Hunting Party

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Well ridden!” came from behind her, but she had no attention to spare. His earlier exertions hadn’t tired the red horse, and he was pulling her arms out. The leaders were nearer now, as Tiger thundered on, lunging against the reins, and his next jump put him even with the first of the field. Heris knew she should be holding him back . . . but excitement sang the last remnants of doubt out of her bones. She had not felt this exultation since—she pushed that away. Now—this horse, this field, this next jump—was all that mattered. All in a clump they raced, angling across the field after the hounds, to jump a sharp ditch. . . . Someone fell there, but Tiger had carried her over safely.

  Ahead was another rockpile, to which the fox sped, and into which it vanished. The hounds swarmed over it, clamoring, but they were not diggers and the fox had found a safe lair. Heris got Tiger slowed, then circled him until he walked; he was wet and breathing hard, but clearly not exhausted. Nor was she; she hoped they’d find another fox and do it again. She could have laughed at her earlier mood: boring? This? No. It was all Cecelia had promised.

  The huntsmen set to work to call the hounds back and get them in order. Meanwhile the rest of the blue hunt rode up. Some she had met, and some she hadn’t, all now willing to speak to her and tell her how well she’d done.

  “I didn’t really,” she said to the third or fourth person who came up to her. “I got lost, then the horse seemed to hear something—”

  “But that’s wonderful,” the woman said. She had one wrist in a brace, and Heris realized it was the same one she’d seen at dinner. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, and you actually caught up. Most people, once they’re lost, spend the whole day wandering around without a clue, or give up and go home.”

  “Which hill were you on?” one of the men asked. Heris looked around, but had no idea. The jumbled landscape looked as confused to her as a star chart probably would to these people.

  “It was near the beginning,” she said slowly. “There was a track through woods, then a creek, then a lot of tracks straight up the hill. . . .”

  “The Goosegg? You got here in time for the final run from Goosegg?” Now they seemed even more impressed. Heris wondered why. She thought of asking but shrugged instead.

  “Tiger did it,” she said. It was true, anyway: he had known where to go, and he’d taken her there without any serious bruises. They liked that, she could see; Cecelia had told her that horse people expect riders to praise horses and take the blame themselves for errors.

  For a time, nothing much happened; the hounds stood panting, tongues hanging out; some of them flopped down and rolled. Riders stretched, or took a swallow from flasks in the saddlebag. A few dismounted, and disappeared discreetly behind the rockpile. Horses stood hipshot, or walked slowly around as their riders talked or drank. A few stragglers appeared, one by one, on lathered mounts, but perhaps a third of the field had disappeared. Heris wondered if they were going to look for another fox—it was still morning, by the sun.

  When the hunt moved again, it was both calmer and more businesslike than the morning’s first action. Heris felt the difference as a sense of purpose, as if a ship’s crew steadied to some task. First the huntsman took the hounds down the field, toward a patch of woods near a stream—this one, Heris noted from the hillside, widened to a pond at one point. Riders rechecked girths and stirrups; those who had dismounted got up again, and those who had been chatting stopped. Someone Heris didn’t yet know put to her eye a most untraditional military-issue eyepiece; Heris wished she herself had had the wit to get one; that lucky soul would be seeing whatever she looked at in plenty of magnification and perfect lighting. She could see fleas on the fox’s coat, if a fox came out.

  Then the hounds found another trail. At the first peal of the horn, Tiger trembled; Heris steadied him, but didn’t hold him back to the rear of the group this time. Steadily, without haste, the field moved toward the call at a brisk trot. This time no one in front of Heris had a refusal at the low wall and ditch . . . nor did she . . . and they trotted on through the woods, lured by the hound song and the horn. Behind her, the bulk of the field stretched out.

  Out of the woods: she could see the scarlet coats ahead, the hounds now fifty meters in the lead across a field. Tiger wasn’t pulling as badly, but her sentiments were with him, now; she would like to have charged at the next field as fast as he would go. It had become more than the physical delight of riding over fences at speed; it was a hunt, and she wanted to be part of it. Now she could admit it to herself—she had not felt this completely alive, this exultant, since she’d commanded her own ship in combat. And that had been tempered with grief and worry, knowing that she risked her crew, people who trusted her. Here, she risked only herself; she had no responsibility for the others. No wonder people liked hunting . . . but she had no more time to think about it, and that, too, became part of the pleasure.

  That run, her first full run, remained a confusion in her mind, when she tried to tell Cecelia about it. Field and wood and field succeeded each other too rapidly; she had to concentrate on riding, on steering Tiger around trees and readying herself for the fences, walls, ditches, banks that came at her every time she thought she’d caught her breath. It felt as if they’d been riding all day—a lifetime—when she heard the hounds’ voices change, heard the huntsman yell at them, and realized that they’d caught the fox, out in the middle of a vast open bowl between the hills, with a little stinking marsh off to one side. This time Tiger was willing to stop; she sat there panting and hoping she would not disgrace herself by slithering off his back to lie in a heap on the ground.

  Breath and awareness came back to her even as the rest of the field came up. “You can ride,” said the woman with the wrist brace, again beside her. “Don’t tell me it’s all that horse; I’ve ridden him myself.”

  * * *

  In the hunting frenzy of Lord Thornbuckle’s establishment, Ronnie saw his companions change. Buttons, who had been growing perceptibly stuffier over the last year, became a proper son of the household, and took over the red hunt without complaint. He seemed almost a parody of his father, despite the difference in looks. Sarah simply vanished; when they asked, Buttons looked down his nose and muttered something about wedding preparations. Ronnie wished he had such a handy excuse. The others had to undergo evaluation by the head trainer—a humiliating experience, Ronnie thought. Raffaele rode better than he’d expected; though the trainer complained about her form, she never fell off, and was passed to the blue hunt after only a week’s review. He and George and Bubbles, though, were stuck with two daily lessons.

  Ronnie hated the lessons; they spent nearly all the time at a walk or trot, with a sharp-voiced junior trainer nagging them about things Ronnie was sure didn’t really matter. The trainer wasn’t nearly as hard on Bubbles; he figured that was favoritism toward a family member. Afterwards, on the way back to the house to swim or play chipball, Bubbles would critique his lesson again, in detail. When he finally burst loose and told her she had to be as bad, or she wouldn’t still be having lessons too, she slugged him in the arm.

  “I could ride to hounds any day of the week, you idiot. I’m babysitting you two. It wouldn’t be fair to make you stay in lessons by yourselves, Dad said.” She glared at both of them. “You ought to be grateful, but I don’t suppose you are.”

  Ronnie wasn’t. That only made it worse, and his arm really hurt. He hadn’t asked for this. She was supposed to be his girlfriend, and she’d been acting as if he were a nuisance.

  The crisp, clear weather of the first few days ended with a cold front, clouds, and drizzle. It made no difference what the weather was—lessons and hunts went out on schedule. Ronnie hated the cold trickle down the back of his neck, the horrid dankness of wet boots, and he didn’t want to get used to it. Tradition be damned; why couldn’t they wear proper weather-sensing clothing like the Royal Service did on maneuvers?

  At dinner each day, the Main House crowd seemed to divide naturally
along hunt lines. The greens, his Aunt Cecelia quite prominent among them, had their favorite rooms and corners, and so did the blues. The reds condescended subtly to those not yet assigned, but knew their place compared to the other hunts. Bubbles left them, pointedly showing off, Ronnie thought, her ability to mingle with ease as well as her white shoulders. The only young women among the unassigned were too young for him, and too gawky—a pair of earnest cousins so obviously overawed by their surroundings that they blushed if anyone came near. Bubbles had introduced them as “Nikki and Snookie; they used to come a lot back when I was a kid” and then walked off.

  When Captain Serrano showed up with a foxtail one evening (“Not the tail, stupid, the brush!” Bubbles hissed) after her first hunt with the blues, Ronnie was disgusted. He had spent five hours that day riding three different horses in boring circles, trotting over boring little fences in a boring ring. He’d been told he might be allowed on the outside course in a couple of days, if he concentrated. And she—twenty years older, if a day—had been allowed to skip the red hunt altogether, go into the blues, and had had a good first hunt. It wasn’t fair. For the first time since his lessons on the ship, he thought of revenge, but he resisted. It wasn’t worth it.

  His only solace in these trying days was Raffaele, of all people. George dragged her away from a group of blues one night, and gave a humorous account of their day’s lessons. Ronnie felt humiliated—he didn’t fall off that often, and George didn’t mention any of his own mistakes—but Raffaele’s glance at him was sympathetic. After that she came of her own accord every evening, for a few minutes at least. She asked once where Bubbles was, and Ronnie shrugged. She asked no more, but he noticed that she talked to both of them, not just George. And when George was taken up by a group of older men who knew his father, Raffaele kept coming, chatting quietly with Ronnie in a way he found more and more soothing.

  By the time he finally got his pass to hunt with the reds (two days before George, a minor triumph which by then he didn’t enjoy), he expected no pleasure. The morning dawned murky and cold with vague clots of mist hiding the low places; Ronnie felt stiff before he even got to the stables. Buttons, spruce and cheerful, grinned at him as he stumped into the yard where the hunt gathered.

  “Good for you!” he said, too loudly for Ronnie’s taste. “I knew you’d beat George out of the lesson pit. It’s a good day for scent, anyway.” He wore the red coat and insignia of the M.F.H. of the reds, and looked as if he’d been born in it.

  “Oh . . . George will be along soon enough,” said Ronnie vaguely, looking around. “Where’s Bubbles?”

  Buttons laughed. “Taking a vacation. She’s riding with the blues today. We decided George could survive without a family member for one lesson.”

  This reminder of his situation did not help. Ronnie grunted, and looked around again. A groom waved to him, and he went over to get on the dark, heavy animal that was his for the day. “Thumper,” he was told, “is good, solid, reliable, and not too fast. Bring him home safe.” Ronnie noticed nothing was said about his safety.

  They rode out into the cold murk. Thumper seemed to think his place was the back of the field; Ronnie kicked vigorously and got him up to the middle. “Eager, aren’t you?” asked someone sarcastically. Ronnie ignored him. They all milled around in a wet meadow while the hounds cast about for a scent. No one spoke to Ronnie, and he knew they were all eyeing him. His neck felt hot. When the hounds began to speak, he urged Thumper in that direction, but the others were faster. He trotted along near the back of the group, getting well spattered with mud the other horses kicked up. Thumper slowed, and Ronnie couldn’t blame him. It must be worse for the horse, he thought, getting mud in his face and not just on his legs.

  After awhile, the horses ahead of him sped off at a canter. Ronnie followed. Now the mud flew higher; he could see it spattering the ground ahead of him. A hedge appeared from the murk, and Thumper lifted to it. On the far side, a ditch gaped; Thumper stretched, and Ronnie clung, slipping a bit at the rough landing. But he regained his seat and urged Thumper on through a flat field after the others. He wished someone had seen—it was a larger jump than he’d ever taken in a lesson.

  After some minutes of this he was breathless and sore. It was much harder than the lessons, even the ones on the outside course. He couldn’t tell what kind of obstacle was coming. There never seemed time to plan an approach, to get himself ready for the jump. Thumper had a rough, lumbering stride, and while he jumped safely, never hitting anything, he took off with a lurch and landed hard each time. He was doing better than some (he had seen riders sprawled on the wet ground, loose horses, people remounting) but he couldn’t get Thumper to catch up with the field.

  Far ahead, the horn rang out again. Thumper knew that signal, and churned ahead faster. Now they passed stragglers, riders whose strained faces showed that they found this as tiring as Ronnie did. He wondered why they bothered. . . . Were there that many bossy aunts in the universe? He saw a rail fence coming up, and braced himself. . . . They were over safely, but another loomed up. With a curse, Ronnie grabbed mane, and survived that one too. Thumper plunged on, into the rear of the slowing field. . . . The dogs had caught the fox, though Ronnie couldn’t see it. He pulled on the reins, and Thumper slowed to a walk, then stood, sides heaving. No one seemed to notice them now; the red-coated hunt staff in the center were doing something, and then everyone laughed and cheered.

  The crowd spread out, as the riders walked their horses slowly around. “Made it, did you?” asked someone Ronnie had seen in the red hunt group at dinner. “Must have been pretty far back. Too bad you weren’t up. You might’ve had a chance at the brush, being as it’s your first day.”

  “Well, I made it,” Ronnie said. He meant to say it blithely, but it came out sounding disgruntled. The man rode off with a shrug. Thumper heaved a great sigh, and shook his head a little. Ronnie noticed others getting flasks out of their saddlebags. He started to reach for his, and remembered that he’d forgotten to bring it. It seemed suddenly darker, and the first cold drops of the day’s rain splashed his hot neck.

  By nightfall, he had ridden too many hours, fallen off twice (both times some helpful stranger caught Thumper and brought him back) and was wet to the skin with both sweat and rain. His throat felt raw, his nose was running, and his knees and ankles felt as if he’d played the finals of some dismal professional sport involving large angry men pounding each other to mush. He managed to stay on Thumper until he guided him through the gates of the yard, and then slithered off, staggering as he landed.

  “Do you need assistance?” asked the groom, with a quick glance at him. She was already pampering Thumper, he noticed.

  “I had a fall,” he said, through gritted teeth. “But nothing’s broken.”

  “Good day, then,” she said, leading the horse away. “If nothing broke.”

  He stumped up to the house, hoping to make it to a hot bath without meeting anyone, but of course there was George, dapper and witty, with Raffaele on his arm.

  “What did you fall into, the pigpen?” asked George. Ronnie was glad to note that Raffaele did not smirk. She was dry and clean and lovely but she did not smirk.

  “Just a muddy ditch,” Ronnie said. He hoped it sounded casual, the way he’d heard others speak lightly of problems in the field.

  “I haven’t fallen off in a week,” George said. “Even though it really rained hard during my second lesson today.”

  “It’s different out there.” Ronnie shot a glance at Raffaele. She wasn’t even smiling; she looked as if she knew that his shoulder and hip hurt, and was sorry.

  “I’ll bet Bubbles and Raffa didn’t fall,” George went on. “Did you?”

  Raffa turned an enchanting shade of pink; Ronnie had never thought how lovely a blush could look against dark hair. “Almost,” she said. “My horse stumbled on landing over a big drop, and I was right up on her neck. . . .”

  “But you didn’t fall,” George brayed
. “Now if that had been Ronnie, he’d have gone splat, right?”

  “Excuse me,” said Ronnie, trying for coolness and achieving only the very tone of wounded dignity he least wanted. “I’d like to take a bath before dinner.”

  “I should hope so,” George said. “You certainly need one.”

  Ronnie fumed his way to his room. Bad enough to have to spend a wet cold day riding a clumsy horse over mud and rock. Bad enough to fall off and be bruised from head to heel. But to meet the impossibly dapper George on the way back—to be twitted about his muddy state—that was too much. People that thought this was fun must be completely insane . . . except maybe Raffa, because after all women were different.

  He simply could not spend the entire winter at this ridiculous sport. He had to get away, somehow, and do something where he didn’t feel a complete fool.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Ronnie said.

  “Do you really want to spend another day bouncing around on that horse?” asked George. Of course he didn’t; that was the point. It had been bad enough before George got into the hunt, and worse afterwards. But sneaking off like this? George went on, “You look ridiculous—”

  “I do not.” Ronnie glared at his friend. George had not fallen off in his first time in the field, and it had gone to his head. He seemed to think a successful maiden appearance made up for later runaways, buckings off, and an inability to keep up with the field on a slow day. “I ride better than you—”

  “And not nearly so well as your aged aunt or that demon captain of hers. Honestly, I had no idea the Regs went in for horse riding; I thought they spent all their time polishing weapons and doing drills.”