The following is an alternate start to the plot concerning the elven horse character of Eqaetz in my book Emperor's Blood which concerns the very nasty race known as the drakoon. In EB, Eqaetz is enslaved to the tyrant dictator Charles Yale, a man who no animal, much less a sentient one like Eqaetz, should be forced to bear. This ended up being one of the only pieces from my alternate second half of EB which I actually like and would like to keep - maybe I will write the other parts and replace them with what is currently in the story now. In this sequence, we truly see Eqaetz' pain and that he is, in fact, employed to a very cruel man but at the same time, we also get a sniff of the real antagonist of EB, a drakoon...
UNEDITED.
The first proceeding rains of a wintering monsoon hit the northern coast of Chartan as if there was nothing to worry about, passing over and then disappearing as swift as an ordinary summer rain. The people of Chartan looked up from their toil in the dusty fields of the arid tropic landscape and put down their tools to let the rain do its good. None of them could smell the difference in the air, the slight sharp twang that tells so-called lesser animals when the season is about to change, warning them to prepare. The humans had only their memories of other winters, other monsoons to help them. In Chartan, indeed, the monsoon wouldn’t even be much of one - a few hurricanes here and there, some of them bad, but the buildings were constructed to sustain these, so nobody was really worried. A few farmers hurried to get their roofs patched, but for the most part people just buttoned on their slickers and kept going about their day, while children splashed in muddy puddles.
Chartan was a land of dirt. There were fields of it everywhere, lines of vegetables and crops growing in peculiarly straight rows under the throbbing sun, irrigated by manmade creeks and rivers called canals and aqueducts. These brought a slide of water constantly down from the looming brownstone Lamina Range of mountains, glacier water which was probably clean when it started its journey, but by the time it reached the farmlands of the Province of Lamina, was the colour of thick milky brown broth. Nobody drank it. Nobody human.
The broth of dusty water trickled into the irrigation systems of the plantations and farms and made the alien plants living there grow. There was foreignness in plenty in the fields; potatoes, oranges, coffee and cotton grew alongside mass vineyards of red wine grapes. Orchard trees stood in rows, heavy with apples, peaches, limes and mangos. One had to look very had to find any plants that were native in the patchwork of farms, but they existed. Kirin heart fruit, native to the Escavian Desert had made its way via international traders to Chartan where it had been further domesticated and bred until the scarlet orbs grew so massively huge that a kiri would never of recognized it as the same plant. Farmers went through the fields, collecting their crops in carts and brought them to market and it seemed a good place, an innocent land.
Around the wooden and stonework houses, past the farms on the bits of land deemed unusable for farming, Chartan’s native plants persisted without any help whatsoever from man. Whereas the fine oranges and cotton might have died without human irrigation, the forests of the province with their scraggly appearance and grey bark simply took care of themselves and as the rain fell over, they soaked up its goodness. The animals here turned their noses to the wind, sniffing at it and smelled the shift of winter from the north to their southern home, a cold wetness that was just beginning to bolster itself for the months ahead.
Winter was coming. Soon it would be very wet.
It was this smell of seasonal change that made a horse act up. The stallion was a dapple grey, a faint star still just visible on his head and his four white socks still defined as they had been in his youth as a black colt, for dappled horses are always born dark. He reared up, the horses all around him stamping and pawing in the middle of the road as the stallion caused them to halt, their riders grumbling and complaining as they did. The stallion’s rider brought out his whip and cut a lash against the stallion’s chiselled neck and the horse went back down on all fours, but only to buck, the horses behind him scattering.
“Sir! Do you need help?” cried one of the other riders, a policeman dressed in a fine official red uniform that was sopping wet, even under his leather slicker.
“No!” snapped the stallion’s rider, bringing down the whip again and making the proud looking horse bleed. “Stupid nag! Get moving! It’s just a little rain you idiotic animal! Move it!”
Eqaetz ai Taveria did not want to move anything, particularly not the mildly overweight and unbearably bossy animal sitting bonily on his spine. Eqaetz had a wide spectrum of discomforts to complain about and it wasn’t just how bad the man smelled in his wet clothing and aftershave. He reared again, the too-tight girths of the saddle chafing his abdomen, his rider’s spurs digging into his ribs while the hefty metal bit - easily able to knock a human out if whacked against its temple hard enough - jarred against his teeth, pinching the corners of his lips and punching his mouth sorry. He whinnied, the bit clacking hard against his molars as the infernal man on his back - dictator President of Chartan Charles Yale - yanked as hard as he could on the reins connected to the bit. It hurt. The whip slashed down again, making him hurt some more.
“Move it bastard! Go! Stupid horse!” snarled Charles, royally incised that Eqaetz was taking time out of his busy schedule to act up. “Trot on! Come, on, kyah!”
There was very little in the world that Eqaetz wanted less than some sharp human pelvis bouncing along his back. He crow hopped, giving his all to throw Charles off of him, but the human clung to him like a parasite. Shaking his head, Eqaetz attempted to jar the reins out of Charles’ hands, but to no avail; President Yale had him well in hand. The whip jabbed into Eqaetz’ loins and he had no choice but to move forward, nickering his complaint, a complaint which nobody paid attention to. Barely a minute later Charles was leaning back to talk to his captain of the guard again, whose only response to the incident Eqaetz had caused was to ride his mare a little further to the right of him, just in case he kicked. Charles bounced up and down like a sack of oats made of lead and Eqaetz the elven horse went back to contemplating a vice for removing the offensive human package from his spine.
Eqaetz had not been born in Chartan. Elven horses did not live there and in a continent that had a population of several thousand equines, he was the only one of the entire lot who was his species. Try to imagine having absolutely nobody to talk to or see - this was what Eqaetz felt every hour of every day. He was lonely. He hated his existence and the ungrateful, heavy, bony thing on his back ruled his life.
Yet the other horses he met, all human ones from Gaia, didn’t seem to mind their bridles or saddles, or that they spent more time running around in harness than grazing in a field. They seldom if ever lived in herds like they properly would have in the wild. Stallions almost never got to help raise their offspring and were more often gelded before they could have any. The most confusing moment of Eqaetz’s life was when he had first met a gelding, smelling a horse that looked and smelled male, but just… wasn’t. It had been horrifying. Eqaetz learned soon after that humans could do it to him too, if they wanted. Eqaetz had come to Chartan thinking he might be able to overpower the humans, but how very, very wrong he had been.
He was a slave and fences surrounded him.
Eqaetz was a good jumper. He jumped every year at the midsummer festival over jumps which most horses could not handle, but he was not invincible. He couldn’t jump anything. Eqaetz wished he could fly like a drakoon, because if he could fly, then he could dump Charles and be done with this foul human existence. He’d fly so far away that no human - or filthy, betraying drakoon, would ever find him again.
There was one good thing about Chartan; the roads were wide, flat and graded to be smooth. Mud coated the road Eqaetz trotted in now, dampening the feathers on his legs and painting his white socks brown. They rode for the green hills just above the capital city Lamina, an area of rich estates and wide open pastures stocked with the finest livestock in the country. Crossing the boundary from poor farmland to the land of beaurocrat mansions there was a noticeable change and rising up in elevation, Eqaetz could see the ocean below with the city nestled massively alongside it. Gold, almost orange light came from the west, painting the leaves of the trees in yellow while just above the nearby, grey mountains, a double rainbow appeared.
Eqaetz had no time to appreciate the beauty. He had smelled what passed for his home and was determined to get there as fast as possible and get Charles Yale off of his poor back. He whinnied, breaking into a canter, striving for a gallop, but this was hard to do, when your nose was being yanked into your chest. Charles hauled on his reins so hard that his nose nearly touched his breast and Eqaetz struggled to breathe, his breaths sounding almost as loudly as his wild hoof beats against the ground. Fighting his head back up, Eqaetz resolved break Charles’ foot the first instant he had a solid chance.
With Charles shouting at him to stop Eqaetz bit down with his hooves and bolted, a spray of road grit flying up behind him. He couldn’t run anything near his fastest fighting for control of his head like this, but he could scrabble home as fast as he could. The trail of police officers urged their horses after him and Eqaetz happily led the way, bucking in what they likely thought was a spirited manner when Charles tried to dissuade Eqaetz from his mad course to turn to one side. It was amazingly tricky to avoid going the way his head was being made to point, but Eqaetz did it and he did it in spectacular fashion as far as he was concerned, watching the road up ahead out of one eye and refusing absolutely to turn.
It was really making his jaw and neck hurt though and his tongue was being beaten into a pulp by the stabbing cruelty of the bit he wore, the bridle leather scraping through the hair of his face. Pink froth dripped from Eqaetz’s open mouth. He bucked again but it did nothing but give Charles an opportunity to get him to stop, which Eqaetz did, only to be smacked upside the head with the angry man’s crop.
“Stupid bastard of a horse! I should geld you!” roared Charles furiously. He clouted Eqaetz’s ears again for emphasis and them kicked him in the ribs. “Get moving - trot you stupid nag!”
Eqaetz trotted.
“Sir, maybe you should be gentler with his mouth -”
“Corporal, do you have any idea what you’re talking about? This isn’t some pretty Andalusian. This is an Elven Horse. If I give him an inch he’ll take twenty! So mind your own business, you stupid Copper!”
Charles was not really nice to any of his servants, human or beast. Eqaetz trotted on miserably, nursing his injured mouth as he went. If it was possible for a horse to cry, he would have then from the pain, but horses cannot. He trotted on, switching his tail irritably, determined to smack Charles in the leg with it, but missing every time. For nearly an hour they rode, the road surface changing from sand to hard gravel, the mud disappearing. Eqaetz’s iron shod feet clanged noisily against the surface and he shied a little, because he was afraid of his shoes. They terrified him; at any moment, one could possibly fly off and he could take a wrong step and then be lamed. Eqaetz really didn’t want that. He knew what happened to lame horses - they were shot.
The Yale Estate, massive and surrounded by a twelve foot stone wall came into view, looking like a white palace on the edge of the hill overlooking Lamina, its windows all decked out in a glow. There were hundreds of people living and working there and still more animals, from the Yale’s prized herd of sheep to the working dogs, meat cows and the horses who made everything go. The pastures here were irrigated, the most expensive livestock in Chartan grazing on the short jade green grass, surrounded by white washed fences and little patches of forest which Charles so nicely allowed to grow. It looked like paradise, with a blue lake full of fish bordering the pasture lands and a massive house garden in the back. What amounted to an entire small town lived on the estate and there were buildings everywhere.
The metal gates opened and this time, Charles let Eqaetz run up the grand drive, the human to look as grand as his property, the horse to be free of him. Right up to the gently sloping marble steps Eqaetz galloped, scattering servants and barking dogs, skidding to a halt as a groom came to hold Eqaetz’s bridle. The president of Chartan dismounted with a well practiced flourish, the feeling of his weight leaving Eqaetz’s back so relieving that Eqaetz exhaled heavily, closing his eyes for a moment of bliss that the wretched man was no longer aggravating his sore vertebrae. Elven horses were not meant to carry such heavy loads as humans; in their own continent they were never used as draft animals because there they were treated very well. Eqaetz had never experienced the good side of drakoon hospitality, but he had been told many stories about it.
“Come’n Smarty, lez go!” encouraged the groom, pulling on his bridle as Charles sauntered bow leggedly away up the steps of his mansion, servants rushing to offer him refreshments. The grand oak doors opened wide, a waft of cooking and conversation echoing out of them. A party was being held. Eqaetz looked longingly towards it; the food there smelled a lot better than the dry musty oats he would have to eat for his supper.
“Come’n boy, come’n!” the groom reminded him, chirruping. Eqaetz trotted after him, the sweat soaking his fur making him feel miserably itchy. Down a path around the mansion towards the back the groom Joel Farings took him, chattering up a storm as if the man knew Eqaetz could understand him, telling him all about all that had passed at the estate since Eqaetz had last been there a week ago. Joel pushed aside the sliding doors of the stable block that was Eqaetz’s home and led him into the dark confines, his hooves clattering worse than ever on the cement of the floor, almost startling him. Joel brought him into an alcove off to the side and clipped crossties to his bridle, then proceeded to hurriedly remove all the tack from his body, holding Eqaetz’s forelock when he changed Eqaetz’s bridle to a fine tooled leather halter. The groom towelled off Eqaetz’s sweat then brushed him down until all traces of the ordeal that the horse had just been through had been removed from his coat.
“Wouldn’t hurt the master to be nicer on the reins eh? Easy there Smarty m’boy, just gonna check on yer poor sore mouth.” Joel dabbed a bit of ointment on the corners of Eqaetz mouth, fed him a sugar cube from his greasy pocket, then led Eqaetz into the spacious box stall that Eqaetz lived in whenever he wasn’t being ridden or used in some other way or in the pasture. He wasn’t in the pasture very often. Joel stayed with him, putting a blanket on him and double checking his hooves before closing the door and settling down to clean Eqaetz’s tack in front of it. There was no way to predict when Charles would call again, so Joel had to clean the harness as fast as possible. His dog Chance, a bobtailed merle coloured mutt came to sit by the man’s feet as he worked and Eqaetz hung his head out over the door to listen to the man talk.
Sometimes Eqaetz wondered if the man had any idea what Eqaetz was, that he was different. Eqaetz had never spoken to anyone in mind speech in his life, save a few very pushy drakoon, so Joel really didn’t have any reason to suspect that Eqaetz was more than just a horse, or so he thought. He rested his nose against the door, relaxing in the warmth of the hay-scented stable. When Joel was done cleaning the tack, he pulled out a blanket and curled up on the bench he had been sitting on to sleep until Charles next called them, the dog Chance becoming a furry ball right beneath his master. Eqaetz went and laid down in the hay, knowing that the next time Charles called would never be far enough away in the future…
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