Excerpt: Untitled (Tal's story)

p 39:

“Nervous?” asked the captain, quietly.
“Of course I am,” I said.
He laughed a little. “Yes… nervous enough to forget your constant ‘sir, sir, sir’.
“Sorry, sir,” I said, flushing again.
“Forget it. Relax. You’ll do fine, and you’ll make a fine soldier in my company. I can tell. You just need to show the rest of these idiots here and convince them of the same thing. What Ruser says you did is unbelievable, and that’s the problem. It’s unbelievable.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
He laughed again, and stared at me a moment. “That captain of yours in the Seastormers must have been a treat to serve under.”
“I’m glad to be in your service now, sir,” I said, after weighing my possible responses to that statement. He had been a tyrant. Horrible temper, sometimes irrationally violent, but he got battles won, so he stayed in as captain. I wondered if that was in jeopardy after his last defeat.
The Lt returned with a large Ridden. She was about mid-size, all black, and moved with a quick grace and agility that awed me. She was introduced as Hekata. She sat in front of me, drawing herself up and looking down at me with her golden eyes. “I have been told to test you. You are not my Rider; Kae is my Rider, and he allows me this task.”
I bowed in return, not knowing what else to do. “You honor me,” I said. Her eyes squinched a little, her whiskers drew forward, and her ears tilted towards me – an expression I had come to interpret as the Ridden smile.
“You may mount,” she said, then stood and crouched slightly so I could. I climbed up on her, and although I was getting better at it, I still heard a few snickers for the soldiers watching. Not a good start.
“How will you be –“ I began to ask, but she leapt off at an angle, jumping over the heads of the men that had been standing near us. Maybe some part of me was ready for it, because Jureur had done something similar when I first mounted him. Maybe I was already so tense I was ready to react. Anyway, the same instinctual reaction took over. Without thought or consideration I hung on, tucked myself in, and rode her as she bounded across camp. She leapt over everything in our way – wagons, carts, men, other Ridden, and then we reached the edge of camp. We were on some of the naturally terraced slopes that run along the south side of the mountains, between them and the sea, and as she hit a stretch of level grassy ground, she really took off. She ran faster than anything I could have imagined, and we flew along the open field.
It felt wonderful.
She finally slowed, and, padding along, panting, she said, “You are a good Rider, Tal.”
“Thank you, Hekata. Was that part of the test?”
She laughed, a melodious rumble. “Yes, that was part of the test. And you were not supposed to pass, did you know that?”
“Um… no. Why?”
“I was told to throw you off, then we could start at a low level of skill, showing everyone that you are as Kai N’tei as any of them. Then we would progress to a level that you failed again, defining your limits.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling both proud and ridiculous at the same time. “Well then, now what?”
“Now we finish the test. I recommend you fall off me, when I signal you, like this,” she said, and she made a short, strange growly sound.
“What? Why would I want to fall off?”
She was silent for a moment. “I think there are two parts to the rest of this test, Tal. First, do you trust me? Will you do as I ask, as hard as it might be? This will test how much and how quickly you can trust a Ridden. A good Rider must do what his Ride asks of him, even as the Ridden does his bidding – without question, without hesitation. And second – you must think to your place in this company. You have just humiliated all the men that were counting on you to fail. They are… jealous of your skill, or they should be.”
“So you want me to act like I’m not very good now?”
“No. I did not say that. Listen. Whether they realize it or not, those men will now be looking for you to fail. They may even go out of their way to make you fail, to once again make you more like the level they thought you should be at, and to elevate their own importance. I recommend you do this, Tal, and get it out of the way. Right now, they are waiting for us to come back. They are angry their plan didn’t work. If we come back and show how good you are, they will remain angry and resentful. If we come back and you show some skill and then fail, then they will be amused and their anger will fade. Do you understand?”
“I understand. How do you know this, though? How do you understand them so well?”
She huffed out a laugh. “I have seen this happen more times than I cared to. They pick me to test, because I have the ability to push Rider’s limits. And always, they act like that. They call it, ‘making sure the new one gets put in his place’. Plus, my Rider has explained it to me,” she admitted.
We rode on in silence for a short minute. “Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll do what you say. I just hope I don’t get hurt too badly.”
“I will try to make it non-lethal,” she said, and then she was off like a shooting star, a blur across the fields again. This time, though, she began to leap up the terraces and levels as we moved back towards camp. Huge, heart-dropping bounds, sometimes ending in a scrabble up a rock face, a moment sliding back down, and then another leap. I hung on. It still felt great.
We came back into camp from above, with Hekata leaping and snaking through the stones and narrow paths that led down the mountain. In short glimpses we could see the camp below us, and I could see the crowd watching us. “This will show them where the enemy can approach,” I said between leaps.
“The way is narrow, but yes, the enemy could sneak in through here. Now we will be watching.” With that she bounded out into an open space, with a drop before us that I couldn’t see the bottom of as she leapt out into the air. We soared through the air, moments of free-fall. I laughed, overcome with glee. It was the giddy feeling that I remembered from being a child, and my father throwing me up in the air, then catching me. A moment of exhiliration, and complete trust that I’d be caught safely at the bottom. Then, always, a plea to do it again, papa. Please, please, do it again.
We landed and I banged my head against her back, with the presence of mind to know it was coming and to turn my head so I didn’t break my damned nose. Her thick fur cushioned the blow, so I wasn’t bothered, and I managed to cling to her as she did it again. Then a stretch where she wove in and out of the rocky path, flinging me from side to side. I was having the time of my life. I couldn’t stop laughing, laughing from pure enjoyment.
Finally we neared the camp, and as we approached one of the last drop-offs, she made that weird little growly sound. It was hard, so hard, but I let my grip slacken, my hands deep in her fur opened, my legs loosened, and I stopped laughing. She leapt one last time, and I tried to make it look like I was still holding on.