The day of Hydrotaz’s victory was also the day that Arlen took Kestrel to learn the new element of his curriculum, the surprise that Kestrel had never considered before.
“Welcome to the stables,” Arlen said as he rolled open a wide, tall door on a wooden structure Kestrel had never visited, or even seen, during his time in Firheng.
Opening the door both revealed a dark interior partitioned into many smaller cubicles, as well as allowed a redolent wave of organic odors to roll outward and envelope the two elves standing at the entry.
“What is this place?” Kestrel asked as he tried to adjust his senses to the smell. It was one he had a faint recollection of, from the evening of his first day in Firheng, when he had sat on his porch and the breeze had brought a momentary whiff of the scent of the stables to his nose.
“This,” Arlen said as he led the way into the stables, “is where we keep the horses.”
Kestrel followed his instructor into the building, his eyes adjusting to the gloom within, and he suddenly realized that three of the cubicles held massive animals within, creatures that were each as large as a moose, though shaped with a more graceful profile.
Kestrel had heard of horses. They were a creature domesticated by men, used for transporting men and goods, he generally understood. Elves did not use horses; elves disdained the animals. Their own fleet-footed nature and the lack of fodder in the heavily shaded forests, made elves see horses as unnecessary and wasteful. Alternately, according to elven lore, there were centaurs who lived far to the east, sentient creatures who looked upon mounted horses as an injustice, an abominable form of slavery and in respect for the mythical centaurs’ feeling, elves stayed away from the animals.
But now, regardless of the reason elves shunned the creatures, as he looked upon the horses he approached, Kestrel began to re-evaluate his opinion of the animals. They looked graceful, and he was sure he saw intelligence in the large eyes that calmly examined him.
“Good,” Arlen said. “I can tell you’re going to get along with our fillies.”
“What’s a filly?” Kestrel asked, as he stood before the gate to one horse’s paddock.
“A filly is a female horse,” Arlen answered. “Go ahead,” he urged, “you can touch her. Pet her neck.”
Cautiously, Kestrel reached his hand over the gate and tentatively touched the large animal before him, then began to gently stroke the coat along her neck.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Arlen spoke softly, standing next to Kestrel, who had focused so closely on the animal that he hadn’t noticed Arlen’s approach.
“Go get a blanket,” Arlen motioned, and Kestrel followed him over to where they each began to gather the materials they needed to take the horses for a ride. Nearly half an hour later they had two horses saddled and ready to go, as Arlen led the way out a back door in the stables, to a yard that Kestrel realized on one side was walled up against the exterior of the city.
Arlen opened a heavy gate in that wall, and they each walked their horses out into the open verge that stood between the forest and the exterior wall. “This is how you mount a horse,” Arlen demonstrated by climbing into and out of his saddle twice, then held the halter of Kestrel’s horse as he awkwardly lifted himself up into his saddle.
“Now we’re ready to go,” Arlen announced, as Kestrel sat ahigh in wonder and surveyed the landscape from his elevated perch. “You’ll have to hold the reins,” Arlen reminded Kestrel, who grabbed the leather straps, and they set in motion along a trail through the forest.
The first several minutes of the ride were exhilarating, as Kestrel swayed back and forth to the rhythm of his mount, and continually reached forward to pat the horse in a friendly manner that was meant to be reassuring for both the mount and the rider. He uncertainly handled the reins to make his horse follow the lead of Arlen’s ride, and felt increasing confidence in his abilities.
By the time they returned to the city wall, Kestrel was feeling chafed and sore in his thighs. He awkwardly dismounted, and gingerly walked his horse back into the stables. The process of removing the saddle was agonizingly prolonged, it seemed, and by the time they were finished, Kestrel could only think about the pain he felt.
“You can probably skip your afternoon lessons,” Arlen said helpfully. “Go into town and soak in the hot baths for a long time, then do some stretching.
“Everyone feels sore the first few times, but your body will adjust,” he added.
“We’ll start doing this every other day, and you’ll be added to the rotation for cleaning out the stables for the rest of your stay. The rest of us appreciate you volunteering to do that!” he grinned, as the two of them walked away from the stables.
Kestrel did as Arlen suggested, relieved to sit in the warm water of the baths for a long stretch of the afternoon. He slept poorly that night as he turned and turned again, trying to find a comfortable posture, but in the morning he managed to practice his staff and sword tolerably well, and the following day he was ready once again to go to the stables and work with the small herd of horses. He found the animals to be so enjoyable he quickly adjusted to the change in his schedule, adding horsemanship to the combat skills and human language and social lessons he was working on daily.
Two weeks after he began his work in the stables, Belinda sent a message asking him to come to her office, a message he received as he finished his work at combat and weaponry. He’d seen very little of Belinda since the start of his stay in Firheng, and he gladly took advantage of the request to skip his language lesson that day.
He’d been in Firheng for over two and a half months, he realized, as he tried to calculate how long it had been since he’d visited the office building where Belinda and Casimo worked. “Hello Kestrel,” Belinda said with one of the bright smiles that marked her in his memory. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you here.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It seems like the training keeps me so busy I don’t have time to visit.” It was true; he’d gotten to know a few of the other students slightly, but socialization just didn’t seem to take place or be encouraged among the elves who were learning the crafts involved in being a spy. One or two had left the camp in the time Kestrel had spent there, and one or two had arrived, but there were no activities in which they all interacted or gathered with one another. The lifestyle of the students was a lonely one, and Kestrel wondered if it was just a result of the rigors of training, or a deliberate part of preparing them for a lonely life afterwards. He didn’t like the implications if the latter were the case, as he continued to internally struggle with the overall question of whether he would ultimately accept the assigned role of being a spy.
“You have been doing more training, faster, than any student I can ever remember,” Belinda agreed. “Do you enjoy it?”
Kestrel thought about the question. “I think I do, mostly,” he answered truthfully.
“That’s good to know, mostly,” she laughed back at him. “Well, I mustn’t keep you waiting. You have a messenger here to see you, waiting for you in the commander’s office. You can go on in.”
“A messenger? From where?” Kestrel asked in shock, not taking a step forward. He had no anticipation of a message, no reason to think anyone would need to communicate with him for any reason. No messages had come back in response to his missives to Cheryl or Lucretia, and even if any had been sent, they would arrived via a courier carrying routine mail, he was sure.
“You’ll see. Just go on in, Kestrel,” the woman at the desk gently urged.
He stepped forward and turned the door handle, then looked at Belinda momentarily before he pushed the door open and stepped into the spacious room. The curtains were closed, dimming the space as he closed the door behind him, and for a moment he could barely make out the outline of a figure standing nearby, devoid of details. Then his eyes adjusted, and he instantly recognized that the messenger waiting for him, grinning at him, was Vinetia, the guard from Center Trunk who had been his partner for one day in the great archery tournament during the festival in the city.
Kestrel held his arms open and rushed to the girl, embracing her tightly, with more emotion than he would have expected from himself. The isolation he had experienced during his time in Firheng overwhelmed him, as he stood still with Vinetia in his arms.
“It’s good to see you too!” the girl told him at length, moving him to release his grip and step back. She was smiling broadly, but there was fatigue beneath the smile, shadowing her face. It was a face that had grown thin, and her uniform hung loosely from a figure that was much more slender than Kestrel remembered, he realized as he hugged her.
“Why are you all the way up here?” Kestrel asked her, as they took the two chairs that were placed side-
