Devils And Unicorns

Chapter 19

The news on the Highland Province grapevine was that yet another foreign owner planned to run their horse in the Grand Chase - some syndicate called Quartet. The horse was pretty big in Driftland, and his name was Dorfinoise.

So it was true. Florence couldn't believe it. Why was Carver following them down here, of all places? Dorfinoise had done perfectly well for himself in Driftland - why risk him in a dangerous race like the Grand Chase? The logical answer could only be the money. Even to the wealthy owners behind Quartet, sixty thousand dollars was no small amount. The only positive in this whole situation was that Dorfinoise was - allegedly - not due to arrive in the HighlandProvince for at least another week. This gave Florence time to get a run into Last Unicorn, maybe two. If Charlie was to be believed, the style of racing in this country was so far removed from that in Driftland that any experience her charge held over his rival would prove invaluable.

She knew little about selecting races down here, and even Charlie admitted to being out of touch. Between them they finally decided on a small contest at a track called Rookbarrow. Deep in the forests of the eastern shoulder of the Highland Province, Rookbarrow's course started with a steep descent through woodland and swung southwards across scrub and heath before finishing with a long stretch across punishing open grassland. The Coalhaven Stakes utilised five miles of the course, taking in multiple man-made and naturally occurring obstacles along the way. Last Unicorn had surely never faced anything like it before, but he had to try. Without a taste of what he'd be facing at Fallbourne, he would be as good as beaten from the moment he set a hoof over the Grand Chase starting line.

So far, life in the Highland Province had been bucolic. Living out of a battered horse lorry was an experience akin to camping, and most of their meals consisted of bread and meat purchased from the nearest town, cooked where appropriate over a campfire on the grassy flatlands they'd parked up on. At night it was cold, and even running the heater provided only temporary warmth. Florence found herself sleeping in more layers than she had ever thought possible.

Sometimes it would rain - a phenomenon Florence had experienced only a handful of times in her life previously - and that was something to behold. Cold water cascaded from the clouds into the soil, spawning muddy rivulets that splattered up onto the faces of horse and rider... it would pummel the grass flat, rattle atop the lorry's roof, and drench the entire land in a kind of cool stillness.

Once, there was a thunderstorm. Clouds the colour of the deepest ocean rolled across the plains, white shards of sunlight gleaming through the cracks and casting warm halos on the grass. They endured storms in Driftland from time to time, but never like this. The entire sky seemed to fracture and snarl, and when the rain fell the droplets were like glittering diamonds. Florence had stepped out of the lorry and let the rain wash down her face and shoulders, feeling for the first time what it was like to be drenched by the sky and marvelling in its sheer beauty.

She had stayed out there, oblivious to the frightened stomping of the horses in the back of the box, until Charlie had told her to come in before she caught her death.

As the days passed, she would work Last Unicorn and Zac up and down the grassland, backwards and forwards, letting the horse get used to his toes digging into the soft earth and the sensation of cold, damp soil flying up to tickle his belly. When the wind cascaded over the plains here, it was nothing like the warm siroccos of the Driftland waste. It was a cold, gusty bite that crashed against Last Unicorn's side, sometimes pitching him off track, and at the very least it buffeted his tail and made him flighty. He didn't like it, but at least he was becoming acclimatised.

Before sending her horse around a place like Rookbarrow, Florence considered it wise that his pilot try it out first. All they had to do was find Zac a spare ride on a native horse that was better prepared for the style of racing out there.