Conflict and Courage by Candy Rae Read Free Book Online

an acceptance of defeat.
    The five
prisoners regarded each other with unease.
    Two of the
yellow-striped Lind stopped some paces away and stood staring at
the men. The other continued her unhurried yet steady advance.
    Richard braced
himself for what was coming.
    He couldn’t
breathe properly, his breath caught in his throat and he began to
tremble. Like most men from the south he was terrified of the
Lind.
    She stopped in
front of him.
    Engineer Maria
Anstell moved up beside her. Tall as she was, the tip of her head
barely reached as high as the Lind’s withers.
    “Well Moreno,
this is a day of surprises and no mistake,” she said.
    “Surprises
ma’am?”
    “It appears
that this lady Lind is anxious to make your acquaintance. I would
assume that she has sensed something in your make-up that has
eluded us. Do you know what a vadeln-pairing is?”
    “Yes ma’am,”
gulped Richard, “we were told.”
    “She wants you
to go with her,” she said in a tight voice.
    “Go with her?”
Richard asked stupidly. “Go where?”
    “I imagine she
wants you to go to the west, where the rest of those paired live. I
don’t know what the Council are going to say about this, or what
they’ll do to me for releasing you. Dahlya here says you must go
with her now. She is very insistent. Says she has made her decision
and nobody can gainsay her right to do so.”
    Dahlya was
standing beside Maria. She cleared her throat. The noises that
emerged did not sound at all threatening to Richard but his four
mates stepped back a pace, just to be on the safe side.
    “Ceja Richard,”
she greeted him in a husky voice.
    : Ceja Richard
:
    Richard took
one incredulous look at her, his Lind as he dimly realised and
promptly fainted, much to the amusement of all who watched,
including the annoyed engineer.
    He existed as
if in a dream for the rest of the day. Of his unconscious
acceptance of the vadeln-pairing, the arguments between Maria
Anstell and the guards and the ride back to the Lindar’s dom he
remembered not a thing.
    It was not
until the next morning that he fully realised what had happened to
him.
    His life was
beginning anew.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     

CHAPTER 5 - RTATHLIANS OF THE LIND
     
    In the far away
domta of Ratvei, deep within the rtathlians of the Lind, a young
woman tried to teach manners to a youngster who had no intention of
doing what he was told.
    “Ouch,” cried
Jessica Howard.
    Gerry the colt
had given her yet another playful nip on the shoulder then pranced
away, his short tail waggling. The mares lifted their heads for a
moment then dropped their heads back down to graze on the succulent
grass. The colt’s mother ignored her son completely.
    “He’s getting
quite impossible,” complained Jessica, “I wish Gerry was here. He
would know how to handle him. I most certainly don’t.”
    She sighed. No
word from or about Gerry during all these months since the horse
handler had waved goodbye on the island and disappeared into the
southern continent to keep an eye on what the convicts were doing
and to try and find out what had happened to her and Jenny’s
families.
    Jessica’s
friend Jenny did not talk about her mum and little brother Gavin as
much as she used to, but then Jenny had Savei, her Lind, the two
having found each other not long after their arrival at the
domta.
    The ‘Two Jays’,
as Jessica and Jenny were called, were the only two humans living
with the purple striped pack Ratvei. With the two girls were the
six horses that had carried them during the partly successful
escape from Fort the previous year, hours before the convict army
had attacked the crew and the families of the WCPS Electra .
    Both girls knew
that the convicts had successfully overrun the Fort, killing the
male defenders and taking the women and children as prisoners, but
not much more.
    They had talked
about it from all angles during the long winter nights, concluding
that Jenny’s father was probably dead, after all had