The Horse. Ch. 2

 The morning after the Prince's theatrical departure, directed towards the setting sun and Adventure with a capital A, Horse was casually strolling around in the glade where they'd made camp picking up the most important pieces of equipment and dropping them into the open pack. The Prince himself was snoring loudly from a shrubbery he had hoped would protect him in case of rain. Luckily for the Prince the weather had been nice, and hence taking cover under the sparse foliage had been completely unnecessary. When the packing was done, Horse walked over to the shrubbery and started to neigh. Loudly.

To another horse this would have been quite beautiful, because he was singing an old nursery rhyme that most mares sing to their foals, and he had a pretty good singing voice. For a horse. To the newly awakened and extremely sleepy-headed Prince however, it was bordering on torture. When he'd figured out what was making the traumatizing noise he tried to shut the Horse up by mumbling irritably at it. When that failed he tried to bribe Horse with carrots, but to his dismay that didn't work either, since the horse had already eaten his morning ration of carrots and was religiously keeping track of them. When the song ended, Horse quieted on his own accord and Pollux sighed with relief, swung his pack onto his shoulder and swung himself onto the Horse's back. How the Prince had managed to make the glade look like some awesomely popular heavy metal band rocked through it on their world tour in just one night is a mystery that to this day stands unsolved.

Horse managed to steer away from the sunrise, which was the obvious direction according to the Prince, and their travels continued at a comfortable but respectable pace. The weather was nice and the world itself seemed to be in a good mood. Unfortunately this scenario didn't last very long, and dark, heavy clouds were gathering further along the road. Both the Prince and Horse realized that this was a serious matter. Horse slowed their pace and the Prince was smart enough to be more watchful of what could be along the road, which up to that point had been almost suspiciously easy to travel.


They carefully followed a turn of the road and while a bolt of lightning shot past, turning the Horse's mane and tail into pink-striped pom-poms of static electricity, a house appeared some distance away. They warily got closer and closer to the big house, which had a huge tower, a moat, a solid foundation, parapets and a whole bunch of ivy clinging to it, and thus was more of a stronghold than a house, a difference which the Prince knew nothing about and Horse honestly didn't care. The thing is that there was this high-pitched yell for assistance from the highest window of the tower and simultaneously a hooded figure in a dark green, silver embroided cloak appeared out of nowhere on the lowered drawbridge.

To be continued...