Read Blood Ties for Free Online Page B

looking at her with amused, knowing eyes. He whickered to her softly.
    “Yes, very funny,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll just stick to walking today, eh?”
    He waited calmly while Bramble walked up to him. She took him by the forelock and led him uphill to the mounting rock. He nuzzled her shoulder. Up until that moment, she had seen him as a creature from the warlord’s world that she could use, a living thing, yes, but like the goats and the chickens that she cared for at home. A domestic animal.
    But the way he looked at her with amusement, she was sure, the way he greeted her with affection, the realization that he was here because he had chosen to wait for her, made her feel that he was more than that, that he was something she had never really had before. A companion.
    It felt just as wrong to give him a name as to use a bit and bridle. Owners gave names. She wasn’t the owner, not in any sense. It wasn’t like she had any real control over him: they were just fellow creatures, spending time together. If he thought of her at all, it was probably as “the human,” and so she would think of him as “the horse,” or maybe, “the roan.”
    She practiced walking him around all day and by the time she went home, she could hardly walk, her thighs were rubbed raw and her hips ached. But nothing could have kept her away the next day.
    When she groomed him — she had watched ostlers at the inn attend to horses — she found more scars from the spurs and whip, and thought with satisfaction of the warlord’s man going down under her foot. The next moment she made a sign of warding, because of the nightmares. She had forced herself to shake them off as soon as she woke. She wondered if she’d have the nightmares as long as she kept the horse, the spoils of her murder, but even if that were true, the roan was worth it.
    She had laughed at the other girls when they breathlessly waited for one of the lads to glance their way, or dreamed over him through their chores, planning what to say when they next met. But she was just as bad with riding. That night, in between the nightmares, she dreamed about riding, about the surge as the horse set off, the muscles sliding beneath her. All the next morning she daydreamed about the wind in her hair, forgot to water the beans because she was planning their next excursion, and was abstracted when her parents spoke to her. They lifted eyebrows at each other and nodded wisely when she blushed. She thought they were relieved to have her acting like an ordinary girl for once, but couldn’t tell them the truth. If the warlord’s men ever found out what had happened, everyone who knew the truth would be killed.
    She distracted them with talk about the move to Carlion, pretending enthusiasm so well that they actually started planning the move. Her father went out, then and there, to book the carrier’s cart, and they even started packing. The house was dismantled slowly around them and every blanket and piece of cloth was commandeered to wrap around breakables.
    “We’ll have to leave the loom until last,” her mother said, and started to make lists of all the things they would have to do before they left.
    Bramble took the chance to escape and went to the roan. His breath snuffled in her face in greeting as he came to meet her at the end of his tether. She watered him and then rode him again, despite the pain in her thighs. She guided him with touches on the neck or a tug on his mane, but didn’t take him far for fear the warlord’s men would recognize him. So she rode as much as she dared around the confines of the deep forest. They rode that day as far as the chasm.
    Wooding was in a valley around a small river that fed the much larger Fallen River, which flowed all the way to Carlion and the sea. Just outside Wooding, the Fallen curved around and dropped suddenly into a deep chasm, an abyss so far down it took a day to climb down and another to climb back up. There was one wooden