Tristran sat stiffly upon the young mud-brown gelding he was given. The animal had obviously been treated badly as a colt. For now, when being ridden, He was either stiff and unreasonable or he shied away from the slightest movement. Either way, he had Tristran's mood darkening at an ever-increasing rate.
With a click of his tongue against his teeth, Tristran tried to steer the animal off the path...he wanted to ride ahead and check for Signs of Ina without the others watching him... The horse didn't budge.
Tristran jerked silently on the reigns, and the horse neighed loudly in protest and planted his feet firmly apart. Tristran felt like digging out a nice leather strap and teaching the stubborn beast a lesson...But he decided against it. Thinking of how, normally, he was good with animals.
One could say he was an animal person; he seemed to prefer their company to that of his fellows most of the time. He just knew them, knew what they wanted, or needed...praps it was because their silence twined his own.
He shook his head, deciding on a different tactic, and softly whistled a tune to distract his horse as he gently pulled on the reigns, and squeezed with his legs.
The horse's ears flicked back and forth as they took in the sound and his feet plodded off the dirt path almost unwillingly. Once they were far enough away from the others, Tristran surprised the animal and heeled him sharply into a trot.
Then he full out galloped across the green and frostbitten earth, forgetting for a moment, all thoughts of his long-lost link to the past...and of the woman who had caused it...
OOO
"MERLIN!" The word was torn from her throat in agony, as the kingly animal beside her buckled to his knees, and toppled in the dirt.
Arrows sprouted from his body madly, and his snowy and dappled coat was soon steaming in the cold, the fresh blood of his wounds staining the earth. Frantically, Ina yanked out arrows, pressing her hands to the wounds ...trying desperately to stop the bleeding.
She was still in shock. Her heart was pounding in her ears and her vision was blurry with tears. Her stomach contracted with sobs, and she felt like retching. Instead, she sucked back her tears, and tried to comfort the dying animal beside her.
"Shhhhhh...it's ok, you're ok..." She crooned brokenly, smoothing away his bloodstained forelock with a shaking hand. His eyes rolled, the whites exposed, and he gave a shuddering sigh, blood frothing on his lips and gurgling in his throat. She choked back a sob, as his legs thrashed out, and a stray hoof caught her in the face.
She felt a trickle of blood, and pressing her palm against her cheek, she then pushed her hand against one of his deep cuts, a broken arrow shaft digging into her hand... and mingled her own blood with the dying stallion's, and smearing his life's blood silently against her brow. The horse shuddered, and with the dimming of his eyes, he fell still, and silent.
Ina screamed…sobbed…beat her hands against his giving body. Her thin white shirt had become a crimson second skin, her skirt soaked rust red, and heavy with gore. She crawled towards his head, cradling it in her lap, and bending to kiss his still-warm muzzle. His head and body still held the warmth of his life, and if she closed her eyes, and felt the heat, she could pretend he was still living.
When she opened her eyes, Merlin and his archers surrounded her. He looked doleful, and almost a bit angry. She closed her eyes again, and wiped a hand across her face, smearing the drying blood with tears.
The gash on her cheek throbbed, and she wished it to scar, so she would remember this betrayal the rest of her countless days...
"Move away from the body, Inara." Merlin commanded. But still she sat there. She rocked a bit instead, pulling the stallion's head against her chest with her.
"Why?" She asked, and almost laughed at herself. She sounded like a foolish child...no better than the youths that had come to gather behind the archers.
"We must prepare the body, now stand aside."
"NO! I mean WHY did you kill him!" She screamed, and stood up abruptly, the horse's head landing with a sickening thud on the ground.
"You would not understand," Merlin continued. "It is written in the books of our forefathers what traditions..." But he was cut off.
Ina spat sharply at his feet, a great insult.
"You're forefathers! Not mine! NEVER mine! You deceitful man...you would have me bring an innocent animal to slaughter...over words prophesized hundreds of years ago!"
But Merlin would not answer her. He stood there, amidst the growls and warnings directed at her from the men around him, and said nothing… he only shook his head.
"You would not understand."
Ina shook with anger and pushed her way through the crowd, but not before locking eyes with Henri, the boy she had saved. He stared at her with all the contempt of the others, as if he were one of them...as if he had been born a woad. The bow in his hand was still strung, and hanging at his side.
She remembered pulling one of his hand-made arrows from the stallion.
He looked, in all aspects like he should, as a pictish youth, but for his hair, which had been neatly trimmed into obedience by Ina herself, just over a week before. His fifteen-year-old frame was livid with anger and shame...of her. And he turned his eyes away.
Ina stopped in her tracks, her heart compacting smaller with every beat. Bajarni ran towards her, her seven-year-old step fleet and light with her white faerie hair flying out behind her. But her "mother" snatched her up before she went more then twenty paces.
The little girl cried, and reached out...
A sharp tap to the back of her head silenced her, and her little face contracted, and became stony. "Enough Hasa!" The woman told her, using Bajarni's REAL (woad) name.
No one but Ina called her Bajarni, no one but the short haired young woman ever reminded her who she really was, secretly told her true tales, and made up fairy ones about her sharply handsome older brother.
The brother she had never really met, and didn't remember.
...Told her, whispered to her in her sleep, that she was not a woad...that she didn't belong with these people. Somehow hoping that the knowledge would create a wall between Bajarni and this race, to keep her from becoming one of them.
Now She looked at Ina angrily, and turned her face away, casting down her eyes. Ina locked gazes with the offending woman, who scowled, and strode back towards her home. Taking the languid snowy haired child with her. Ina turned away, and her eyes stung with fresh tears.
In the short time she had been away, the woads had managed to rob her of everything. Henri was ashamed of her, for not fitting in... He had often told her to look for a husband, suggested his friend's older brothers to her as suitors. But she would have none of them.
They saw her as a queer sort of conquest. Some prize...or animal to own...a horse with yet an unbroken spirit; unfit for a rider...Something else to master, and nothing more...
And now, Bajarni associated her with pain, and punishment. The innocent little girl, who could skin a rabbit faster than anyone, had been her last comfort. But they had managed to break that bond too.
Now, she would be lucky to get anywhere near her without a fight with the girl's mother...
Ina stormed through the crowd again, and shoved people roughly from her path. An uncertain laugh rippled through them at her anger, and it swelled, and gained strength. She kept her gait even, and disappeared out of sight, the sound of it ringing in her ears.
Once alone, and back in her singular hut, she cried in private, shaking with sobs and an effort to keep quiet, and all the while silently begging Tristran to forgive her...
OOO