Aieee, Yuma. Is it so hard to praise him?
She turned her horse and rode away, not words for him either, he was in disgrace. She left the horse-field slowly, she could not gallop anymore. She did not look back, he did not ride after her.
As the other straggling warriors finished the contest he urged his stallion to join Dimmi’s brown pony, a fiery thing with blood in its eyes. It snapped at his horse, he backed away. “Dimmi—”
Dimmi ignored him, he pitched the goat’s head into the crowd of warriors, flung himself from his saddle and stalked away, towards the horse-field’s fringe of trees.
Zandakar turned. “Jenkin!”
The grey-haired old shell-leader, retired now to training younger warriors, left his fellow trainers and came to his side. “Warlord,” he said, fist pressed to his heart.
It
