They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [36]
From the depths of the mysterious woods suddenly came a deep rumbling roar not unlike the roll of some giant drum, or empty wooden barrel, though it clearly came from some living source and not from any dead piece of wood. It was an angry sound, filled with demand and desire, a mating call or a battle cry.
They all stopped and the horses pricked up their ears.
‘It must be a fallow stag,’ whispered Balint. ‘He can’t be far away!’ and he turned his horse and trotted swiftly along a narrow grassy path which led through the wild tangle of willow trees and elders, beneath arches of giant topolya, until they reached the ford. The reeds by the riverbank were tall now and stood like a wall in front of them. A narrow path had been cut through that led down to the flat pebbles below the bank. At that season there was not much water in the sluggish little stream, indeed it barely came up to the horses’ hocks because most of it had been diverted a mile further upstream to drive the mill. The Aranyos was always like this in autumn and it was hard to believe that the mighty torrent to be seen in spring was the same river. Of course the proof was there to see on the further bank, which was a small perpendicular cliff two or three metres high, cut clean like some geological illustration with clear-cut layers of pebbles, dark humus, alternating strands of clay and stones, until finally reaching down to a base level of bluish-coloured slate which had once been the bed of some prehistoric sea.
They followed the path through the reeds and crossed the ford, and now, for the first time, they could look out over the Keresztes plain, the largest in Transylvania, towards the bald slopes of the Mezoseg, broken only by canyons of yellowish clay, with here and there little square patches of vineyard; over to the right to the hills of the Maros and to the left, far, far away, to the vertical line of the Torda cleft. Still further in the distance, almost melting into the clouds, were the soft grey outlines of the Jara range. The plain was bathed in sunshine and in front of them were the great fields of now harvested oats at the sides of which enough ground had been left unploughed for three horses to gallop side by side. These were the autumn training grounds, for here the going was not so hard as it became inside the park itself. Along one side posts marked a six-hundred-metre stretch.
They rode the horses twice round the perimeter of the field, as a preliminary workout, and then tried out the speed of the five-year-old Csalma and the novice Menyet against that of the experienced Honeydew.
Balint, Simon Jäger and one of the stable lads watched from the side. The first try-out went smoothly enough and Csalma kept up with Honeydew without difficulty, even though the mare went full out.
‘She’ll do us proud, my lord,’ said Simon, and then, almost under his breath. ‘I wouldn’t give any of our horses for that spindly goat! At five thousand metres she’d be well behind!’
Gazsi now trotted over to Balint, said a few words of praise for the Denestornya mare and then, signalling to the lad to bring up the young colt that was to be tried out next, cantered back to the starting post. Then something quite unexpected happened.
Young Pisti, the lad, said ‘Komelo’ sharply and dug his heels into the colt’s sides to bring him up in line with Gazsi’s thoroughbred and the latter, perhaps believing that the command was for her, or because she was suddenly reminded of those days on the racecourse at Alag which she had so hated, and resented being shouted at once more, put her head between her forelegs, arched her back in a crescent and, turning a full circle, bolted in every direction in the wide open field. Gazsi was taken by surprise and thrown almost