FOREIGNER: a novel of first contact by Caroline J. Cherryh

The paidhi could only be a certain degree dead. He was replaceable, in an hour, once Mospheira knew he’d broken his neck.

“It’s your responsibility,” he said to Cenedi, taking up the reins. “Tabini-aiji has filed Intent, on my behalf. I trust you’re aware what went on last night.”

With which he prepared to put his foot in the stirrup, and let Cenedi worry. He resolutely struck Nokhada on the shoulder, to make him or her or it extend the foreleg: he knew from television how one got up.

But as Nokhada inclined in the brief bow, and he couldn’t get the stirrup situated, or his foot situated in it, the handlers gave him a shove up toward the rings. His light weight went up from their hands in a greater hurry than he expected, and he had only just landed on the riding-pad when Nokhada came up on her feet.

He went off the other side with a wild snatch at the riding-pad, into the hands of security, as Nokhada went in a circle.

Atevi seldom laughed aloud. Ilisidi did, as Babs threw his head and circled and snorted and handlers tried to collect Nokhada.

There was no choice, now. Absolutely none. He dusted himself off, asked Cenedi for the rein, and, shaking in the knees, remade his acquaintance with Nokhada, who had been made a fool along with him.

“Make both of us look good,” he muttered to a mountainous shoulder, and tried a second time to make Nokhada extend the leg. “Hit harder,” Cenedi said, so he hit harder, and Nokhada sighed wearily and put the leg out.

A second time he put his foot in the stirrup, and a second time Nokhada came up with him.

This time he expected it. This time he grabbed the pad-rings and leaned into Nokhada’s motion—landed astride, then tilted as Nokhada continued to turn in circles.

“Loosen the rein, loosen the rein, nand’ paidhi!”

He heard the dowager laughing uproariously and clung to the rings as he let the rein slip through his thumb and forefinger. Nokhada shook herself and turned around and around again.

“Ha!” Ilisidi said, as his circular, humiliating course showed him other riders getting mounted, with far less spectacle. He tried to straighten the reins out. He tried with pats of his hand to make friends with Nokhada, who in her now slower circles, seemed more interested in investigating his right foot, which he moved anxiously out of range.

Then Ilisidi shouted out, Babs passed him in a sudden rush of shadow, Nokhada took it for permission and made the last revolution a surge forward that jerked the rein through his hand so hard it burned. The stone face of the building passed in a lurching blur, the gate did, and while he was clinging to the pad-rings and trying to find his balance, they were across the courtyard, headed through an arch and down a stone chute beside the stairs that ended in an open gate, and sunlight.

A cliff was in front of them. He saw Ilisidi and Babs turn to the road, and he jerked on Nokhada’s head to make her turn, too, which Nokhada took for an insult, dancing deliberately out on the brink of disaster, with the misty lake beyond and empty air below.

“Don’t jerk her head, nand’ paidhi!” someone shouted from close behind him, and Cenedi came riding past, bumping his leg, sending Nokhada on a perverse course along the very edge, the creature shaking her head and kicking at nothing in particular.

On the upward course ahead, Ilisidi stopped, and turned about and waited until they caught up, among the rest of her guard. Nokhada was sweating and snorting as he jogged them to a stop beside Cenedi, and he was perfectly content, trembling in every joint, that Nokhada should stop and stand as the other riders gathered about them.

He’d survived. He was on a solid part of the mountain. Nokhada couldn’t fling them both into the lake. That was a hard-won triumph.

“Caught your breath?” Ilisidi asked him. “How are you doing, nand’ paidhi?”

“All right,” he lied, out of breath.

“The lake trail’s a little steep for a novice,” Ilisidi said, and he thought she had to be joking. There was no trail over that edge back there. Surely there wasn’t. “Are we ready?—Thumb and finger, nand’ paidhi. Gently, gently. She’ll follow. Just hold on.”

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