Regi's Goddess, chapter 8 (Patreon)

Dante stretched his neck. He might have grown up on the back of a horse, but these pebafri had a much different gait. Instead of the rocking motion of a gaited horse or even the bone shivering trot of his first horse—a cranky old gelding called Skip—the pebafri had a lurching motion, front to back. Part of his brain felt like he was on a horse, but every uncomfortable jerk reminded him that he was on an alien creature from another planet.

Dante breathed out and closed his eyes as he searched for that moment where the animal’s movement became his. However, his beast did a quick two-step that made Dante’s eyes fly open and his body tighten around his spine in preparation for the animal to start bucking. The pebafri turned to look at Dante before snorting.

Apparently they were not destined to reach any accord. Sometimes a rider and an animal simply didn’t mesh. Aggravation still circled in Dante’s gut. He had pinned too many hopes on the idea of escaping the metal walls of the ship, and reality was not living up to the many daydreams he had tended over the previous months. He had asked Siger for an animal with some spirit, not a demon focused on scraping him off on the nearest tree.

Siger guided his huge black pebafri up a slope between two trees with limbs that drooped almost like a weeping willow. Something had eaten all the lower branches and foliage. Long strips of gray bark were missing, revealing pinkish sapwood underneath, and Dante guessed some alien version of deer. If Regi’s people truly respected nature they way Regi suggested, the presence of deer implied the presence of predators. That made Dante search the trees for any shadowed forms. “Do you have large predators in the area?” Dante asked.

“I do not see any at this time, but if I identify one, I shall point to it,” Siger said. That wasn’t exactly what Dante had asked, but he had grown used to the translator’s near misses. Siger weaved through the forested area following faint paths between dense bushes and up a steep slope. Siger’s long-legged beast leaned into the angle but maintained a placid nature that made Dante wonder if it was overfed. In contrast, when Dante’s pebafri reached that point in the trail, he dug his front feet into the loose rock and rocketed forward.

When they reached the top, Dante settled back into the saddle and rolled his shoulders to release some of the tension. He had spent so long telling tenderfoots to relax when he took them on a range rides that he felt like he shouldn’t have to keep giving himself the same reminder. Dante’s animal closed the distance and stretched out a neck, probably to take a bite out of Siger’s pebafri. Dante pulled his creature’s head around and earned another baleful glare.

“So what is this specific pebafri’s name?” He had asked earlier and been offered only ‘pebafri,’ which probably meant that he had phrased the question badly. Dante patted the pebafri’s neck. He’d found adding a little kindness to a firm hand on the reins worked best.

“We call him Goddess’s Brown.”

“I thought pebafri belonged to a god, not a goddess.” Dante had trouble keeping track of all the various gods, but he figured asking respectfully about the gods was a good way to start convincing Kowri that he wasn’t an asshole. Maybe the Coalition had trouble dealing with believers, but Dante lived in Texas, a land famous for freedom, self-made men and women, and hard-core religion. Texans knew how to turn religion into a weapon of mass destruction against the federal government, so Dante never underestimated the lengths a person would go to in order to defend their God. Or in the case of the Kowri, their gods.

“I’m not sure which goddess he was named to honor. I was a middling student of theology and there are many goddesses one might hope to please.” Siger’s voice had a terse quality that might imply that he disapproved of the topic or that he needed more fiber in his diet. Dante found it hard to tell. When Siger urged his pebafri between two trees and up a slope, Dante accidentally turned his horse in the opposite direction. Dante corrected his handling. A horse turned away from leg pressure, but push a pebafri and it leaned it. Siger’s instruction had been clear, but Dante’s body had certain habits he had a hard time breaking.

His animal and Siger’s were so different that Dante suspected one of them lacked either breeding or training. Siger’s pebafri was languid and took every opportunity to grab a mouthful of grass. He was as lazy as any trail horse Dante had ever put a greenhorn on. While Dante would never call Goddess’s Brown flighty because she showed no interest in running away from anything, but she did have a twitchiness that came close. She just tended to jump toward stimulus instead of away from it. If Dante wasn’t careful, she was going to take a chunk out of Siger’s mount before this ride was over. He doubted that would improve his reputation.

“How do you judge quality in a pebafri?” Dante asked.

“If they run well.” Siger kicked his animal and darted through the trees. This was a dangerous game to play with someone on a new animal, but Dante kicked his own pebafri and raced after him. Siger glanced over his shoulder and then turned his animal sharply to the left.

“I don’t think I’m comfortable enough in the saddle for barrel racing,” Dante said, trying to make his words light with humor. He didn’t know how much of that translated, but hopefully the tone came across. Dante didn’t want to sound like a know-it-all who told the guy that he had no business encouraging a rider to take risks on an unfamiliar animal. That’s how accidents happened, and Dante remembered that Regi carried an anelace specifically to offer a quick end to pebafri who might break a leg. He didn’t want an animal to suffer because Siger wanted to issue some challenge.

“I don’t think an outsider will ever get comfortable in a pebafri’s saddle,” Siger countered. “That animal is sacred to Gavd.”

“I respect that,” Dante said. He focused on guiding his animal away from a thick tree trunk.

“Outsiders have no respect,” Siger said.

Dante’s head jerked up. Siger looked at him before kicking his pebafri, sending him scrambling up the slope.

“Have I offended you in some way?” Dante called. Already Siger was half-hidden by the trees. He looked downslope, and the cold expression on his face made Dante’s guts turn to ice. He’d seen that expression on homophobes in Texas and slavers on the alien ship. Disgust and disdain clearly transcended species. Worse, the Kowri communication network used phones keyed to an individual, and Dante hadn’t qualified to get one, so he couldn’t call for help. Five minutes earlier, Dante had loved the fact that Siger had taken him deep into the woods, but right now fear burned the base of his throat.

“You came to our sacred world.”

“Your gods brought us,” Dante countered. He was a good sixty percent sure that was the truth.

“Gavd didn’t bring outsiders to this world. If any god did, it was Divashi, the poisoner, the destroyer of life. Gavd does not lead us to yield in the face of outsider impiety.” Siger urged his horse faster. Dante urged his own animal up the steep slope. The nature of the Kowri world with civilization ending in a sharp line that left untouched wilderness meant that he wasn’t as confident he could find his way back to the town.  In Texas, he’d had his phone, the distant rumble of a truck on the highway just over the rise, a line of power cables. Civilization always lurked right around the corner.

“Siger!” Dante called. Maybe this was a particularly cruel form of hazing. The dislike wasn’t faked, but Dante told himself that Siger wouldn’t act on the feeling. He just wanted to vent his displeasure. Dante got it. The Kowri had their nice isolated empire with an impervious boundary, and here came Regi and Dante and all sorts of outsiders threatening their sense of security. Dante suspected he understood that better than Regi did. Regi talked as if his people’s xenophobia was illogical enough to defy explanation, which was naive.

Siger reached the crest of a wooded hill and whipped his pebafri around. Something in his gaze made Dante stop his animal. Without warning, Siger drove his animal straight downhill at Dante. Dante’s animal screamed and threw his head into the air rearing back, sharp hooves cutting through the air. The other pebafri bared his teeth and Siger kicked his heels into the animal’s sides. All Dante could do was hold on as his animal screamed and charged uphill. Dante held tightly with his legs and kept his body low as he struggled to move with his animal. He abandoned any attempt to regain control in favor of simply not breaking his neck.

Siger brought his whip down on Dante’s arm, and fire coursed through his body, but months as a slave had inured him to that sort of pain. It was familiar, and Dante just leaned away from Siger, trusting that the stable master would not risk hitting his own animal. He trusted wrong. Siger’s whip came down on the pebafri’s neck, and Goddess’s Brown shoulder slammed the other pebafri, sending it stumbling downslope. Dante’s leg had been caught between the animals, and now it ached dully. Even though it hurt less than the whip mark, Dante knew that sort of injury could cause much more damage. Crush injuries could kill, even hours after the person survived.

However, Dante had no time to worry about that now. Siger was downhill and galloping his horse as if he were on a racetrack. The problem was that the uneven ground and rock made an accident more likely than not. Dante held on as tightly as his animal pursued through the trees and careened down hills of loose shale. It slammed into one tree with his shoulder, and Dante felt the reverberation through his entire body. A horse would have broken a leg, but the pebafri screamed and jackknifed before breaking free of the trees and racing along a low ridge in pursuit of Siger’s and his pebafri. Dante held on for dear life through the most dangerous ride of his life.

The pebafri found its stride and Dante started to believe that he might survive when the animal lost his footing. He went off the edge of a shallow escarpment, and Dante felt the roll begin. He couldn’t survive if the pebafri landed on him, so he kicked loose from the stirrups and threw himself backward into the gravel. The pebafri rolled, legs kicking in the air for a moment as he slid before he righted himself and bolted to his feet, legs sprawled and braced as though he expected the ground to betray him as well.

“Easy, boy,” Dante crooned, hoping to get close enough to grab the reins. The pebafri took one look at him and bared his teeth before bolting away through the trees after Siger.

Well, fuck.