Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [6]
The charioteer carried no whip, but held the reins with strong, sure hands. Insulated against the morning chill by leather leggings and a woolen cloak, the nimble figure balanced lightly on the tiny, lurching platform, springing into the air each time the chariot skipped over a rise. A stout cap of leather covered the rider's head, slight protection in the event of a hard fall.
To the east, the waters of Whitefish Bay gleamed in the morning sun. That brightness also etched the craggy highland of the Fairheight Range in vivid detail. The crest sprawled the length of the western horizon while blue sky-the first cloudless weather in months-domed overhead. Only beyond the mountains, far to the west, did a fringe of clouds linger along the horizon.
Before the chariot stretched a seemingly limitless range of rolling grassland. The rider directed the racing team with confidence, often darting onto the narrow pole between the horses. There the charioteer perched, exhorting the steeds with encouragement and praise. The small vehicle, careening behind the horses, followed the creatures into a gully, splashed through a gravel-bottomed stream, and then bounced up the steep bank.
The driver held on, guiding the twin wheels around boulders, up a barely discernible path, and once again onto the freedom of the moor.
"Geddaway there, now! C'mon, Brit! Run, Mouse!" The voice was intense, and the rider's eyes stared toward the sea. The horses bounded forward with renewed intensity, clods of dirt flying beneath the thundering hoofbeats. The wind whipped the crouching driver, who once again perched on the bar between the straining beasts. They crested a steep rise and the chariot left the ground, soaring like a flying thing.
Caer Callidyrr came into view then, its alabaster walls gleaming in the sun. The haze had burned from the hills, and the castle stood out clearly as the dominant feature of the panorama. High ramparts stretched across three small hilltops over the town that clung to the edge of the bay. Towers soared, a dozen of them higher than any other man-made structure in the Moonshae islands, fitting grandeur for the palace and castle of the High King, ruler of all the Ffolk.
The team began the long descent with a staccato gallop, but gradually the driver pulled them into a canter, slowing to an easy walk by the time they rolled toward the stable building along the outside of the castle wall.
Here the charioteer's strong hands revealed gentleness as they tugged the reins slightly, bringing the two frothing steeds to a rest. Reaching upward, those hands lifted off the driver's leather helm, releasing a cascade of hair the color of rust. Curling slightly, as thick as a lush stand of wheat, the locks wrapped like a full blanket, trailing behind the lithe figure halfway down the slender, proud back.
Alicia Kendrick, Princess of Moonshae, returned to the castle, her cheeks stung red by the breeze, her heart pounding.
"By the goddess, what a ride!" She made the announcement to the liverymen who already moved out to tend the exhausted horses. She stepped smoothly to the ground and shrugged off her cloak, which was quickly caught by an attendant. Jauntily Alicia strode toward the door of the stables. Though the castle was huge, the Kendricks maintained their stables outside the walls for convenience's sake-and because, in Alicia's lifetime, there had never been any threat to those high walls or indeed to any other portion of her father's kingdom.
Any military threat, she corrected herself. She couldn't forget about the scourge of weather that seemed to constantly afflict the Moonshaes, the reason today's warmth had been such a compelling summons to the outdoors.
For the last five years-fully a quarter of the young woman's life-the Moonshae Islands had suffered the onslaught of terrible violence, but it had been the violence of nature run amok, not of man. Winters of deep frost, broken only by the blizzards that howled in from the great Trackless Sea to bury the land beneath tons of wet, clinging snow, had marked each