Moving Water by Sylvia Kelso

You were allowed down here once, he had said. It was pure but determined assumption that we would be allowed again. “We’ll bring more candles. I’m sorry about the bucket, and the straw. So late, we could get nothing else.”
    He merely nodded. The pity had grown clearer. Then he said quietly, “We all have our own choices. Don’t blame her for putting your sons first.”
    I opened and shut my mouth. Then I felt an easing, as when a bandage is slacked over a swollen wound. Tossing out the blankets, sure he would read the mock-taunt rightly, I said, “Sleep well.”
    * * * * *

    A Guard Captain has duties, whatever his allegiance. Parades, inspections, escorting the Lady abroad. The old world engulfed me, emphasizing the change at home, driving in the knowledge that I am not made to serve two masters, and that a choice would have to be made. I almost welcomed the furtive meetings to enlist more of the escort as provisioners.
    â€œCheerful, he is,” Sivar reported at the third noon-watch, face knotted in wonderment. “Been killing rats by the hundred. Reckons he’ll charge mouser’s fees to cover stabling the mare.”
    â€œThe mare!” I had quite forgotten her. “I’d best go down and pay something before they turn her out in the street.”
    I entered through the long post-house yard with its ranks of seemingly disembodied horse-heads, meaning to inspect her first for myself. But the whole inn force was moiling about out there, ostlers, tapsters, scullions, cooks and hysterical chambermaids. I paused to retreat. Then I saw the red streams oozing amid their shoes and tore into the crowd as into a battle-front.
    The mare lay flat on her side on the cobblestones, neck outstretched and belly mounded up in that pathetic posture of a horse’s death. The blood was on their shoes, in the cobble crannies, in her shimmering gray coat, on her unshod hooves. A slash behind the jaw had all but beheaded her. Cleaver at least, said my soldier’s past, before I saw the human body pinned under her, the mashed mess that had been a face, and the weapon beyond. A cleaver it had been.
    I had no need to ask. They had already fastened on the black surcoat, the badge of succor, authority.
    â€œWent mad she did—quiet as a cow ’n then kicked down the door—put us out o’ the yard! Clean up the waterpipe—Tem had at her with a pitchfork, savaged him—yah, over there, near to—not the street, the kitchen—maids screeching fit to bust—she went right in! Kicked over the spits ’n the cook had a giggling fit—two barons o’ beef, clean ruined! Roosting on the drainpipe—Tath there back from the butcher—‘Watch out,’ I said, I said, ‘she’ll butcher you!’—‘Butcher!’ he says, ’n off for the cleaver—join the army he was going to—at her full tilt—swipe—no, she knocked him flat—never, he got her first swing—’n then. . . .”
    They all went quiet at once. Battle, murder, sudden death. It was too alien to their little world. I looked with them at the dead. I should have grieved for the man, my own kind, my own breed, my own blood. But I could only see her on the road, gay and docile and beautiful, and I grieved for the mare.
    A portly aproned person was forging up, outrage well in advance of sorrow in his eye. I heard myself promising reparation for damage done by the beast of an imperial prisoner, arranging a funeral, someone to tell the family, check their finances, provision for the savaged groom. And the mare. “Get the knacker’s mules,” I was saying harshly. “I’ll show him where to go.”
    She left a long smear of blood down the hill among plunging horses and scandalized carriage folk, through the gate, along the harbor, into the forest quiet. I grieved for the damage that the dragging did. In a clearing amid the