She took the harness off him, and the bridle, and let him loose for a moment, then approached him with the bridle again. Of course he wasn't going to let her put it on him now that he'd gotten rid of it! But the warsteeds were ready for that, and quickly had him neatly sandwiched between them again, and this time it didn't take nearly as long to get him bridled and harnessed.
By the end of the day she had him pulling a plow, harnessed between her mares. If he shirked and didn't take his share of the load, they squashed him. If he tried to run away with the plow, they squashed him. If, however, he behaved himself, Tarma was there with a word of praise.
She was concentrating so hard on handling this horse that she completely forgot about her audience, and when she brought the gelding back in to be put up in his stall and fed, the stablehands treated her with a respect verging on awe. 'We'll have to work him between my mares for a few days,' she told Lord Kemoc, 'But after that, he'll go all right for you this spring, and Beaker and Jodi will be able to train him to saddle and sell him afterwards -- which I gather you weren't able to do before.'
Lord Kemoc could only shake his head in wonder.
She and Beaker and Jodi worked with Lord Kemoc's horses for a week before all of them were working properly in harness. By the end of the third day, Lord Kemoc had voiced delicate hints about their employment status, and by the end of the week, he and Jodi and Beaker had successfully concluded negotiations that gave them equal pay and status with Lord Kemoc's Weaponsmaster. Tarma was completely satisfied at that point; the worst of the horses had learned proper behavior, and with Jodi and Beaker in charge, from now on the foals would never have a chance to learn bad habits. The Ashkevron horses should be the most sought-after in the Kingdom.
She and Hellsbane and Ironheart rode into the gates of their own home just as the spring rains began to break up. Jadrie rode up to meet her on her own sweetly-tempered little mare, full of spirit and impatient to be off to the Dhorisha Plains for summer holiday. Over dinner that night, Tarma had the whole family in stitches over the story of the poor, squashed gelding with his eyes bulging like a frog's.
Kethry wiped away tears of laughter from her eyes with a napkin. 'So Jodi and Beaker are safely ensconced, and Lord Kemoc's horses are all going to behave themselves from now on? I'd say that was a successful ending to your assignment! But you still haven't told us what you said to the Valdemarans to explain your training techniques-'
'Well, they probably still think it was magic, Greeneyes,' Tarma told her with a chuckle. 'But what I told them was the truth.'
'And what was that truth?' Jadrek asked.
Tarma grinned. 'That it was just the proper application of peer pressure.'
OATHBLOOD
Here is where I've gotten to put together a bit of what life is like at the schools, and why the partners aren't rolling in gold when their reputation should ensure that they get plenty of clients. Better quality than quantity, as Tarma would say. I'm assuming that the pupils all go home in the summer for a long vacation that corresponds with the growing and harvesting seasons, and take a briefer vacation over Midwinter Holidays, if they live near enough to make it feasible. Obviously, for this story, all of them did.
Tarma watched her two favorite pupils enter the ring -- a simple circle of paint on the floor of the salle -- with a critical eye. The first, a blonde whose hair was confined in a tail and bound with a bright blue headband, stood about even with Tarma's chin, but the second, whose dark mane was plaited in two braids wound severely around her head, was even shorter. It wasn't often that Jadrie faced off against an opponent smaller and younger than she; at the age of twelve, Kethry's eldest daughter was more likely to find herself paired with Tarma's oldest pupils, two and three years her senior and correspondingly taller. Jadrie was by no means an extraordinary fighter by Shin'a'in standards, but she was quite good, and she had been tutored by Tarma from the time she first evidenced an aptitude and interest in warrior-training. That had been at the tender age of four -- though naturally she had not been given weapons, even practice weapons, until she was eight and had already demonstrated steadiness and responsibility by taming and training her first horse. Most of Tarma's pupils never had the benefit of such early training, so Jadrie was naturally far in advance of even some much older than she.
Kira was the exception to that; her father, the now -- Archduke Tilden, King Stefan's former Horsemaster, gave his children access to some surprising teachers. At the age of three, on the sound principle that taking lessons with a former entertainer would be play rather than work, Kira and her twin sister had gotten a retired professional acrobat and contortionist as a tutor, and at six, along with the usual schooling, lessons given by a professional dancer had been added. At eight, on her own initiative, Kira had begun training with her father's Weaponsmaster, and now, at ten, she and her twin were here, with Tarma, Kethry, and Jadrek.
But Kira and her twin Merili were both extraordinary children, each in her own fashion.
They were not identical twins; in fact, if they had not been born at the same time, their father often joked that he would have suspected his wife of some infidelity. Ash-blonde Merili was as delicate and feminine as her mother, but with her father's eyes, although in Merili the expression was of sweetness and utter innocence -- Kira was tough, wiry, tall for her age, with straight brown hair and eyes of an incredible violet that had never appeared in either family to anyone's knowledge.
