Look at Marjorie! Like a queen! Regal and tall and rides that thing as though she were part of it. That thing! Ha-ha. Horse. Horse. They make soft noises when you pat them and they look at you kindly when you get on. This one, Her Majesty, she does what I ask her to. It’s almost like loving a woman. Horse. Not Hippae.
Tony’s watching me, too. He doesn’t like me. I thought at first it was because of Marjorie, but that’s not it. I offend him somehow. My manner. My bon manner. Maybe it was because I didn’t take their plague seriously. I didn’t know. Did I even think it mattered whether there was anything left of humanity, elsewhere? That’s what the Hippae thought. They didn’t care. If they thought it, we thought it How long have they been doing our thinking for us? They don’t want there to be another intelligent race. And they won’t believe that they themselves become another intelligent race. Foxen. What was it Brother Mainoa said? We never believe we’ll get old. The Hippae don’t know what they have in them to be. They’ve stopped themselves, half grown. They’ve stopped themselves at adolescence. Brutal time, that. Hateful time. Not a child. Not grown. Full of strength and fury and no place to put it….
Well, they stopped us there, too. Marjorie looks at me the way she looks at Tony. As though I’m a boy. And when have I ever had the chance to be anything else….
Mother. Mother. You shouldn’t be out here at all. Oh, Mother, do you really think this pays back for Dimity….
Tony thought: Let’s get this over with and go home. If I die, I die, but if I don’t die, let me go home. Let’s leave these people, these crazy bons, let’s go! Let me go through this hour, two hours, whatever it takes, then we’ll go, I’ll go, somehow. Let’s get it over with. If I die …
Rowena thought: Dimity. For Dimity. For Emmy. For Stavenger. For my other children, dead so long ago I’ve almost forgotten their names. For all of you. For all of us.
Sylvan. Oh, Sylvan. Whatever happens, remember that I love you, I love you all….
Don Quixote thought: She is riding. Trust her. Trust what she does. And listen, all of you. Listen for the voices.
At the foot of the hill they were separated from the Hippae at the tunnel entrance only by a few deep pools and a screen of foliage. Only Rigo rode all the way down, measuring the distance at a mental gallop. Then he turned back, summoning the others to a line that seemed an appropriate distance from the bottom. They wanted the slope of the hill to aid them, but there had to be space to turn along the hillside without being forced into the sucking pools at its foot. Silently Rigo checked his lance while the others did likewise, then began rattling the butt of his lance on his buckler, screaming insults at the same time. “Hippae fools. Mock horses. Stupid beasts.” Not that they understood what he was saying, but they could pick the intent up from his mind.
“Genocides,” shrieked Marjorie at the top of her lungs. “Ingrates! Malicious beasts! Curs!”
“Oh, wah. wah, wah, wah,” screamed Tony, making as much noise as he could but incapable of thinking words.
“For Dimity,” cried Rowena. “For Dimity, Dimity, Dimity.”
“Cowards,” trumpeted Sylvan. “Cowards. Animals. Peepers. Mig-erers. Muddy migerers with no more honor than a mole.”
The Hippae came out of the screening brush in a rush, then stopped while those on the hill fell silent. The humans had expected Hippae. They had not expected them to have riders. Foremost among them was a great gray mount bearing someone they all knew on its back. “Shevlok,” breathed Rowena. “Oh, for the love of God, my son.”
“It’s not Shevlok,” Sylvan spat at her. “Look at his face.” The face was a mask, empty as a broken bottle. There was nothing there. “You’re fighting the beasts, not the riders,” trumpeted Rigo. “Remember that. The mounts, not the riders!” He kneed El Dia Octavo into a trot. Behind him the others did likewise, falling into a diagonal line so that each would have room to charge and turn without endangering the ones behind.