Destrier

The painted Queen claimed she didn't know much in the ways of battle, but not knowing much was better than knowing nothing at all.

Though was she really ready to learn? Right here, right now? The Kahlua I had known many a season ago peeked through the softness of her voice when she spoke next, but the melancholic mask she had brought along with her was quick to slide back over her only moments later. Dark lips pressed together in a firm, thin line as I gazed upon her, taking in the mare's demeanor and trying my damnest to read her, but I could not. Something was wrong, my gut couldn't be convinced otherwise, and my belly ached in tremendous concern for the Queen I barely knew.

The duties of being a soldier and a friend were ever at war, a heavy, tangible weight in my breast, but she wanted to learn. She had answered my call and asked me to train her, and that was what I intended to do, even if the circumstances weren't as I would've liked them to be.

Dragging in a deep breath that expanded my barrel, I watched as she began to approach, experienced eyes sizing her up. She was by no means the smallest I had fought, and had plenty of weight to throw around if she wanted to, but I still stood over and out-muscled her. She would be more agile than I, though, and I'd have to keeps my wits about me to avoid any easy hits.

... Or would I?

Her first attack was slow and lacked heart, and through Suli's eyes I captured a glimpse of the mare even turning her head away as she struck for me. Shifting my weight and turning to the right, presenting my left side to her with hindquarters lined even to where she stood, feeling the beat of a hoof or two land on the thick of my rump. It was a dull pain like that of a slap, stinging for but a moment, but one that would fade as the battle progressed. I popped my rear end up then as gravity took control and forced the Queen back down, intending to give her a mouthful of my rump before my own bulk was forced back down to earth.

"Don't apologize!" I bellowed as I moved away from Kahlua, our left sides facing one another as I made a wide, hefty half circle towards her, "If you want to learn to fight, then there can be no apologies. You have to find that one thing to fight for, Kahlua, and you have to cling to it." Oh, how I loathed barking such things at my Queen, but if this was how she would handle herself in the face of an enemy, then I had no choice. Perhaps my words could evoke some kind of fire within her. They had to. "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him," I added as I rounded towards her, hoping to be facing her left side from approximately twenty feet head-on now, "But because he loves what is behind him!"

I had done a lot of ungraceful things in my long life, but as I pushed myself into a charge at her, the last thing I expected was a horrid, intense strain somewhere in the upper rear part of my back right leg, beginning from right above the hock and up the better half of my rear. I inhaled a sharp, hitching breath, ears tipping back as the pain radiated the length of the injury. I must have pulled something; damn it, I was getting old.

But I pressed through the pain, favoring and jerking the leg up every other step or so, irritation at the throbbing pain apparent across a firmly set face, teeth clenched together behind sealed lips. As I neared Kahlua, and if she didn't move, I planned to ram my broad chest right into her exposed side. It was a move unlikely to be used on the battlefield, as most would typically be right on my tail, or had long, deadly horns protruding from their foreheads that kept me at bay.

Whether I was successful in slamming into her and knocking her rear out from under her or to the side, or not at all, I turned to the right and kicked out for the painted Queen, again hissing as the motion and mindful to keep my right leg drawn a little closer than my left.

"bloop"

[ooc - 761 words.
1/3 attacks

looking for heaven
found a devil in me