Unicorn Dragoons Part two
First six pages of the second part of Unicorn Dragoons, written from the perspective of the vampire Mildgyd as our intrepid team of unicorn cavalry escort her to an important meeting with a local duke.
First draft unedited.
Part 2: In The Tower's Shadow.
Mildgyd was the vampire chosen to accompany them. There were five vampires riding with the whole formation, but of them all she was the one with the most experience moving in such social situations. A scion of the Von Crowley line her normal haunt was in the countryside around the great city of York where a great host of King's Thanes kept the Fyrd raised and ready to hold back any Scottish incursions into English soil. Of course with so many armed men led under the command of noble families always jockeying for power there was a great deal of court intrigue that every vampire both couldn't avoid getting involved and yet could also not let themselves be drawn in too deep lest the suddenly find themselves a part of a rebellion or some other kind of open warfare against those that should be their allies. Used to all that, convincing one Duke to stay home and continue to enjoy himself shouldn't be too difficult. Honestly the most difficult part of this mission was probably going to be living long enough to reach the Duke while traveling in the midst of suspicious and hostile unicorns.
Mildgyd hadn't been eager to join the company on their mission. Not entirely anyway. Like all vampires she loved humans and looked forward to any chance to draw near to a group of them. The attraction was built into the runes carved in her flesh, to find the scent of human blood to be an exciting and precious thing rather than hungering for it as so many other creatures do. Such a fundamental longing left her in two minds about any long term mission. On the one hand it was a chance to know and befriend a new group of men, on the other it meant leaving her usual guard with whom she was highly familiar already. She was needed though, the best suited for a mission that had to be undertaken, so she would do her best.
"You don't have to cling so tightly to my mane." Deagscield said from beneath her. His voice was a deep and powerful one, but his words had a clipped almost annoyed tone to them. "I am not going to drop you so you can stand up straight."
"Sorry," she apologized, "I know you wouldn't let anything happen to me, but we are going so fast it's disconcerting."
"You call this fast?" The unicorn scoffed which was unbelievable they must've crossed some twenty miles in the last hour at least, a journey a normal horse might have made in half a day if it had pushed itself hard, and the unicorns showed no sign of fatigue despite the ground eating pace.
"As fast as I've ridden on the ground in my life." Mildgyd answered honestly. "I feel as if the wind will yank me out of the saddle any moment."
"None of the others has such a fear," Deagscield pointed out and indeed the other riders were all completely unaffected by the rushing winds around them. They stood up straight on their mounts, and didn't bother with using any hand holds at all. Several of them were checking or cleaning their weapons, one or two others were reading. All were conversing freely with each other, turning from side to side, sometimes even completely around in their saddles to face the man they were addressing. The men were completely at ease with the speed they moved at and had total confidence in their mounts to carry them safely. Easy for them to feel so, the unicorns actually cared about their welfare.
"You said this was the fastest you've gone on the ground? Have you gone sky riding before?" Deagscield continued curiously.
"I was carried by a griffin once or twice." Mildgyd explained. "The Earl of North Yorkshire has on occasion demanded my family move about the shire with him at considerable speed."
"So you’re more used to airiel speeds then?” Deagscield asked rather mecheviously.
“I didn’t say that!” Mildgyd panicked, “I didn’t say that at all! I only rode a griffin twice at most and it scared me nearly half to death and-”
“Sergeant!” Deagscield called back to the formation ignoring his passenger’s mounting protests. “The good lady says she doesn’t mind if we go a bit faster, she’s taken rides with the sky core before so she knows what it’s like to really move.”
“Ah excellent!” Sergeant Holt answered as Mildgyd froze as she realized just what was about to happen. “I was hoping we could pick up the pace a bit. We’re still close enough to the battle for rumor to have overtaken us and I would like to get out of that range as quickly as possible. We’ll keep to a standard pace. Thirty on at fast, fifteen off, fifteen on but slow.”
As he spoke, Holt broke off his conversation with his corporal and turned back to face in the same direction as his unicorn. He locked his boots in his stirrups and stood up slightly while arching his back forward. Unicorns did not wear bridals, they rode where they wanted to and preferred to have full use of their mouths and teeth as they did. Instead their saddles ran further up their backs and had an additional series of straps about the base of their necks, this supported a pair of heavy and stiff leather loops which could be grasped tightly for added stability when a unicorn really got moving. Hold grabbed both of those loops in front of him after he had made sure that all the rest of his gear was tightly packed down.
The other riders were doing much the same. The unicorns had slowed while these preparations were made, but now had an air of excitement about themselves. They all but danced as they trotted on, eager to fully let loose and run to their heart’s content. Corporal Leofflad rode over to Mildgyd side and set a series of straps around her legs that would hold her to her stirrups.
“Lean forward mam if you would.” Leofflad instructed. “Our men know how to manage the wind currents as they run, but it can be a bit overwhelming for first timers. If you would grab hold of these loops in front of you. Not those deary, the ones all the way in the front. Yes now just lay down close to Deagscield’s neck and should all be good. Deagscield if you feel her slipping, you let us know at once so we can tie her down safely.”
“Of course mam.” Deagscield agreed. Mildgyd was still a bit too stunned at what was going on to say anything herself, so she was soon lying all but flat on the unicorn’s back and feeling a growing sense of dread in her gut.
“Um…” She finally managed. “What exactly are we going to do? Aren’t we already going fast enough.”
“Oh this has been a good pace for us so far.” Deagscield explained. “But it’s hardly the fastest we can go, and the Colonel said he wanted to get you to that tower as fast as we can. So we’re going to gallop for a while, then walk for a bit afterwards to cool off, then trot along a bit further to stretch back out and then go for another gallop and repeat.”
“Ah!” Mildgyd exclaimed somewhat calmed. “I am familiar with that tactic, we often do so with the rest of the cavalry. One mile at full speed, one at a walk, one at half speed. It’s the best way to cover ground quickly and safely.”
“Yes that is how regular horses do it.” The unicorn scoffed. “They’re such strange animals. I don’t get how they can be satisfied with running for such short periods. We unicorns measure the pace by time rather than distance.”
“Time?” Mildgyd asked, growing apprehensive again.
“Yes you heard the Sergeant.” Deagscield explained simply. “We’ll start with a thirty minute gallop, then a fifteen minute walk and so on. This road looks well maintained so we should be able to cover about forty miles in the next hour.”
“I’m sorry wh-” But Mildgyd was interrupted.
“The Team will advance at full pace!” Regnaldor called out from ahead of them, and with Holt nodding in confirmation, the team took off.
Their trott became a run, became a gallop, and finally became very nearly a flight. The ride itself was surprisingly smooth, since the unicorns spent most of their time leaping over the ground in absurdly long strides, touching the ground only long enough to spring forward again. The men riding them rose and fell rhythmically, stretching their bodies out to catch and cut the wind as unicorns reached the zenith of their jumps. They created a kind of downforce that helped the unicorns come back to the ground faster and not waste too much speed to wind resistance. The men fell back down again as their mounts hit the ground and so absorbed what shock there was.
Of course Mildgyd had neither the practice nor inclination to match such movements. She clung desperately to Deagscield’s neck and the ground raced past her. Deagscield’s pace suffered somewhat from this as he spent more time airborne than the others did, but three unicorns had formed up in front of him and were matching him stride for side, cutting through the wind for him and pulling him along in their backdraft. So he still managed to keep pace with the rest of his fellows.
And what a pace they kept. In what seemed like no time at all Mildgyd saw a mile marker rush past. Perhaps a minute and a half later she saw a second go by, then a third not long after. The group had crossed three miles in less than five minutes. The speed was frankly absurd for anything walking on the ground on the power of its own legs. Even more absurd she knew because each unicorn carried a full grown man or a woman who had pressed herself to get into fighting shape, along with their equipment and perhaps two days of supplies. Most absurd of all, they were going this fast while carrying her.
She had known unicorns were fast, she had even known how they were so fast, but to actually move at such speed was another thing altogether. She could feel the mana crackle in the air around her. As creatures irrationally aligned with the elements of Weight and Decay, a unicorn’s soul was formed with certain bound spellcrafts, abilities that they could activate or suppress at will. When a unicorn wished it could weigh almost nothing, and that weight would return at will as well. Light as feathers when they pushed off the ground, yet somehow still dragging themselves forward with all the friction offered by their three quarters of a ton of mass. At the same time mana rejuvenated their strength and ensured they lost almost no stamina as they ran at their full speed. So quickly engaging and disengaging magick even for such simple spells would’ve taxed even an Elven archmagister to their very limits, but for naturally magical creatures like unicorns it was almost all instinct, done as easily as breathing. It was wondrous to behold, it was terrifying to be carried by it.
Mildgyd stopped looking for mile markers not long after the fourth swept by even faster than the third had. She could hardly stand the sight of the world around her rushing by so quickly. She looked forward instead and that was even worse somehow. The road they rode over was well maintained like all works in the empire. It was flat for the most part, well built up, free of debris, and fairly straight. But it was made for ponderously marching armies, lazy farmer carts and great merchant trains. Not for a team of unicorns all but flying over it at breakneck speed.
That was not a turn of phrase she appreciated in retrospect. There were ruts cut into the road by centuries of wagon traffic. There were dips where larger stones had come free, and bumps where they had come up. They were not large obstacles, but they were impossible to see until a unicorn was almost right on top of one. So when she looked forward she would see a small flaw in the road, no harm to any normal traffic but more than capable of bringing unicorn and rider to a disastrous end if hit the wrong way, appear just a moment before they would be right under foot of a rushing rider. Then the unicorn would jerk to the side in a move that should’ve sent it thundering to the ground, or somehow manage to lengthen the amount of time it spent airborne to jump right over it and then continue on as if nothing had happened at all.
Her heart froze as she watched Llywelyn and Scuralet clear such an obstacle, a set of multiple wheel ruts where a farmer’s wagon had joined the main roadway for several generations. A half dozen ruts were cut in the ground, any one of which was just large enough to catch Scuralet’s hoof for just long enough to throw off his gait and trip him. Scuralet somehow managed to land with his legs stradling either side of the ruts. His hoofs touched the ground for less than an instant before he was springing through the air again, while Llywelyn smiled and laughed enjoying the reckless speed of the mad dash.
Mildgyd couldn’t take the sight any longer. The speed was too great, the risk to grand. Any of a hundred things could go wrong and bring man and beast to ruin far beyond her powers to fix even if she could bring the men at least back as revenants. That wasn’t alway guaranteed, if the body was mangled enough, particularly if the skull was split and the brains within reduced to pulp than trying to make the corpse into a revenant would likely kill her or close to it, and no soul would ever be convinced to return to such a ruined form. And even still men lived their lives, so precious and brief with such reckless abandon. For little more than the joy of speed, and the freedom of the open road, these men threw themselves on the mercy of chance and the skill of creatures that not more than six hundred years earlier, would’ve gleefully devoured them all and glutted themselves on their blood. So she ducked her head down and closed her eyes tight so that she would not have to see them press on in joy and danger.
She did not know how much time had passed when disaster struck. Yet it was not any unicorn that came to harm from the dangers of the road or ill chance, but herself that was suddenly under threat due to her own negligence. Her hat had come loose, as had her face wrappings. This would inevitably happen during any long horse ride as the rhythmic gait of any beast would slowly work such clothing free of its binds. Normally she would’ve adjusted it to put it back in place by now, but since she was trying her best to ignore the world around her, she had not noticed it grow slack and had not thought to check it as she would’ve normally. So all at once it all went wrong. Her hat was caught by the wind and pulled from her head, with it went her head wraps, so that now her naked flesh was exposed to the sunlight that poured down on them all from the clear open sky.
The sun was the center of Existence and Decay in the world. It was the magical source of life and the driving force of change and entropy. Its light therefore was a kind of magical awareness that flooded the world and forced things to hold to the fundamental principles it represented. And her existence spat in the face of all that the sun represented. She was human, and she was not. She should be dead, but she was not. She was a creature manufactured by Uncertainty and the driving will of humanity to rise above the endarkened and rebel even against their demonic masters. The light hated her for what she was, and now it had found her. The all pervading presence of the sun, untainted by reflection, glass or shadow struck her full in the face so that Existence itself now strove against the Uncertainty of her being. Her body was paralyzed as the world struggled to decide if she was dead or not, and her skin felt like it was burning under the sun’s touch. She couldn’t even scream, and she had about two or three minutes or so before the magick that sustained her broke apart and tore her in half.
“Something’s wrong!” Deagscield cried out in a piercing voice that cut through the roar of the passing wind, as he felt his passenger go even more rigid on his back, he couldn’t look back though, not at the speed he was running at. And slowing down from this speed without falling in a tangled mass of limbs took time he might not have.
“Her face is exposed!” A rider called out at the top of his lungs, but Mildgyd could only barely hear him. In a moment an arm wrapped around her head, and yanked it away from Deagscield’s neck and into the cold, hard surface of a soldier’s cuirass. Somone had ridden over next to Deagscield, leaned across the gap between two unicorns that could only come so close together without risking tripping the other up, and grabbed her head to shield her from the sunlight. A second arm joined the first and then she was free.
The soldier had managed to block enough of the direct sunlight from reaching her that she was able to act. Chanting the principles of Lost Places, Zeno’s Paradoxes of motion, and the math equations that proved that the sum of all positive integers was negative one twelfth. The energy of Uncertainty filled her as mana was diverted by her soul to split time itself in two. She was alive, and she was not. She was a monster, and she was human. She was, or she might not be, but it was not the sun choice to make her one or the other.
Her muscles untensed. The paralysis faded. She grabbed a spare heavy cloth from within her dress and quickly began to wrap it around her face and head. The arms that shielded her moved only slightly to let slip the linen beneath them. She blinded herself in the process, but she was now safe from the sun’s touch once more. And fortunately enough, Deagscield was finally slowing down as well.
“What happened?” Holt demanded, it still sounded like he was at the head of the team, he was alarmed, yet also frustrated.
“Are you alright mam?” Leofladd asked, she sounded much closer and there was genuine concern in her voice.
“Her head scarf and hat came off.” Llywelyn answered, by God he sounded like he was right over top of her. Was he the one who had grabbed her head to save her? Had she just had her head shoved into his chest protectively?! She hoped this panic was still mostly from her near death experience. “She took the sun directly to the face, but I don’t think for very long though.”
“I’m fine now.” Mildgyd offered, she pushed back from the man who had saved her, she nearly overbalanced and went over the side of her saddle, but a pair of hands grabbed her shoulders and steadied her. “Did anyone see where my hat went?”
