Having veered too close to the buckskin, Nephilim was unable to completely pull away from the attack to come. The older stallion’s back hooves landed against Nephilim’s shoulder, pushing with enough force to knock him off center as he stumbled. Instinct drove him to throw his weight toward the hit in order to stabilize himself so he didn’t crash to the ground and create further problems for himself. With his ears pulled flat against his poll and nostrils flared, mouth frothed with saliva, Nephilim looked every bit the wild monster his dam likely thought of him as.
Mariael was pleased to have clamped her teeth against a good bit of the buckskin’s tough hide only to know she’d caused him some form of physical pain for daring to come to the Bay and cause trouble. Any lesson which could be taught to an outsider the Bay of Tinuvel was not to be reckoned with was a lesson which Mariael wanted spread far and wide. The more who spoke of their strength and dispersal of justice, the better.
This being Mariael’s second fight of her life, the young cream mare wasn’t completely daft to a fight, yet she was still inexperienced. Unlike colts who often sparred in their youth, Mariael had never had the opportunity for roughhousing. This meant Mariael, while pleased she’d inflicted some sort of pain, hadn’t moved away fast enough to dodge the buckskin stallion’s rebuttal. Her cheek, the same one which bore a faint scar from the superficial wound she’d received two months prior, was the victim to his attack. Again the skin tore, reminding Mariael of what she’d already experienced once before. A squeal of both pain and anger pulled from her mouth as she came to a jarring stop while the buckskin had continued forward.
If Nephilim and Mariael had hoped their charge from the forest would drive the buckskin into the sea for good, they were wrong. The two looked onward as the buckskin stopped, both their heads raised and muscles bunched beneath their coats, ears turned back. Both engrossed in driving this intruder from their home, neither looked back to see Rohanne, though eventually they would return to her. Nephilim’s mind buzzed as if it were filled with a hive of angry wasps circling ‘round and ‘round, driving him to only one thought: attack. With the bright flash of red against her cheek once more, Mariael appeared even wilder than she had having come from the forest to drive him away from her shores.
The buckskin’s obvious challenge and disinterest in leaving so soon made both lace their ears flat against their skulls. Nephilim snorted and Mariael pawed the layer of snow covering the dark sand, seashell littered beach they stood on. She had a mind full of insults she wanted to spit at the stallion but they became a tangled knot of fire in her throat, overpowered by her desire for action over speech.
Again, and without looking at another first, the brief moment of inaction between the pair was broken by them launching forward in unison. The further they could drive the buckskin toward the water, the better; the more they could harm him before he was forced to swim from Tinuvel, the better. The Bay would not be known to show mercy.
Rather than both meeting the buckskin head-on, both Mariael and Nephilim took to different approaches. While Mariael pulled her weight to her haunches in order to rear up in front of the buckskin and attack him with her front hooves, Nephilim had moved in a half-circle to come up along the buckskin’s left side, rearing up as well to also attempt to hit the stallion with his front hooves. Immediately after gravity pulled their weight back to the sand, both continued the assault with snapping teeth in an attempt to both overwhelm the buckskin and also attempt to deflect whatever aggression would come their way.
It was Nephilim who pushed close to the stallion rather than backing away, fully intent on bullying his way forward to force the intruder to walk back closer to the surf rather than further inland. Seeing her father do this, Mariael adopted a similar strategy in spite the instincts which had hounded at her to get away from the immediate skirmish.
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