Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

“Sister Emhelee.” The reply was firm, though wavery and distant. It was hard to communicate over the distance, for Midnight kept himself well back in the foliage.

“Midnight, enemies, help!” Emhelee sent. “Careful, careful.” She sent again and again, hoping only that the colt could pick up her thoughts as he followed. She was aware of the black shadow behind them, far enough away to avoid immediate detection, but real communication was difficult. Still she reinforced her warning. She was not so frightened now that shfe had at least one friend who knew of her plight and who could be counted on to help. Not that Midnight was a properly trained war stallion. He was still a very young, leggy colt without the killing weight and thick bones of an adult.

Emhelee closed her eyes and her mind to such thoughts. Midnight was her best hope now. He could surely help her escape from the priests, no matter the purpose for which they wanted her.

They arrived at a large gate just past twilight. Emhelee was not familiar with this place, even where it was. She knew that they had come farther south, which pleased her, but exactly where and how far she couldn’t say. She was sure from the sun that they were slightly more to the east than when she had been captured, but there was no city here, no town or village with a name she knew. Instead there was only this large holdlike building.

A thin man with watery eyes in a black robe came out. “Oh, yes, very good,” he said, examining Emhelee. “Bring her in. The father abbot will see you shortly.”

The men grumbled, but the gate groaned and opened. A thought brushed Emhelee’s mind lightly. The priests would not notice one more horse nosing behind the rest, a black one in the quickly darkening night. “Be careful,” Emhelee repeated once more as the priests took her away.

They did not unbind her. Instead she was carried like a sack of potatoes over the shoulder of one into the stone edifice and down a flight of stairs. They had not taken her knife, strapped against her thigh in proper feminine manner. She twisted slightly so that the priest carrying her would not feel the unyielding hardness of it. Down they went again, and this time Emhelee was taken to a small chamber, where she was unceremoniously dumped.

The priests left, taking the lamp with them. She was alone in the dark, her hands still bound. “Midnight,” she beamed, knowing full well that the colt must be too far to hear. Still, against all hope she called out, the only thing she could think to do in this place. They had left her tied and had given her neither food nor water, nor even a pail to use in the comer. As her eyes became accustomed to the dark she noticed that there was no window, no spot of stars anywhere in the room. That she had expected. She was underground.

“Midnight!” This time panic boosted her sending. If she had been glad before that the men who had captured her had waited to do ill, now she was not so sure. With her knife at least she could have tried to fight or sought an honorable death so that h#r father would have been proud. Now there was only the dark and the terror of what would come. If they didn’t give her food or water they didn’t care much if she lived long, and somehow she suspected that was exactly the case. “Midnight!” It was almost a warcry, stronger than she had ever believed she could send.

A moment of recognition, of contact, and then there was nothing. Still, it reassured her. Midnight was here and had not been found. If only he lived up to his boasts, or only a quarter of them, she would find some way out.

Later Emhelee could not say if she had slept or dozed or had been awake the whole of the night. Time ran strangely locked up in the darkness without contact with any creature. When she heard the footsteps coming closer to her cell she was relieved to have the monotony broken, if only by danger.

In the flickering light, the priests’ faces were sepulchral and threatening. Emhelee shrank away from their thin-lipped grins and grasping hands. “Come, girl, it’s an honor you’re lucky to receive, ’ ’ one of the priests said, which reassured Emhelee not at all. The other shrugged, grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. Emhelee was too exhausted to fight, even had she not been tied.

They went down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs. After another hallway they emerged into the light of day. Emhelee blinked against the brilliance of the morning sun. She could hear chanting in the distance, strange cadences in a language she could not understand. Then, from the comer of her eye, she caught a dark movement near the comer of the building.

“Midnight!” she called, hoping that the colt was close enough. Familiar thought brushed against the edge of her mind as Midnight tried to contact her.

“Where do they take you?” he demanded brusquely.

“To the building with the chanting. Midnight, I fear they mean me no good,” she mindspoke urgently.

She thought she heard a snort and the stomping of a hoof. Desperately she tried to impress Midnight with the fear in her, the certainty that these Ehleenee did not plan to let her live. 1

“Midnight loves battle.” The words rang clearly in her head. She whimpered. The unlessoned colt could say anything, but he was still too young and unable to do anything against the many Ehleenee gathered here for the ritual. A fully trained warhorse of years, with his full weight on him and heavy shoes to crush the fragile bones of enemies, might have been able to save her. A yearling like Midnight was no help at all.

Amid the chanting the priests tied her to a stone altar, dark with rust-colored stains. Around stood not only the black-clad monks, but others dressed as lesser nobility and soldiers. Soldiers. Emhelee whimpered again. This was not meant to be. She had not been bom and raised, the daughter of the great ihoheeks of the Confederation—albeit illegitimate and unacknowledged—to be used as a sacrifice in some decadent religion. Sun and Wind were honest and fair, and she wondered briefly if the Wind would take her up, sacrificed to an unnatural god.

The chanting went on and on. One of the black-clad monks produced a silver chalice of delicate work. Emhelee shrank against the cold stone. She did not plan to do it. Anger merged with fear, anger above all, and flowed through her. Even though she had been bound all the night and had not slept, energy coursed through her. She could feel it like sparkling sunlight on frost, blazing in her body. Then the fear was gone and only the power was left. Emhelee was no longer aware of herself, of the priests and their chalice. Strength merged with strength, power with destiny and heredity.

It was horses she knew to seek, Midnight she had found before. Midnight and Meehah converged into a single image in her mind as she sent her thoughts clearly to those who had minds to hear. There were no words wrapped in her power and terror, nothing to direct the current she poured forth. There was only the one ringing note/image/concept of revenge.

A thundering came at the door, the sound of Steel and hooves against the heavy oak. The priests turned white. They dropped their implements, and swords came out from behind long robes. The soldiers, who had stood quietly to this point, now turned, weapons in hand, to face the splintering portal.

Emhelee was not aware of what was going on. She could not stop the sending, the fury that drove the pictures in her head outward, outward over the quivering crowd. Midnight and Meehah and all the others she had seen she imagined at the door. The great chestnut and two grays who roamed the pastures of Harzburk, the roan mare and the bay with white stockings, all of them crowded into her memory and out in that sending. She bespoke all of them with all the power of her life, her being.

The door splintered open as the participants in the aborted ritual began to scream. They ran, not for the door but for the few windows. Some even managed to climb to the high ledges and jump in their panic.

Others, men armed with swords and axes and bows, began fighting phantasms. Emhelee turned her head and watched with amazement as the crazed men-at-arms charged an army of the unmounted warhorses of Harzburk. She knew them all, the horses she had called, and elation tinged the fury and fear in her as she watched the great chestnut trample the priest who had carried her here under his great hooves.

In her joy she tried to communicate with these noble four-legs, but try as she could there was no mind she could touch. And as she stared a little longer, she found she could not focus on a single one of the great beasts. The chestnut’s coat shimmered in the darkness, and Emhelee thought she could glimpse a bit of the wall through his bloodied bulk.

Suddenly she gasped, would have screamed out except for the surprise. The horses of Harzburk dissolved before her. The Ehleenee continued to fight, to run and fall before warrior beasts Emhelee could no longer see.

Only a single horse remained in her vision, a leggy black yearling who went from one downed man to another, stomping and rearing on the fallen, crushing flesh into bone in great killing blows until the place was empty of living Ehleenee.

Elegantly Midnight approached Emhelee on the altar. "I told you that Midnight is brave and great and crushes the enemies of his sister,” the young horse mindspoke proudly. He leaned down to nuzzle Emhelee’s cheek, and the mindtouch became stronger. “But why are you waiting? Why didn’t you run away?”

“They tied me here with rope,” Emhelee explained. “If you could pull it free or chew through it or something, then we can wo away from this place. But 1 have a question, Midnight. Where were all the other horses? Where did they

all go?”

“What other horses?” Midnight demanded angrily. “There were none but myself, although the two-legs acted most strangely, striking where there were no enemies. They fled from the sight of me, though, did you see?”

Emhelee beamed her affirmation and reminded the black colt about the rope, which was not too thick and rather old. He began to chew it contemptuously. “Sister Emhelee, it tastes very bad,” he complained. “When you get up, will you give me some apples? I like apples very much and you never give me any.”

For several more days of travel, Emhelee could not keep her mind on the country they passed or the journey itself. I'.nough that they kept moving south, she thought. The horses who had come to her aid with Midnight in the Ehleenee monastery haunted her. Still, they made progress, especially since Midnight insisted that Emhelee ride him and that they keep to the main road.

As they were scouting for a good place to camp, Midnight’s ears pricked up. “Sister Emhelee,” he bespoke her happily, “1 hear the sounds of horses and an army. If we get near I can see if they’re friends, and then we will be safe. For I am tired of this going always to nowhere. I don’t know where any Confederation is, and my sire will be pleased to see me. It was him I went to follow, though all said 1 was too young. But 1 am not too young. I proved it, didn’t I?” Emhelee was too distracted to protest as Midnight carried her close to the assemblage of armed men. In the center of the great camp stood a silken tent, larger and more beautiful than any Emhelee had ever seen. Midnight filled her head with joyful wonder.