Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

him because, of all foolish reasons, I
wanted to see how this young man with the surprising Celtic name handled such a horse.
    The horse was of course already bitted and bridled, but not saddled. The boy swept me a swift low bow, and turning, set his hands on the great brute’s shoulders, and next instant was
astride the glossy back, and catching the reins out of the dealer’s hands as the great brute began to dance and snort and sidle, swung him out onto the open trampled turf. Watching him as he
put the Black One through his paces, I found myself judging the rider’s mettle as well as the horse’s, noting how lightly he handled the savage ‘wolf’ bit, while never for
one instant losing the control; and the way the Black One himself, who I was very sure would have been a plunging fury with almost any other man on his back, not only answered to his authority but
seemed to enter into the thing with him as they wheeled and circled and changed paces, and came sweeping in a cloud of dust around the full circle of the open space; so that when at last they came
to a trampling halt before me, I could have sworn that the horse, as well as the man, was laughing ...
    ‘See, my lord, and he is not even sweating,’ said the dealer’s voice in my ear; but I had to think of the long road home; above all, of the sea crossing. I longed to take this
superb black thunderstorm, but if I did, he would almost certainly cost us a man’s life, or another horse’s, maybe more, to get him home.
    ‘He is a good horse – with the right rider,’ I said, aware of the man Bedwyr looking down at me under that flaring eyebrow, with a curious intensity widening his eyes,
‘but he is not good for my purpose.’ And I turned on my heel and pushed my way into the crowd again, followed by Flavian in a cloud of mute protest, for he was still young enough to be
sure that if one only wanted it badly enough, one could hook Orion out of the sky on the end of a cockle pin.
    He looked back once, and sighed. ‘It’s a pity,’ he said.
    I glanced down at him, and because he looked so young and forlorn, found myself calling him by the name that had been his when he stood nose high to an otter hound. ‘It’s a pity,
Minnow.’ And felt that the pity of it included the man as well as the stallion.
    But it was to be only a few hours later that I saw the man with the pale forelock again.
    Every evening after the first, we had had our own small fire in the corner of the corral, for dried dung cakes cost little, and a sack of them went a surprisingly long way. And that evening we
were gathered around it as usual, eating the evening meal, when a step came past the horse lines and a shadow loomed out of the crowded shifting dark, and took substance in the smoky light of the
fire. The small licking flames seemed to leap up at his coming, and the pale lock of hair gave him the look of having a white swan’s feather caught at his temple; and I saw that he held in
his hands a small thickset harp of black bog oak, on the strings of which the firelight played as on running water.
    He came in the usual way of wandering harpers, who sit themselves uninvited at any man’s fire, sure of a welcome and a hearing and a meal for the song they sing; and making me the same
swift bow that he had made in the horse ring, he folded onto his narrow haunches between Flavian and Bericus, settling his harp onto his knee and into the hollow of his shoulder before most of us
were aware of him at all. We had been talking of the horses, cavalry talk, sweet and nutty on the tongue, but at his coming a gradual silence fell, and face after face was turned expectantly to the
newcomer; horse talk one could have at any time, not so a harper. But having gained our whole attention, Bedwyr seemed in no hurry to begin his song, and remained for a few moments fondling the
well-worn instrument, so that watching him I was reminded suddenly of a man making his falcon ready for