Photo source : here.

No spectacle in Nature was more awe-inspiring, more addictive, more commented on by Argad than the vision of the travelling horses. No one else dreamed of them, no one spent more time spying on them, following them, than he did. Climbing into the top of a tree, he would gaze at them, studying each one in the pack, observing their colouring, their manners, who were the dominant ones and who were the passive ones. Other nomads would recount sightings of deer, of nests of bees dripping with honey, of ripening new fruit, of crop-destroying ants ; Argad talked mainly about the horses. They too were nomads, but not hunters. They too preferred wide open spaces to the confinement of the woods, and yet were not averse to spending days up in the mountains feeding on the rarer, more acidic-tasting grasses, as if to vary their monotonous diet. They had used to try to approach the camp’s stocks of cereals, but had long since learned that humans were a dangerous sort of animal.

One horse in particular haunted Argad’s thoughts : a deer-coloured mare with billowing blonde hair and a full matching tail. If anyone joked that she looked wonderful indeed when running across the prairie in the cool of an early evening, but would look more wonderful still roasting nicely on a fire, Argad would return a cold unfriendly stare. His first wife would listen distractedly when he would go on and on about the mare’s unique beauty ; his second wife would nod and ask questions, but Argad knew that she cared nothing for horses - live ones, anyway. A dead one was good for a few meals and some second-rate leather. Occasionally, the mane or tail would be deemed satisfactory as ornaments for the children’s clothes.

He told no one, not even his twin brother Colax, that he had thought of a name for his favourite horse. Argad had decided to call her Marna.

So on this muggy, overcast morning in late spring, after spending over an hour in a pine tree watching the pack and sensing its growing unease, Argad himself became restless. Throwing caution to the wind, he jumped out of the tree he was in. He was going to get nearer the pack to try to understand what was making them all so nervous.

His plan failed. As soon as he came to the edge of the copse of trees, his presence was noted by a dark grey stallion who whinnied loudly. Most of the pack stopped grazing and looked up immediately. There was nothing remotely welcoming about the way they snorted at him.

A moment later they were startled into flight by the arrival of a she-wolf and three young pups. Argad watched painfully as Marna, following her mates, raced across the green prairie in the direction of the rising sun. In minutes, the whole pack - some 100 horses - had disappeared.

Argad looked then at the she-wolf. She was walking at a slow pace, not running. She seemed completely unconcerned with her surroundings, staring straight ahead as she led the pups in the same direction the horses had taken. Argad closed his right hand over the lion’s fang that hung from a leather cord around his neck. A mother never walked with her young pups through a prairie in broad daylight, under the open skies. This she-wolf was bad. No, cursed. A demon ghost-wolf, for sure. And Argad had laid eyes on her.

He decided he would do best to kill a pair of white doves this morning.