Wicked Bronze Ambition

54

Brownie and two of her gal pals gamboled round, yapping joyously. It was the beginning of a great day!

Number Two shared my bleak attitude.

I blurted, “What the hell?” I stared. I shuddered. I started to sweat. I turned back, but the door had shut behind me. My hands trembled. My knees knocked. “What in the hell?”

There were horses tied up at a street-side hitching post just downhill from my steps. Intuition shrieked that they were there because of me. I am cursed with a powerful instinct when it comes to the darker blessings. Just seeing those monsters guaranteed that all things dreadful were about to come down.

My reaction was maybe a wee bit melodramatic. The fact remained: I should have vandalized that post as soon as the neighborhood association put it in. Hitching posts attract horses the way horse apples attract flies. Right now my stretch of Macunado was suffering a surfeit of all three.

Moonblight announced, “We will cover more ground faster if we ride.” My vote having no real weight. She strode manfully to the larger beast, a gelding whose ears brushed the bellies of the clouds. She checked its tack, swung aboard with the ease and grace of a feline cavalier.

The lesser beast was a mare, old, saggy, not much bigger than a kiddy-ride pony. She gave me a sideways look three seconds long, all sad and resigned, smoothly masking the evil in her heart. I psyched myself up to commence to fix to begin working my way closer.

“Will you stop dawdling? You could get annoying if you insist on being a drama queen.”

Oh boy. Struck to the macho heart.

Tara Chayne’s stallion pranced and caracoled impatiently.

All right. Her gelding shuffled sideways a little while my ego shrank till it could slither under the bellies of night crawlers. I stepped in, checked cinches, bridle, and stirrups like I knew what I was doing. The saddle did not fall off while I levered myself aboard and, age of wonders, settled facing the same direction as the nag. My toes did not quite drag the cobblestones.

“That isn’t so terrible, is it?”

Curses. She knew that I suffered a slight neurosis concerning horses.

Yes. It was terrible. The view from way up there was. .

I bit down on that. I needed no aggravation from anyone who suspected my secret foibles.

The mare stepped out, sadly trudging along beside the sorceress and her beast, one step back like a good Venageti wife. Brownie and the gang, no more enthusiastic about horses than I was, moved out with us, in synch with the monsters despite being ill at ease. Number Two and another roamed ahead, scouting. Brownie assumed her standard station a foot outside the range of any surprise kick. The remaining mutt fell back as a one-dog rearguard.

I clutched saddle and reins and awaited the dark moment when my steed commenced her mischief.

It is gospel absolute. Sometimes “they” really are out to get you!

The mare might be working for the people who had been out to get me the past few days.

I worked on my nerves, using relaxation techniques learned back when I was a national hero in training. I reserved a fraction of my attention for taking advantage of my new high vantage point.

TunFaire’s streets teem by day when, as this morning, rain is only a threat, though come nighttime, some areas turn into deserts. By day it can be easy to follow someone through all the busy, and more so if they rise above the press on horseback. A professional eye, however, can discover followers. They will be the frequently seen people impatient with folks who impede their parallel progress.

It helps to be operating with clever dogs, too. They notice things when you don’t if you’re preoccupied with feeling sorry for yourself.

Hangovers and horses. Could it get any worse?

Of course it could.

“Lady Tara Chayne, we’re being followed. And not by guardian angels.”

“Tara Chayne will do. Titles get cumbersome.”

I grunted.

“I’m not surprised. Your partner warned me that we might be stalked. He sensed watchers who weren’t close enough to read. Are they friends or enemies? Enemies might be more fun. Guardians? I see a lot of rat people.” Her tone suggested that she found being of interest to bad people particularly flattering.

“I don’t know. You’re right about the rat men. I don’t recognize them, though. They’re grays. John Stretch would use ones I know. And his own kind.” I didn’t recognize any of the humans, either.

The followers weren’t together and seemed unaware of one another.

Me. Me. I wasn’t alone. Moonblight had people interested in what she was doing, too. We might each have our own stalkers.

Hell, for that matter somebody could be watching those weird dogs. Or they might be agents dedicated to exposing equine treason.

I had to admit that equine treason was a stretch, even in an unlimited universe.

Moonblight shifted course next intersection.

She had been hot to get those tracers to Trivias Smith. But, more than I, she didn’t want the transaction witnessed. Why mark the swords if the creeps who took delivery had reason to be suspicious?

My steed stomped on in the lee of the gelding, resolutely indifferent, just getting through another day. I wondered if she wasn’t blind and navigating by sound and stench.

Tara Chayne’s beast definitely had a horsy pong.