The Horse and His Boy: Chapters 9–15

"Great man!" said Aravis. "A hideous grovelling slave who flatters when he's kicked but treasures it all up and hopes to get his own back by egging on that horrible Tisroc to plot his son's death. Faugh! I'd sooner marry my father's scullion than a creature like that."

And now at last, brave girl though she was, her heart quailed.

"That's how humans talk," said Bree. "But you don't get a company of two hundred horse and horsemen watered and victualled and armed and saddled and started all in a minute. Now: what's our direction? Due North?"

Aravis said nothing and looked prim.

Ahead, and a little to their right, there was at last a slope: a slope downward and hummocks of rock on each side.

The Horses were far too tired to speak but they swung round towards it and in a minute or two they were entering the gully.

Before them a little cataract of water poured into a broad pool: and both the Horses were already in the pool with their heads down, drinking, drinking, drinking.

And out of the darkest recess among the trees there came a sound Shasta had never heard before—a nightingale.

A huge tawny creature, its body low to the ground, like a cat streaking across the lawn to a tree when a strange dog has got into the garden, was behind them.

Remember your orders. Once we are in Narnia, as we should be by sunrise, you are to kill as little as possible. On this venture you are to regard every drop of Narnian blood as more precious than a gallon of your own.

In the assault on this castle of King Lune's, nothing matters but speed. Show your mettle.

He had thought, of course, of going back to Aravis and Bree and Hwin at the hermitage, but he couldn't because by now he had not the least idea of the direction.

"It's no good going back to Anvard, it'll all be besieged. I'd better get lower down into the valley and see if I can get anything to eat."

But you won't find the High King at the Cair. He's away to the North trouncing those giants.

With a great deal of bustle, muttering reproaches to itself, the Dwarf half led and half supported Shasta at a great speed further into the wood and a little downhill.

"Mind your head, lad," said Duffle a moment too late, for Shasta had already bashed his forehead against the low lintel of the door.

Then came three people riding abreast, two on great chargers and one on a pony.

"By the Lion's Mane, prince, this is too much! Will your Highness never be better? You are more of a heart's-scald than our whole army together! I'd as lief have a regiment of hornets in my command as you."

At last they were going in single file along the edge of a precipice and Shasta shuddered to think that he had done the same last night without knowing it.

No moat, unfortunately, but of course the gate shut and the portcullis down.

They have felled and lopped a great tree and they are now coming out of the woods carrying it as a ram.

So Rabadash, by the time he encountered Edmund at the gate, had a hole in the back of his hauberk.

Then, turning to Rabadash he said, "Your royal Highness, if you had given that challenge a week ago, I'll answer for it there was no-one in King Edmund's dominion, from the High King down to the smallest Talking Mouse, who would have refused it...."

"Chide him no more, Sire, if it please you," said Lord Darrin. "His Highness would not be your son if he did not inherit your conditions. It would grieve your Majesty more if he had to be reproved for the opposite fault."

"Chide him no more, Sire, if it please you," said Lord Darrin. "His Highness would not be your son if he did not inherit your conditions. It would grieve your Majesty more if he had to be reproved for the opposite fault."

Hwin broke out into a horse-laugh. "It's your tail, Bree! I see it all now. You want to wait till your tail's grown again! And we don't even know if tails are worn long in Narnia. Really, Bree, you're as vain as that Tarkheena in Tashbaan!"

"By the Lion's Mane, Tarkheena, I'm nothing of the sort," said Bree indignantly.

Strange to say, they felt no inclination to talk to one another about him after he had gone.

Then followed a herald, and the trumpeter.

"And you'll be living at Anvard now," said Aravis rather wistfully.

"Buck up, Bree," said Cor. "It's far worse for me than for you. You aren't going to be educated. I shall be learning reading and writing and heraldry and dancing and history and music while you'll be galloping and rolling on the hills of Narnia to your heart's content."

But the bow with which he greeted Aravis as he took her hand would have been stately enough for an Emperor.

They liked each other at once and soon went away together to talk about Aravis's bedroom and Aravis's boudoir and about getting clothes for her, and all the sort of things girls do talk about on such an occasion.

To look at him anyone would have supposed that he had passed the night in a noisome dungeon without food or water; but in reality he had been shut up in quite a comfortable room and provided with an excellent supper.

Then Rabadash rolled his eyes and spread out his mouth into a horrible, long mirthless grin like a shark, and wagged his ears up and down (anyone can learn how to do this if they take the trouble).

You are the foul fiend of Narnia. You are the enemy of the gods. Learn who I am, horrible phantasm.

He (or it) was duly sent back by boat to Tashbaan and brought into the temple of Tash at the great Autumn Festival, and then he became a man again.

"No. The King's under the law, for it's the law makes him a king. Hast no more power to start away from thy crown than any sentry from his post."

"And that's truer than thy brother knows, Cor," said King Lune. "For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land."

That was how he got his name of Corin Thunder-Fist; and how he performed his great exploit against the Lapsed Bear of Stormness, which was really a Talking Bear but had gone back to Wild Bear habits.