Will shook his head. "Flares won't work on these horses."
"Why not?"
"They're blind," he said. "Now be quiet.''
After a while the clanging stopped. That meant the horses would becoming soon Some time after that, Will was almost certain that he heard a gentle murmuring noise like the rumor of rain in the distance. It was less a sound than wistful thought. But it was there. Maybe.
"Do not take the lead horse," a ghost of a voice murmured. It was the Whisperer.
"Why shouldn't I?" Will asked, every bit as quietly. "Surely the leader will be fastest and most desirable."
"Not so. It will be fast but callow. The wiser horses hold back and let the young stallions, their heroes, take the foremost with its attendant risks. They are expendable. The queen mare, however, will be found at the very center of the herd and it is she you want. Fleetest of all is she and cleverest as well, sure-footed on wet surfaces, cautious on dry, and alert to danger even when all seems safest."
Far down the tunnel, a gentle luminescence bloomed, faint as the internal glow of the ocean on a moonless night. There was a soft sound, as of many animals breathing deeply in the distance. "Here they come," Tatterwag said.
Like sea foam, the horses filled the tunnel. Shadowy figures ran among them, as swiftly as the beasts themselves. These were the old haints, the horse-folk, running naked as the day they were born. Even at a distance, they could be sensed, for with them came fear. Though they could not plant or build or light a fire, the old powers were theirs still, and they were able to generate terror and use it as a weapon. Thus it was that they herded their horses. Thus it was that they fought, using the great brutes' bodies against their enemies.
"Oh, baby!" Jenny Jumpup moaned. "I gone get me a young stud. I gone wrap my legs around him and never let go. I gone squeeze him so tight he rear up and scream."
"You're making me horny, Jen," Kokudza said. They all laughed softly.
Then the herd was upon them.
The noise of hooves, near-silent a moment before, rose up like thunder. The horses filled the aqueduct like ocean waters surging. One by one, the raiders dropped down upon them, like ripe fruit falling from the trees.
"Wait," the Whisperer said. "Wait...wait...not yet..." And then, when Will could wait no longer, he spotted the queen mare in the center of the herd, running as quickly as any but clearly not expending herself, holding something extra in reserve. "Now!"
Will leaped.
Briefly, he flew. Then, one incredible second later, he slammed onto the back of the mare. He grabbed wildly for her neck and scrabbled to keep his legs on either side of her back.
The queen mare rose up, pawing the air. Wills legs were flung clear, and he was almost thrown. But he clung to her neck, and by the time her forefeet were back on the ground, had managed to get his own legs back in place.
She ran.
Once, twice, she slammed into the horses running to either side of her. Each time, one of Will's legs was crushed briefly between the great beasts. But the impact was not quite enough to numb them, and Will was determined that he would not be stopped by mere pain. He hung on determinedly.
Then the queen mare had broken free of the herd and was running ahead of them all.
Riding low on her back, concentrating on keeping from falling, Will began to sing the charm he had been taught:
"Your neck is high and straight, Your head shrewd with intelligence, Your belly short, your back full, Your proud chest hard with muscles..."
His mount swung her head around and tried to bite him, but he grabbed her mane high on the back of her skull with both hands and was able to keep her teeth from closing on his flesh. And then the charm took hold and she no longer tried to throw him, though she continued to run in a full-out panic.
They were alone now, separated from the herd and galloping wildly down who-knew-which lightless tunnel. Though she was blind, somehow the queen mare knew where the walls were and did not run into them. Somehow she never stumbled. Whatever senses she employed in the absence of sight, they were keen and shrewd, and equal to the task Will understood now. as he had not before, why Lord Weary so desperately wanted these steeds. Will's motorcycle was of only limited utility belowground; it could not be ridden along the ties of the train tracks, nor could it leap over a sudden gap in the floor of a funnel if Will did not spot it in time. This beast could travel swiftly anywhere. It could traverse the distance between settlements in a fraction of the time a pedestrian could.
"Joy of princes, throne of warriors, Hoof-fierce treasure of the rich, Eternal comfort to the restless..."
There were hundreds of lines to this charm, and if Will were to skip even one, it would not work. He had labored hard to memorize them all. Now, as he neared the final stanzas, Will felt the thoughts of the queen mare like a silvery brook flowing alongside his own. They were coming together now, moving as one, muscle upon muscle, thought on thought, a breath away from being a single shared essence in two bodies.
"Riding seems easy to he who rests indoors But courageous to he who travels the high-roads On the back of a sturdy horse."
She was breathing hard now. Horses could only run at a lull gallop for brief periods of time, though those who did not know them imagined them continuing thus for hours on end. The queen mare was winded—Will could feel a sympathetic pain in his own chest—and if she did not stop soon and walk it off, her great heart would burst within her.
This was the moment of crisis. Will had to convince her that accepting him as a rider was preferable to death.
Laying his cheek alongside her neck, still singing, he closed his eyes and entered her thoughts. There was neither color nor light in the queen mare's world, but her sensorium was wider and more varied than his own, for she was possessed of a dozen fractional senses. Riding her mind, he felt the coolness coming off of the walls, and the dampness or dryness of the ground before them. Tiny electrical charges lying dormant in the conduits and steel catwalks that flashed past tickled faintly against his awareness. Variant densities in the air slowed or sped sounds passing through it. Smells arrived in his nostrils with the precise location of their origins. Braids of scent and sound and feel wound together to give him a perfect picture of his surroundings.
Now Will thought back to the farmlands outside his old village, and recalled the dusty green smell of their fields and the way that in late afternoon the sun turned the seeded tops of the grasses into living gold. He pictured the cold, crystalline waters of a stream running swiftly through a tunnel of greenery and exploding under the hooves of his borrowed mount. He called up the flickering flight of butterflies among the wildflowers in a sudden clearing, and then an orchard with gnarled old apple trees and humblebees droning tipsily among the half-fermented windfalls. This was something the queen mare had never experienced, nor ever could. But the desire for it was in her blood and her bones. It was written into her genes.
He sang the last words of the charm. Now he found himself murmuring into the queen mare's ear.
"Ohhhh, sweet lady," Will crooned. "You and I, mother of horses—we were meant to be. Share your strong back with me, let me ride you, and I will show you such sights every time we travel together."
He could feel the tug of his words on her. He could feel her resolve weakening.
"I'll take good care of you, I promise. Oats every day and never a saddle, never a bit. I'll rub you down and comb your mane and plait your tail. No door shall ever lock you in. You'll have fresh water to drink, and clean straw to sleep on."
He was stroking the side of her neck with one hand now. She was skittish still, but Will could feel the warmth of feeling welling up within her. "And this above all." he whispered: "No one shall ever ride you but me."