The close yowls of a bobcat cut through her thoughts. Why had Satan taken her off the track? Didn't he know how dangerous it was?
Of course he did, and on that thought, the most dangerous animal in these woods would be Satan anyway.
He was fiddling with the saddle bags, filling them with cartridges, snares, arrows and darts. How much did this man carry around in his belt?
Something had been bugging her for a while now, this change she felt in Satan. Before he had been, she does know how to explain it, cut off, above…just different.
Now he was back. Back to the devil she ran into war, back to the man who had threatened Washington and the Grandmaster Templar before storming off with her into the night.
She does not know how to truly make sense of how he will seem to shift from his true self to almost like he was a man on strings, or being controlled by an otherworld force. She does not know, but she senses it.
And it seems the different, calmer phases of Satan have finally left him alone to be the raw being that he is.
The spiked outline of a fort barrier came into view through the ancient, mossy trees of Black Creek. Satan dismounted and continued on his way there by foot, holding up a hand and hushing her to show that she was not to follow.
Ho ho, so that was what he was doing. Infiltration. Well she can work with that.
"Yeah, I'll be here then." She nicked after Satan, who had already disappeared into the ferns and shadows.
After about an hour she had grown bored with pawing frozen grass and roots up to eat. So she started down the little gully to the cold stream.
It had only started flowing recently, she could tell by the sharps of ice still gripping to its stepping stones and banks. A fat encased beaver waddled with a branch into the water like it was nothing more than a lovely thermal spring. After a while, she grew bored once more, even watching a handful of winter birds come down to the miniature, humble river (a stroke of bubbling blue across the white forest more than anything else) to bath and chatter did not hold her rapt attention for long.
So she walked in a circle again, sitting under a tree here, making snow hoof patterns there.
An explosion rippled throughout the quiet wilderness, a cloud of fire and smoke growing to loom over the fort where Satan was.
Then there was another hour of nothing.
She walked back up the gully, the saddle bags and tack clinching and bouncing as she pulled herself up the sharp incline.
Wondering off, deeper into the wonderland, she found a body. There was only a square of its brown hide showing from under the snow that had covered the animal. It was large too, massive even. She allowed herself to breathe again; it could not be any of her loved ones.
But as she daintily scraped the snow off the animal, she received a sharp slap of horror when the revealed face was familiar.
The bay stallion, eyes still wide open, dried blood covering nearly all of him.
She stood for a long while, staring into his frozen and unmoving eyes. Tracing his stiff, dead body and watching his sides not move and fall.
Was Max just as bad?
Had he gotten home safely, alive, was he in a fit state to get there?
Was he still in the area, on the ground, collapsed, suffering, wounded, attack?
This was all her fault. The sooner she owned up to that the better.
"I'm sorry, this is my entire fault." She confessed to the glazed eyes of the dead.
No. It was the bay's fault too, she realised as she finally admitted to it out loud, if only he had not been such a disastrous horse. But she had known the nature of stallions and yet she had let herself trust him in the first few moments they had known each other. She had let the good deeds of Max become the good deeds of all stallions. She had forgotten the Max was a rare, rare find. He cared, not about himself but about other.
How had she let herself forget that?
The crunching of Satan coming back echoes throughout the forest.
She walks to his side, where he was waiting in the gully he left her at.
She hides her face in his shoulder, closes her eyes and listens to his steady heartbeat.
The blood on his clothes did not matter to her.
She really ought to do what a horse should normally do and just forget them all. They are the past, and it is in a horse nature to only look forward.
She ought to forget them.
But she can't, because against her best wishes they had- some bloody how- managed to become a family.
Winter is closing when she finally finds the horse of the hunting party. She has all but forgotten him name, but recognises him for his chopped tail and white face.
"The hunting party you were on back in the middle of winter," she starts walking straight over to him with purpose, no matter how bemused Satan was upon her back. "There was a little foal found with some elk," she began. His ears picked up at that in recognition.
"Ah yes, you too?" He asked her, making her confused.
"Me too what? Wait, no, just answer me this. What's happened to him?" She demanded it, and she was well within her rights to do so, she was the chief horse in this situation, in this entire frontier. The horses out here respected her, they all knew her by name and sight thanks to her days ghosting around by the Monmouth Tavern.
And this last half of winter, hunting the untouched slopes with Satan, coming into contact with the towns only to trade, had only elevated her reputation as chieftain. Wild horse they whisper her as being, unbeatable, untameable; invincible.
"He was sold at the Lexington markets."
"To who?" She asked with a pitch to her voice- she practically screamed the question.
"Some frontier man, he had the insignia but no one could pick up what camp he was from."
"Okay, well, thank you very much." Disappointed but at least with one answer. "And before I forget, your brother the mule sends his well wishes."
He takes her words with a nod of the head, but before she manages to turn and leave, he cut her off.
"Listen, I think you should know. I get asked questions about Hearn daily, everyone knows him now and wants to learn more about the little guy. You got to understand chief, please don't hurt him, he's only tiny and doesn't understand what his doing is out of line, I-"
"What?" She swirl back to him, almost spluttering. Her? Hurt her own child?
"I mean...what- what part of that surprised you, exactly?" He had crumbled back meekly from her. It was a sight, a muscular hunting horse trying to collapse in on himself as a rather malnourished (due to the lack of food she comes by on the week long hunts with Satan) mare glares at him.
"All of it." She told him frankly, raising her head and starring how her snout at him in a 'explain now' gesture.
"Well, he's made a name for saving horse's skins. He stepped in when a horse was getting whipped, got a copping but it stopped the other from being all but killed. He's got a way with the forest animals that none of us understand, he be opening gates in the middle of night and, well chief, some are whispering that when he becomes old enough, by summer really, that he should become chief...you know... instead of you."
"Well..." she wanted to say something, but only ended repeating herself dumbly.
"...well..I.."
Satan kicked her, impatient, and so she left the white faced brown, confused yet proud yet terrified yet...well...well?...well.