Dragon's Child by M. K. Hume Read Free Book Online Page B

simply snickered his enjoyment at the attention he was getting.
    ‘See? He’s a pleasure to be around, is this old boy. But he’s useless, mind, except for siring more big bastards like himself, or pulling logs from the forest. Now, lad, I want you to mount him.’
    ‘How? He’s as big as a small room,’ Artorex retorted. ‘I’ll need a ladder.’
    ‘You won’t be finding a ladder on the battlefield.’ Targo laughed and wandered off in his usual, aimless fashion.
    Unwilling to even touch Plod at first, Artorex approached the huge horse from one side. Placing his hands on the horse’s back, the young man tried to jump on to its broad haunches as he had done with the smaller farm horses. He ended up sitting on the ground with the horse’s tail switching in his face. Plod turned his head and eyed Artorex with a wide, long-lashed stare of amazement.
    Even the horse is laughing at me, Artorex decided.
    Then he gripped the base of Plod’s mane in his left hand and tried to hoist himself on to Plod’s back by brute strength.
    Inevitably, he fell on his backside again.
    Plod continued to gaze at Artorex with a total lack of comprehension.
    Think, idiot! Artorex admonished himself, not even bothering to rise to his feet. It’s like the post and the rail. There must be a trick to this business of riding a horse as big as Plod.
    And so the boy considered his position logically, for he was by now becoming comfortable with devising solutions to Targo’s problems. He determined that he needed to approach the large horse from the front, grip the mane and leap on to Plod’s back, turning as he did so.
    The solution worked and he was successful at the first attempt.
    Plod ignored Artorex once he was seated painfully on the horse’s very sharp spine. The young man was soon slapping the stallion’s shoulders and trying to discover how to entice or, better still, order the beast to move.
    Plod continued to munch on some green shoots near the fence. If he bothered to obey the command to move at all, it was to search out sweeter grass.
    ‘Aaaah!’ Artorex screamed with frustration after five minutes of fruitless pummelling and shouting; Plod, being well used to the strange ways of humans, took no notice.
    Then, in pure frustration, Artorex kicked the beast in the flanks with his heels. Abruptly, Plod obeyed, and Artorex, who had not thought to grip the stallion’s mane, fell backwards over the horse’s flanks.
    The horse stopped and turned its head to look back at the boy as if Artorex was mentally retarded, a gaze that was mirrored in the laughter and expressions of two passing field hands.
    ‘That’s the way, Artor - show him who’s the boss,’ one guffawed as they carried their reaping hooks and hoes out to the fallow fields.
    For the first time, Artorex heard the shortened form of his name used by common field hands instead of the regal-sounding name that Lucius had chosen for him at birth.
    Artorex persevered and soon began to unlock the secrets that allowed him to control his horse. He practised hard and began to experience the pleasure of feeling such a huge creature move on his command. While Plod’s great muscles surged and bunched under Artorex’s knees, he soon became familiar with the exquisite pain that men experience as their bodies become fused to the unbending spine of a horse.
    Not surprisingly, Artorex managed to fall off the workhorse on many occasions, and was almost crushed against the fence until he learned to manipulate the horse’s halter and pull its head back when he wanted the beast to stop.
    And so the young man and his giant horse began to learn the rudiments of riding.
    Targo allowed him no time for self-congratulation, because the veteran now arranged for Artorex to meet Aphrodite.
    This slightly smaller mare had a nasty disposition and hated all men, especially tall, vigorous specimens like Artorex. She gazed balefully at him with a jaundiced, narrowed eye at their very first meeting,