Protector

That left the children, and three quiet, older mecheiti, sleepy-looking animals—there were four younger spares and a new foal milling about the pen at loose ends, making trouble, occasioning a threatening head shake from Tatiseigi’s mount and a warning from the junior grooms. But these were the oldest in the herd. They’d follow the herd leaders at whatever pace they could muster, to the ends of the earth, but they wasted none of their energy. The first stood with eyes half-shut as the grooms first lifted Artur up, and then led up a mecheita for Irene.

The herd-leader, however, had gotten wind of odd-smelling small strangers, and was circling under taps of the groom’s quirt, wanting to get closer, chuffing and blowing, sloping hindquarters aquiver with impatience. He—it happened to be a male—let out a moaning rumble, a threat, a warning. They very much needed to get this lot out of the pen and moving on this cool morning.

Irene looked at the herd-leader, who had been put into another frustrated circle, and with a slip of her foot on the first step of the mounting block, she recovered her balance. Then she froze, with a look of terror on her face.

“Come on, Reny,” Gene called out. “Move! You can do it!”

She came unfrozen. She settled her balance on the block, faltered her way up another step onto the top of the block, dropping the rein as she caught her balance. The groom handily caught it as it fell and gave it back, folded the same hand about the quirt and shoved her upward without any preamble. Irene grabbed the saddle back, not the mounting strap, missed the toehold, and as the mecheita took a step forward, she lost contact with the mounting block and hung there, dropping the quirt. Bren loosed his rein and shifted his quirt, deciding to ride alongside and tell Irene to go back upstairs and ask Cajeiri’s servants for a cup of tea.

But she had hold of the front ring instead of the quirt, and she started hauling herself upward. The groom caught a flailing foot in his hand and lifted. Irene landed belly down, managed to drag her right leg over the saddle back and, as the groom tried to keep the old mecheita still, Irene hauled herself upright, grabbed the ring, dragged her left foot into its proper place in the curve of the neck and, panting, took the quirt a second groom put back into her hand.

“Loop around your wrist,” Bren said in ship-speak. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. She gave her head a shake, getting the hair out of her eyes. “Yes, sir!”

Bren worried. She looked very, very small up there, and looked terrified as the old mecheita moved in response to the shifting of the rest of the herd, but she had made it.

Meanwhile Gene had tried to go up Cajeiri’s way, didn’t quite have the reach, but two grooms had just swept him up and put him into the saddle as if he weighed nothing at all. Gene awkwardly sorted out reins and quirt as the mecheita, let at liberty, turned and came alongside Irene’s, giving it a casual butt of a tusked jaw.

“Hold on,” Jase said. Gene had acted as if he had an idea what he was doing, the grooms had let the mecheita go, and there was a butt and a head flung back, the two old girls in a momentary fuss, brass tusks flashing, but there was no great fire in it. Algini rode in and settled the situation with a little flick of the quirt.

The head groom then let the leader move toward the gate, the herd-leader’s rivals shouldered their way after him, and a junior groom opened that broad gate and rode it outward as it swung. The herd-leader exited, ready to stretch out and run, and the entire pen emptied out in rough order of herd rank, except the one youngster trying to keep up with its mother and scrambling with amazing shifts through the towering crowd. The impetus of the herd slowed fast—the three lead riders got them all to a sedate pace.

Bren, carried through the gate in the initial rush, looked back at the youngsters at the rear, made sure they had all made it. Cajeiri and his aishid pulled aside from the leaders, likely trying to wait for his young guests, but stopping began to entail a discussion with Jeichido. The boy was managing at least to hold his position, but only just. Jeichido was having none of it, and he began to let Jeichido move up again, but Jegari peeled off and rode back to the rear, a lad who’d grown up riding and who had no trouble violating the herd order, even on a strange mecheita.

So Jegari was going to ride with the kids.

Good, Bren thought, took a deep breath and relaxed as the mecheiti, denied a mad dash, swung into their traveling stride. They swept along beside the house and across the drive to the end of the low inner hedge. Beyond that was pasturage damp from the rains, so wide and rolling a range the limiting hedges were out of sight.