Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman Page B

and scars on his hide. But they were going too fast . . . They were too close to the chasm: they’d never be able to stop in time.
    The roan didn’t falter as they broke from the trees and headed wildly toward the abyss. Bramble considered tumbling from his back before he reached the edge. Then she heard Beck’s voice calling.
    There were worse things than death.
    There would be a leap and a moment suspended, and then a long hopeless curve to the rocks and the river below. They would fall like leaves between the clouds of swifts and then be washed away by the thundering rapids. Bramble clung to that thought. If their bodies were washed away then there could be no identification, no danger of reprisals on her family.
    She hung on tighter.
    The roan’s hindquarters bunched under her and they were in the air.
    It was like she had imagined: the leap, and then the moment suspended in the air that seemed to last forever.
    Below her the swifts boiled up through the river mist, swerving and swooping while she and the roan seemed to stay frozen above them. Bramble felt, like a rush of air, the presence of the gods surround her. The shock made her lose her balance and begin to slide sideways.
    She felt herself falling.
    With an impossible flick of both legs, the roan shrugged her back onto his shoulders. Then the long curve down started and she braced herself to see the cliffs rushing past as they fell.
    Time to die.
    Instead, she felt a thumping jolt that flung her from the roan’s back and tossed her among the rocks at the cliff’s edge on the other side.
    On the other side.
    The roan slowed down and turned to head back for her. She stood slowly, muddled and shaken. She couldn’t see properly, everything was in shadow, as though it were night. She reached out to touch the roan’s shoulder. She knew she was touching him, but she could barely feel the warmth of his hide. She could barely hear; everything seemed distant, dull. She was breathing, but the breaths gave her no life. She felt like a dead woman breathing out of habit, as ghosts do when they first quicken, before they realize they are dead.
    Her sight cleared, although the light still seemed dim. Her hearing came back a little. On the other side of the abyss a jumble of men and horses and hounds were milling, shouting, astonished, and very angry.
    “You can’t
do
that!” one yelled. “It’s impossible!”
    “Well, he shagging did it!” another said. “Can’t be impossible!”
    “Head for the bridge!” Beck shouted. “We can still get him. I want that horse!”
    That got her moving, got her onto the roan’s back and riding. The world still felt distant, but the roan, once she was on his back, was as sharp and clear to her as ever, each hair in his coat distinct, each movement warm and vital beneath her. Around her the forest was like a dream, but he was real. The need to keep him safe drove her on.
    She didn’t know this part of the forest quite as well, but well enough. She made her way as fast as they could go, cantering where the trees thinned out, walking quickly when they closed in. The roan was pleased with himself, she could tell; he cantered with his ears pricked up and almost pranced through the clearings. She showered lavish praises on him and he took it all in and pranced some more, until she almost laughed aloud.
    She thought back to the leap. That moment in the air had been . . . magnificent. But once was enough. She wasn’t sure, now, if the gods had merely surrounded her to taste the moment, as they sometimes did, or if they had actually held her and the roan up in the air for one crucial heartbeat.
    Whether they had or not, she felt an obscure certainty that she had been meant to die in that chasm — that her time had been up. She should be tumbling in the white water of the river right now, being swept to sea, the roan beside her. It was only because the roan had made that extraordinary midair shrug that she hadn’t fallen.
    The fact