Free Firebrand by Gillian Philip Page B

the perfect almighty Conal couldn’t control everything. Involuntarily I tightened my arms around my knees, crushing them against my stomach, trying to crush the ache inside me. ‘Can’t have it all your own way.’
    He grinned.
    ‘You didn’t wake me up just to go through all that again,’ I said.
    ‘I didn’t wake you up at all, you wee fraud.’
    This time I grinned.
    ‘There’s something we should have done long ago,’ he said. ‘Want to go up to the Dubh Loch?’
    I tried not to whoop with delight; then cold reality kicked in.‘But I’m leaving, Cù Chaorach.’
    ‘Doesn’t matter. You have to do it now. The animal must be more than two years old by now. If you wait much longer it won’t be masterable.’
    ‘I won’t be here. I…’
    ‘Listen. Once he’s yours he’s yours, but you need to do it while he’s young.’ He gave me a wry look. ‘And of course, when he’s young he’s got less chance of killing you.’
    That went right over my head. I was too excited. ‘Tonight!’
    He smiled, a little sadly. ‘When else?’
    * * *
    What a night it was, the sky so frosted with stars it hardly mattered there was no moon. I sat behind Conal on his black horse, holding onto his waist, and now that it was so close I was almost mad with the hunger for a horse like this one. Conal seemed in no hurry; I wanted to race at the gallop, but he kept his black to an easy canter. I craned my head back to look up into the Milky Way, dizzy with the distance and splendour of it. Night air is different; it tastes younger, newer, darker. Fill your lungs with it, and you fill your lungs with night. Riding to the Dubh Loch that night I felt my innards cold and keen and hungry for life, and I thought that perhaps after all a man could live forever.
    The black slowed to a halt when we were still half a mile or so from the water’s dark lapping edge, hooves squelching in marshy ground. I slid off before Conal did, and he had to send a brusque order into my head to stop me charging ahead of him.
    I paused reluctantly, looked back at him, and then towards the loch that glimmered between slopes of bleached scree and scrappy heather. I could hear the soft slap of tiny waves on a pebbled shore, the hiss and suck of water between rocks. As I drew closer it was a breath of wind in the rattling reeds I heard. And the scrape of a hoof on wet stone, and the scatter of silver droplets as a mane was shaken dry, and the questioning snort of fierce breath in the stillness.
    Don’t know why Conal was so hesitant. The creature’s hide glowed like a pearl in the starlight, and Iknew before it raised its head from its lochside grazing that it had heard us coming, but it was entirely unafraid. It looked unthreatening, unthreatened. Its jaws crunched round tough grass from the lochside, and as its tongue came out to lick its lips I glimpsed its canines. Eyes watched us, black and featureless. The empty stare might have been unnerving, but for the way it lowered its head and whickered, flicked its tail and shook its black mane once more, playful and confident. Its face was black too, and its long still-coltish legs. You couldn’t see its true colour in the night; its neck and shoulders and flanks were all starlight and phosphorescence. Beautiful. My horse was beautiful.
    ‘Careful,’ said Conal.
    ‘Yes.’ My fingers clutched the bridle so hard I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to unfreeze them. ~
What do I do?
    ‘You speak openly, for a start. It’ll hear your thoughts anyway.’
    ‘Not very straightforward, this, is it?’
    ‘Where would the fun be otherwise? Now give me the bridle. It’s no use to you yet. And don’t let the horse go into the water, that’s the main thing.’
    ‘Don’t let it go in the water,’ I echoed, as he eased the bridle from my fingers.
    ‘If you go into the water you’re dead. Now, listen. You’re not taming it, you’re offering it an exchange. You’re offering yourself and you’re taking