Free Exile's Challenge by Angus Wells

about their saddles—but how did they use them without stirrups, or high-mounted saddles?
    He got his answer as they came down from a defile flanked by two tall hills, onto a plateau where the broad shelf spread all grassy to the drop beyond and it seemed the world fell away into distance like a steep beach meeting a great green ocean.
    A small herd of deer grazed the plateau, sentried by a high-antlered stag. The wind blew from the south, carrying the scents of horses and men away from the deer. Rannach raised a hand to halt the little column and turned, smiling, to Kanseah. Arcole saw the shy akaman nod, and then both men take bows from their packs and nock arrows. Morrhyn gestured that none move, but Arcole could not resist bringing his horse a little closer to the front, that he might see the hunt clearly. He thought that were it left to him, he would work his way slowly down on foot and belly until he had a clear shot—which should be difficult, because likely the stag would sight him and take his harem away.
    Rannach and Kanseah had no such doubts: they heeled their horses and charged; and Arcole could scarcely believe what he saw.
    The deer scattered at the first sound of the pounding hooves. The stag belled and ran away toward the timber edging the plateau, his harem running swift after him. Rannach and Kanseah galloped in the same direction, intent on cutting off the herd. Neither held their reins, but left them loose across their mounts’ shoulders, guiding the horses with their knees alone, both their bows full strung as they closed on the panicked deer.
    A doe ran laggard, clearly aged, and hampered by some old wound. Arcole thought that her meat would likely be toughened by the years she carried, and that he would have selected younger game, but neither Rannach or Kanseah seemed to share that thought. They ignored the younger animals and closed on the limping doe. Both sighted and loosed their arrows, and the shafts flew straight and true, thudding hard into the doe’s chest, just behind the left foreleg, so thatshe was killed on the instant and fell over with the feathered poles jutting from her side.
    Rannach sprang from his horse as it still ran, landing loose with a long blade in his hand, that he drove deep into the deer’s neck and slit her throat for all she was surely already dead. Then he fell to his knees and stroked her throat, and Kanseah joined him, and both men raised their hands to the sky and said something that Arcole could not hear, for the wind carried their words away, and he would not have understood them anyway. But he thought that they gave thanks for the kill to whatever god they worshipped, and that he had never seen such horsemanship.
    Then Yazte slapped him on the shoulder and he must steady the prancing gray as he looked at the plump man, who pointed at the felled deer and then at his mouth, and then rubbed his ample belly, grinning hugely. Arcole nodded and smiled back.
    â€œI think,” he said to Flysse, “that we shall eat well tonight.”
    Flysse nodded, staring at the two akamans, who were already beckoning them forward that they might stow the deer on a packhorse. “I’ve never seen such riding,” she said, her voice awed. “They’re like …”
    â€œCentaurs,” Arcole finished for her. And promised himself that he would learn to truly master this simple style of horsemanship: the admiration he saw in her eyes rankled somewhat. “Like the legends.”
    â€œI wonder,” she said, “if we’ve not stumbled into a legend.”
    He smiled at that, and squeezed her hand. Had he felt confident enough of his seat, he would have leant to kiss her. But he was not yet so able, and so only smiled. Then they were moving again, down to where Rannach and Kanseah waited, and the doe was loaded on a packhorse and they all, laughing, rode down off the plateau.
    The trail grew steep here, narrow between high walls