"Serrano Legacy - 03 - Winning Colors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

Heris had by this time seen dozens of cubes of the Wherrin Horse Trials, both complete versions of the years Cecelia had competed, and extracts of the years since. She recognized the view from the hotel room windowЧthe famous double ditch of Senior Course A, and the hedge beyond. Although modeled on the famous traditional venues of Old Earth, the trials had made use of the peculiarities of Zenebra's terrain, climate, and vegetation. One advantage of laying out courses on planets during colonization was the sheer space available. At Wherrin, the Senior Division alone had four separate permanent courses, which made it possible to rotate them as needed for recovery of the turf, or for the weather conditions at the time of the Trials.
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Up close, the Wherrin Trials Fields looked more like the holocubes than real land with real obstacles. Bright green grass plushy underfoot, bright paint on the viewing stands, the course markers, some of the fences. Clumps of green trees. Bright blue sky, beds of brilliant pink and yellow flowers. Heris blinked at all the brilliance, reminding herself that Zenebra's sun provided more light than the original Terran sun, and waited for Cecelia to get back from wherever she'd run off to. They had agreed to meet at this refreshment stand for a break, and Cecelia was late. Then Heris saw her, hurrying through the crowds.
"HerisЧyou'll never guess!" Cecelia was flushed. She looked happy, but with a faint touch of embarrassment. Heris couldn't guess, and said so. "I've got a ride," Cecelia went on. Heris fumbled through her list of meaningsа.а.а. a ride back to the hotel? A ride to her chosen observation spot on the course? "Aride ," Cecelia said. "Corry Manion, who was going to ride Ari D'amerosia's young mare, got hurt in a flitter crash last night. A mild concussion, they said, but they won't put him in the regen tanks for at least forty-eight hours, and by then it will be too late. Ari was telling me all this and then sheasked meЧI didn't say a word, Heris, I promiseЧsheasked me if I would consider riding for her. I know I said I didn't mean to compete again, butЧ"
"But you want to," Heris said. From the cubes alone, and from her brief experience of foxhunting, she had had a vague notion that way herself, but one look at the real obstacles had changed her mind. "Of course you do. Can I help?"
"You don't think I'm crazy?" Cecelia asked. "An old woman?"
Heris did think she was crazy; she thought they were all crazy, but Cecelia was no worse than the others. "You aren't an old woman anymore," Heris said. "You've been working out on the simulator. You've got a lifetime of skills and new strengthЧand it's your neck."
"Come on, then," Cecelia said. "I'll get you an ID tag so you can come in with meЧyou have to see this mare."
Heris didn't have to see the mare; she had only to see the look on Cecelia's face, and remember that less than a year ago Cecelia had been flat in bed, paralyzed and blind.
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As with the foxhunting, more went on behind the scenes than Heris would have guessed from the entertainment cubes she'd seen. The Trials organization had its own security procedures; Heris and Cecelia both needed ID tags, and Cecelia had to have the complete array of numbers that she would wear during competition. Cecelia spent half an hour at the tailor's getting measurements taken for her competition clothes.
"I have all this somewhere, probably in a trunk back on Rotterdam," Cecelia said. "Maybe even somewhere in the yacht, though we didn't move everything back aboard. I don't remember, really, because it had been so long since I needed it."
"Why so many changes of clothes?" Heris asked. She had wondered about that even with the foxhunters. Why not simply design comfortable riding clothes that would work, and then wear them for all occasions?
"Tradition," Cecelia said, wrinkling her nose. "And I'd like to know what a shad is, so I'd know why this looks anything like its belly." She gestured at her image in the mirror; Heris shook her head. "Yet that's what this kind of jacket is called."
Heris followed her from the tailor's to the saddler's, where Cecelia picked out various straps that looked, to Heris, like all the others. "Reins are just reins, aren't they?" she said finally, when Cecelia had been shifting from one to another pair for what seemed like hours. Cecelia grimaced.
"Not when you're coming down a drop in the rain," she said. "And by the way, see if somebody can dig my saddles out of storage and put them on the next shuttle. I'd rather not break in a new saddle on course." Heris found a public combooth and relayed the request; Brun promised to bring the saddles herself if Heris would give permission to leave the ship.
"Fine," Heris said, and anticipated her next request. "And why not bring Sirkin down, too? She's probably never seen anything like this."
Finally they arrived at one of the long stable rows. Ari D'amerosia had four horses in the trials, two in the Senior Trials and one each in Training and Intermediate. Grooms in light blue shirts bustled about, carrying buckets and tack, pushing barrows of straw, bales of hay, sacks of feed. Ari herself, a tall woman with thick gray-streaked hair, was bent over inspecting a horse's hoof when Cecelia came up with Heris.
"Tim, we're going to need the vet again. Cold soak until the vet comesЧ Oh, hi Cece. Have your rider's registration yet?"
"YesЧand this is Heris, who's hunted with the Greens at Bunny's." Nothing at all, Heris noted wryly, about her main occupation as a ship's captain.
"AhЧthen you can ride. Ever event?" The woman straightened up and offered a hand hastily wiped on her jeans. She was a head taller than Cecelia.
"No," Heris said. "I came to riding a bit late for that."
"It's never too late," Ari said, with the enthusiasm of one who would convert any handy victim. "Start with something easyЧyou'd love it."
"Not this year," Heris said. "I'm just here to help Cecelia."
"Next year," Ari said, and without waiting for an answer turned to Cecelia. "Now. I've had the groom warm her up for youЧwe've got two hours in the dressage complex, ring fifteen. Get to know her, feel her outЧshe may buck a few times, she usually does."
"Where can I change?" Cecelia asked.
"Might as well use her stallЧyour friendЧHeris?Чcan hang on to your other stuff until we clear out Corry's locker."
Cecelia ducked into the stall and reappeared in breeches, boots, and pullover; Heris took the clothes she'd been wearing, rolled them into Cecelia's duffel, and felt uncomfortably like a lady's maid. She followed Cecelia down the long row of stalls and utility areas, past grooms washing horses, walking horses, feeding and mucking out, around the end of the stable rows to the exercise rings.
"The great thing about Wherrin," Cecelia said, "is there's no shortage of space. You don't have to make do with a few practice rings, a single warmup ringа.а.а." So it appeared. A vast field, broken into a long row of dressage rings separated by ten-meter alleys, and another long row of larger rings with two or three jumps each. Everywhere horses and riders and trainers.
At the far end, Heris saw the number fifteen. A bright bay mare strode around the outside, ridden by a groom in the light blue shirt of Ari's stable. Cecelia showed her competitor's pass, and the groom hopped down to give her a leg up. Heris stood back. She thought the horse looked different from those Cecelia usually praised, but she couldn't define the difference. Taller? Thinner? In the next ring, a stocky chestnut was clearly shorter and thicker, but looked lumpish to her.
She didn't understand most of what Cecelia was doing, that first session. That it would lead to a dressage test the day after next, yes, but not how Cecelia's choice of gait and pattern aimed at that goal. Cecelia's expression gave her no clue, and her comments and questions to the groom, and then Ari, didn't clear things up. Heris felt uncomfortable, not only because of the hot sun. If anyone had asked her, she thought it was a silly thing to do in the first place, trying to get horses over those obstacles. And for Cecelia, at her age, when she hadn't done it for thirty yearsЧand on a horse she didn't knowЧit was worse than silly. But no one asked her, and she kept her opinion to herself, through the few hours of training that Cecelia had before the event began.
When Brun and Sirkin arrived with Cecelia's saddle (which looked just like all the other saddles, to Heris's eye), she noticed that Sirkin reacted as she did, while Brun clearly belonged with the equestrian-enthused. Before the day was out, Brun had convinced Ari to let her work with the horsesЧfor no pay, of course. Sirkin, having been stepped on by the first horse led past her, had even less enthusiasm than Heris.
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Early in the morning two days later, Heris found herself perched on a hard seat in the viewing stands of the dressage arena. Cecelia, already dressed for her own appearance, sat with her at first to explain the routine. A big gray, paired with a rider who had won the Wherrin twice before, moved smoothly through the test. Cecelia explained why the judges nitpicked; Heris thought it was silly to worry about one loop of a serpentine being flatter than another. It seemed an archaic concern, like continuing to practice drill formations never used in real military actions.
Then Cecelia left, to warm up her own mount. Heris worried. She still couldn't reconcile the old Cecelia, well into her eighties, with the vigorous woman who seemed a few years younger than herself. She kept expecting that appearance to crack, as if it were only a shell over the old one.
She was thoroughly bored by the time Cecelia appeared. All the horses did exactly the same thingЧor tried to. Some made obvious mistakesЧobvious to the crowd, that is, whose sighs and mutters let Heris know that something had gone wrong. One went into a fit of bucking, which was at least exciting, if disastrous to its score. But most simply went around and around, trot and canter, slower or faster, until Heris fought back one yawn after another.
Cecelia and the bay mare did the same, not as badly as some and not as well as the best. Heris tried to be interested, but she really couldn't tell how the judges scored any of it; the numbers posted afterwards meant nothing to her. She climbed out of the stands after Cecelia's round, sure her backside would have been happier somewhere else.
To her surprise, Cecelia said hardly anything, shrugging off Heris's attempt at compliments with a brusque "That's over withЧnow for tomorrow." Tomorrow being the cross-country phase, Heris knew, with four sections that tested the horse's endurance, speed, and jumping ability. "That's the fun part," Cecelia said. Heris had more than doubts, but at least she wouldn't have to sit through all of it. She could watch on monitors, or walk from one obstacle to another.
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Heris watched the start on the monitor, trying not to listen to the announcer's babble. He had already said too much, she thought, about Cecelia being the oldest rider in the event, on the youngest horse. Cecelia had the mare gathered up in a coil, ready to explode, and when the starter waved, she sent the mare out at a powerful canter. The first fence, invariably described as inviting, didn't look it to Heris: the egg cases of the native saurids glittered bronze in the sun and their narrow ends, pointed up, looked too much like missiles on a rack.
"We used to use the whole eggs," someone said in her ear; she glanced around and saw that it was another of Ari's people. "But someone crashed into them one year, and the stench was so bad none of the other horses would go near the fence. Ruined the scoring, completely upset everyone. Now they have to weight the bottoms of them, but at least there's no stink."
Cecelia and the mare were safely over the first fence, and Heris decided to walk across the course to the water complex. Cecelia had said it would be a good place to watch.
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Cecelia grinned into the wind. The mare had calmed down on the steeplechase, where she could run freely, and she met all the fences squarely, with the attitude of a horse that knows it can jump. Of course, most horses would jump on the steeplechase course, with its open grassy terrain and its clearly defined fences. The problems would come in the cross-country phase. During roads and tracks, Cecelia tried to feel out how the mare felt about different surfaces, about dark patches of shade and reflections from water. The mare didn't like sudden changes in light, but she would go on if supported by the rider. She paid no heed to the loose dog that suddenly yapped at her heelsЧa good omen because the crowds in the event course often had dogs, and at least one always got loose.
On the big course, Cecelia continued to feel her way into the mare's reflexes. So far, she was amazed at how easy it all seemed. Her own reflexes had come back as if the thirty years since her last big season had never been. They had cleared that first easy fence. The second fence was another straightforward, well-defined obstacle, made of the intertwined trunks of a stickass thicket. The mare flowed over it.
Now the course ran toward the ridge for which it was named, the grade gentle up to a scary but jumpable set of rails over a big ditch. The mare looked at the ditch, but jumped without real hesitation when Cecelia sat tight. Next came the Saurus Steps, a staircase arrangement that required the horse to bounce up a series of ledges, then take one stride and jump a drop fence. Here Cecelia thought the mare was going to run out of impulsion on the last bounce, and legged her hard into the stride at the top. The mare stretched and almost crashed the fence, but caught herself and landed without falling.
My mistake, Cecelia thought. Too much pushing, too much delight in being here again. But there was no time to reride it in her head; she was already entering the switchbacks that led to the ridgetop, with trappy obstacles at each turn. Two of them required a trot approach; the others could be cantered if the horse didn't pull too badly. The mare pulled like a tractor, fighting the down transitions, snaking her head. On the second trot fence, the mare charged straight ahead past the fence and ran out past the flag.
"Settle down," Cecelia said, as much to herself as to the mare. She was still pushing too hard, abusing the fragile, two-day relationship. The mare switched her tail and backed up, kicking out finally before Cecelia got her lined up for the jump. She jumped willingly once aimed straight at the fence, and didn't charge the next fence. "Finesse," Cecelia muttered. "It's easier if you don't fight the course." Or the rider, but it wouldn't help to tell the horse that. She had to convey that with her body, all the mare would understand.
Now they were on the ridge, headed back to the east, roughly parallel to the early part of the course but higher. Here the obstacles were built to take advantage of natural stone formations. Horses had to jump into depressions, leap back up and over the ridgeline, twisting and turning, changing leads and stride length between each obstacle.
Cecelia had always enjoyed this demanding part of the course. On a good day, it had a compelling, syncopated rhythm, very satisfying to mind and body. On a bad day it was a bone-jarring, breath-eating nightmare of near catastrophe. This mare continued her headstrong, stiff-sided refusal to bend left, but Cecelia kept her on course, regaining her own confidence with every successful jump. Perhaps she was out of practice, butЧshe hauled the mare around a stone pillar and got her lined up for the nextЧshe could still handle a difficult horse on a difficult course. She felt more alive than she had in years. She knew the tapes would show a wide grin on her face.