Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [76]
The hare was tiring. Little lovers’ gift, consecrated to Venus, fed on wild thyme and summoned by flutes, the young puss with her emerald collar was unused to enemies, had had no dreams of the bamboo forests of the Ganges and the glib death lurking there. She ran white-eyed and unbreathing, sensing the thick soft pads closing and feeding horror from every sense to her loaded heart until, clear above the sifting grasses, the far-off barking, the distant beat of a tired horse, the voices muted and uneasy and the tinkle of bit and hardel, a familiar voice cried, a little porcelain mare started forward, and someone with a familiar smell and look and shape called ‘Suzanne!’
With all the strength in her bleeding paws, the little hare turned from the open, unyielding horizon and made for the small Queen. Far behind, the cheetah turned too, and pinned its mesmeric, passionless gaze on the white scut and the little palfrey and its red-haired rider beyond.
On the ridge, the Duke de Guise, his spurs instant and cruel, hurled his horse after his niece. Below, helplessly, the mounted and unmounted surged forward in their fear. But before that, a hand like steel closed on O’LiamRoe’s wrist, and Lymond’s clear voice said ‘Luadhas.’
For a second the silence lay between them, aching. Then O’LiamRoe moved and spoke. Unbelieving, the little Firbolg heard, bent and, slipping the fine shackles, sent the wolfhound Luadhas hurtling after the cat.
She was a noble bitch, high in heart and honest after her calling. She could overthrow a wolf, but the alien, wicked beauty slipping through the grasses ahead was of an element she had never known. She raced uphill, tail streaming, rough hair blown and parted with her speed, loping high on her long legs; and fast as the gap was closing between cheetah and hare, the gap between dog and cat began to close faster still. The hazel rod in O’LiamRoe’s right hand broke in two.
The hare was at its end. Thrashed by its heartbeats, suffocated with exhaustion and fear, its thick sight blinded, it was running by sound alone to its mistress’s voice, the fortune on its neck winking and sparkling in the unsparing sun.
And the porcelain horse, with the lightest and smallest of riders, had flown, skidded, stumbled downhill faster than any. Within yards of the creature Mary kicked her feet from the planchon and slid to the ground as the Duke’s gelding reached her. She rushed forward; the little horse fled; and her uncle, one-handed, snatched at her cloak.
Mary stumbled. She was weeping, her hair tangled about her hot face, the tears rushing off nose and chin. The leveret gave a mighty, last leap and stopped, rigid, in the naked ground out of her reach. Mary tore herself from her uncle’s grasp and flung herself forward as, in the distance, the grass shook and parted.
In an act as brave as any in his whole young, foolhardy career, the Duke de Guise leaped from his horse, seized the girl, and scooping up the leveret with one hand, flung it to the nearest rider. Robin Stewart caught the inert, warm, fatigue-sodden weight in his arms as the Duke flung the child on his plunging horse and followed her into the saddle.
From above and below, horses were rushing towards them; but the cheetah arrived before them all. The grasses stirred and he was there: lyre-marked face and strong forelegs and silken, yellow-white belly. He came upon the big gelding as the little girl clutched at the saddle and the topaz eyes followed the red head. He did not even pause. Cheated of his rightful prey he landed, turned and sprang. The Duke, the child in his arms, dragged the terrified horse sideways, but the spread needles did not reach them. Instead, a matted, brindled shape breasted the grass. A slender, pointed muzzle struck the air; long legs, rough-haired and uncombed, paused a little; and then the deerhound Luadhas, with the courage of her inheritance, gathered her powers and sprang