm flat on the stone. "The plains here can be a blessing and a curse, but we have managed. The early days were rough, and Fitch and I had to help each other out more than once." Her head tilted as she examined him. "But you probably know our history fairly well, don't you, my lord?"

Harold chuckled at her blunt question. "Not as well as you would think. I didn't exactly have time to browse the forums and memorize everything in the early days. And you and Fitch didn't post a lot. I know you had trouble from some of the surrounding Lords until you got your cavalry; then your control of the plains expanded rapidly."

He looked at Fitch, who was scratching his horse's jaw and whispering to him. "I'm about to complicate your lives though."

Maren's brow went up a fraction. "How complicated."

"The Legion's a hammer right now." His hand came up and sliced the air flat. "Hale can hold a line against anything. You two will be the reach and speed. I need you to integrate your forces into the Legion."

"Our signals aren't his," Maren frowned. She'd picked a loose stone off the wall base and was turning it over in her fingers. She wasn't arguing, just thinking out loud. "We'd have to learn his flags and horns, and he'd have to write calls that mean something to a battery and a horse line both. Two weeks of drills. Probably three."

"You've got the march north to do it in."

"Then it's done, my lord."

"You want my riders under Hale?" Fitch said.

"You already knew this was coming. It's time to make it happen. Your two towns will be the center of the Legion's cavalry. Though I will retain the Heavy Tarentine Path book at the Landing. When you judge your people ready, they can come claim it."

"...deal." Fitch's grin was climbing again. "Does this mean one of us will be promoted to Baron? A single Century isn't enough to garrison this place."

"He knows, Fitch," Maren murmured. "I think I know how he plans to handle that as well."

"—right."

Harold looked at her as they kept walking towards the large paddock outside the town. "Sometimes you have to allow people a little mystery, Maren. I'm tempted to approve Colonel Hale's request to add you to his plans section."

Maren blinked. "...uhh, my lord?"

"She's right though; I do have a way to handle it. A cohort from the Legion will be stationed in each of your towns as a garrison under one of the more junior captains we have. They will report to you, but they will control the Legion, not you. Colonel Hale has the details on what authorities the Legion has versus the local nobility."

"One other thing, Lord Fitch. I captured some of the local elk. They have a mana gland I'm interested in. I was going to bring them back to the Basin to breed, but you already have a program going here and the space to do it in. I want a herd of them in three years; the gland is one of the better ingredients for a few potions, and the elk is good eating."

Harold shrugged. "Feed them, breed them, keep them alive. Finn will tell you what a gland's worth to me. Call it a standing contract."

Fitch nodded at the ground, and he could see the grin on his face. "I — yes. Yes, I can do that. They graze like deer, so the east range would—" He caught himself. "Thank you, my lord."

The drill field opened up on their left as they walked — a long fenced run of churned snow with a line of riders working down it at the canter. As Harold watched, the lead rider dropped his reins, drew, and put a javelin through a straw man at a full gallop, then twisted and threw a second one back over his horse's tail into a target behind him before breaking away.

"AGAIN — you throw like you're mad at it, not aiming at it! Reset, from the top!" a drill-master bawled somewhere down the line.

Fitch stopped walking. "Okay — okay, you have to see this. That's the path." He was up on the balls of his feet. "Maren, where's the—"

Maren already had a folded square of leather out of her coat and was holding it out to him without looking. "He'd lose his own head if it weren't stitched on," she said to Harold, dry. "I keep his records."

Fitch didn't hear it. He flipped the leather open — ten lines burned into it, the first seven scored through. "Heavy Tarentine Path. A Tarentine's a light horse-javelineer, right, you throw from the saddle. 'Heavy' means you armor the horse and the rider both and still do it. So it's three things at once." He jabbed a finger down the field. 

"One, ride and fight hands-free at the gallop — steer off your legs and your weight, no reins. Two, put a javelin in a man off a moving horse. Three — that thing he just did, the cast over the tail while you break away. Four, carry half-barding on the horse and mail on you for a whole fight without blowing the animal. Five, a full sheaf thrown in one pass without fumbling the draw. Six, punch one through a shield at range. Seven—" the grin broke wide "—full barding, horse and rider both, and still skirmish and wheel. That's what I have gotten to. Seven of ten."

"And eight?"

The grin mellowed some. "Eight's kinda hard, and I haven't figured it out yet. You draw on the horse's own mana in the charge, and the two of you surge as one entity." He glanced, without deciding to, toward the paddock past the pens. "I can kinda feel Roach’s mana. I can’t mesh mine with his though. Nine's leading a whole timed volley that breaks a standing line on command. Ten's driving a heavy charge clean through a formation and pulling the wing back out intact. Haven't done those either."

Harold looked at him suspiciously. "Why is that name familiar? Roach?" He cast back his memory, and Mens Perfecta helped, and he searched his memory until he came upon it. He was in his living room playing one of his favorite games. The memory buried within his mind until the perk helped him recover it. It was a good memory.“Witcher fan huh.” Harold said dryly.“Uhhh,” Fitch stammered. “Well, he does look like Roach, and he had a habit of getting out of his stall and coming to find me. He ended up in the wildest places, like on the roof of my hall one time. It seemed appropriate.” Fitch haltingly replied.Maren sighed next to him. “Roach was a girl. Why don’t you explain our plan for the True Path of the Heavy Tarentine?”

"That's the part I'm proud of." Fitch swept a hand at the drill line. "End of every training course, we run a selection. Top graduates go to the Landing to claim the true path off your book. Everyone else gets it word of mouth, from my veterans and me." He sobered. "Every man who takes it swears never to speak it to a soul."

Harold nodded once. "Good system."

Maren's mouth curved. "It was his idea, my lord.”

"It was a group—"

"It was your idea, Fitch."

Then he stopped talking, and glanced sideways at Maren.

"Show him the other one," she muttered and nudged him again.

"...Yeah." And just like that, he was nervous again.

The paddock sat off by itself past the pens, and Harold heard it before he saw it — a boom of hooves on heavy timber, then another, the sound of something big and furious trying to take a wall apart from the inside.

It stood alone in a stall built twice as heavy as the rest, and it was enormous — a hand and a half taller than anything else on the place, black going to storm-gray down the legs, and the air around it carried the same faint shimmer he knew very well. It threw its head, slammed a forehoof into the rails, and the whole structure jumped.

"My people can't tame him, my lord, and the methods I got from the trial aren't effective on him. After my adventurers captured him, he quickly took over the herds." Fitch had backed up half a step without seeming to know it. "He's broken two arms and a collarbone. He did kill two of my tamers, but they respawned pretty quickly. I'll never know what the system determines is crafting or not. I was going to turn him loose, honest — it isn't right, keeping him — only." He stopped. "Maren said you might know how."

Maren looked at him with narrowed eyes. "I did say that; you tend to pull out surprises." Maren agreed, arms folded, entirely at ease. "And you collect impossible things."

Harold didn't answer. He was letting his aura out and washing it over the horse while keeping it from the people around him. It was still hard to control, but all the practice over winter and on the march had helped. He'd been half-hoping the whole march that Fitch might have a good horse to spare, or one to sell him. This was better than anything he'd let himself hope for.

"Hello," he said to it.

He stepped up to the stall, and the horse came at the rails — teeth, faster than a thing that size had any right to be. It was taller than the horses Fitch and Maren had by another couple of hands. A monster by his own race's standards. Harold's hand moved before the thought finished and cracked it flat across the nose.

The horse froze. For one whole second it stared at him with what he'd have sworn on his life was personal outrage, and then it screamed and reared, hooves raking the air, and came down hard enough that the stall groaned on its posts.

Harold laughed and swung himself up over the paddock fence.

"Let him out!"

"My lord—" Fitch started.

"Let him out, Fitch!"

"Are — I really don't think that's—"

Maren walked past him and lifted the catch.

"Five silver he's on its back in a minute," Elroy said to Jenkins.

"That's not a horse, Elroy. That's a mean centaur's love child."

"Ten silver, then."

"Nobody's taking that bet; that horse is piiiiised," Carter said, not looking away.

The gate banged wide, and the horse came out like one of Vera's javelins and headed straight at him. Harold slid aside and let it pass close enough to feel the heat off its hide, and then he flared his mana and went after it.

The horse didn't run from him. It would shoot forward and create space, then it wheeled, hauling its huge body around to bring its hooves back onto him, and every time he was already moving around it — at its shoulder, off its flank, his boots tearing up the frozen ground and his breath going ragged and white, mana screaming off his skin — until he got a hand on its haunch and smacked it hard across the ass.

The horse spun in place, furious in a whole new way, and stamped down where he'd been. His hooves kicked up dirt and snow with the impact. He'd already gone the other way, around and in, and his fist closed on a handful of mane, and he swung up onto its back.

It bolted. It went from standing to flat gallop in a single stride and nearly left him behind on the second, and Harold got low over its neck, laughing into the wind, and put his mouth to its ear.

"Come on. Let's see what you've got. Let's run."

It threw one ear back at him — listening, or pretending not to — and then it quit fighting him and just ran full out, down the long axis of the paddock and around.

It ran for ten minutes, and Harold let it. He wasn't steering, focused on staying on, learning to move with him, and the horse only sped up.

The far fence rose up ahead, and the horse began to gather and slow. Harold leaned to its ear again.

"No. No, no — don't you dare slow down." He felt it hesitate under him. "Are you a lord of horses or aren't you? Jump it!"

Something surged up through the animal, a pulse of mana he felt in his own legs, and instead of pulling up it drove harder — three strides, two—

"HA — I knew it—"

—and it left the ground.

They cleared the fence with a foot to spare, and Harold nearly went off the back, clawed a double fistful of mane, and hauled himself down as they came onto the open plain running.

They ran and ran. Snow spat sideways, the town fell away behind them, and neither of them had any interest in stopping. Harold let it go until his hands went stiff in the mane and the cold got down into his chest.

"Alright." He eased it around with his knees, and this time it came around for him without a fight. "That's enough. You'll freeze us both." He laid a hand flat on its neck and left it there, feeling the great engine of the thing working under the skin, the steam rolling off it into the falling snow. "Let's go back. We need to get you a name. Something majestic."

The horse blew out a long breath and turned itself for the town, and Harold rubbed its neck while looking for his gloves. It was damned cold out.