—
He listens carefully, ears forward, to the directions given. The name of the Mors he has heard in passing, but five miles through a desert is nothing to a soldier as weathered as he. In the background, the sea goes hush, hush, as if beckoning him to stay. Its urging makes him want to leave it more.
“Thank you. I ought to be able to manage.” His smile is a dirty-mirror reflection of the other, and doesn’t fade when he nods. “I arrived to Denocte’s harbor a fortnight ago.” The blood bay does not expand on his reply; if the stranger is the kind of man to be aware of such things, he will know that is when the Night Court’s queen returned a conquerer. Time is a limited resource, but Martell must wait with his net open, until he learns the habits of this country’s fish.
He doesn’t move to meet the stallion, but he does turn toward him, opening up his posture, cocking a hind hoof into the hot sand. He finds that the golden man is bigger than he’d thought, well-muscled, with impressive confirmation. When he gives his name, the general’s gaze flicks up to eyes that are still dark in the newborn morning. His own horn, bone-white, glows like a pearl as light creeps across the horizon. It dips as he nods. “Martell,” he answers.
It isn’t the first time he’s said the name, but it still feels wrong, even struck surely as a hammer tapping stone. His own name lies buried a hundred miles from here, with the rubble of his city and the rotting bodies of his men.
But for Martell, the war is over, and the world open, unfolding like the horizon into crimson and gold.
“Well, Vercingtorix. Are you up very early, or very late?”
@Vercingtorix
“Thank you. I ought to be able to manage.” His smile is a dirty-mirror reflection of the other, and doesn’t fade when he nods. “I arrived to Denocte’s harbor a fortnight ago.” The blood bay does not expand on his reply; if the stranger is the kind of man to be aware of such things, he will know that is when the Night Court’s queen returned a conquerer. Time is a limited resource, but Martell must wait with his net open, until he learns the habits of this country’s fish.
He doesn’t move to meet the stallion, but he does turn toward him, opening up his posture, cocking a hind hoof into the hot sand. He finds that the golden man is bigger than he’d thought, well-muscled, with impressive confirmation. When he gives his name, the general’s gaze flicks up to eyes that are still dark in the newborn morning. His own horn, bone-white, glows like a pearl as light creeps across the horizon. It dips as he nods. “Martell,” he answers.
It isn’t the first time he’s said the name, but it still feels wrong, even struck surely as a hammer tapping stone. His own name lies buried a hundred miles from here, with the rubble of his city and the rotting bodies of his men.
But for Martell, the war is over, and the world open, unfolding like the horizon into crimson and gold.
“Well, Vercingtorix. Are you up very early, or very late?”
@
