The town is asleep; a restless dog runs over to her but does not bark. The sounds of the night, the cries of babies, crackles of fires and the ever humming calls of the insects and hunting birds of the night.
The steady plod of her hooves punctures through them. Her footfalls thump the compacted dirt and feel like they are echoing and shimmering down the sides of the fort. She cuts her way straight through it, coming out on the other side and crossing the little dirt bridge.
Before she may have taken into the forest instead of sticking to the trails. Made a direct route of her own. But she does not dare, because it she encounter a hunting wolf, she cannot run them off her tail like she has done so many a time.
So instead she picks her feet up and tenderly tries the feel of a trot.
Oh wouldn't it be a sight, to be traveling alone on that hot night, to round a bend in the small dirt travel and see her coming down towards you. Clip clopping, rising up and down, her swollen sides swaying back and forth with the movement of the jog. Eyes half closed with ideas and thoughts, mindlessly following the trail through no matter how much her heels swell from the weight.
If she was impressive and intimidation before, now she is more so, huger and outlined almost in a hungry fashion by the moon and forest shadows. Riderless, bare, alone, a man would assume her wild or escaped. Dangerous, uncontrollable, unknown.
But there is no one to see her image, for it is the dead of night and for, indeed, it is the dead of nowhere.
The squirrels and owls regard her though, along with the raccoons and foxes as they hunt. Slowly the morning chips into the night.
When Lexington draws closer, at around seven in the morning, instead of plodding straight through it like she did with the fort, she goes around its outside. There would be men and woman out and about on the farms and taverns who are more than ready to race out and capture her when she trots past. Some may even recognise her; she does cut a very rememberable figure.
Skirting around the outside, she passes many pens of animals, but one particular lot of goats draws her attention.
There is a stillborn baby on the ground with the heartbroken mother still kneeled by its always-dead side still trying to lick it awake.
She shudders and moves on. At least she knows hers is alive; it kicks and squirms, bruising her kidneys and hitting the underside of her spine.
For now.
That afternoon in the Scotch Plains a patrol of soldiers spots her and starts to advance. She looks at the horse which is carrying the captain over.
"Don't you dare."
She stops short, afraid. Another law of horse society is to never blame the steed, blame the rider. Why is she angry at her then? She continued to trot on and away from the patrol, the captain tells them to keep on marching while he fetches the loose horse.
He comes after her.
She ignores him.
He rides up beside her, tries to grab for the lone halter around her head and…
Smack! She twists and gets a mouthful of his royal attire, rearing and jerking him off the saddle she lets him fall to the ground from the high back of his graceful mount.
She trots on, the other horse whines in good humour at the sequence of events and continues to dart out of the captain's reach when he goes to get back on.
She tosses her head to the young mare as a thank you.
She snorts her 'you're welcome'.
The great barrier fence of New York draw closer and she wonders, will it be easier or harder to move around in the city with no rider? Holding her breath she passes through the gate and eyes people around, watching for any reaction to her and she trots deeper and deeper in the monstrous city.
It seems that in the city, everyone assumes that someone else is taking care of it and passes her off with a flick of the hand. Excellent.
It's when she's passing by a large crowd outside a hall that she smells it. It's been a long time, and a lot has changed, but still, she recognises like the day he was shooting people dead from her back.
Satan.
She spins and looks and finds him, like always, only out of the corner of her eye. He had just finished killing two guards behind a building after they had dragged him there. Fools.
She was not letting him get away.
Lunging after him as he absorbed in and out of the crowd, the men who had been misfortunate enough to be standing in her way were down lying winded in the dust. The masses of people all gathering parting in screaming waves before her. She turned a corner. Satan was nowhere to be seen.
Frustrated, she turned to a pair of horses that had been hitched to a waiting carriage on the corner.
"Where did the man with the arrows on his back go?"
They quickly replied to her.
"Left."
"Left."
No one dares lie to the chief horse.
The streets were quieter down here, she could smell his fresh trail now that is was not mingled with the crowd. He was heading for the docks, for the salt and the seagulls and the boats which she could not follow him onto.
And she charged down those cobble roads, feeling the thrill of old times, catching sight of him just before he disappeared around a corner again.
Down on the wharfs, he walked, just enough for her to nearly catch up…just…enough…
And then Satan spied someone, they spied him too, because he was suddenly running and pushing people aside. She follows, her hooves striking and flicking a loose nail up behind her from the salty sea side boards.
Satan slips down on to a lower part of the dock; she keeps running alongside him from above.
That's when the grenade goes off. It had been amongst a pile of crates and broken sails, she got floored by the shock wave and collapsed as she went boneless.
People were running and cursing when she struggled to her feet again. Everyone was running, the man jumped off the ship with his suitcase, the woman with a paper full of fish tripped over her own feet. It made Satan harder to track down now that he was not the only running human.
There he was, down further, nearly around the corner.
She wanted to scream.
Stay still!
Turn around and see me!
Recognise me.
See how much I have been through just to return to you.
All she wanted to do was ram him, topple him over and yell in his face. Damn Satan, god of all things painful and sinful, damn you and your pathetic flights of fancy. And that's for leaving me with those bodies and freaked out horses nearly three years ago. And this is for disappearing off the face of the earth for those three years. And this is for letting the thrill of the chase control you rather than become a part of you.
He's charging for a firing line of soldiers when she materializes behind him (she's running that fast, powered on fury and oiled by a sense of self-justice) she reaches him and topples him over with her shoulder. She stands over his aggravated and fallen body; she is equally enraged as he is.
The eyes widen and there is that familiar sound of recognition. She has her name. Lucky Girl.
The clicking of the firing lines guns fill the air around them, and she understands a bit too late that they are still aiming, they are still going to shoot…
She can take bullets with clenched teeth, but what of the one inside her, nestled and defenceless and weak in every way? It's a moment that is brilliant with blurring speed but also in slow motion all at once, she spins on the tips of her heels and yanks her body behind one of the many sheds. She feels like she's got whiplash, like her eyeballs were left behind, the amount of ferocious power that she put into throwing her body to safety.
Satan does the same, but in the other direction. He rolls and falls down over the side of the wharf onto a lower section, making all the men fishing scatter as the guns follow his liquid movements. He runs and vaults over the other side and in the direction his prey had fled for.
She may be bulletproof, but her child is not.
Watching the man chase like a bloodhound on the scent of dinner, she's hurt but had guessed that he would care so little.
See you on the other side, Satan, she promises to his disappearing shadow.
She has promises to keep that come before helping the suicidal man in his mortifying missions. At least he knows she's here and, more importantly, that she's cranky.