Ashan 71, 717
Peg had probably sensed something was different about that morning, even before her young owner had put on her harness and hitched her up to her cart. At least Arlo wondered if she knew what he'd planned for the next few breaks, based on the fact that the ordinarily patient and agreeable creature had swung her head round and nipped him when his back was turned. The sturdy brown mare was right to be suspicious. Or would have been, had the young man thought that animals were capable of any sort of prescience.After hitching her up to her cart, he'd loaded the gear he'd purchased the previous trial into the back; along with the book he'd picked up from a local shop. As he climbed aboard the cart and drove Peg to the outskirts of Ne'haer, Arlo found himself grateful that Vega was off doing something else that trial. If she'd been there, and was to witness what he had planned as it unfolded, she'd never let him forget it. Maybe, Peg's apparent knack for divining the future had rubbed off on him after all.
A half break later, Peg was turned loose from her cart and was grazing at the edge of an open field. Arlo was seated beside her on a overlarge stone, one foot propped up and the book laid open on his knee. All the gear he'd brought with him was scattered around them on the ground. "Look here, Peg," the young man said, tapping his fingertip on a diagram at the top of the first page. "Here's a horse and her owner riding nice as you please. We're smarter than them both for sure. It ought to be a lark, yeah?" Peg didn't raise her head or cease her munching on the succulent green blades at her feet. Instead she snorted through flared nostrils, and flicked a dismissive ear his way.
"So it says here," he uttered as he skipped the first chapter and part of the second, "that I should tie you up somewhere before we start, so you don't wander off." She didn't, ordinarily, when he put her driving harness on her. But somehow he thought this time might be different. So getting up off his rock, Arlo took her lead and tied her off to the corner of her cart. He picked up the leather bridle then, with it's bit already attached. "This part ought to be easy. It's not much different than your driving headstall."
He was right about that. Except that for some reason Peg found the bit not to her liking and clamped her teeth tight together. "Quit being so stubborn Peg. You've taken a bit a dozen, even a hundred times now," he said, and slipped a finger into the back of her mouth behind her teeth to apply pressure there. She finally took it. But once he got the thing in place and tried to slip the crown piece over her ears, she flung her head up and showed him the whites of her eyes.
It was fair warning, but it passed Arlo by. "Look. I know you know what you're thinking. I've done this before and you probably remember it. But I was just a kid then, and I've forgiven you for coming back and trying to stomp me after you threw me off. It was a long time ago and no lasting harm done," he said, and tried again. Finally, through cajoling, trickery and a level of patience that was unusual for the young man bent on riding his mare, the bridle was in place, the cheek straps adjusted to fit, and the leather reins were attached.
The mare had begun pawing irritably at the ground, but she didn't seem to mind when Arlo placed the small padded blanket on her back. For that small, cooperative gesture, she received a small piece of an apple that he'd cut up before they'd left camp. Then came the saddle and turned out, there'd be more of the treats offered in quick succession. Not as rewards so much, but as desperate attempts at bribery.
Eyeing the saddle that was slung over the side of the cart and comparing it to the labeled drawing in his book, Arlo frowned. "There's an awful lot of pieces here. But it's only a few of them that appear to matter," he uttered. Still seething from the battle over the bridle, and as if she understood each and every word, Peg side checked him and sent him stumbling. It was the first real shot across the bow, apparently, and what followed was a battle of wills that would consume at least the next half break.
Half of it was spent getting the mare to let him slide the saddle on to her back without her pivoting out of the way, or hopping up on her front feet, so far as her tied off lead would allow it. She'd stepped on his foot, twice and nipped him a couple times more. But once the thing was on her back, Arlo was quick to move on to getting it secured. "So the front cinch straps across the chest," he'd said as he talked his way through it, "between the front legs and attaches to the flank cinch, which goes under the belly and hooks up with the flank cinch, which meets up again with the girth cinch."
It was an awful lot of cinches, and that wasn't all of them. There was the rear cinch too, which according to his book oughtn't be quite as snug as the front one. Peg seemed more tolerant of that rear one, so it was the first that Arlo sorted out. In fact, she didn't seem to mind the adjusting of the girth cinch either. It ought to have made him suspicious. But she'd cleverly peppered in enough of the nipping, pushing and stepping on him to stop him wondering too much.
"Snug, but not too tight," Arlo mused quietly, reading from his book and slipping a couple fingers between the thing and her belly in order to check it. And then for good measure, he gave it another tug in spite of the snorting and eyeballing coming his way. The stirrups, the book told him, ought to be adjusted on this type of saddle so that the knees were just bent...but only a little. And having not been up in the saddle just yet, his best guess would have to do.
Then came the moment of truth. And if Arlo hadn't skipped the first chapter and a half; the part that went into the thinking, disposition and wiles of horses, he might've predicted what happened next. Peg wasn't a stupid horse. In fact he'd never assumed that she was. But what he hadn't considered, was her newfound knack for conspiring against him.
He took hold of the horn, put a foot in the stirrup and launched himself up. But as soon as the whole of his weight was focused on that one stirrup, before he ever got the chance to swing a spare leg over the saddle, the air that Peg had sucked into her belly and had kept there while he'd tightened the cinch, came rushing out in one long sigh and the whole thing came toppling over. The saddle slid sideways across her back and Arlo with it, until he found himself unceremoniously dumped on the ground.
What had gone wrong? After a few well chosen curses, Arlo got up, dusted himself off, took his book and referred to chapter two, section three. Frowning deeply, he looked up at a mare that he'd swear was inwardly laughing at him. "Well played Peg," the young man muttered resentfully and picked up the saddle again, determined that by trial's end, he'd win this battle of wills.
Off Topic
purchased for this thread: 1 nonfiction book: riding. 1 horned saddle, 1 small blanket, 1 leather bridle,
1 set of leather reins, 1 riding bit. 82 gn
1 set of leather reins, 1 riding bit. 82 gn
