Messenger
By Zeldara-Rain

Chapter One
The Boy and the Horse

The tall, roan gelding moved at an almost lazy stroll through the autumn forest. There was no rider in the horse's saddle, although a liberal smearing of dried blood across the animal's hindquarters and flanks, none of which apparently belonging to the gelding, gave hint as to what had become of his previous owner. The horse seemed unconcerned at his rider's obviously messy demise, and continued to amble along quite happily. The horse, while tall, did not appear to be very well fed, and there were several nasty scars along his sides, resembling the marks made when a careless or cruel rider drove sharply pointed spurs into the poor animal's flesh to hurry them along. Those scars might have explained why the horse wasn't overly upset about his sudden lack of ownership.
He wandered along for a while longer, and then came to a sudden, abrupt halt. His ears pricked forward, every line of his body tense as he listened. A soft, human groan sounded nearby. After a moment, the horse slowly, cautiously began to move towards the sound of the moan, ready to run at any moment.
A human boy lay on his stomach in a ditch, exhausted and barely breathing. His back was a horrific mess of cuts and welt, some infected and leaking yellowish pus. This boy had obviously been badly beaten. Skinny to the point of emancipation, the boy wasn't much more than fourteen years old. His skin was a light golden brown underneath all the dirt and blood that was smeared across it and his thick, overgrown hair was a dull brown-black. The eyes he opened to stare with when the roan gently nudged him, though, were a startling shade of emerald green, glazed over with the haze of fever.
The boy whimpered as the horse nudged him again, crying out as he shifted slightly to get away from the insistent touches. "Lemme 'lone..." he whispered, his voice an agonized barely audible sound that nonetheless fell heavily into the near silence. The horse lifted his head slightly, only to shake it in a curious parody of the human motion, whicker softly and then lower it once more to nudge the boy again.
Slowly, bit by bit, the horse managed to coax the boy to his feet. The injured boy clung desperately to the saddle, managing to hold himself upright only by sheer determination. Clinging to the saddle, he stumbled along as the horse slowly led him to a nearby stream. The boy stiffly, uncertainly, waded out into the water, slowly lowering himself into a crouch as he did so, until the water level was up to his shoulders, over all of the cuts. Wincing, he stayed that way for a while, letting the cool, clear waters soothe and clean his wounds. The horse bent his head to drink. For a long while, all was still and peaceful.
Finally, the boy straightened up and walked out of the waters. He moved quietly, but with a strange confidence, to the horse's side. Reaching up, he carefully undid the buckles holding down the leather flaps and slid out the medical kit he'd guessed would be there. It was fairly basic, just a few rolls of bandages and a bottle of ointment used to disinfect wounds and hasten healing. However, it was exactly what the boy needed.
He awkwardly managed to salve his wounds, nearly fainting from pain in the process, as the horse moved to graze of the sweet grass that grew long next to the stream. Whilst he carefully wrapped the bandages around his torso, looping them over his shoulders to make sure they stayed in place, the boy talked quietly to the horse. "My name is Chal," he told him softly, talking more from something to distract him from the pain and to make sure the horse was accustomed to him than out of any real need for conversation. "It isn't really much of a name, since in the language of my people, all it means is 'boy'. I haven't got around to earning a name yet..." There was a pause as he tugged a bandage a little too tight and a wave of pain rendered him unable to speak. "...I wonder if you have a name," he murmured, once he'd gotten his breath back and his legs stopped threatening to give way beneath him. "If you do, I've got no way of knowing it. But I suppose, if we going to stay together for a while, I should give you one, shouldn't I?" The gelding flicked an ear, apparently not fussed as to whether he should remain nameless or not. Chal laughed shortly, jerkily, running out of strength and slowly collapsing to the soft dark earthen stream bank. He crawled towards where the horse was grazing, carefully dragging his tired body along the ground, medical kit in one hand. The horse gave him a long appraising look and then stopped feeding and walked over to stand next to the boy. Chal dragged himself to his feet and once again clung to the saddle as the horse walked him over to sit beneath a nearby tree. The horse stood patiently whilst Chal stripped him of his saddlebags, and then marched straight back over to the grassy patch where he'd been feeding. Chal grinned slightly. "Anyway, I probably should work out something to call you, even if it's only so I feel better." He searched through the saddlebags and grinned triumphantly as he found a half loaf of bread that wasn't too stale and skin of water. The water was lukewarm and tasted of leather, but he was too tired to drag himself over to the stream and refill it, and gulped it down happily. The bread went down a little slower, as chewing was made difficult by exhaustion and he hadn't eaten for a few days, so he didn't want to puke it all up again. Between mouthfuls, he kept talking to the horse.
"So... what to call you..." He threw several names around his head, some of them names used by his own people, other ones he'd heard the fief-born call each other. None of them seemed to fit the horse.
Suddenly, the roan gelding's head shot up, ears laid back and teeth bared. He seemed to be staring at a point just to the left of Chal's right leg. Glancing sideways, Chal saw with a spurt of horror that there was an adder not a foot from his leg. He froze, terror clouding his mind and rendering him unable to move. The snake stirred lazily, seeming to wonder whether it should do something about this stupid human who'd been so dumb as to just plonk himself down practically on top of it. Luckily, the horse did not freeze. He rushed past Chal, trampling the snake before it even knew what was happening. The horse's unshod hooves clattered down furiously upon the snake's vulnerable body, killing it in moments. It took a while longer for Chal to come out of his petrified trance, and a few moments longer for him to persuade the horse to stop squishing the snake's already lifeless body. When he finally managed to talk him into doing so, Chal threw the corpse back into the tree line for the ants to eat, and chose another tree to sit beneath.
At least he had a name for the horse now. Wrapping himself in a long, warm woolen cloak he'd found in one of the saddle bags, Chal curled up on his side to rest, a faint smile on his lips. "Marko," he informed the horse."Your new name is Marko. It means 'war-like'."

The boy woke early the next morning, to the soft sounds of the birds twittering away in the trees, to the sight of Marko standing guard over him nearby, and to searing pain in his back and shoulders. He breathed a curse word he'd heard the men of his clan use when the the horses broke loose of when the fief-born sneered down their noses at them, and gingerly climbed to his feet. His head spun briefly, but the dizziness wasn't as bad as the day before, and he just had to lean against a tree for a moment until it subsided. His morning was devoted mostly to carefully washing his wounds in the creek, even more carefully drying them, and then applying the healing ointment and rebandaging them. After he was done with that, he had to sit down again.
As soon as he'd built up the strength for it, Chal dragged himself to his feet once more and removed Marko's saddle and bridle. He figured if the horse was going to leave, he'd do it anyway and he fared a far greater chance of survival minus the restraints. Then he sat back down and went through the saddle bag's he'd taken from the horse the night before. Whoever Marko's previous rider had been, he'd been rather well equipped. There was another cloak in the saddlebags besides the one Chal had used for a blanket the night before, a shorter summer one in a nondescript shade of rusty brown, as well as three changes of clothes in sizes a little too large for Chal, but wearable nonetheless, and a pair of boots. Chal was surprised at the boots. Normally people only had one pair, if they were lucky enough to have a pair at all. He had never worn any himself, so he was rather happy at the acquisition. Also contained in the leather saddlebags were some books he couldn't read, having never learned how, a plate and eating utensils, a tinderbox and all the food he'd need until he was well enough to move around and hunt again. There was also a bow strapped to the back of the saddle. Chal grinned at it -- he'd always been good with a bow, and when he could move freely again the weapon would probably guarantee him a steady flow of meals. For the first time since he'd been beaten half to death and cast out of his clan, Chal let himself have some hope for the future.

Chal and Marko stayed for nearly a month next to the stream as Chal slowly recovered from his wounds. The bond between the boy and the horse who had saved his life grew strong over the time, and when the two of them were ready to leave there was no doubt that it would be together. Chal often spoke to Marko about his life before they'd met, because it seemed as though the horse actually understood him when he talked, and because some times it was just a little too quiet at the encampment for the boy, who'd grown up with the hustle and bustle of a large and noisy clan of his people always talking or doing something around him. Talking to Marko kept him from getting lonely.
"I'm a pushrat," he told the horse one time. "That means I'm only half-blood of the People. My father was fief-born. I got my eyes from him, the useless bastard." In answer to the horse's almost curious look, he explained, "My father never offered to marry my Ma, even when he knew she was going to have his kid. He just went back to his stupid town and stayed there. I've never actually met him. He's prob'ly married, with a fat-arsed wife and a whole bunch of pathetic fief-born kids of his own by now." Chal rolled grass-green eyes. "Why he would want to give up a chance for a,life on the road and just live in one place all his life is beyond me. the clan would've let him come along if he wanted, since Ma was pregnant with his kid. But, no, he was too scared. Bastard." He spat into the fire. Marko gave him a reproachful glare, as if to say, That's disgusting. It made Chal laugh.
Another time, Chal told him that he was pikie, an outcast of the clan now. "I hit the boss-man's son and broke his nose," he said with some pride. "It's all crooked now, I'll bet, cos my clan has no good healer. That'll mess up his pretty face some... He was going on about my Ma. She died a couple years back, and now everyone thinks they can say whatever they want about her, so long as they don't actually mention her name -- we don't say the names of the dead cos it might call them back to haunt us. Anyway, he said my Ma was a slut for laying with a fief-born. So I had to hit him." He snickered quietly, his hands moving with practiced ease as he cleaned Marko's leather bridle with some oil he'd found in the saddlebags for just such a purpose. "You shoulda seen him, Marko, lying in the dirt and bawling his eyes out with blood pouring everywhere. Real satisfying, I tell ya... But then the boss-man had some of his men lash me with the lead reins off one of the wagon-horses and throw me out. Pretty dumb thing to be outcast over, but the boss-man was way proud of his son, and he was looking for a reason to get rid of me anyways." He looked up at the roan gelding from his seat in the dirt and grinned. "I was prob'ly gonna die... But then you found me. I owe you my life, Marko, I hope you know that." The horse whickered quietly, sounding amused. Grinning, Chal returned his eyes and mind to his work.

By the time Chal and Marko finally left their little campsite by the stream, Chal had grown another three inches from his former height, and had filled out a little. He was close to fifteen years old now. He would never be a big man, tending more towards being small and slender, but he wasn't anywhere near as skinny as when Marko had first found him, and he'd even put on a fair bit of muscle. He'd found a small, strange little carved box filled with little bits of jewelry in the saddlebags, yet more evidence that Marko's former owner had been a fairly well off man, and he'd pierced his left earlobe with a small, needle-pointed knife he'd also found in the pack. Most of the men of his clan had worn a heavy golden hoop in one or both ears, but instead of choosing one of them from the small box, Chal had decided on a copper stud carved in the shape of a falcon's head. The metal went well with his golden-brown skin, and he liked the design of it. Dressed in the man's clothes, Chal took to the road on Marko's back, exalting in the sheer freedom of being nearly fifteen years old, more of less healthy and well fed, with a good horse and the road stretched out before him, no ties to hold him down.
It never occurred to him that he might be suspected of being Marko's former owner's murderer if he just went sauntering along in the man's clothes, riding his horse and wearing his jewelry, so it came as a great surprise to him when he was arrested by the King's men eight days later.