![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ishafelSummary: Even Immortals have things they hold sacred.
It sometimes seemed to Methos that in a thousand years there was only one thing he loved. He won her in war, from another Immortal, and she was too small for Silas, too fierce for Caspian, too plain for Kronos. It took him months to break her to the bridle, and even then she was never truly tame. But she was loyal and brave and generous to a fault, and he rode her sons into battle for thirty years, and their sons and daughters for three hundred more. Her descendants carried him across Asia and Europe, and when he gave up wars they pulled plows, and every one of them was willing and fast and agile as his little mare had been, and every one a gray.
She failed him in only one thing, and when she died he mourned her the way other men mourned women, and when the flesh had fallen from her skull he put it atop his standard and no army that fought under it was ever defeated. But she never bore him a filly, never a horse that was her equal in cleverness or temper, and though he was often grateful to her get he never loved them as he had loved that first gray mare.
When the time came he walked away from the Horsemen, and when he walked away he left behind the things that had made him one of them: left his sword and his shield, his tent with its fine rug and his books and the gold cup, inlaid with rubies, from which he drank his wine. He left his slaves, and his women, and everything but his horses, and before he went he buried the spear with the mare's skull on it. And with it he buried Kronos's luck, and so the Horsemen were defeated.
But Methos rode west and north, to the cold lands where wild men ruled, and did not look back. It took a long time, but he changed from a soldier to a scholar, and his gray horses became only ordinary gray horses. And he told himself he was not sorry, and for three thousand years he almost believed it.
And then in the span of a single man's lifetime he found Silas and Kronos and Caspian again, and lost them, and the ghosts of the unquiet dead and the ghost of what he had been stirred in him. He was a conqueror who had given up conquering, and he did not miss it, but he missed the way the world had looked between a small curved pair of gray ears. Once he had ridden from the ocean in the west to the ocean in the east, and owned the land between-- at least while he was crossing it. But that was not what he wanted.
He dreamed at night of hoofbeats, of a warm nose against his chest in the mornings, a wicked dark eye watching over him. He had eaten her heart and burned her hooves, and the rest of her had fed the warband for a night or two, but her head he had left in the shadow of a great rock, on the side of a lonely hill. Now it was behind glass, carefully preserved, still bound to its shaft.
Methos knew the sort of people who could set it free, for a price. It was no treasure, worth nothing in its own right: it was only an ugly, shadowed thing, and he was the only one who remembered when it had been more. But when he held it in his hands, heavy and fragile, crumbling with age, he knew its worth and he would have paid it a thousand times over.
Fifteen years was nothing at all and forever, and he learned again to wait, and to pray, and the difference between science and religion. And then one spring he stood in a field and watched six mares in green grass to their knees, and beside each mare a filly, almost black, awkward on long legs and impossibly young and new and impossibly ancient. And Methos fell in love all over again.
It sometimes seemed to Methos that in a thousand years there was only one thing he loved. He won her in war, from another Immortal, and she was too small for Silas, too fierce for Caspian, too plain for Kronos. It took him months to break her to the bridle, and even then she was never truly tame. But she was loyal and brave and generous to a fault, and he rode her sons into battle for thirty years, and their sons and daughters for three hundred more. Her descendants carried him across Asia and Europe, and when he gave up wars they pulled plows, and every one of them was willing and fast and agile as his little mare had been, and every one a gray.
She failed him in only one thing, and when she died he mourned her the way other men mourned women, and when the flesh had fallen from her skull he put it atop his standard and no army that fought under it was ever defeated. But she never bore him a filly, never a horse that was her equal in cleverness or temper, and though he was often grateful to her get he never loved them as he had loved that first gray mare.
When the time came he walked away from the Horsemen, and when he walked away he left behind the things that had made him one of them: left his sword and his shield, his tent with its fine rug and his books and the gold cup, inlaid with rubies, from which he drank his wine. He left his slaves, and his women, and everything but his horses, and before he went he buried the spear with the mare's skull on it. And with it he buried Kronos's luck, and so the Horsemen were defeated.
But Methos rode west and north, to the cold lands where wild men ruled, and did not look back. It took a long time, but he changed from a soldier to a scholar, and his gray horses became only ordinary gray horses. And he told himself he was not sorry, and for three thousand years he almost believed it.
And then in the span of a single man's lifetime he found Silas and Kronos and Caspian again, and lost them, and the ghosts of the unquiet dead and the ghost of what he had been stirred in him. He was a conqueror who had given up conquering, and he did not miss it, but he missed the way the world had looked between a small curved pair of gray ears. Once he had ridden from the ocean in the west to the ocean in the east, and owned the land between-- at least while he was crossing it. But that was not what he wanted.
He dreamed at night of hoofbeats, of a warm nose against his chest in the mornings, a wicked dark eye watching over him. He had eaten her heart and burned her hooves, and the rest of her had fed the warband for a night or two, but her head he had left in the shadow of a great rock, on the side of a lonely hill. Now it was behind glass, carefully preserved, still bound to its shaft.
Methos knew the sort of people who could set it free, for a price. It was no treasure, worth nothing in its own right: it was only an ugly, shadowed thing, and he was the only one who remembered when it had been more. But when he held it in his hands, heavy and fragile, crumbling with age, he knew its worth and he would have paid it a thousand times over.
Fifteen years was nothing at all and forever, and he learned again to wait, and to pray, and the difference between science and religion. And then one spring he stood in a field and watched six mares in green grass to their knees, and beside each mare a filly, almost black, awkward on long legs and impossibly young and new and impossibly ancient. And Methos fell in love all over again.
