Page 71 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6
He’d stood near the launch space of enough angels to know when one was taking flight. He could just make out a smear of darkness twisting through the white, a column of centred movement as Sybilla bore her passengers aloft.
‘I can’t see a bloody thing, damn it.’ Silas lifted a hand to shade his eyes, as though that would help him see through thick snowfall.
‘I think that is entirely the point. Let’s go, Silas.’
The ankou sighed, a despondent sound. ‘Pitch…I don’t think I could bear it if…’
‘Nothing shall happen to the lad, Silas.’ Pitch defied the gods to prove him wrong. He’d slay them on their pedestals should they do so. Silas’s misery would be immeasurable. ‘Now we should go too.’
It took the ankou a moment before he came back to himself. ‘Yes, of course. Move on, Hastings. Fast as you like.’
The mare did move on, setting off in a direction Pitch suspected was her choice alone, following the invisible thread that existed between a Horseman and their mount. Sybilla was now their guiding star, in a sky they couldn’t see.
‘Oh blast.’ Pitch winced as the horse’s gait rocked him too far forward, finding bone in unwelcome places. ‘Don’t you dare trot, you silly nag.’
‘Does your ankle still bother you?’ The carriage and its abandoned rigging was swallowed by the storm and the growing sea of white upon the ground.
‘It’s my cock and balls that concern me. Do you have any idea what damage a wither can do?’
Silas’s laughter was no more than the shift of his chest against Pitch’s back. ‘Trotting is definitely prohibited, then. I’ll see no harm come to anything between your legs.’
‘What use would you have for me otherwise?’
‘Exactly, my dear. None whatsoever.’ Silas’s embrace tightened before slackening once more. ‘This is not so easy as I imagined though. I fear I’m going to slide straight off her back once we have some speed.’
‘True, but we can’t have her walk all the way to the Sanctuary.’ Their coats snapped in the wind, and Pitch spat out a length of hair the wind was determined to shove down his throat.
‘No. We cannot.’
While he and Silas pondered the most pressing of issues, the well-being of their family jewels, Hastings took the matter in hand. The mare’s mane defied the bothering of the wind to slither around Pitch’s waist and down his legs, forming stirrups of a sort beneath his feet, putting an extra weave around his wounded ankle, bracing it. He was locked in place, his lap blanketed by hair whiter than the snow that fell.
‘Well, this is…oh.’ Silas shifted, edging back from where he’d been pressed up against Pitch. ‘Oh my.’
Pitch glanced to one side, but with his hair whipping about it was hard to see much. He used his hand instead, reaching for Silas’s thigh, finding him likewise woven into Hastings’s mane. The horse whinnied, tossing her head as though ensuring the weaving tight enough. Her muscles tensed beneath Pitch’s thighs.
‘Silas, I think you should hold–’
Hastings burst into a gallop, a headlong charge into the white ether that would have sent both him and Silas tumbling off her back if not for the fact that they were so neatly strapped in. There was wriggle room enough to lean forward, press his good foot into the hair-sewn stirrup she’d made for him, and rock his hips in time with the motion of the horse with no fear of flattening his assets. But there was as much chance of falling off the mare’s back as there was of saving his eyes, and nose, from watering with the mix of startling speed and chilled air.
Silas was a looming presence at his back, his arms brushing Pitch’s own in time with the rhythm, his breath the one hint of warmth where it glanced against Pitch’s ear.
How the mare could see a bloody thing, he could not imagine. But she could see well enough to plough her way through the land. And plough it was, for the snow was thick, her hooves kicking out sprays of white as she drove forward.
There was some sense of rise and fall in the ground beneath them, of travelling over uneven terrain. They passed through a thin woodland at one point, Silas pushing Pitch down without warning as a branch glanced over them, drawing a grunt of complaint from the ankou when its snow loosened upon him.
‘I thought I might like snow. I’ve decided I do not.’
Pitch laughed, despite being cold and wet and sore. ‘Much better to look at through a thick pane of glass with a glass of whisky in hand. Brandy for you, of course.’
‘Christ, can you imagine how wonderful that would be right now?’
Even with Hastings’s mane weaving between them, the motion of the gallop pushed Silas against Pitch’s back in a way that made it very difficult to imagine much else at all.
The White Horse ran on. Her pace was blinding.Actuallyblinding. They could have reached Scotland– he wouldn’t doubt it possible with the speed– and he’d be none the wiser. All the world was a blur.
His stomach was beginning to ache with the need to lean into the gallop. Not to mention the difficulties of resting more heavily upon one foot than the other. His hip thought very little of the pose, the muscles spasming enough to make him wince. He’d been fighting a sneeze for a while, but there was no stopping it now, the only redeeming factor being the startled sound from the ankou as Pitch’s arse shoved against him.
This propensity for sneezing, the dripping nose and slightly blocked ears signified a cold, Sybilla had informed Pitch. As though he had not suffered indignity enough, now he had a pointless purebred ailment.