Angel and the Flying Stallions, page 10
Issie watched as Roberto did a neat bow to Mrs Brown and then whispered something in her ear as she blushed.
Issie felt a stab of panic at this intimate gesture. Could it be that Stella had a point? Was her mum really falling in love with Roberto?
“Madre mia!” Alfie muttered, shaking Issie out of her thoughts. “Vega looks like he has Francoise in a headlock!”
Vega had the Frenchwoman in a vice-like grip, his chubby arms wrapped around her, as he tangoed her with great determination across the dance floor. As the music swelled, Vega seized the moment. He thrust Francoise backwards in a dramatic dip which took her by surprise and threw her off-balance. Then, as he pulled her back up again, ensnaring her even more tightly in his arms, he shut his eyes and leaned in for a kiss.
“Ohmygod!” Issie squeaked in horror, “I can’t look!”
She peeked out between her fingers and saw that Vega had closed his eyes and lunged for the kiss, but his lips had missed their target. At the very last moment Francoise had been snatched roughly out of his arms and Vega was left puckering up into thin air. When he opened his eyes, there was a man standing in front of him where Francoise should have been.
“Arrghh!” Vega spat out. “What are you doing here?”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Tom Avery said. “I’m cutting in on this dance.”
Vega’s expression changed from amorous to angry. “Mind? Of course I do! Get your hands off my dance partner,” he commanded.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” Avery told Vega.
“Francoise isn’t your partner. She was meant to be here with me.”
“She said yes when I asked her! You cannot turn up at a dance like this and take another man’s partner!” Vega fumed.
“It should be Francoise’s choice,” Avery said, “so why don’t we let the lady decide?”
He turned to her. “Francoise, I’m no good at romance. I’ve been a bachelor for so long,” Avery admitted. “I always wanted to ask you to the dance but I left it too late…”
“Yes!” Vega interrupted him. “You left it too late! She is my partner now! Step aside…”
“Wait!” Avery cautioned Vega, “I’m not finished!” He turned back to Francoise. “I’ve been a fool, I know that – partly because you’ve pointed it out to me…” he smiled at her. “But I realised tonight that I couldn’t bear the thought of another man with his arms around you on the dance floor. I love you, Francoise. Will you do me the honour of dancing with me?”
The whole room had stopped dancing. Everyone had heard Avery’s declaration of love and they were waiting to hear Francoise’s reply. She stood there in front of him, with tears in her eyes, lips trembling. Finally she spoke, “Tom, I…”
Suddenly the front doors to the hall flew open and one of the grooms raced inside the hall, panting and wild-eyed.
“Hurry! Please! Everybody!” he shouted. “It’s the horses. They’ve been attacked!”
Chapter 12
There was a crush at the door as everybody panicked and tried to get outside all at once. In the rush, Issie and Alfie were both pushed to the very back of the crowd. By the time they got outside it was madness. There were people racing about everywhere, trying to recapture horses that had broken loose and were running free in the square.
“This way!” Alfie grabbed Issie by the hand and led her down a side path, staying close to the walls of the houses and out of the way of loose horses and the crowds. They ran towards the hitching posts where they had left their horses, beneath the trees at the far end of the square. Avery and Francoise were already there ahead of them. Issie could see Avery hanging on to a wild-eyed Victorioso and also trying to handle his own horse, Sorcerer, who was skipping beside him.
Francoise had Marius and was holding him tightly by his head collar.
“Where are the others?” Issie shouted out to Francoise. “Where are Amira and Aliya?”
Her question was answered a moment later when she heard the loud clarion call of a stallion and looked down the steep banks of the hill to the pasture below. In the moonlight she could see the two terrified liver chestnut mares. They were running with their ears flat back, and on either side, making it impossible for them to escape, were two stallions, the black and the dun. Leading the way across the pasture towards the gorge was a third stallion, dove grey, and even at a distance Issie could make out the strange two-tone black and white colours of his flying mane.
The bachelor stallions had staged yet another raid, and this time they had got away with not one but two of the El Caballo’s best mares. They had taken Aliya and Amira.
Roberto wasted no time once he saw what had happened. He took control of Marius and hastily threw on his saddle and cinched the girth. Alfie meanwhile, was preparing to mount Victorioso and Avery had Sorcerer saddled too, ready to go. Francoise looked anxious as he mounted up. “Please be careful, Tom. Those stallions are dangerous and unpredictable.”
“Don’t worry,” Avery reassured her, “I’ll be back soon.”
Francoise smiled. “Stay safe,” she insisted.
Issie had wanted desperately to ride after the bachelor stallions too, but she had no choice but to stay behind. Francoise agreed that it was awful being left without a horse as they watched the men gallop off down the hill without them. They stood there in the darkness watching the riders disappear from sight.
“Well,” Mrs Brown said, “I’m not sure how well these shoes will cope with the walk home.” She lifted her Spanish skirt and peered down at her pretty high heels. “They were made for dancing the tango, not trekking the countryside! But I suppose we’ll have to give it a go.”
The walk took less time than they had thought, and Mrs Brown’s shoes survived intact. Once they were back at the hacienda, Mrs Brown went straight to the kitchen to put on a pot of strong coffee. They were only just sitting down with their mugs of latte in the front room when there was the sound of hoofbeats in the courtyard.
“They are back already!” Francoise said, looking out the window.
“Do they have the mares?” Issie asked.
“No,” Francoise shook her head. “They are alone.”
Outside in the courtyard, Roberto, Alfie and Avery were leading their horses back towards the stables.
“No sign of them?” Francoise asked as she came outside on to the steps of the hacienda.
“We gave up when we reached the other side of the gorge,” Avery said. “They were long gone by then and it was too dark to follow them, so we rode straight back.”
“We’ll come and help you to unsaddle,” Issie offered.
But Roberto shook his head. “It is late. Go to bed, Isadora, and leave it to us. There is nothing else you can do tonight.”
Issie came downstairs to breakfast the next morning to find that Avery and Roberto were already gone again. Francoise, who was busily dishing up bacon and eggs, told her that they’d left before dawn to make one more search for the missing mares.
Despite the late-night dramas, Francoise also seemed determined that haute école training was to go ahead as normal. Issie finished breakfast and headed down to the stables to find Alfie saddling up one of the Andalusians ready to ride.
“You didn’t go with your dad and Avery then?” Issie asked him.
“They didn’t ask me!” Alfie looked annoyed. “They never mentioned it last night and they were gone by the time I woke up this morning.”
“Maybe they knew you couldn’t come because you had to train today?” Issie offered.
“Maybe,” Alfie said. “Or maybe my father still thinks of me as a child. I don’t suppose it helps that the last time he left me in charge of the herd Margarita was stolen!”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Issie insisted. “You know that those stallions can sniff out mares from miles away…”
Issie’s heart began to race as a thought occurred to her. “Alfie, the stallions could smell the mares last time, couldn’t they? So why don’t we use more mares to lure them back again?”
“You mean use our horses as bait?” Alfie asked. “Dad would never allow it – we’ve lost three already!”
“But this time we’ll be ready to follow the stallions when they take the mares! We’d track them down and get all the mares back again!” Issie insisted.
She took Angel by the reins and began to lead him down the stable corridor.
“Where are you going?” Alfie called after her. “We have training now!”
“I’m going to find those stallions,” Issie replied. She looked back over her shoulder. “Are you coming with me?”
Alfie sighed in resignation and picked up the reins of his Andalusian stallion.
“Madre mia!” Alfie shook his head and followed Issie out into the cobbled courtyard. “I must be as crazy as you are!”
The two young riders left the gates of El Caballo a few minutes later. Issie was mounted up on Angel and leading a cobra of three of the stables’ best mares. They were liver chestnut Arabians, just like Amira and Aliya, and Issie was convinced that these mares would prove to be an irresistible temptation to the bachelor stallions.
An hour later, however, Issie could feel her conviction ebbing away. They had brought the mares up through the gorge to the upper pastures and let them loose in the same spot where Margarita had been stolen. They had lain in wait behind a grove of trees and watched and waited. But the stallions had not come. It felt like they had been there forever, and there was still no sign of the bachelors.
“I’m sorry. It was a stupid plan,” Issie said. She shifted about uncomfortably in her saddle and looked at the mares grazing peacefully. “Maybe we should give up. We can’t sit here forever.”
“No,” Alfie disagreed. “They’ll come. We just have to wait…” He suddenly stopped speaking. They could both hear the sound of hoofbeats approaching!
A few moments later, around the bend of the hill, came the three bachelor stallions. As usual, the grey Sorraia was leading the herd. Behind, flanking him to the left and right, were the big black stallion and the dun. Issie hoped that the stallions might have Margarita, Aliya and Amira with them, but they were nowhere to be seen.
The mares that Issie had chosen as bait were all Anglo-Arabs like Amira and Aliya. They were liver chestnuts as well, with white socks, white blazes and the same pretty dished faces as their stable mates. Issie watched as the dun stallion circled the three mares, nipping at them and driving them towards the Sorraia. The grey Sorraia stallion made a vicious lunge at one of the mares, biting her hard on the neck so that the mare let out an angry squeal.
“He’s hurting her!” Issie couldn’t stand to watch.
“No!” Alfie hissed. “She’ll be all right. He’s just asserting his dominance – look!”
The mares were moving in a herd now, obeying the Sorraia. As she watched the stallions manoeuvring the mares, Issie was glad she had chosen to ride Angel this time. Nightstorm would never have been able to stand by and let the bachelor stallions steal the herd. He would have reacted the same way he had done last time, attacking and fighting back. But Angel was not like Nightstorm. He was a gentle stallion and his Iberian bloodlines made him calm and obedient. As long as Issie was on his back, he would do as she asked.
The Sorraia set off at a canter and, with the dun and the black stallion bringing up the rear, they herded the mares off around the curve of the hill.
“Wait until they are around the corner,” Issie whispered to Alfie. “We don’t want to let the stallions know we are here.”
“And we don’t want to lose them either!” Alfie was beginning to panic. “If they take another three mares my father will kill me.”
“Come on then,” Issie agreed. “Now!”
The two riders pressed their horses into a gallop and set off in the same direction as the stallions.
As they rounded the corner of the hill the horses were nowhere in sight.
“We have lost them!” Alfie groaned.
“No!” Issie shook her head. “Listen! I can hear them. They’re just ahead of us.”
The echo of hoofbeats was coming from the dirt path ahead that led off to the left. They followed the same route, keeping their horses at a steady gallop, trying to keep pace with the stallions.
A few minutes later the sound of hoofbeats became more distant and Issie began to worry that they had taken a wrong turn and lost them this time. She was even more concerned when rocky cliffs rose up around them and there was a fork in the narrow path as it split in two directions.
“Which way?” she asked Alfie.
He pulled his horse to a halt. “If we go to the right, that path will take us back down to the olive grove. To the left, there’s a canyon; it’s a dead-end.”
As he said this, Angel raised his head and pricked his ears in the direction of the canyon and let out a whinny.
“He can hear something that we can’t,” Issie said. She pointed towards the dead-end canyon. “Come on, we’re going this way.”
“OK,” Alfie said, “but take it slowly from here, and let me go in front. If the stallions are in this canyon then they’ll be corralled in by the canyon walls at that end. They may panic and try to get past us and I don’t want to end up with another fight on our hands.”
Issie agreed, and they cantered on in single file. As they rounded the bend, the canyon neck narrowed for a hundred metres or so, hemming them in, and then they emerged out the other side into an amphitheatre-like space, a dead-end canyon just as Alfie had said, with steep cliffs bordering it on every side. The rocky terrain was covered with trees and lantana bushes.
Alfie pointed beyond the lantana bushes. “Over there! Look!”
To the far right of the canyon Issie saw a horse moving and the dun stallion came into view. A moment later she spotted Margarita and Aliya. The mares were here too! Including Vega’s Laeticia and the three new additions that the stallions had just taken. The mares were nervously greeting each other with snorts and snuffles while the stallions stood back, looking pleased with their new harem.
“OK,” Issie whispered to Alfie. “So we’ve found them. Now what?”
“Issie,” Alfie hissed back, “this was your plan, remember?”
“OK, OK,” Issie said, “I know. Don’t rush me!” She looked down at the stallions. “If we try and get all the mares out by ourselves now, we might lose them again.”
Alfie nodded. “We need help.”
“You go back to the hacienda,” Issie told him. “Hopefully your dad and Avery will be back there by now. Get them and Francoise and some of the men. I’ll stay here and keep watch, and make sure they don’t go anywhere.”
“OK,” Alfie said. “Stay out of trouble. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He turned the Andalusian around and headed back towards the narrow mouth of the canyon. Issie watched him go, and then turned her attention back to the stallions and the mares.
The horses had moved away from the undergrowth to a patch of grassy flatland at the rear of the canyon. Most of the mares were grazing, but the three new mares still held their heads high and looked tense. It wasn’t surprising, Issie thought. This morning they had been locked safely in their stalls at El Caballo Danza Magnifico. Now, here they were, being held hostage by a group of bachelor stallions.
Margarita seemed the most self-assured of the mares. She was definitely the alpha, the leader of the harem. She was also the mare that the Sorraia seemed the most interested in. Stallions often have favourite mares in a harem and it was clear that Margarita was the Sorraia’s chosen one. It was also clear that Margarita didn’t feel the same way about the Sorraia.
When the Sorraia trotted over to Margarita and began to try and affectionately groom her neck, the mare resisted, throwing up her head in defiance. The Sorraia grew angry at this. His authority in the herd was being threatened by this headstrong mare. He lunged at Margarita, his ears flattened back against his head as he tried to bite her hard on her neck. Margarita squealed and fought back, lashing out with her hind legs. The Sorraia dodged her hooves and came back at her again, plunging his teeth into the shoulder of the mare, this time drawing blood as he delivered a vicious bite. Margarita let out a heart-wrenching whinny as the stallion bit deep into her flesh, and then another squeal as he dealt her a blow with his front hooves, striking her hard on the same shoulder. The blow caused Margarita to lose her balance and fall. As the mare went down, Issie suddenly couldn’t control herself any longer.
“No! Leave her alone!” Her voice rang out in the quiet of the canyon. The stallion stopped his attack on Margarita and looked in Issie’s direction. She froze. But it was too late. The Sorraia had seen her.
“Uh-oh…” Issie’s heart began to pound. The Sorraia still had his ears flat back and his eyes were filled with black hatred at the sight of the girl and the grey stallion. He was in battle mode, ready to strike. And Issie and Angel were his target.
Chapter 13
As the Sorraia bore down on them, teeth bared and ears flat back, Issie had only one thought. Run. She turned Angel and kicked him on, cantering back down the path between the trees and scrub, towards the narrow mouth of the canyon. Unfortunately the other stallions had also been alerted to her presence and the black stallion had already anticipated her next move. He had circled around the herd to the right and now stood guard in the neck of the canyon, blocking Issie’s path.
Issie pulled Angel to a halt. Should they try and barge their way past the black horse? Issie took a good, hard look at the stallion, snorting and quivering, holding his ground in front of her, and she knew that it would be foolish to try and make a dash past him. There wasn’t enough space to get through the narrow canyon neck, and if the black stallion attacked they would have no hope of getting out of his way. So they stayed trapped where they were – with a wild stallion blocking their exit, while another cantered up behind them, getting closer with every stride.
The Sorraia had Angel in his sights and his eyes shone with hatred. His ears were flat against his head, making him look almost demonic in his fury. Issie had to do something.
