The lifting slings were rigged once more and the horses were hoisted over the side into the shallow water. Tug looked balefully at Halt. He'd been enjoying himself for the past two days, quietly swaying from side to side in his comfortable, padded pen, eating at regular intervals, dozing in the sunshine and generally taking it easy while the wolfship bore him along. It wasn't the first time he and Halt had disagreed on the subject of how much rest a horse should have, how many apples it should be allowed to eat or how much exercise it really needed.
Still, it felt good to have firm ground underfoot once again and they hadn't been on board ship long enough to develop what the Skandians called the 'land wobbles' – where the ground seemed to rock and heave beneath you like the moving deck of a ship.
Tug shook himself all over, vibrating from his ears and short mane to his shaggy tail in the way horses do. Then he stood patiently as Will slipped a bridle over his nose. They weren't going to bother saddling the horses. Bareback would be fine for the current purpose. Evanlyn watched a little enviously as her four friends scrambled onto their horses. There had been no reason to bring a horse specially for her. If she needed to ride, they could buy a horse at Al Shabah. But Kicker and the three Ranger horses were all specially trained. No locally purchased horse would have the skills or the stamina they possessed. If the three Rangers or Horace needed horses, they needed the ones they were used to.
'Take it easy for the first few hundred metres,' Halt told the others. 'They'll want to run but we don't want them to strain anything.'
And indeed, in spite of Tug's initial displeasure at having his sea voyage interrupted, he found that he did want to run. He wanted to show Abelard and Blaze – and that big, dumb, musclebound battlehorse – just who was who when it came to speed.
He strained against the reins as they moved off, heading south. But Will held him in, allowing him only to walk at first, then to trot, then finally releasing him into a slow canter.
The four horses swept down the long curving beach in line abreast, cantering side by side, each one of them tossing his head and pulling stubbornly at the reins. Each one convinced that he was the fastest, most sure-footed, longwinded creature in the horse world. They rolled their eyes at each other, snorting and challenging each other – and accepting the challenges the others were throwing out. But the firm hands on their reins stopped them cutting loose.
Tug felt the blood coursing through him and the stiffness flowing out of his legs. He felt good. He felt alive. He felt he was doing what he was born to do. The sand underfoot was firm without being too hard. It flew in showers of wet clods behind him. The salt air filled his lungs and he breathed it deeply. He felt Will's hands relax a little and he surged forward, for a few moments moving ahead of the other horses until their riders allowed them to accelerate a little and Will checked his own increasing speed. Still shoulder to shoulder, the four horses went to a full canter along the beach.
On the high stern of the wolfship, Evanlyn stood on the railing, shading her eyes to watch them as they dwindled into the distance. She hated being left behind like this. Horace had offered to let her ride behind him but she had declined, It wasn't the same. She didn't want to be a passenger. She wanted to ride with her friends.
Svengal heaved himself up onto the railing with her, staring after the riders.
'I really don't know how you do it,' he told her quietly. He had watched the Araluans mount, then move away, sitting easily as if each was suddenly part of the animal itself. It was a skill he knew he would never, ever master. It looked like such fun, he thought. But it had nothing to do with the clutching, lurching, fearful clumsiness he felt when he ascended to a horse's back.
She saw the slight wistfulness in his eyes and patted his hand.
'It's not hard. It just takes practice,' she said. 'I could teach you.'
But he shook his head. 'It's the practice that's the hard part,' he replied, absentmindedly rubbing his backside, where his muscles still had a faint memory of the ride to Redmont and back.
'Skipper!' Axel called down, from the lookout position on the cross tree of the mast. Svengal looked up and saw his arm outstretched to the north.
'We've got company,' Axel continued. Svengal shaded his eyes. Far to the north, on the low hills inland from the beach, he saw a glint of sunlight on metal – a helmet or a shield. A small cloud of dust could be seen as well. Riders, he thought. And quite a lot of them. He shrugged. It wasn't too surprising. Even though this was a sparsely inhabited part of the coast, the Iberians would have patrols out, and the sight of a beached wolfship would be a matter for investigation. The riders were still at least an hour away, he estimated. There was plenty of time to recall the four Araluans, load the horses aboard and sail away. But it was best to be careful.
'Better call them back,' he told a crewman, standing by with a ramshead horn for that purpose.
The man nodded, took a deep breath and blew two long blasts – the agreed recall signal.
Three kilometres down the beach, Halt heard the long mournful blasts. He reined in, signalling the others to do the same, and swivelled in the saddle, looking back along the beach to the ship. From his position, he couldn't see the approaching horsemen. But he knew Svengal would have a good reason for sounding the recall.
'Time to get back,' he said. 'Let's give them a… '
Before he could finish the statement, Will and Tug were away, the little horse's legs churning as he shot to a full gallop within the space of a few strides. Blaze was close behind him and Horace and Kicker lumbered behind the other two, slowly building to the battlehorse's thundering full speed.
'… run,' Halt said to nobody but himself. Then he touched Abelard with his knee and the finely trained horse shot away like an arrow from a bow. He'd catch Kicker, Halt knew. But there was no way he'd make up ground on Blaze and Tug.
Particularly Tug…
Chapter 14
The Arridi coast was a thin brown line off the starboard side as Wolfwind slipped smoothly through the water. It was strangely quiet now that the crew had been able to ship their oars and set the big square sail. For the past four days, the wind had blown steadily from the east, directly opposed to their direction of travel. But as the sun had risen on this, the fifteenth day of their journey, the wind had shifted to the south. Svengal had the yardarm raised and braced round to an angle of forty-five degrees to catch the wind. The wolfship tried to turn upwind immediately, like a weathervane. But Svengal's firm control of sheets and tiller kept the bow pointed east. Wolfwind still crabbed to the north, inevitably, but the conflicting forces created by the wind in the sail, the resistance of the keel in the water and the turning force of the rudder resolved themselves into an east-north-east course for the ship.
And even if she was losing some ground to the north, she was making better progress to the east than she would under oars. Svengal knew that a wise captain conserved the strength of his oarsmen as far as possible.
'We're making some northing,' he told Halt, 'but we'll stay with the wind until we're closer to Al Shabah.'
Halt nodded agreement. Svengal knew what he was doing and there was nothing that the Ranger could suggest to improve their progress. He trusted the big Skandian's skill and judgement almost as much as he trusted Erak's.
Halt, Evanlyn and Svengal were deep in conversation now in the stern part of the ship, discussing plans for the coming negotiations. Horace was crouched beside Kicker in his pen, working to remove a stone that had become wedged under the battlehorse's shoe on their last run ashore.