Free Dark Horse by Mary H. Herbert Page A

she flung herself back on the mare. "I'd sooner trust a viper."
    Nara deigned to ignore her. She carried the fuming girl back to the field where Athlone waited impatiently. Gabria spent the next few hours keeping her misery and anger tightly leashed. Athlone worked her at swordplay and hand-to-hand fighting. They began on horseback, where Athlone's stal ion, Boreas, could help Nara with complicated maneuvers. Then they moved to the ground. Athlone pressed Gabria to the limit of her strength and skill.
    A thousand times Gabria blessed her brothers for teaching her the rudiments of their weapons. She was no match for the wer-tain, but she could keep her borrowed identity from suspicion as she fought Athlone through each of his testing exercises. No woman should have known the fighting skil s Gabria used.
    Athlone worked her hard, both mental y and physical y, and he watched Gabria's every move, waiting for her to slip from anger or carelessness. He deliberately taunted her, shot orders at her, and gave her no rest. When he finally stopped, late in the morning, she fel to her knees, panting and drenched with sweat. He stood back and studied her. The nagging little warning in his head was ringing madly, yet he stil could not put a reason to his suspicions. The boy could hold a sword and he knew most of , the basic moves, but there were some important details he did not know about swordplay that he should have. There was also a hesitancy in his attacks that belied a normal boy's experience with weapons.
    Athlone sheathed his sword and whistled to Boreas. Whatever the boy's secret was, it was obvious from the past few hours that he had a great deal of determination. That was something in his favor.
    "Keep practicing the last three parries I showed you," the wer-tain ordered. "Remember to keep your weight balanced or you will find yourself in the dust. I will take you to the saddler later." He vaulted onto the stal ion's back.
    Gabria glared at him, too tired to move. Without thinking, she said, "What for? I do not need a saddle."
    "No," Athlone replied sarcastically. "Nara wil keep you mounted. But you wil need the other trappings befitting a warrior."
    Gabria bit her lip as the stallion cantered away. She had done it again. She had walked into that blunder like a child. This acting was much more difficult than she had anticipated. When she had thought of this scheme, Gabria had imagined herself drifting easily into the fringe of Savaric's clan and playing the part of a boy with little concentration and great ease until she found the right time to chal enge Lord Medb. If she could handle a bow and a sword, she could pretend to be a boy for as long as necessary.
    But Gabria had never fully appreciated the countless differences between a male and a female, not only physically and mentally, but socially as well. A boy would never have questioned the wer-tain about the saddler, for a boy would have already learned what was intended. A woman, on the other hand, made her own leather goods. She had no need to visit the saddler, who was the warriors' craftsman for saddles, harnesses, and leather accoutrements---things a woman had little use for.
    In the clans, a woman was expected to keep her place in the tent. She was protected by the men in her family or her husband's family, and in return, the men demanded obedience. Despite their restrictive lives, the clanswomen were intelligent, efficient, and often fierce, but they understood and believed in the social mores of the clans and fol owed them by habit. No woman was al owed into the werod, the council, or any of the important ranks of the clan. Only the priestess of Amara and the wife and daughters of the chief had any status and esteem.
    As the daughter of Dathlar, Gabria had had status in her clan, and as the only girl in a family of five men, she had been raised with love, respect, and a measure of equality. Her family had given her more freedom and responsibility than many clanswomen