Free The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts Page A

sideburns with his fists. The draught team milled, netted in. slackenedtraces and flighty as shoaling fish; while the mis-shapen cause of the disaster stood nonplussed, conversing in great sucking gusts with the wheel horses.
    ‘Curse of a fiend!’ The carter unfurled from his box in a frog-leap that landed him beside the russet-brown bundle that was Dakar. ‘What in Sithaer will you do about that misbegotten insult of a horse?’
    ‘Misbegotten? Insult?’ Dakar inspected the burly antagonist planted over him, fists cocked for mayhem, and his hair screwed free of an oiled felt cap like tufts of snarled wool on a shuttlecock. ‘You’re pretty ugly yourself, you know.’ Through the half-breath while the carter was stunned speechless, the Mad Prophet pushed past, retrieved trailing reins, and hauled Faery-toes out backwards from the tangle of shafts and shredded harness.
    While Halliron and Medlir watched amazed, a safe distance removed in the pony cart, Dakar came back, towing horse. He poised before the irate carter, oblivious to the pounding from the adjacent gate houses, as the watch on duty pelted downstairs in armed readiness to forestall an altercation.
    ‘I suggest you forgive the old boy.’ When the nag butted a congenial head against the carter’s shoulder and knocked him a half-step back, Dakar added, ‘How could you not? He likes you.’
    The carter purpled and swung. The suet-round face of his target vanished as Dakar ducked and fled beneath the saddle girth. Bunched knuckles smacked against the barrel-sprung ribs of the horse, who responded from both ends with a grunt and a fart like an explosion.
    ‘Oh my,’ cried Dakar, stifling a chortle. ‘Your wife’s nose must look like a pudding if that’s your reaction to her kisses.’
    The carter dove under the gelding’s neck in a fit of killing fury while the horse, ears flat, parted gaunt jowls and snapped.
    Teeth closed over greasy fleece, and the breeches of the carter burst a critical seam. The Mad Prophet sidestepped around the chestnut’s churning quarters, blithe in rebuke as he passed, ‘Leave him alone, Faery-toes. Your affection’s a wee bit misplaced. You know this fellow you’re undressing’s about as nice as a hawk-pecked snake.’
    Arrived in a rush that packed the postern, Jaelot’s guardsmen cracked into laughter.
    Faery-toes switched its nubby tail just as the carter began his rush. Caught a dizzying lash in the face, and howling falsetto invective, the man lunged with full intent to mangle just as the horse lost its poise. Its knurled spine humped. Enormous hooves battered for purchase as its hind end heaved up and cleared the ground. One hind leg hooked out in a cow-kick that demolished the front wheel of the dray. A descant of splintering spokes sounded above the crash as the hub hammered into the cobbles.
    Set dancing in nervy refrain, the unattended team bit their collars. The crippled vehicle dragged in their wake with a blistering screech that harrowed up six yards of paving. Some fast-witted bystander caught their bits and muscled them to a standstill, all unnoticed in the ongoing tumult beneath the archway.
    The carter expended one last volley of monosyllabic epithets. Fairy-toes, carried away in a careening sidle, lost the last of his questionable footing. He dropped belly-down in a splay-legged heap to a whistling grunt of astonishment.
    Felled by peals of mirth, Dakar buckled to his knees not far off. With both eyes squeezed shut and leaking helpless tears, he failed to notice when the officer of the watch stopped sniggering. Jaelot’s men at arms snapped to in dutiful propriety as a four-in-hand bitch and black lacquered coach thundered up the thoroughfare. Gilded, lion-blazoned doors sparked in the torchlight as thevehicle slowed and pulled up before the obstruction that clogged the city gate.
    Stiffened as pokers, watch gate captain’s men saluted as boy grooms in velvet livery leapt down to catch the bridles of