Black Horses for the King
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Black Horses for the King». Краткое содержание книги:
After his father's death, young Galwyn Varianus is apprenticed to his uncle, who puts the boy to work on the high seas. But horses, not ships, are Galwyn's passion. Luckily, a passenger aboard, Lord Artos (later to rule as the legendary King Arthur), is bound for the great horse fair at Septimania. Risking his life, Galwyn abandons his uncle to serve the gallant leader. Galywn's calming way with horses quickly impresses Lord Artos and his men. But what no one expects is how crucial Galwyn will be to their upcoming battles--as he masters the secrets of the iron shoes that will protect the exotic horses' delicate hooves. . . .
He took the hoof in his hand, turning it around and around, obviously pondering some problem.
"Sorry, lad"-and he handed it back. "There is such a thin wall. One would have to be so careful…"
"Of what?" I prompted when the silence continued.
Canyd inhaled and then tapped the hoof. "You know, don't you, that all the Libyans are footsore-between hoof rot and cracks?"
I nodded, because it had been the talk of everyone in the cot: How was Lord Artos going to use horses who kept going lame? Ponies might not be big enough but they were sturdy and never had such problems with their feet.
"Those big Libyans have nice long hooves but they are accustomed to rocky and sandy surfaces. We have more bogs and marshes hereabouts, an' I mislike what the wetness does to these hooves, especially with such a high frog, where the mold likes to settle."
"But it's all hard," I said, tapping the shell. "Surely…"
"You've scrubbed stables down afore now, lad, and weren't your nails soft after a day in water?"
'Tes, they were-but they're only fingernails, not tough hoof like this."
"The pony that wore this foot was born and bred on this island. Big and strong as the Libyans are, they will need something to keep their feet up out of constant contact with wet ground. If we could only-" He broke off, frowning to try and catch some elusive notion. Then he reached into a dark corner and brought out some very odd looking pieces of leather. One had strings attached to it. He tapped the surface and I identified it as boiled leather, from which my father's guards had made their breastplates and the skirts that fell from waistline belts to protect their thighs from arrows.
"D'you know what this might be, lad?"
Some memory struggled to be recalled: something said in Lord Artos's voice.
"Look at it." And he pushed the thing into my hand. A rounded piece of boiled leather, all right, a sort of sandal-but for what sort of short and rounded foot… ?
"A sandal for a horse?" Yes, that was what Lord Artos had said of Canyd: He wanted to put sandals on horses to protect the hooves he was always talking about. I picked up the strings. "And these tie it on … ?"
"Good, lad! But leather, as tough as it can be made, is scraped and worn out in several days, and it takes weeks to prepare."
Then he handed me some flat metal crescents. They, too, had ties, but it didn't take me a minute to see that going over rough ground would split the thongs and the sandal would come off. Or it would hang by one tie and be a danger to the animal, not a protection.
"I think we may have to nail it to the hoof…"
I gasped, knowing very well how any sort of puncture in the foot could lame a horse.
"If"-and now Canyd's gnarled forefinger circled the rim of the hoof-"we very carefully put our nails into this part of the horn…"
I know I gawked my astonishment at him, and he smiled.
"Alun and I have been working-oh, years now, I think"-and he grinned at me for all that time spent on vain effort-"on the type of nail that would be slim enough to go in just this area and strong enough to hold a metal rim on the hoof. No hoof, no horse!"
"I know, I know."
"But the time has come, has it not, when those Libyans are goin' to need somethin' to protect 'em. Best we figure it out this time." He gave an emphatic nod of his head. "Had a pony once with bad cracks in his hooves. Fine pony, save for that, so Alun and me did keep the hoof from spreading with a metal rim … Should have kept on at the proper sort of sandal then." He frowned then and dismissed me to my evening chores.
It should not have surprised me that the next day I was ordered to Alun the Smith's forge, where he did all the metalwork required by the large farm, including making the flat spather swords used by the guards. Alun was the biggest man I had ever seen, with arms like tree trunks and a chest that was as deep and broad as Cor-nix's. He had a cap of very curly black hair, just grizzling above the ears, and a face with smears of soot generally on the ruddy cheeks. When he smiled, and he was a smiling man, he nearly lost his eyes in the creases of his flesh. He had four great anvils about his big fire, and three apprentices: two were his sons, built on the same generous lines as their father, and one a thinner lad who never smiled the whole time I lived at the Devan farm.
Alun and Canyd were working at one of the anvils in the forge, once again trying to find a shape of nail to suit the requirements. Round ones had long since been discarded as unsuitable, though I often heard Alun say that he forged the best nails from Venta to Eburacum. I was set to working the bellows, a job I could easily do with the one hand I had to work with. It was not an easy job, though, for the coal fire had to be very hot to heat the iron enough to make it malleable.
In that forge, I also saw the various shapes of horse sandals that had been devised over the years Alun and Canyd had been experimenting. Sandals with lips three-quarters of the way around that would be hammered down to fit tightly against the outside of the hoof; sandals with long clips that fit halfway up the outside of the hoof. Canyd thought that clamping the clip while still hot and malleable to the horse's hoof would seal it on. I fretted about red-hot iron being applied to a hoof, but Canyd and Alun laughed at my fears.
"There's no feeling to the outer shell. It's deader'n fingernails, you can be sure o' that," Alun told me. "But if it will save the hoof"-and he winked at me, jerking his head at Canyd to be sure I caught the jest-"then that one'll be happy, now, won't he?"
As Canyd laughed at such wit, I was able to smile back. Despite the heat and the smells in the forge-for I was at the back of it, against the wall that ringed the home farm, and constantly inhaling the odd odors of hot metal and coal-I had a sense that these two men were on the brink of an extraordinary accomplishment.
"Light enough to be lifted, strong enough to protect, sturdy enough to last, and easy to place," I often heard Alun declare.
A flanged sandal was finally eliminated, though such a one stayed on an old pony for weeks. It had to be removed because the thick mud of the winter fields seeped in between hoof and metal, causing the old horse to go lame.
If I heard Canyd murmur, "No hoof, no horse," once, he said it like a litany as he and Alun attacked their objective. And I got so I would groan in protest the moment he formed the first "No."
AS THE WEATHER IMPROVED and spring seemed nearer, I hoped in vain that Lord Artos would come to inspect his mares and foals. Bericus came every month, checking each of the twenty Libyans and the foals himself, though he also read Teldys's laboriously written daily reports. Bericus would ride into the yard on the heavy-boned bay gelding that took him on all his travels, for the horse farm was not the only property Lord Artos had in this area. He would bellow my name and bring me running.
"You get taller every time I see you, lad," Bericus would say.
In truth I was getting some growth, with all the good food Daphne liked to set upon her table. We even had meat twice a week.
Then Bericus would toss me the reins of the gelding and turn to have a few words with Teldys while I stabled the horse.
"Has Cornix eaten the pony yet?" Bericus might ask as we three strode down to the stables. Lord Artos's stallion was always the first to be seen on these inspection visits.
I'd have to strip the rug off Cornix-which I did even with my broken arm-for Bericus was thorough. He'd run his hands down each leg to assure himself of soundness, and pat the smooth hide. And after the first time Cornix got hoof rot, Bericus always checked each foot. I was careful to use a powder to prevent it, so he never found another trace of it.