The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 2b - Blood on the Stones

Willard made no special flourish as he drew the great-sword from its sheath at his waist. It was Molly he needed them to watch: a horse so big she made their stallions seem ponies; the Mad God’s own mare; a thundering, violet-black divinity with more scars than the keel of a longboat. One look at her and they’d assume that he, too, was still immortal. How could they not? In twenty generations no Phyros-rider had ever successfully abandoned the Blood and immortality.

And he still wore the impressive oversized armor. Filled as it was with pads and air around his shrunken mortal muscles, it maintained the appearance of immortal stature. The only thing that hinted at his secret was the paunch he'd hammered into his breastplate to accommodate his new belly.

…And his blood.

He cursed again, the sound ringing in his helmet. This damned red blood on the stones!. There would be no time to hide it. 

A wash if shame poured over him. To be exposed a fraud and japed at in a ballad! He could see it now:  Sir Willard and the Feeble Paunch. SirWillard and the Shriveled Snail.

Molly’s blood called to him. Within easy reach, hot streams of immortality pulsed through rippling veins beneath the wine-black hide. He shut his eyes tight against temptation. How he longed to cut and drink from her! Molly cast a glance back, longing to be cut, pinning him with a violet eye and urging him with a low groan.

Willard’s stomach rolled. No. He forced his eyes away, and she bucked in anger, but he would not look back to her. Never more, girl. Never again.

Roaring in frustration, Molly channeled her rage into the pursuit, iron-shod hooves hammering sparks from the stones.

The bowmen had whipped their horses to an all-out run. Ahead of them, the road plunged over the edge of the ridge and into another scabland canyon, and they plunged down it, leaving a cloud of dust on the rim.

Only fifty strides behind, Molly sailed over the rim, and the thunder of her massive hooves compounded between the walls. 

The bowmen had just reached the flat of the canyon floor when Molly flew among them. With a four-hand height advantage, and nearly two times their weight, it only took a sideways check of Molly’s shoulder to shove the rearmost stallion into a stony outcrop where he crashed from full gallop to full stop against the stone. Without breaking stride, she drove between the second and third horses, seized a rider’s ankle in her jaws and hoisted him from the saddle. She dropped him under her pounding hooves, and with the upswing of her tusk-like blood tooth opened a fountain in the neck of his horse.

The third rider tried to rein in, hoping perhaps to duck the charge and circle back for the ambassador, but Willard’s blade slashed through his ribcage as they passed.

Willard sighed. It felt right, the unconscious perfection of their partnership. More right than anything he knew. Ten lifetimes in her saddle — ten lifetimes infusing Molly's blood in his veins — and how could it be otherwise?

They were one, and made for battle.

He knew she could not understand his abstinence — his repudiation of their old fellowship, his refusal of the daily ritual of drinking from her veins— and he knew she hated him for it. But unlike him, she could not release her bond. She served him rebelliously, an old lover rejected but still hopeful. Glancing back at him in challenge, she surged forward, redoubling her stride in pursuit of the remaining stallion, a sleek, crop-eared black with a fearless stride. Drawing alongside it, she seized it between her teeth at the top of its neck, behind the ears.

Willard read her signals and let her run free, adjusting his balance to her motions as Molly forced the stallion’s head down and dug her hooves in for a precipitous stop. The stallion squealed in pain, twisting and juddering to a stop that launched its rider swimming through the air. Molly forced the stallion to the ground, twisting until he rolled belly-up like a yielding dog. With a hoof the size of a stumper’s wedge she pressed its skull to the stones, and leaned.