We needed the sword. Carefully avoiding Del's eyes, I told the swordsmith, in his dialect, "When she's done playing with it in a week or so, I'll sell it back to you. At a reduced price, of course, because of its taint."

That seemed satisfactory. He placed the sword in Del's hands, then moved back to the farthest corner of the room, pressing himself into it. Knowing what she would do to test the weight, balance, response, I moved only so far as I had to. The swordsmith stared at me out of astonished eyes.

I grinned. "Indulge me."

Del danced. It was a brief but beautiful ritual, the dance against an invisible opponent, intended only to allow one to establish a rapport with one's weapon, to let the hands come to an understanding of the fit of the hilt, how the pommel affected balance, how the blade cut the air. It lasted moments only, but enough time for him to realize what he was witnessing.

Impossibility.

Del stopped moving. Flipped the braid behind her shoulder. Nodded.

The swordsmith drew in a rasping breath. He named a price.

Knowing there was no room for bargaining under the circumstances, I accepted. Paid. Saw him to the door.

Del's voice rose behind us. In clear Southron, albeit not his dialect, she said, "I will not dishonor your art."

His eyes flickered. Then his face closed up. With his back to us both, he said fiercely, "Tell no one that sword is mine."

I shut the door behind him, then turned to look at Del. She had sheathed the sword and buckled on the harness, testing the fit. It would require adjustment, but wasn't bad. "Happy now?"

She smiled languorously. "With a sword in my hand again, I can indulge even pigs like him."

"Then indulge me, won't you? Let's visit the stud together." I grabbed up my own new harness, slid the sword home. "I may need you to pick up the pieces."

The stud was, predictably, full of piss and vinegar. I sighed as the horse-boy led him out of the livery, recognizing the look in the one rolling eye I could see. The pinning of ears, the hard swish of tail, a peculiar stiff readiness in body indicated the stud had an opinion and was prepared to express it.

I didn't really blame him. He'd been cooped up on a ship, nearly drowned in a shipwreck, deserted on an island, refound, then stuck aboard a ship again. Someone had to pay.

I sighed. "Not here in the street," I told the boy. "Someplace where no innocent bystanders might be injured."

He bobbed his black-haired head and led the way through a narrow alley between the livery and another building to a modest stableyard. The earth had been beaten into a fine dust, and the muckers had already shoveled and swept the yard. At least when I came off, I wouldn't land in manure.

Del, following, raised her voice over the thunking of the stud's hooves. "Shall I send boys out to invite wagering?"

The tone was innocent. The intent was not. Del and I had indeed managed to make some money here and there with wagers on who would win the battle—but that was when the stud was well ridden, and I was more likely to stick. Del knew as well as I that this battle would be worse than usual.

"The only wager here is how soon I come off," I said glumly as the boy slipped the reins over the stud's dark-brown neck. Ordinarily his mane was clipped close to his neck, but time on the island had allowed it to grow out. Now it stood straight up in a black hedge the length of my palm. I ran a hand through my own hedge. "I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to be painful."

In deference to the Southron sun if not Southron proprieties, Del had donned a striped gauze burnous before exiting the inn. Now she arranged herself against a whitewashed adobe wall, arms crossed, one leg crooked up so the toe of the sandal was hooked into a rough spot. The thin, hand-smeared slick coating was crumbling away to display the rough, hand-formed block of grass-and-mud brick beneath.

She smiled sunnily. "It won't be painful if you stay on."

Despite my desire to discuss things with the stud in private, an audience was already beginning to straggle in. Horse-boys, muckers, even a couple of bowlegged, whip-thin men I suspected were horse-breakers. All watched with rapt attention, murmuring to one another in anticipation. It felt rather like a sword-dance, except no circle was in sight. Merely an open-air square, surrounded on three sides by stable blocks and on the fourth by the solid wall of an adjoining building. With a horse as my opponent.

"Don't embarrass me," Del said. "I still need to buy myself a mount, remember?"

"I'll sell you this one cheap."

Her smile was mild. "You're burning daylight, Tiger."

Muttering curses, I stripped out of harness and sword, left them sitting on a bench near Del, and strode across to the stud.

Groundwork was called for, a chance to settle him to some degree before I even mounted by circling him around me at the end of a long rein, by handling head and mouth, by singing his praises in a soothing tone of voice. Actually, it's the tone of voice that counts; I often called him every vulgar name I could think of, but he was never offended because I did it sweetly.

However, I'd had the stud long enough to know groundwork was ineffective. It never seemed to change his mind when he was in the mood for dramatics. Certainly not on the island, when I'd mounted him after months away. That had been a battle.

And now another loomed.

There isn't much to a Southron saddle to begin with, and this one was borrowed from the livery since all of my tack had been lost when the ship sank under me on the way to Skandi. Supremely simple, it was merely an abbreviated platform of leather with the swelling humps of pommel and cantle front and back atop a couple of blankets, a cinch around the horse's barrel to hold the saddle on, stirrup leathers no wider than a man's belt, and roundish stirrups carved out of wood.

Almost simultaneously I took the woven cotton reins from the boy, grabbed handfuls of overgrown mane, and swung up into the saddle with a burst of nervous agility that put me right where I needed to be, even without benefit of stirrups. I'd done that purposely. It was a shortcut into the saddle and gave me an extra instant to set myself before the stud realized I'd beaten him to the punch.

I wore soft Skandic boots instead of sandals, the latter not being particularly helpful atop a recalcitrant horse, and the crimson silks bestowed weeks before on the island. Waiting back at the room was more appropriate Southron garb, but I'd opted to try the stud in clothing I could afford to have ruined. In the whitewashed stable yard, beneath the Southron sun, I must have glowed like a blood-slicked lantern as I eased boots into the stirrups.

Then the stud blew up, and I didn't have time for imagery.

Unless he falls over backward—on purpose or not—riding a rearing horse is not particularly difficult. It's a matter of reflexes and balance. Which is not to say a rearing horse can't do damage even if you survive the dramatics; if you're caught unaware, there is the very real possibility that the horse's head or neck will collide with your face. Trust me, the nose and teeth lose when this happens. And I'm not talking about the horse's.

A bucking horse is tougher to ride, because unless the horse gets into a predictable rhythm, which then becomes a matter of timing to ride out, a jolting, jouncing, twisting and repetitive rear elevation can not only hurl you over the horse's head and eventually into the ground, but can also shorten your spine by a good three inches. And turn your neck into a noodle.

Then, of course, there are the horses that can contort themselves into a posture known as "breaking in two," where they suddenly become hinged in the middle of their spines, drop head and butt so that the body forms an inverted V, and proceed to levitate across the ground in abrupt, stiff-legged, impressively vertical bounds.