The Plains

The feel of his hooves striking against bone gives him an eerie feeling of success and he is still high on that feeling as he comes around for his second attack, the smugness of hitting his target making him less observant than he should be; he sees that Marston has shifted to the side and seems to be favoring his left foreleg, but he doesn’t see the signs or shifting weight that would indicate the other boy is going to rear up to meet him, and so he is taken by surprise to meet flying hooves and legs instead of a larger target. It is too late to change his plan now, and he simply legs his blow fall where it will, glad to at least feel the give of flesh beneath his right fore. But Marston’s hooves are still in motion, and Brennen doesn’t really have anywhere to go. He refuses to pivot around the injured left hind so he goes the other way, turning right around his right hind. Marston’s right hoof lands heavy against his shoulder, right at the point of the shoulder where the scapula and the humerus meet.

It hurts, and he yelps at the impact but it doesn’t stop him from trotting away. It does put another hitch in his stride, as he now hurts front and back on the left side. No more running for him – he stays safely at the trot where one of his right legs is supporting a left leg at all times. He circles at this slow gait, trying to keep his head from bobbing and giving away any more of the pain than must already reflect in his stride, and he waits for Marston to attack, watching the other boy carefully, fighting with the haze of blood-red fury that threatens to consume him. Somehow, he knows that letting the instinct take over completely would not be a good thing. He has to concentrate.

When the buckskin suddenly charges, the bay boy is in the process of losing the fight with the fury, and he reacts instinctively, his unconscious mind urging him to take to the sky. Twice he strives to flap powerful black wings and take to the air, and it takes him those two seconds to remember he doesn’t have wings anymore. If he did he’d be twenty feet in the air and out of range, but instead he is on the ground, front legs half-lifted to prepare for takeoff, and Marston is right there, like a freight train, and Brennen doesn’t have time to do anything else but react defensively as the buckskin rams into him. Because his fore end was lifted to allow him to leave the ground quickly, and Marston is slamming into his left side, the brunt of the bay’s entire form plus Marston’s is pushed onto his right hind, and he can feel it twisting where it shouldn’t – too much bend at the fetlock, pain as his hock buckles above that.

The bay boy is motionless for a moment as this shock sets in, the pain a haze over his vision, but the impact of Marston’s hoof against his already-injured left shoulder (and again and again and again) brings him back to the present and he throws himself forward at the buckskin, pushing off of his front legs and his less-injured left hind leg as Marston is landing and trying to turn, before he starts backing up. Keeping all four of his feet close to the ground so that he can land lighter and mostly on his last full functional leg, he throws his head instead, teeth snapping at whatever he can reach – ears, eyes, face, the jugular if Marston throws his head up instead of defensively tucking it down. Perhaps not the most damaging of attacks, but it is one fueled by pure pain on Brennen’s part, and has a chance at being quite effective if the bay stallion’s teeth catch on something fragile or delicate.

And then Brennen is on the ground again, ears pinned back against his head while he watches Marston back away. He has one attack left to end this battle, but like his buckskin opponent he is now barely mobile. Gradually, he tries to put weight on his right hind leg and though he clamps down against making any sound his breath catches for a moment and he wishes with all of his heart for his wings back so that he will never have to walk on the offending limb again. Second to that, his left shoulder aches the most, but it is a mere tickle compared to the shooting pain elsewhere. Somewhere inside his thoughts he realizes that the pain is only going to get worse and it’s not over until he makes his last move, and so he forces himself to move forward, his gait a sort of three-legged canter as he refuses to put down his leg for more than the very merest of moments.

Thankfully, Marston can’t move away any faster than Brennen can chase him and so inevitably he will catch up. Surely the buckskin wants this fight over with as well, anyway, and will allow him to catch up and end it. He approaches the other from the right, forcing as much more weight onto his right hock as he can bear to speed up as he gets closer. When he cannot spare any more time before running into Marston, the bay lifts himself off of the ground as high as he can balance with his right hind leg not on the ground, balancing his entire weight precariously on his left hind for the split second before he lets his hooves fall, aiming one last time for the buckskin’s right shoulder, not really caring at this point where they fall as long as he feels the satisfying give of flesh underneath them before they slide to the ground.

Of course, he has already kicked this shoulder once, which is why he chose it. He is hoping to hit again in the same area, complicating any issue he caused before. He is also hoping that Marston will try to lean away onto the injured left foreleg, the one he has been favoring since their rearing tussle only moments before. Because of the slow speed of his movements and other hindrances, Brennen knows that his attack will not hit at full-force or be as damaging as his last set, but he also knows that Marston cannot move fast enough to evade his hooves entirely, no matter how he tries to maneuver, so the bay boy will feel that last attack as a success even if it just a minor bruise. At this point, as the red haze fades from the edges of his vision, Brennen doesn’t care who won – the fact that it is over is so much more important to him.