She looked behind her. The two she had touched were not badly hurt. Surprised into inaction for the moment, but not badly hurt. She had touched their necks, not their legs. She pulled Quixote up and back, wheeling on his hind legs. “Come on,” she cried to Quixote, riding directly at the monster confronting Tony. Beyond the beast was a patch of level ground.
Her heart was hammering so loudly that she could hear only it, nothing else, a pulse in her ears that drowned out the fall of hooves. She took the lance in her left hand, held it loosely. They came closer. “We’re going to jump,” she told Quixote. “We’re going to jump over him, boy. Over him.” Then there was no time to say anything. Quixote’s haunches gathered under him; they were high, high over the monster’s back and the lance was pointed down, down and back, then they had landed on the other side.
They were on a tiny island, only large enough for Quixote to stop on, stop and wheel and jump once more, back over the pool to the solid hillside. Tony was there, looking stupidly downward at the recumbent, slavering Hippae with the severed spine while two wounded ones stalked toward him.
Four.
“Anthony!” she cried as she went past. “Come, Blue Star!”
Horse heard her if rider did not. Quixote lunged up the hill, faster than the wounded Hippae, with Blue Star close behind. When they had gained a little distance, Marjorie turned to the south. Blue Star was even with her. She risked a look at Tony. He looked almost like Shevlok, his face white and expressionless. She drove Quixote at Blue Star’s side so that they raced only inches apart, then leaned out and slapped Tony with her glove, and again.
He came to himself with a start, tears filling his eyes. “I couldn’t think,” he cried. “It got into me and didn’t let me think.”
“Don’t let it!” she demanded. “Yell. Scream. Call it dirty names, but don’t let it!”
Perhaps a half mile ahead of them on the hillside, Octavo and the two mares raced side by side with four of the Hippae in pursuit.
“Now,” Marjorie cried, pointing ahead and to the right. “We’re going to intercept them.”
She leaned forward. Rigo, Sylvan, and Rowena were riding on the level line of the hill, around it. not up it. The full circuit of the sloping ground, back to the gate, would take two or three hours, riding at top speed the whole way. If she and Tony went slightly uphill and to the west, they should intercept the others a bit past the southernmost point of their arc. Quixote and Blue Star stretched out, galloping side by side like twins joined at the heart. Behind them came the two wounded Hippae, still screaming, still with their blank-faced riders aboard. They were not fast enough to be an immediate threat, but the laser knife had cauterized as it cut, so they were not being greatly weakened by blood loss, either.
‘They’re still trying to get into my head,” Tony called. “So I’m thinking about going home.”
She smiled at him, nodded encouragingly. Whatever worked. She herself could not feel them at all. She felt something, but not Hippae. Something else. Someone else.
“You didn’t kill your bad individuals,” Someone commented, quietly curious. “Why are you killing ours?”
“Because I could tie mine up and keep them from hurting anyone,” she replied. “I can’t do that with these creatures.”
“You could figure something out,” the voice suggested. “No!” she said, angrily. “Everyone always says that. It isn’t true. If you can figure something out, you do. If you don’t, it’s because you can’t. Can’t because you don’t have the time, or the money, or the material. Can’t because there isn’t any way or any time or you’re not smart enough.”
A thought very like a sigh. A touch, like a caress. “Damn it,” she cried aloud. “Can’t you see that theoretical answers are no answers at all! It has to be something you cando!”
Shocked silence. Tony was staring at her. “What was that?” he cried.
“Nothing,” she muttered, concentrating on riding. “Nothing at all.” The ground fled by beneath them. The leather of their saddles creaked.