Chapter Text
She expected she was going to be a cart horse. She was a big horse, a dusty brown draft, and it seemed like the only job that she would be fit for. She had barely seen three winters when her first owner, an aging man with soft hands, brought her to auction.
It was a loud, uncomfortable affair. There were horses and sheep and cows and some creatures she’d never seen before all crammed into pens. The old man had handed her off to a harsh man, who handed her off to a harsher, rougher man. The men here shouted and waved their arms and she snorted and stomped and was drug into a pen with other mares. She was the last one taken from the pen, led around into a louder, larger arena, a man shouted fast, men and women crowded around the big pen, shouting back. She tossed her head, was led back around, and her lead was given to two men.
They led her to their own horses, who shied away from her bulk. They were frail looking beasts. She was tied to one of them, and led away from the little livestock town.
They rode for hours, riding out of the valley and through the night. This was the longest she had ever rode for. Her thick legs ached, and her head hung low when they paused. She was so tired that she didn’t hear the crying, didn’t even realize that the men had dismounted, until loud shots rang through the air. She spooked, attempting to jerk away from the horse she was tethered to, spooking that horse as well.
The men came back with a small child, screaming. The screaming did nothing for her agitated nerves, and she stomped anxiously. The dark haired man, who wasn’t holding the kid, approached her and his own mount, quieting them. He gave her a sugar cube, and then they were off again.
They finally stopped a few hours after dawn, and the big draft filly was exhausted. She blearily took in the camp they had stopped in: a frumpy, blond pony stared at her from where it had obviously been grazing, another child, older, talked to the dark haired man, two tents were pitched centered round a smoldering fire. The boy broke away from the dark haired man.
The older child approached her, smoothed his hand down her nose and crooned, “Boadicea.”
Boadicea was allowed two days to recover from their journey. The older boy, the men called him Arthur, groomed her both days, watered her, and snuck her treats alongside her diet of sweet spring grass. He followed her as she grazed with a small book and charcoal stick, smearing the stick over the pages. He crooned her new name again and again, whenever he touched her.
The men didn’t even seem to own a cart or a plow, and she couldn’t imagine why she was there if not to toil such creations. Perhaps they had yet to bring it to their camp, or maybe they would have to travel more until they arrived at it?
The answer came in the way of one of the men’s absence. The dark haired man had left nearly as soon as they had arrived, and taken both of the other horses. Boadicea hadn’t thought much of it, men seemed to be coming and going often nowadays. He had returned after a day and a half, with a too big saddle strapped on his second horse.
The men meant to ride her, it seemed. Boadicea hadn’t considered the possibility. She had never seen a man on a horse as big as her before. She had never had a man on her back before, never even had a saddle or a blanket. The old man had only ever put a halter on her, and that had been the worst thing that had ever happened to her before the auction.
The saddle, and the blanket that went with it, were placed on the post that the animals were all tied to at night. More days passed, and nothing happened with the saddle. She snuffled at it and the blanket, jerking away from the rough wool the first time her nose made contact with it.
Arthur continued to groom her, and he had also been made to work with the other horses as well. The old pony, an ornery fellow named Dandy, seemed to also be in a state of not working. The smaller boy, who they called John, spent most of his time crying or yelling, and the older man, Hosea, spent most of his time consoling him. The younger man, Dutch, spent much of his time spouting noise at Arthur, or out of the camp entirely.
It got to be that Boadicea forgot all about the saddle on the hitch, and fell into the routine she had found herself in. When Dutch led her out into the field with Arthur trailing alongside him, with the saddle in his arms, she wasn’t overly concerned.
The lead on her halter was much longer than the usual one, and when they were a distance out from camp, Dutch yelled and waved his arms at her, sending her out from the pair. She was caught by the long lead, however, and was driven into a circle. Dutch continued his yelling, and she continued her running, occasionally switching directions at Dutch's movements.
It continued as such, with Arthur taking over after what felt like hours. The yelling stopped, and she walked back to them, only to have the blanket and saddle thrown over her back, and the long girth cinched around her waist. She received a sugar cube for her trouble before she was sent back out again.
They repeated the ordeal everyday, only sometimes with Hosea instead of Dutch. It went on for a week, but with each day, Boadicea felt less panicked and more confident as to what they were asking for. By the end of the week, she could anticipate their commands, and they no longer had to shout. She stood still for the saddle, and the blanket no longer itched. John had stopped crying so much, too. He had taken to following the much older Arthur around, and had taken something fierce to the blond pony.
The bridle was introduced to her next, the bit tricked into her mouth by Hosea, who slipped it in while she was reaching for the apple in his other hand. The metal was cold in her mouth, but she couldn’t focus on it due to the apple slice she was given as reward. They continued working as normal then, and then at the end of their session that day, Dutch came over to hold her lead.
“She can’t give you anything worse than that pony did,” Hosea was rubbing her neck, and was talking to Arthur in a soothing voice. Arthur was at her side, his hands messing with the saddle. She waited for him to remove the thing, but instead, the saddle was pulled toward him, and he pulled himself to stand in the stirrup. She went stiff, unsure of how to stand as Arthur pulled himself fully onto her back. He sat there for a moment, running his hand through her mane and crooning her name. Then, with Dutch tugging her forward, Hosea proffering another apple slice, and Arthur tapping gently at her sides with his heels, and she stepped forward.
After that first ride, things fell into place quickly. After another month, Arthur was taking her on cautious solitary rides, and by the end of the summer, they were riding confidently together. Boadicea grew stronger as Arthur grew taller, both of them putting on muscle and gaining stamina as the weeks flew by.
Arthur spent more time with Dutch, and the loud shots that had spooked her that first day were now a common sound in their camp. Hosea had both John and Arthur talking while looking at books in the evenings. John began to ride Dandy, never by himself, but sometimes riding alongside Boadicea. Life seemed to be going well for their small camp, and Boadicea forgot entirely about carts and plows.
Dutch worked with her too. He took her to the woods where Arthur and him often disappeared into, and pointed his metal stick away from them and let it off. The shots agitated Boadicea, but less and less so every time. He eventually even climbed onto her saddle to let off the shots. Arthur joined them, fired his own stick. She barely twitched her tail at the loud cracks by the end of that summer.
That fall, things changed. Arthur and her began to accompany Dutch on his frequent trips, going to the small town more and more. Once, they left Boadicea and the proud horse Dutch rode outside of a tall building, fabric pulled up to cover their mouths, and went in. They took their sticks with them, and let them off in the building. When they came back out again, they put heavy bags in the saddlebags, and urged the horses into a flat out gallop. Boadicea could sense the adrenaline pumping through Arthur, could feel the shaking of his hands on the reins, could see how he kept looking back.
Things changed a lot more that fall. The camp grew, an angry older lady, a sweeter lady, a few gruff men, and several others. They moved camp before the winter came, heading towards the setting sun. Arthur kept riding out with Dutch, sometimes joined by the gruff men. They practiced Arthur leaping from Boadicea’s saddle, and eventually Arthur did jump off her saddle, and onto a wagon out on a ride. He fired his stick more and more, and they rode out more and more. Arthur no longer buzzed with anxiety on these rides.
The seasons kept changing, and Arthur kept growing. What used to be a boy was now a young man, confident and steady in her saddle. The people in the camp came and went, but Arthur, Dutch, Hosea, and John remained the same. John grew, too. He was no longer the small, crying child, but an aggressive young adult. John no longer rode Dandy, who had died a year or so back, but a big, brown colt he called Old Boy.
Boadicea had seen six winters, three of them with Arthur. They were in a mining town when they were separated from Dutch. The metal sticks, guns, she had learnt, no longer just went off facing away from them, but at them. Boadicea had been struck by one on the ride, piercing the meat of her thigh, sending both her and Arthur to the ground.
She nickered in a panic, thrashing as she hit the ground. Arthur let off more shots, but was at her side immediately after, running his hands over her neck and shushing her as she cried. Her eyes rolled in her panic, and Arthur kept crooning her name.
“Hey, hey now girl. It’s gonna be alright, girl. Shh, Boadicea, shh girl,” Arthur’s voice was tinted with anxiety, and he covered her face with his coat, something he’d done only once before, in a wildfire.
He dug his fingers into the hole in her thigh and she let out a scream, interrupted by another shot, from Arthur. He opened up the bottle of the foul smelling liquid he sometimes like to drink, pouring it into her wound.
Boadicea trusted her rider, trusted him to lead her blind and deaf, but she was terrified. He urged her to her feet, heaving at her back, pulling on her reins. She stood after a struggle, and he wrapped his coat more firmly around her face. He lead her, limping, forward. She followed where he led, and they walked for several hours at least.
Some time later, he removed the coat from her face and they continued on. Boadicea could tell he was tired, could tell that they were nowhere close to Dutch. They limped along the road out of the town, into the night. Both their heads were hanging when they reached it.
It was a small farmhouse, letting light out into the night warmly. Arthur dropped Boadicea's reins and walked to the house door like a moth to a flame. It opened slowly, a gun poking through.
“Please, miss. My horse has been shot and we just need a place to bed down for the night, please,” Arthur’s exhausted voice had an edge of desperation to it, and the gun lowered. The woman said something back, and the tension Arthur had been holding dropped from his shoulders.
Arthur staggered back towards Boadicea, grabbing her reins and leading her around the house to a barn, pulling the door open and taking them inside.
He heaved the saddle off of Boadicea’s back and eased the bit from her mouth. He shook out the apple bag in front of her, and she reluctantly set to them, ignoring her riders shift in attention back to her thigh. He spread something over the hole, and she could no longer feel what he did next to the area. She laid down that night, which she couldn’t remember doing since she was a filly, and Arthur rested beside her.
They were woken up the next morning by the woman, who slid the barn door open and brought Arthur something on a plate. Boadicea rested more after Arthur started talking to the woman.
“I’m Arthur Morgan, by the way, miss.”
“Elizabeth, but you can call me Eliza. Glad to meet you.”
They stayed at that little farmhouse for a week, Boadicea healing, and Arthur off talking to the woman. Even after she had recovered enough to ride back to Dutch, they visited the woman often. The rides slowed down after that last disastrous one, and the time was often spent back at the farmhouse. That summer faded into winter, and the woman’s stomach swelled as the months passed, eventually flattening back out sometime in the spring, only to be replaced with a screaming baby.
The only others of the men at camp to come with Arthur had been Hosea and John. John because he had tailed them, Hosea because Arthur invited him on the ride. Hosea had crooned, and held the squealing thing in his arms gently.
“Isaac,” Arthur had responded to Hosea’s questioning noise. Boadicea had snuffled at it when Arthur had shown her, setting the thing off again.
John had made a scoffing noise when the baby was offered to him, but his eyes lingered on the small face. Boadicea waited patiently for her rider as they went into the house.
That was the last time they visited the house for three winters. The camp had moved that week, the wagons they now had were packed, and they once more headed into the sun.
Boadicea healed, and the rides picked back up again. The shots spooked her a little more now, but the rest remained much as it had before. They rode out with Dutch, the men in the camp came and went, but the core family remained the same.
The first visit back to the farmhouse after three winters started with a slap, and ended with a hug. The baby was a child now, and let out quiet, constant babble. They returned to the house for a week every fall after that, until four trips later, when they arrived to no welcome. The child and the woman were nowhere to be found, and Arthur lingered over some sticks driven into the ground before they left again.
They never returned to the farmhouse.
Boadicea has seen fourteen winters, twelve of them with Arthur. He was well and truly a man now, had been for sometime. After they left the farmhouse for the last time, he was harder. He remained just as gentle with her, but he was quicker to pull his gun, fired more shots, took them out on more rides. It was fall again, and they were in a bigger town. Hosea was with them for a change, and Arthur went to the foul smelling building, which he had been frequenting more and more often these days.
Boadicea waited for him to stumble out that night, only he never did. Arthur didn’t return to her until morning, looking rumpled and haggard, but with a jolly smile on his face. Boadicea huffed, feeling where her saddle had begun to dig in a little over the night, and how her mouth had begun to dry.
A woman chased out after him, handing Arthur the piece of cloth he used to cover his face on rides, and mashing their faces together in a way that Arthur and the woman from the farmhouse had sometimes done.
And so the woman, that Boadicea would come to understand was called Mary, came into their lives. They kept running into her over until the end of summer, each time ending with Arthur leaving Boadicea hitched for hours on end.
At the end of that summer, Mary came back to the camp with them, smiling widely. Tilly, a kind lady who always had a sugar cube for Boadicea, didn’t seem to like Mary much, nor did the mean lady, Miss Grimshaw, but that didn’t surprise Boadicea much, as she didn’t think the lady like anyone overly much.
People at the camp still came and went, but the core family expanded. Most notably, a dark haired woman joined them. The seasons changed, and the next summer had Mary shouting and raging around the camp, with the dark haired woman, Abigail, right behind her. This had become a normal enough occurrence in the camp, and Boadicea merely flicked her tail in acknowledgment of the conflict. Abigail's belly had begun to swell, like the farmhouse woman’s, and Boadicea passively dreaded the arrival of another screaming babe.
Arthur intercepted Mary, John intercepted Abigail, and the fight exploded from there. Boadicea shared a look with Old Boy as they grazed. Things were changing, they could sense it in the air.
Things did indeed change, as when the camp awoke the next morning, John and Old Boy were nowhere to be found, Mary gone along with them.
Arthur, who had been slowing down on the amount of rides they went on, picked it back up again. It wasn’t until the spring, when Abigail brought the screaming baby into the world, did he slow back down again. He hadn’t even had much choice in the matter, as they had been on a ride when he’d been shot clean off of Boadicea’s back. It had been a terrifying experience, and one that Boadicea attempted to bar from her memory.
John came back to camp, a different one from when he’d first left, that summer. Arthur and Boadicea no longer went riding with him. They fell into a routine of riding out and resting and riding, and the weeks blurred and the seasons passed.
The seasons keep passing, and Boadicea has seen twenty-three winters, twenty of them with Arthur. It’s summer again, and the camp is the largest it’s ever been. They’re camped in the plains, and the sky seems to Boadicea to stretch out forever. She is the oldest horse in the camp, older than every horse she’s ever met, except for the old pony John used to ride. Her joints ache and creak, and she can’t muster the same gallops she used to. The prairie sun feels good on her back. Arthur knows these things, and he takes the wagon more often now, makes sure give her a firm rub down when they do go riding, even bought a new, lighter saddle.
Arthur wasn’t going out on rides as much these days anyways, more often accompanying Hosea into town on the wagon, or doing the various chores around camp. He often was with Abigail's child, Jack, who was no longer a screaming baby. Jack liked to be set upon Boadicea’s back, and led around the camp, shouting at the other camp members. She didn’t mind the small boy, even though he tended towards squirming around and flailing.
The last few quiet months had done good for Arthur, too. Boadicea had smelled the foul liquid on him less often, and he was growing closer to a new camp member, Charles. She liked him as well, as he could always be trusted to have treats in his pockets, and he watered and fed her whenever Arthur was away.
It was one of the days that Arthur was out of the camp, in the wagon with Hosea. It also seemed to be one of the days when Dutch rode out, and the whole camp was in a fuss as everyone but the women and Jack rode out with him. Boadicea watched them leave, and sensed the change coming on the wind. She continued her easy grazing, however. She had seen many changes had come to the camp before, and it had been quiet for too many seasons.
Arthur and Hosea came back to camp without the wagon, on a strange horse, and at a gallop. They were shouting at the women before they were even off the horse. Boadicea came at Arthur’s whistle, had already been on her way over to him. He saddled her quickly, a little rough on the girth. She couldn’t begrudge him for the lack of gentleness. Change had come, and they were riding to meet it.
Arthur shouted something to Hosea, mounting while he spoke, turning Boadicea to the road before he was done, losing the end of his words to the wind as he pushed her as fast as she could go. He was tense in the saddle, and anxiety he rarely had these days dripped from him like blood from a wound.
They raced through the prairie, heading for the town on the riverbank. Her hooves beat faster than her heart, and still Arthur urged her faster.
They didn’t make it to the town, running into Dutch and the others a mile out. Two horses were missing from the group.
Dutch and Arthur talked in shouts as Arthur turned her to keep pace with the man's small, white horse. Arthur gestured angrily, and the distress was pouring off him in waves. Boadicea could smell blood.
They rode as if a pack of starving wolves were nipping at their hooves. They arrived back to the camp to find it in chaos, half broken down, the women rushing to pack the wagons, Jacks loud sobs rising over all other ruckus.
“We need time, we need some goddamn time! Arthur, Charles, John, I need you boys to buy me some goddamn time!” Dutch yelled at Arthur as he dismounted, and Arthur gave Boadicea’s mane an apologetic rub before wheeling her back around, Charles and John on their heels.
They rode out, but this ride was so very different from the other rides Arthur had led her on. She would follow him, but the wind carried only the stench of blood and change.
Arthur let off the first shot not a mile away from camp, and the ride was on. Charles and John followed suit, the men in front of them only a second after. Boadicea frothed around the bit, her coat lathered in sweat. The shots burst into the ground around her, and she kept forward. She would follow her rider until her very last, they had seen worse together. The shots petered out as they got closer, stopping altogether after one last crack of Arthur’s gun.
The unfamiliar men were gone, their abandoned horses bolting into the hills. Arthur pulled Boadicea into a stop as they came up on the fallen men, breathing hard. Man and horse alike gasped for breath as they waited for the other two catch up to them. Charles stank of blood, Boadicea noticed after a moment, and held his right hand limply against his chest. Arthur noticed, too, and leaned over to check it.
While they were distracted, and before John could catch up to them, Boadicea got the glimpse of a man hoisting his gun on the ground, the tip of it pointing directly at her rider.
Time seemed to crawl as Boadicea remembered in vivid detail the pain of a shot hitting her thigh, the panic of Arthur being struck from her saddle.
She had seen Arthur through twenty winters, and she hoped to have him see this one, too.
Boadicea reared. Arthur began to curse just as the shot cracked through the air. They fell to the ground, and she could do nothing but pant.
Someone, Charles, probably, shot the man in the grass. Arthur scrambled to Boadicea’s head, filling her swimming vision. He stroked her neck, smoothed his hands over her snout, buried his face in her mane, covered her eyes, rested the tip of his gun against her head, and crooned;
“Boadicea.”