As Ruger turns to leave the clearing, Kendry pauses to nose Vasilisa’s cheek. “Keep yourself safe,” he says in response to her care-filled farewell, unable to offer her any further reassurance. “We will see you again!” He cries over his pale shoulder as he charges after Ruger. There is a bit of distance between the two stallions as they run through the trees, largely in part due to Kendry’s belated start, significant bulk, and unfamiliarity with the path they take through the trees. He is loathe to run at his full speed here in the woods where an errant root or sudden hill could trip him fatally, and so he trots hastily after the rapidly-diminishing Ruger.
It is inevitable that he should lose the black and white stallion. Kendry does not fret, however. He knows Ruger’s scent and maintains the trail and his pace under the shadowy canopy, certain he will catch up shortly. His breath comes in powerful heaves as adrenaline strikes his system, accelerating the beat of his heart and pumping his great lungs to their maximum, and a small laugh bubbles up out of his chest. The reality of this has not hit him yet. Right now it is all a big spar, a mock-battle between casually passionate combatants. He has yet to see the blood, the scored loam, the scattered leaves... the casualties.
Kendry is no pacifist. He’s simply never before had any reason to fight beyond bragging rights, though the bloodlines of mighty fighters run unacknowledged through his veins. He carries within him echoes of his great-grandsire’s wrath, the fury of his grandsire, and yes, even the incoherent rage of his own father, a monstrous stallion never personally known to Kendry. Their home began in these woods; without the Forest, Kendry may never have come to be. If he knew these things, if he understood the generational power he carries at this moment upon his shoulders, Kendry would rally under the flag of fate and stand his ground outside of his own personal motives until the enemy had been driven not only from these shores but from the islands themselves.
But he knows none of this, perhaps because it is fate that Kendry’s familial tie will forever be singular and his link in this generational chain the last.
He smells the fear first. Sweat, rank and heavy, and a lot of it. His ears turn back in alarm but he does not check his pace. Less dense but much sharper is the hot-copper tang of blood in the air undercut by the decaying leaf-litter and overturned soil, wet and dark and damp. He can hear horses clashing mightily in the distance, the grunts and squeals and screams intermittent but audible, and comprehension chokes the nervous laughter still hiccuping in his breast. “Is pride really worth the cost paid in blood to obtain it?” Shenzi’s words drum in his head as his eyes are drawn to a figure moving in his direction, and the perlino adjusts his course to meet him, moving so abruptly he scrapes his left shoulder raw on a tree.
It can’t be Ruger: this horse is brown with minimal white patching his coat, and he’s going the opposite way, appearing to be propelled by the wind blowing behind him. Kendry can only assume the painted stallion is not a member of the Thicket and must regard him as a potential threat. It would help immensely if he had any idea what his foes looked like, but here, too, fate has its hand: the wind carries the stallion’s scent to him as they trot toward one another, and under the briny saltwater is the impression of clear, aqua pools and humidity under generous shade, the red-brown dust of the dry earth and the musk of a multitude of stallions—of the Lagoon.
Kendry’s lungs fill and he bellows a challenge as he lunges into a direct charge, close enough now to risk an increase in speed through these trees. He aims to slam into the other horse chest to chest, or perhaps collide with the other’s hip if he turns to avoid Kendry’s approach, fully intending to use the other stallion’s body as a brake. Simultaneously his head snakes out, ears laced back, blunt teeth snapping at the shorter male’s face, ears, or crest. Should the other male be quick enough to avoid Kendry’s charge entirely, the perlino will slide to decrease his speed and pivot with the intent of facing Collision Course, biting blind to keep the other at bay until he is oriented again. |