Foundation

Oh, yes. And how could she ever, ever begin to measure up to that legacy? She wanted to fall to the ground and moan in despair. Instead, she shook Lita’s hand, and went to collect her things and be conducted to a room.

The memories and the desperation behind them flooded over him. Here was someone who was feeling just as out of place as he was, and just as unworthy. Suddenly, he didn’t feel quite so alone.

Poor kiddie. She scarcely knew her father any more than Mags knew his, and they were expecting her to be some kind of younger copy of him. Mags sensed Dallen all but spluttering with indignation; Mags ignored him. “If ye need a frien’, Lena ...” he said, slowly, the unfamiliar word leaving a strange, but pleasant, sensation behind it, “I c’ud be yer frien’. If ye want.”

He expected her to look away and politely decline. After all, it wasn’t as if he had anything worth offering to someone like her. So her reaction surprised him.

“You would? You could?” Two bright pink spots appeared on her tear-blotched cheeks. “You’d really be my friend?”

“I guess everyone’d be if they knew ye,” he half-mumbled, staring down at his hands. “Uh ... I guess poor ol’ Bumper there—”

“I wanted to bury him,” she replied, choking down a sob. “But the ground is so hard—”

He almost laughed. “Might not know much,” he offered, but I know diggin’. If yer not too partic’lar about where, I’ll get ye a hole.” When she nodded, he went off to the gardener’s shed and came back with a pickax and a shovel. And of course Mags did know digging; after scraping back the snow in several places and examining the ground closely, he found a spot under a bush that was mostly mulch, and softer than the ground around it. With the pick and shovel, he managed to dig a little hole; the girl carefully wrapped her rabbit in her scarf and laid it in the bottom, then looked at him expectantly.

:You should say something, Mags,: Dallen prompted.

He gulped. What should he say? He was not good with words at the best of times. Finally, he bit his lip and tried to think of what she might want to hear.

“He was a good rabbit,” Mags began desperately. “An’ he was a friend when Lena needed one. Reckon that’s how ye knows a friend, they be there when ye need ’em.” He paused. “An’ Lena’ll miss him. Lots.”

Lena burst into tears again, though it did not seem to be because of anything he said or hadn’t said. He shoveled the mulch back on top of the little body while she sobbed, and patted it flat with the shovel.

“Best go back inside,” he advised her. “Yer goin’t’ get sick, out here in the cold.”

She nodded, and with drooping head and sagging shoulders turned to go back to the building. But then she stopped, and looked back at him, tears still slipping down her cheeks.

“Where can I find you later?”

“Uh—I got a room. In Companions’ Stable. Uh—I’m Mags.”

She nodded gravely. “Thank you, Mags. And thank you for being my friend.”

And with that, she disappeared into the building.

Mags put his protections back up.

:Class,: prompted Dallen, just as the bell rang for the change. With a sigh, Mags gathered up his forgotten books and went back on his schedule.

He really did not expect to see Lena again, despite offering to become her friend. It was one thing for her to have flung herself on the mercy of a strange Trainee when she was so distraught. It was quite another for her to actually seek him out and take him up on that offer.

So he went on to his riding practice and weapons practice without giving much thought to her.

He had found over the last couple of days, somewhat to his own amazement, that he liked both. More than that, he was getting good at both.

Riding, well, that was all because, for the first time in his life, he felt in control of something. And powerful. Up there on Dallen’s back, he wasn’t puny little Mags anymore. And there was the whole sense of freedom he got when Dallen really cut loose and ran or jumped. Their mental link was so strong that he was able to anticipate Dallen’s every move and move with the Companion to the point where it sometimes felt to him as if they were one creature. He could scarcely remember now how frightened he’d been, perched uneasily on Dallen’s back a few sennights ago. Now, well, he might as well have been sewn to Dallen’s saddle, and Dallen had taken to more than just simple running and jumping the past couple of sessions. The Companion called these acrobatic exercises “battlefield moves,” and Mags could see where they would come in handy if a lot of people with sharp things in their hands came at you to do you wrong.

Today was like that. Half a dozen of the Guards had been borrowed from the barracks (and Mags suspected, bribed with the promise of drink) and were standing in for enemy fighters. Each of them in turn was set upon by fellows with blunt wooden swords, with ropes, with spear-poles with heavy wads of rag and wool tied to the end, and one man with a very long pole with a padded hook on the end. The object was for Companion and Chosen to hold them off for one turn of a very small glass. This was not as easy as it sounded.

These men knew Companions and warhorses both, and knew what they could do. The first three Trainees that were set upon lost their seats and were dragged down out of the saddle before half the sand had run out. Then it had been Mags’ turn.

By then, he and Dallen had had more than enough time settle into that peculiar merging of minds that left them so aware of each other that the rope around Dallen’s hock might is as well have been around Mags’ ankle. When the six Guardsmen popped up out of “ambush” to take them, the two of them were ready to show what real riding was all about.

Dallen leaped almost straight up into the air, lashing out with his hind hooves as he did so. The men behind them threw themselves to the ground to avoid those hooves, even though Dallen was in no danger of hurting them.