to with sickle and scythe. Trionn cowered down in the razed-back scrub that edged the meadow, and prayed the two men were given no cause to glance aside. Did they so much as turn his way, they could not help but catch him skulking.

    Escape was impossible. Trionn dared not risk the noise of movement, even to cover his ears. Despite the spirited charge of the stud, neither could he help but overhear every word that passed between Lord and crony.

    'Will you look at his stride!' the bald man exclaimed in boyish excitement. 'He can cover ground, for a marvel.'

    The stud reached the fence, dropped his hind-quarters underneath himself with a grace that could stop the breath, and whirled in pirouette. Trotting now in taut-muscled extension, he resumed his patrol against invaders. His neck was high set, and curved like a bow, capped with a mane whipped to elflocks that no groom dared to unravel. The last one to try had suffered a broken wrist. Trionn had been assigned the clearing of the supper boards at the time the late kord, who had been young and a cripple, had gently made disposition.

    'Cordiar was never bred to be gentled, but to ride to the fields of war.' The Lord raised shaky hands and worried at the shawl that covered frail shoulders. His flesh was pale with ill health, the skin nearly transparent against the blankets piled in layers over his lap; his smile seemed the grimace of a death's head. 'My father might have mastered him, had the fighting not sent him to the grave. Leave the horse to his field. Nail the gate closed and let him live as his nature allows. He is wild and filled with hate, but beautiful. He will run free, as I cannot, and give me simple pleasure by watching him.'

    And so the dun stallion had matured, handled by no man, left to gallop and kick up his heels as he pleased for the two years before Silverdown's master had succumbed to his wasting disease. Unmarried at the hour of his death, leaving not one bastard as issue, his inheritance had fallen to a cousin who was also young, but thick-set and muscled, and vigorous.

    'You were right to have me come,' the bald man was saying to the new master. 'Everyone brags on the virtues of their horses, but this one - he's more than magnificent.'

    'A treasure,' the Lord allowed with an offhand cuff at his cloak. Grass chaff ripped up by the stud had clung and sullied

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