The knight lord was furious. Not in fornt of his wife, of course, though he went to great lengths and gentle pleas to change her mind. Yet she proved a mind even a knight and husband could not overcome. Thoughts of adventures filled the lady’s every conversation and daily thought, allowing no one and nothing to gainsay her decision. The cause of this sudden whim she told no one, so naught could assault the basis of her conviction. Yet little doubt the greatest suspicion landed on the newly added members of the households, whose influence one imagined can only range from queer to bad. Not a soul suspected a deliberate temptation, however, nor the thought of a lurking temptress ever occurred, as far as Cordelia could tell.

She did feel some measure of remorse for having caused her benefactor and employer such a headache. She came even very close to regretting her deliberate suggestion once she had sobered up a little and realized the preposterous recklessness of her plan. Still, that ship had sailed: both Esme and Galilea were hell-bent on going, and if they would go, she had no reason to stay behind and hold a fort deprived of its chief defenders.

For all of Sir Kamaric’s hopes for time to prove the ultimate cure for his wife’s malady for adventures, news arrived only a few days later from a remote village, carrying a situation requiring his martial presence.

Raiders, so it appeared. A war band had ravaged a small village at the border. Outlaws first came to mind. But the organized manner in which it had been carried out was not something a mere bandit lord could muster. Then outlandish talks arose of warring bands sent from the neighboring lords, but this too was dismissed, for horsemen had been seen emerging from that treacherous passage leading into the marshlands and then the wilder lands to the north, whose difficulty and long route to traverse the looting of a single village could not debate. For good reason, this route had lain unused for decades - only once upon a time employed by the northern barbarians to enter the country for their dread raids.

Kamaric quickly dashed all speculations and ordered his band to ride out as soon as humanly possible. A decisive command though one that would expose his adamant wife to grave danger. It was a small amusement to behold his conflicted emotions during dinners in the days leading to the deployment, when his wife would talk in animated manners of the adventure to come.

As for the seasoned warriors of his warband, they treated the threats, however real or imagined, of the barbarians with sullen import.

According to Esme, “The barbarians, as most figures contemporary to High King Gunther, hold a legendary status in the kingdom’s folk tales.”

It was the afternoon before the march, and Esme was being constantly distracted as she described the barbarians to Cordelia. The latter wrinkled her nose at the stable’s odor as they walked between the stalls. Some other men of Sir Kamaric’s band were there, checking their horses or instructing the grooms to mend their saddles at the last minute. Occasionally she would hear idle talks from their corners regarding the subject she had inquired Esme about, as with everywhere in town, whose safety behind tall walls the ominous news had wormed its way into.

The omens were so grave, Cordelia had a mind to postpone her plan. But not without learning the facts first.

Esme was checking out a brown gelding. The creature looked back at her with sagely eyes. Taut muscles shifted to the languid movements of its legs. But she shook her head and moved on.

“Fierce fighters,” she continued, “and crafty riders on sure-foot horses. They scorned the bow in favor of the francisca or throwing spears. And they fought in battle crazes, trusting to the magic of their gods for armor and strange charms for unfailing courage. Among their ranks, there were even empowered fighters said be our knights’ equals.” She stopped in her tracks again. “Or so the tales told. In truth, few alive but the old and mazed of mind still remember when they ravaged the land.”

Cordelia thought on it, and pitied Sir Kamaric. Little enough one may do to protect a helpless wife when hordes of warriors were riding about throwing axes every which way.

“Oh don’t you worry,” Esme scoffed at her worries. “To tell the truth, I don’t think the village raid was done by barbarians.”

“Why not?”

“High King Gunther vanquished most of them, and it was truly most of their number. He was no bloodthirsty king, but also never sued twice for peace, you see. So once he had marched into their land and met their every clan with bloodshed for bloodshed, there were not many left of them by the war’s end. For they were a warring people, and even their women and elders went to war. By all reckoning, it is scant time since the devastation of their population for the children of some handful of unburned villages to grow into real threats.”

Next was a break from questions and answers as Esme seemed to have found what she was looking for. Sir Kamaric had allowed her a choice among the chargers in his stable for her first ride with him. A delight to the girl, little doubt, as that of a child receiving a present of all birthday presents. It was for this distraction that she had given the brief version of the barbarians and their war with High King Gunther, and the hour-long one was put off to another day.

As she called the groom for the saddle, the horse Esme had chosen looked back at her with eyes full of distrust. He was a young stallion, pitch black of coat and dark of mane. As the saddle was fitted, he threw his head restively, all but thrashing like one unbroken.

Cordelia observed as Esme recklessly struggled to get on his back, one leg bracing atop the stall’s wall. The groom meanwhile assured her the horse had never before been so unruly.

Mostly to amuse herself than for any expressed purpose, Cordelia tasted the air, trying to see what his problem was. And surprisingly, she did manage to read something of the creature, not in hints of intricate patterns as in humans, but in signs and expressions far more simplistic. She learned that it was a strong and fierce male. A fine specimen Esme had picked out among the rest in the stable. But also the existence of something else in the moment, something unnatural.

“ ‘Tis fear, Mistress,” Mastema remarked.

“Fear?” she asked silently. “What’s to fear in the Maiden of God?”

“Not the Maiden, nay. The creature fears its own fate. Being chosen by the Maiden, it senses imminent death.”

“Can animals read the future?”

“Only insofar as you can, Mistress.” And the familiar laughed off the matter.

Nor did she bother to inquire further, for she was never fond of the tiny snake’s sudden interjections, who only spoke unprompted or little at all.

A few minutes went by and Esme eventually mastered her mount, making him answer to the tugging of the reins in a logical manner. For a test ride, she led it out of the gate while a groom introduced Cordelia to her new mount. Not so much picking this time, for Sir Kamaric had instructed the grooms to get her the most docile creature in the stable that was not a donkey. But docile was a word she was to learn a new definition.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

It was a mare with a dapple gray coat, who expressed a sagely approval upon seeing her new owner, as though the horse was the one who did the picking and not the grooms nor the lord of the castle.

“You know what I think?” she said to the groom, “I think she looked down on me.” She was standing akimbo, looking with wariness into the horse’s coy dark eyes, and thought she saw in them a hint of amusement.

“She won’t bite,” the groom said, “Nor rear you from her back, she won’t. This girl is as timid as farm horses get. You can’t find one gentler in the Marches, you won’t.”

“The bastard’s sizing me up.” She was skeptical.

The man shrugged. “Well ‘tis true she escaped once, they say, lived like a wild animal for years then showed up outside the forest one day like a ghost in the gloaming, not much worse for wear nor aught older, if bit lean. No surprise there’s something queer to her, but she’s been driving carts and carrying old folks for years without complaint. What more could you ask for?”

“What’s her name?”

“Hagborn.”

“Really?” she raised an eyebrow.

“How the last owner called her anyway. Not that anyone can remember who that was, and she having been here since I was just a wee laddie. You know what else is queer?

“What?”

“Gay horses’ coats turn white as they get older. This one’s hasn’t. Like she’s still a young lassie at heart. Queer, eh?”

Cordelia decided that the thirty-something man looked larkful enough that she needed not take his words at face value, and so asked him to just get the saddle on.

Leading the horse outside was simple, and so was climbing on its back. This got Cordelia complacent, and she tried to implement at once all the groom’s basic instructions. The horse trotted to her controls, turned right and then left, making circles around the courtyard, and slowed down when she pulled. So far so good. Her confidence was further bolstered by the strange feeling that the horse was responding to her intention even before her hands had moved (later Esme told her that the horse probably felt when her legs pressed instinctively on her flanks). The moving muscles between her legs reminded her of the power the beast possessed, and the height to which she was elevated infused a sense of pride as she looked down upon the servants in the courtyard. Then the horse started prancing as though in response to her lifted mood, and this filled her with glee and giggles.

By the end of the fifth round or so, the creature perhaps decided that she was not giddy enough, nor was the repetitiveness of her practice adequately exciting for such a fine day as this. So the horse swerved, without warning and heedless of Cordelia’s tug at the reins, towards the gate.

Even as she pulled hard in dismay, letting out a yelp to warn the groom, the beast broke unexpectedly into an excited canter. A water-carrying serf flung himself out of the way, buckets and all, with an inarticulate holler. The figure of the groom grew smaller and smaller, and she heard Esme’s cry. Ere the first rally call was made, the runaway horse had put all of the men in the courtyard helplessly behind. A mad gallop as the groom never thought to exist in the “docile” creature carried her out of the keep, speeding down the slope like a specter. Cordelia screamed. Naught could check the horse’s path now.

Cordelia had never known euphoria though she had known death. She did now. In this spell of danger, all the world was immaterial, yielding its physics easily to thundering hooves and pulsing muscles, her fear gradually conquered by an unfamiliar excitement. All the power and mighty rumbles modern vehicles try and fail to imitate. The embodiment of speed and power, of risks and ventures. A thing that fed upon the wind then discharged by way of the roaring air, flying mane and a streaming skirt. A consciousness at once clever and reckless drove this gallop, knowing by an honed instinct where to place upon the earth its next propulsion.

Cordelia would have been more immersed in the incredible experience if she had not been also too busy screaming her lungs out. Then at the bottom of the hillslope the horse came to a halt.

As the oddly named Hagborn sniffed the air, the sound of Esme’s arrival brought some assurance to Cordelia's heart, that the ordeal was over. The blonde’s gelding was approaching at a more measured pace, yet already at hand.

Far from it.

The horse reared, knocking a few years off Cordelia’s fey life, then relaunched anew into its grand escape. It stormed down the main street full of unwitting humans.

A mixed blessing was the many obstacles on the path to the gate as it hampered the steed’s mad speed: screaming peasants, terrified cattle, abandoned carts, baying dogs. The very real chance of breaking her neck to a bad stumble also lent a new dimension to Cordelia’s terror. Nevertheless, the horse’s maddening pace had been much reduced. Its navigation around the moving and unmoving obstacles had allowed Esme who was the more competent rider to catch up. Soon the blonde was riding abreast of Cordelia.

“Can you jump?” Esme cried foolishly.

“Are you sane!?”

Esme broke off and rounded a stumbled cart, then rejoined her on the other side. With a brief glance to make sure naught more was in the way, the blonde tried something daring. She reached out for the Hagborn’s rein. But even Cordelia knew it was idiotic. She had already pulled and pulled yet the beast never responded to her command. Nor would Esme, for all the strength that she possessed, be able to decidedly hold a beast at full gallop just so. She never did make the attempt anyway. The horse flung its head away, doggedly put the rein outside of Esme’s reaching hand, then to a side veered and broke off, putting an even greater distance between them.

The oddly intelligent behavior baffled Cordelia. And suddenly a thought clicked in place, bringing a chill down her spine.

What if this was no normal horse at all?

The groom’s odd story did not come to mind. It was fear of the outside. Not once since entering the keep had she set foot from its gate till now, for fear that the lurking einheri had recovered enough to mount another attack. But all her calculations had failed her. She had thought that the only time she would get outside again would be in Sir Kamaric’s company. But who could have guessed a runaway horse would shatter all these cautions in a heartbeat? If it was a horse at all, and not that very einheri who had demonstrated the ability to shapeshift that night, when it had been a winged creature before transforming into a chimera.

The horse sped past the town gate, in no time had crossed the drawbridge. Before them was the open country. There was nary a chance for aught rider to catch up with them now, and naught would be there to defend her when the horse had carried her past the tree line.

Suddenly jumping did not sound so crazy an idea anymore. And she scrambled to look for a rick or aught place stacked with grass that she might make a reckless leap. A broken limb or two would be a small price. So long as it was not her neck she would break.

She had hardly mustered up the courage to act upon her plan when suddenly the horse turned. It was running along the moat now. Another turn and it had plunged into the water. Splashing in the shallow, it knelt down, leaning to the side. The world shifted hues as Cordelia submerged.

A belatedly arrived Esme found Cordelia crawling on the bank, shivering and bewildered by the event. The while the unruly beast was splashing in the water without a care in the world.

“You got yourself a merry one, Cordelia,” the blonde remarked cooly, breathing hard on her new steed..

She cursed. “Lend me your coat, will you?”

Esme did. And Cordelia would have changed out of her soaked clothes if doing that would not expose her to the entire castle-town who had turned out for the curious event.

She was full of misgivings, to say the least. Even when the horse got out of the water she was eyeing it cautiously for another transgression. Then as if to appear apologetic, the Hagborn drew close, nugging her with affection.

“Confound the beast,” she said, yet still reached up to brush the wet mane. But then she realized it was not asking for a petting at all. Its flank was positioned against her quite insistently. “Are you asking me to ride you?” She looked at it guardedly.

But the horse threw the soaked head towards the battlements. Frowning, she set her foot on the stirrup and froze. Over the beast’s back, she had seen, though only for a moment, a dark figure on the battlement who stood apart from the curious guards. A dread filled her. The same kind that had panicked her that day when she was fleeing after killing a guard.

Without another breath wasted, she mounted and urged Esme to get back. Yet despite her worries, the trip back home was uneventful enough, and the Hagborn lived up to its docile reputation this time.

Still, her reckless plan seemed all the more pressing to enact, now that the einheri had finally shown up.

No more hesitation, barbarians or not.