Dagg rolled his eyes, ears akimbo, nostrils flared, and tossed his head like one who had just trod upon a snake. Jan put his head down, helpless with mirth. He laughed until his legs felt weak.
“Both of you have borne yourselves like brainless foals,” the young mare snapped. “You, Jan son-of-Korr, haven’t you grace enough to speak when you’re spoken to?” Jan ignored her. Her tone crackled. “I am talking to you.”
She marked that, when the prince’s son neither answered nor turned, by nipping him smartly on the shoulder. Jan jumped and wheeled. Disbelief, and a sudden odd heedlessness uncoiled in him. No one had ever set teeth to him, not in earnest, but his father. No one had ever dared. He felt the blood surging in his head. His ears grew hot.
“You champed me!” he cried.
Dagg on the ground had swallowed his grin.
“You set teeth to me.”
“Aye, and I’ll do so again the next time you ignore me. What have you to say for yourself?”
Jan stared at her. Not even a word of regret—the arrogance! The astonishment in him turned to rage. He’d let no one, not even the healer’s daughter, treat him like a foal. He plunged at her, his head down, before he was even aware what he was doing—perhaps a slash across the flank would teach this half-grown better manners. Tek countered with her own horn, fencing him expertly, and threw him off with a sharp rap on the head.
Jan staggered, startled. He had always been the victor, the easy best in the mock battles among the uninitiated colts. Now—first bitten, then baited, then parried in three blows. Jan regained his footing and stood stunned, humiliated. A cold little voice in the back of his mind teased and taunted him, but he shoved it away, shoved everything away. His breath was coming hard between clenched teeth. Tek had not fallen back even a step.
Dimly, he came aware that Dagg beside him was speaking. “Jan. Hear me. She’s half-grown.”
His friend started to rise. “Colts don’t spar with warriors. List, come on, let’s….”
Jan ignored him, flattening his ears. He was not a colt, not just any colt. He was the son of the prince of the unicorns, and he would not be beaten off a second time. Tek snorted, shifting her stance. She squared to meet him. He lowered his head, gathering his legs.
“Enough!”
The word rolled hard and deep above the rising wind. Jan pulled up, startled, spinning around. Tek glanced past him, and he glimpsed her falling back now in surprise. The prince of the unicorns stood before them on the lookout knoll, black against the grayness of the storm. Lightning clashed, throwing a blue sheen across him. Jan flinched at the suddenness, feeling his rash temper abruptly vanish, like a snake into a hole. He gazed uneasily into his father’s dark and angry eyes.
“Leave off these foals’ games,” ordered the prince. “You, Dagg, son of my shoulder-friend, off home with you—at once.”
Jan felt his friend beside him scrambling to his feet. Dagg bowed hastily to the prince, then wheeled and was gone. His hoofbeats on the slope grew faint.
“You, Tek, healer’s daughter, begone as well.”
“Prince,” Tek started, but he shook his head.
“Rest sure, young mare, I put no blame on you in this.”
“Korr, prince,” she said, “I am on look-out….”
He tossed his head then. “Never mind. No gryphons will be flying once the rain comes. Now off, or you will be soaked.”
Tek bowed her long neck to the prince, then wheeled and bounded away like a lithe deer through the trees. Korr waited until the gusting wind had swept the sound of her heels away.
“Foal!” he burst out then, and Jan flinched beneath his father’s rebuff. “Witless thing! Have I not expressly forbidden any colts so high on the slopes, and warned all against interfering with the lookouts?”
Jan eyed his hooves and mumbled assent.
“Can you not understand gryphons may slip into these woods under cover of cloud in two bats of an eye? A moment’s distraction…” He broke off with a strangled snort.
Jan hung his head. His father spoke the truth; he remembered the hunting eagles, how swiftly they had fallen from cloudbottom to treetops while Dagg had been baiting Tek. What if, rather than hawks, there had come wingcats instead? Jan picked at the turf with his hoof.
“It was just a game,” he murmured, more to himself than to Korr. “We meant no harm.”
“Your games,” muttered Korr. “But enough.”
The black prince launched down from the lookout knoll and gave his son a shove to turn him.
“Be grateful this storm’s brought no gryphons, young princeling, or you might well have made feast-flesh for some formel’s hatchlings—or Tek might, or Dagg. Hie now! Get you home.”
Gryphons
Jan sprang down the slope, his pace abruptly quickened by a few hard nips on the flank from his father. He galloped blindly, careless of the hillside’s steepness, reckless where he set his hooves. The prince ran beside him, herding him away from the sheer drops, the loose rock shelves.
Jan ducked, dodging through the trees. He wished he could fly, fly away and outpace his father. His breast was tight, his eyes stinging. All he had wanted to do was watch the storm. Nothing, no ill would have come of it if it had not been for Tek. Arrogant half-grown! Jan wished the pied mare bad footing.
How he hated the young warriors, half-grown, already initiated—hated, yet in the same breath envied them. He was weary to death of colts’ games and foals’ playing, and longed to the center of his bones to be allowed to sharpen his hooves and horn and join the Ring of Warriors. Why had Korr held him back from Pilgrimage last year, despite his pleading?
Deep down, he knew. And thinking of it brought a bitter taste into his mouth. There was in his nature a grievous fault. He could never do as he was told, as others did. He always plunged ahead without thinking, forgetting the Law—or deliberately breaking it. He was a vexation to everyone, a bitter disappointment to Korr, and secretly he wondered if he would ever learn to bear himself as befitted the prince’s son.
Jan plunged down the steep hillside. A stitch had grown between his ribs. It ached like a wound. He and his father left the wooded slope for the rolling meadow of the valley floor. The sky above was wholly dark. Jan felt a great drop splash against his back, soaking into the long hairs of his winter coat. Another drop struck him, and then two more. The air was thick suddenly with falling water. He heard Korr snorting in disgust.
They headed across the open meadow toward their cave halfway up the near slope of the Vale. Korr sprang onto the rock ledge before the cave mouth, Jan scrambling up behind. The entrance to the grotto was narrow. In the gloom beyond, Jan saw his mother, Ses, cream colored with a mane as amber as autumn grass. She was heavy in foal.
Korr moved two steps into the cave, tossing his head, and the water slung from his long, jet mane. Jan crowded in behind, out of the rain, though he knew by his father’s abrupt, forceful movements that he was angry still. The prince of the unicorns shook himself, and Jan ducked, but he could not avoid the spray short of retreating into the rain again. His mother stood back out of range.
“A wet day for bathing,” she laughed when Korr was done. “How clement of the weather to soak you both so handsomely.” Her light, sure tone seemed to mollify her mate a little. “Jan, come out of the door now; you’re wet enough. Korr, let him by.”
Jan saw his father glance over one shoulder at him. The prince advanced a pace, no more, cleaning the muck from between the toes of his hooves with his horn. “I found him up on the high slopes again,” he said shortly, “near the lookout knoll.”
Jan saw his mother’s eye grow rueful for a moment, but then she smiled. “But he always goes up there. You know that. He always has.”