Free Gwenhwyfar by Mercedes Lackey Page A

dissimilar to the pony as she had feared. She was a lot higher off the ground, it was true, but the pony was so fat that his girth wasn’t a great deal smaller than Adara’s. She couldn’t imagine why Little Gwen hadn’t been able to sit the saddle better, unless it was that her youngest sister really hadn’t learned to ride properly. She fitted her feet into the leather stirrups and was relieved that the horsemaster had judged the length right. She was even more pleased when he didn’t clip a lead rope to her bridle.
    Since he was waiting expectantly, she chirruped to Adara, tightened her legs in the right places, lifted the reins a trifle, and nudged her a little with her heels. Adara moved out in a walk, circling the paddock, then increased her pace from a faster walk into a trot.
    Gwen bounced for a few paces before she found her seat again. Adara’s ears flicked back and forth and she looked over her shoulder with what looked like amusement, and she moved into a canter.
    Now this was the fastest she had ever ridden, and it was both thrilling and terrifying. The pony had never gone this fast, not even at a gallop. But the mare had another pace in her, and without Gwen doing anything, she lengthened her stride into a gallop.
    The world blurred. All Gwen was conscious of was her own breathlessness, her heart racing, and the horse moving under her. And it was glorious. Like flying.
    The mare gave her only a taste of this before slowing, first to the canter, then the trot again, and finally into the walk. She stopped on her own at the side of the horsemaster.
    “Ye’ll do,” was all he said. Then he left her to make sure the mare was walked cool, unsaddled and unbridled, rubbed down, and put up in her stall with her tack with her. Gwen moved in a kind of happy dream. She had thought that yesterday was the best day of her life. But no. Today was.
    One of the grooms came to tell her when she was finished that she was to report to the novice trainer. She thanked him and trotted off to the yard where all the boys, and the odd girl or two, got their first lessons in warcraft. Or rather, their first lessons in making their bodies strong enough for weapons; it seemed that handling a sword or a bow or even a knife was a long way off. Gwen had never thought of herself as lazy, but after what seemed like an age of lifting small leather pails of water over and over, of swinging weighted sticks against a padded pole over and over, and many other similar exercises, she was hot and sore and grateful to be dismissed for the day to go back to the paddock and commence another round of riding, this time under the eagle eye of one of the grooms, in the company of the rest of the beginners. She got no help in saddling and bridling this time, but neither did the others. No help, that is, from the groom; she was not the only undersized person among the beginners, and they helped each other reach girths under bellies, pass breastbands around chests, and persuade the canny old horses to bend their heads for the bridle. Gwen was especially good at the latter, so no one begrudged her the help it took to get a saddle that seemed a hundred times heavier than it had been this morning onto Adara’s back.
    Then they lined up, head to tail, along the paddock fence, and the groom called out what they should do. Oh, not for their benefit; it was very clear to Gwen that she wasn’t in control of Adara right now, and it looked to her as if the rest of the beginners were in a similar case. No, no. It was the horses who responded to the commands, and they, the riders, were doing their pitiful best not to fall off, to learn how to move as one with the horse, and not merely balance there.
    Ride in a circle; walk, trot, canter, then drop back to a walk. Wheel and do the same in the other direction. Repeat until the horses’ muscles were sufficiently warmed up. Wheel, so that they were all facing the same direction. Charge the fence at a trot, pull up,