Page 58 of Fate of the Argosi

Neighing is the wrong word. A neigh couldn’t describe that sound any more than the patter of a raindrop could be confused for a thunderstorm. Neighs are lilting and musical, sometimes even playful. There was nothing playful aboutthisinfernal, skull-shattering racket. But okay, since no language has yet been invented to describe this particular sound, let’s start with what we’ve got: take some of that neighing, make it loud as hells, then deepen it. Lower the pitch. No, lower than that. I’m talking belly-deep fury that sparks a fuse dangling off that neigh until the whole thing explodes like the wrath of every god forgotten by their followers. The unyielding, soul-rending battle cry of a one-horse army. Now, underneath that roar, add the pounding of four hoofs as they thunder across the deck, hammering sturdy wood planks into pulp.

Think you can hear the sound yet? Because, friend, you ain’t heard nothing yet.

If ‘neighing’ is too timid to encompass the first part, then ‘braying’ is positively timid compared to the incandescent honk riding on top of it – both figurativelyandliterally. This was the trumpet’s blare of a war being declared on anyone and anything that got in the way of the chimeric beast that, as I turned during my fall in a flailing bid to grab the railing, was currently leaping over the side to my rescue.

Quadlopo, the most placid, apathetic horse ever born, had bounded over the crowd of passengers rushing to their respective oblivions with such unbridled determination that, in the paradoxical nether-space of the shadowblack, he somehow caught up to me. On his rump, facing back towards the ship and with his little spire goat belly bloated to bursting, was Conch.

Now came the punctuation to all those other pieces of the sound-for-which-there-is-no-name: the loudest belch in all recorded history. What Conch’s spontaneous gastric emission lacked in dignity, it more than made up for in potency as he spewed enough spire goat gas to smother the entire mob in a billowing black cloud tinged with just a touch of defiant green.

Like I said, a miracle.

I wasn’t entirely passive during all this, you understand. In the split second between Quadlopo’s leap and our landing, my arms instinctively grabbed hold of his neck. I’d like to believe that I then swung my legs across his back, but I suspect it was more the way he contorted himself under me than any acrobatics on my part. Either way, by the time his hoofs struck the black ice of the necropolis, I was mounted on my horse, shaking like a leaf, my eyes so wide they couldn’t focus on anything. So confounded was I by the strangeness of existence that all I could do was play that bizarre sound over and over in my head until, finally, I found its name. I even managed to say it out loud.

‘Glorious.’

Next thing I knew, the smaller hoofs of my other four-footed hero settled on my shoulder, balancing with far more confidence than one would expect. Then again, heisa spire goat. I turned my head to glance up at the galleon trapped in the onyx ice. Beyond the railing, the crowd of Mahdek who’d been lurching towards their doom were now tumbling to the deck, one by one. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Conch gave a smug grunt of satisfaction with his handiwork.

‘Proud of yourself, little fella?’

Quadlopo neighed at me. This time it was his regular, ‘Ferius, why are you the dumbest human who ever saddled up a horse and how many more times are you expecting me to rescue you from your own stupidity?’ sort of neigh.

I tried to compose a witty reply, but I was having trouble keeping myself from sliding off his back and falling to the onyx from which, I was pretty sure, I would never rise again. Sure, I’d shaken off some of the black fog of despair that had sent me lumbering towards oblivion moments ago, but I was still staring out at a shadowy necropolis where dozens of Mahdek lay beneath their death arches, slowly sinking into the black ice. Soon the effects of Conch’s fumes would dissipate and the passengers on deck would reawaken. After that things would likely get real ugly, real fast.

That’s the second problem, I thought, squeezing my legs around Quadlopo’s sides for balance.First problem is getting yourself together, Ferius.

‘Thing about arta forteize, kid, is th—’

‘I don’t need a lecture on arta forteize, Pappy. Just gimme a second here.’

Resilience comes not from ignoring pain or pretending you’re not exhausted. It comes from building trust between your mind, your body and your emotions so you can align them to a single purpose. Right now, mine were running off in all different directions.

When your head is full of clamouring thoughts, breathe in emptiness so you can breathe out the stupid.

That was one of mine, not Durral’s. Sometimes I forget that no matter how wise the maetri, every teysan must walk their own path, and in doing so chart their own Argosi ways.

I breathed in deep, and though I wasn’t even sure that whatever existed in this strange place of shadows could be called air, I let it fill me up until there wasn’t any room for idle ruminations about death, doom and the cruel misfortune of the Mahdek people. Took a couple of tries. Didn’t help that Ala’tris was shouting something at me from the spellship.

Leave it for now, I told myself.You won’t be any good to her or anyone else until you straighten yourself out.

Once my head was clear, I turned my attention to my body, listening to everything it had to say to me. Boy, did it have a lot to say.

‘Hey, Ferius, this is your heart speaking. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m beating so fast you’re going to lose consciousness any second now.’

‘You think you’ve got it tough? I’m her muscles, and we’re all clenched to hells. She’s losing the feeling in her hands from squeezing so hard.’

‘Uh, hello? Head here. Aching pretty bad. Blinding, actually.’

I assume most people’s bodies don’t actually talk to them, but then most people don’t imagine their old mentor nattering at them all day long either.

‘Ferius? Don’t mean to disturb you here, but I’m your bladder and I’m about to pi—’

Do what you gotta do, I told my body.Don’t hide from the pain or the shame or whatever else is coming over you. Just let it be what it’s going to be. One more step and then we can figure out what the heck Ala’tris is on about up there.

With my thoughts clear and my body doing all the shaking and stirring it needed to do, I went to work on the last part of myself that was in sore need of coming back into alignment with the rest of me.

‘Go on,’I whispered to the maelstrom of emotions that my mind and body had been working so hard to keep me from feeling.‘I’m here, and I ain’t afraid of you.’

---