No one knew when the people of Horace had first devoted themselves to breeding better horses.

Back when the Arman Empire still existed, when the mighty magical nation of Alto still flourished—or perhaps even further in the distant past—the people of the grasslands had been striving to make their four-legged companions stronger by any means they could.

Their efforts, begun before writing itself was invented, had eventually taken them beyond the realm of ordinary horses.

Unicorns, bicorns, kelpies, pegasi...

For centuries, they had tried crossing horses with any monster that bore even a passing resemblance to one, determined to acquire its power. At last, five hundred years ago, their efforts bore fruit when the split between the New Faith and the Old Faith allowed them to enlist magical aid in exchange for supporting the New Faith.

The Horace warhorse.

So proud were its breeders that they gave it their country's name. This beautiful horse was stronger, faster, wiser, and hardier than any other breed in the world. As a bonus, it was ferocious enough to trample and bite even fairly formidable monsters to death.

Naturally, anything so powerful had to have at least one flaw.

The Horace warhorse was also notorious for its reluctance to obey its master. No, in most cases it refused to acknowledge a “master” at all. It merely regarded its owner as a servant who supplied tasty fodder.

The horse standing before Shan was a perfect example. It looked down at him with the utmost arrogance and disdain, as though wondering what this young upstart wanted...

“From now on, your name is Arwin.”

Unconcerned, Shan wrapped his arms tightly around its neck, finally naming a horse for the first time. This one was in an entirely different league from ordinary horses that could be bought and sold at any time.

He did feel a little sorry for the black horse he had ridden for nearly a year without ever naming it—

“Whoa!”

SNAP!

Shan jerked his head back just as the horse's jaws closed on the spot it had occupied an instant earlier. The animal gave a disappointed whinny, then turned its head away as if nothing had happened.

Considering the strength of a horse's jaws, failing to dodge would probably have meant having his skull crushed and dying on the spot.

“... Why, you little—”

“Well, now that the prize has been presented, I shall take my leave.”

The marquis, who had been watching, hurried off. Roden hastily took the reins from his attendant. Fortunately, the horse submitted to the handover without protest, apparently having little affection for its former owner.

“It just tried to bite my head off for no reason! This is supposed to be the finest warhorse there is?!”

“Taming a difficult animal is another mark of a first-rate knight's skill. Well, perhaps you could take your time getting to know each other...?”

Roden offered an awkward smile as he tried to console Shan, who was expressing his sense of betrayal like a boy rejected by his first love.

After exchanging a few more greetings with the other knights—with Lug doing most of the talking here, too—the two returned to the mansion, leading Arwin and the black horse Shan had used in the tournament.

Shan's original mount was bold enough not to flinch before most monsters, yet the Horace warhorse easily cowed even it.

“Looks like I'll be busy taming this one for a while.”

“We have some time before we carry out the princess's commission anyway. Though I don't know whether that'll be enough. Think you can manage?”

“Somehow, I don't think it'll be easy.”

Shan answered Roden's question with a small sigh.

The moment they returned, that assessment proved mistaken.

Taming Arwin was not merely difficult. It was so horrendously difficult as to be almost impossible.

For a start, the instant it arrived, it began wreaking havoc, apparently displeased with everything from the stable facilities to the fodder.

Every stamp of its enormous hooves crushed a feeding trough. A blow from its head brought a partition crashing down with a crack. Even the brick outer wall could not withstand its hind legs, which kicked a hole straight through it.

At the sight, the other horses screamed in terror and wet themselves.

“What in the world...?”

“What kind of lunatic horse is this?!”

The stablehand and the other servants who had come to help stared in dismay. At this point, wasn't it less a horse than some sort of monster?

The truly malicious part was that it was not rampaging in a frenzy of excitement. On the contrary, its expression was so calm it seemed almost cold. It simply wrecked everything within reach as though demonstrating its foul temper, casting mocking looks their way.

“M-my stable!”

Even Kalion, whose face had lit up with a broad smile at the news of Shan's victory, buried his face in his hands in despair.

“I wondered why they'd offer something as valuable as a Horace warhorse as a jousting prize. Now I get it. They had no idea what to do with the thing...”

Watching from a short distance away, Roden muttered ruefully. Come to think of it, hadn't the marquis looked as though he regretted losing it but was glad to be rid of the nuisance?

Clearly, the plan all along had been to make a show of generosity by offering an uncontrollable horse as a prize. If the winner had been a knight the princes might recruit, rather than an Altoan, they would probably have provided an expert capable of handling it as well.

Behind them, the servants whispered among themselves as they watched.

“What do we do now? Never mind that taming it will take far more than a day or two—I don't even know where we'll put the horses tonight.”

“At least it's summer. This would have been truly awful in winter...”

While everyone else stood bewildered, Shan quietly watched the rampaging horse before giving an instruction to the stablehand beside him.

“Get me a saddle.”

“A saddle... sir?”

“Yes.”

The stablehand could not imagine what use he intended to make of it in these circumstances, but obediently complied. Ever since Roden had brought this Altoan boy home, he had been treated practically as the family's youngest brother. Now he had become someone more exalted still.

When Shan approached with the saddle, Arwin stopped wreaking havoc and stared at him. It seemed to be boasting, “Well? What do you think? I'm no easy horse to handle. Understand?”

Shan met its gaze for a while, then spoke calmly.

“Yes, you're very impressive. How about we take the rest outside? It's too cramped for you in here, isn't it?”

Horses could not understand human language, yet Shan murmured those words as he placed the saddle on its back and took the reins.

Astonishingly, Arwin complied without protest and began walking where he led. Everyone else could only stare blankly as the boy and the horse walked side by side toward the main gate.

Roden hurried after Shan.

“Wait, how did you tame that vicious thing in one go?!”

“I haven't tamed it. It just agreed to my proposal.”

“What proposal?”

“A contest? Hmm, it's a little hard to explain... Remember what Master said? When he was teaching us how to look after horses.”

Horse care had been among the things Sir Darkal taught in their lessons on the fundamentals of warfare. Insisting that a good warhorse was like a knight's life partner and should be tended with the utmost devotion, he had passed on all manner of techniques—though he himself would buy any old horse to ride, saying he was retired.

One of those techniques was simply to look your horse in the eye. A good knight, he had said, could instinctively understand and empathize with what his horse wanted through that alone. Or something like that.

Shan could not call this horse his own yet, but when their eyes met, he had felt their thoughts connect.

It was sick of being passed around like an object, sick of having to obey these small, feeble humans. The only reason it let them lead it around was that it lacked the confidence to escape this enormous city they had built.

In those circumstances, Shan had issued a challenge, polite without being servile, and the animal had accepted.

Two creatures without a shared language had communicated through nothing more than slight gestures and looks. One might well call it a new milestone in interspecies communication.

“What...? I know it's a Horace warhorse, but you're saying a horse can think that deeply?”

“Not exactly. That's just the feeling I got. A feeling.”

As they walked and talked, the capital's residents stared at them in wide-eyed astonishment. Small wonder, when a warhorse with a metallic sheen covering its entire body had appeared in the middle of the main street.

“Wait, is that...?”

“It's Sir Shan! The jousting champion!”

“Is that the horse he won? The one from Horace? They really weren't exaggerating when they called it the most beautiful horse in the world.”

“But where are they all going?”

At last, Shan passed through the city gates. He glanced at the broad road stretching out ahead, then turned to Roden and the others behind him.

“This might take a few days, so go home and get some rest.”

“A few days? What are you planning to do?”

“That's up to this one, not me.”

As he answered, Shan vaulted onto Arwin's back. The horse shot forward with explosive force from its legs, as though it had been waiting for that very moment.

It looked less like a charging animal than an arrow released from a bow drawn to its limit.

Everyone gaped as Shan dwindled to a distant speck in an instant.

* * *

'So fast!'

The instant Arwin began to run, that was the only thought in Shan's mind.

The animal was outrageously fast. The overwhelming sensation of speed made it feel as though the whole world were being sucked backward...

The wind lashing his face made his eyes sting, and he could barely make out his surroundings.

He could say with certainty that an ordinary horse's gallop was little more than a leisurely stroll compared with this. The horse he had seen Feonil riding could not possibly have been a Horace warhorse.

'If I fall off now, I'll almost certainly die.'

As that thought crossed his mind, Arwin leaped into the air, seemingly realizing that running alone would not dislodge him. His eye level changed in an instant, and his body floated up as though freed from gravity.

“Urgh—”

Then came a dizzying drop.

THUD!

His lower back rang with pain as he landed heavily in the saddle. Had he not absorbed as much of the impact as possible, he might have strained it.

'You're a fierce one...'

Arwin continued racing wildly along the roads outside Hasra's walls, then veered off them, charging indiscriminately across fields, mountains, and forests. It gave no thought to branches scraping and scratching its beautiful body.

Ignoring even Shan clinging to its back, it behaved as though all it wanted was to see more of the world outside and tread upon it with its own hooves.

Shan felt he understood. He had been the same when he first left Willow Village, running and roaming freely through the mountains and fields. The sheer happiness of being free to enjoy a world stretching endlessly before him...

Born and raised in Pendia, thousands of kilometers from its homeland, this animal had probably never felt such liberation before. Shan had heard nothing about its upbringing, but he could sense it instinctively.

Perhaps they had been able to connect through a glance because the two of them were alike.

Feeling as though he might fall at any moment, Shan pressed himself flat against Arwin's back and wrapped both arms around its neck. Otherwise, the jolting of each leap would have thrown him off long ago.

After several minutes, then tens of minutes of this rampage, Arwin suddenly plunged into a nearby river. It was downstream of the stretch that ran through Hasra.

'Hup—!'

Just before they submerged, Shan drew the deepest breath he could and clamped his mouth shut. Even though he was not breathing, the water forcing its way into his nose carried a bizarre stench.

It was probably waste discarded by the Magic Society and other mages while brewing their various elixirs. Either that, or the reek of all the filth dumped through the capital's sewers.

After several minutes underwater, his lungs hurt as though they were burning. He desperately wanted to breathe, but doing so would leave him unable to hold out any longer.

Keeping one hand on the saddle, Shan clapped the other tightly over his mouth and endured.

'Please, just a little longer...'

Fortunately, just as he thought he could bear no more, his head broke the surface. Arwin had reached its limit first and come up for air. Its lungs were as large as its massive frame, but naturally, it needed that much more air as well.

“Gah! Hah! Kah!”

Greedily gulping and expelling air, Shan realized that Arwin was panting too, its lungs swelling and contracting to their fullest. Even as he struggled for breath, he laughed.

Perhaps taking that laughter as mockery, Arwin bristled and set off across the land once more.

Of course, even this close to the capital, Pendia was still Pendia. Assorted lesser monsters occasionally sprang out to block their way, but Arwin battered them into bloody wrecks without Shan needing to intervene.

Water ghouls, the nightmare of riverside and coastal settlements, fled as a horse bit them to death or crushed them beneath its hooves. It was quite a spectacle.

Their stubborn contest of endurance lasted through the night and on until dawn.

By the time Arwin was too tired to rampage any longer, Shan was nearly spent as well. Both were coated a comical white with the foamy sweat from the horse's body.

'So sleepy...'

Before drifting off, Shan took out A Thousand Forms, which he had been wearing as a bracelet. He stretched it out, then twisted it into a rope and bound himself securely to the saddle. A metal rope made of truesilver would be all but impossible to break.

“Good night.”

Arwin stared at him in disbelief, then lowered its head and went to sleep standing up.

Shan woke because Arwin, already awake, was shaking its body to throw him off. Caught unprepared, he was flung outward, but fortunately the truesilver rope connecting him to the saddle stopped him.

Clambering back onto the horse's back, he returned A Thousand Forms to bracelet form. It could not be helped while he slept, but relying on it while awake would have been cheating.

Now Arwin not only bucked and leaped to throw Shan off, but attacked him directly, sometimes rolling on the ground or slamming its body against walls.

Each time, Shan used his characteristic agility to move in a full circle around its body, or hung on to the side opposite the impact and held firm.

Naturally, there was no time for toilet breaks. He could hold in a bowel movement, but not his urine, so Shan relieved himself while clinging to the horse's back.

He felt Arwin recoil in disgust as warmth and wetness spread beneath the saddle.

“If you don't like it, surrender!”

Arwin snorted at the threat and leaped, as though declaring that out of the question.

But whether it rampaged in every direction, plunged underwater, or rolled over while battering monsters to death with its forehooves and teeth, Shan refused to yield.

Another day and night passed. At last, utterly exhausted, Arwin sank to its knees and slumped onto the dirt.

It took Shan several minutes to notice. After spending nearly three days starving atop a crazed, rampaging horse, he was half out of his mind himself.

“... You've lain down?”

The horse answered with a low whicker, as though it lacked the energy for anything else. Unlike its earlier mocking snorts or furious cries, this was a sound of resignation anyone could understand.

“Ha, haha...”

Joy welled up in Shan's chest, and he laughed despite himself—then toppled straight out of the saddle and rolled onto the ground.

Though Shan had finally fallen off, Arwin did not flee. It merely gazed down at him. Respect had replaced the arrogance in its blue-gray eyes.

“I won, right? Man to man, you've got to accept defeat.”

Then a thought occurred to him. Shan got up, discreetly lifted Arwin's tail, and peered between its legs.

“So you're a girl. Fine, accept defeat woman to man!”

He gave its rump a slap as he spoke. Arwin answered with a whicker and an expression that suggested it found him rather pathetic.

* * *

After bringing Arwin to heel, Shan rode around the area until he found a nearby village, where he bought bread and milk.

The sensation of his first meal in three days spreading through his body was truly something special.

“Ahhh...!”

The villagers exchanged bewildered looks, wondering who this mysterious stranger could be. His clothes made him look like a complete beggar, but a closer inspection revealed that the fabric was not merely decent but luxurious, and his horse was obviously magnificent.

Was he some noble's runaway son?

In an ordinary backwater village, it would not have been surprising if the locals had tried to kill him and steal his belongings on the spot. But this was a civilized village not far from the capital of Hasra. In other words, its people had enough wisdom and conscience to know better than to harm a boy who clearly was no commoner.

That was fortunate indeed.

For the village, of course, not Shan.

“Thank you for the meal. Here you go.”

“Oh my, you're as generous as you are noble! Thank you!”

Having eaten his fill, Shan patted his full belly and handed the chief a few gold coins from his purse. The payment covered not only his own meal, but also the tremendous quantity of fodder Arwin had eaten.

It was probably still more than the usual price, but what did a little extra money matter when the horse ate so heartily?

Apparently pleased with its meal of fine hay mixed with generous helpings of beans, oats, and rye, the horse wolfed it down despite its sulky expression.

With their bellies comfortably full, horse and rider left the village and headed northeast. For the first time, Shan experienced a coordinated ride in which each accommodated the other, rather than simply clinging on. Once again, he marveled.

'This is incredibly comfortable...'

Despite traveling far faster than other horses, Arwin was utterly comfortable to ride. Perhaps it was the distinctive gait, but as long as Shan matched its rhythm precisely, there was less strain on his back and thighs than even a leisurely walk would have caused.

Considering how dreadful clinging to its back had been over the past few days, it was almost absurd.

Alternating stretches of running with brief rests at a walk whenever they tired, Shan and Arwin retraced the distance they had covered over the last three days and returned to Hasra in a mere two hours.

Considering that the journey would have taken two days on foot, their ability to cover ground was truly ridiculous.

“What... you...”

“I'm back, Roden. A little late, huh?”

After spending three sleepless nights at the Wievers mansion, Roden could only gape in disbelief at the sight of Shan and Arwin returning on such friendly terms.