~Bast~ wrote:Owner: ~Bast~
DAM's name: Valiant
Gender: Mare
Height: 14.3 hh
Rarity: Very Rare
Story:
Another vision wracked the young woman's body where she lay in the damp cell of Britian's prison.
The two armies clashed once more, Britian and France, continuing the war they perpetuated past reason. Both sides had lost more than they could ever hope to gain by victory, and God's favor began to wane as more men met their death on the ends of swords.
Again and again she'd seen this vision. But where was she? She led this charge.
She felt weapons clash in her bones and heard the ringing in her ears. Hot blood stained her hands, and flavored her mouth. Every injury on the field was hers: Britian and French, the cuts, wounds, broken bones, crushed flesh, and mutilated minds.
But where was she? Where was her courser, where was her guard? She knew this vision, lived it's result. And where was she?
There was her grey courser, racing into battle, carrying her slight, armoured figure. She was Joan of Arc! This was her campaign for peace! She was graced by God with visions, and in desperation, the French men followed the feckless teenage girl into battle. But it wasn't her sturdy grey courser she rode. This creature was of unspeakable beauty, slender with perfectly straight long legs. Girl and horse raced past the vanguard, and plunged towards the British troops, who-
Heavy steps outside her cell door rattled her from the vision. She immediately felt the loss of the white horse-horse of Kings. Greys were treasured for their ease to find on the battlefield; they were the mounts of Generals. But the white she rode in her vision was finer than any horse she had seen before.
"Quit lookin at me wit ye devil eyes, Witch!" the jailer spat. He was an unpleasant man, dirty and always smelling faintly of alcohol. His rotting yellow teeth gave him the look of an ogre and flavored his breath with the reek of rotting carcasses. Joan would have disliked him even if the only reason he hadn't killed her yet was the enjoyment he gained from slowly starving her.
"The Council wants ye, ye ugly witch. That flamin red hair of ye's marks ye as the Devil's and ye unnatural actions jes proves it. We all know dat ye witches don't hang, so I gess we got a burnin ta look forward ta dis evenin."
Joan shuttered but didn't speak. She hadn't talked since the first day the British captured her and locked her here. But now it looked like she would soon be executed. She wondered if it was odd that now that she was to die, she even missed this pathetic hole of a cell. Any life was precious when death loomed.
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The Councilmen found her guilty in five minutes without her even opening her mouth. The hordes of bloodied soldiers around her cheered and congratulated each other on the conviction of the witch. Joan herself stood, her hands tied before her with rough rope. It was the only sensation she could feel. Every emotion had seeped into the ground below her, and the only thing left was the piece of itching rope around her wrist.
They hauled her to a stake driven into the ground. She stood numb before into, and didn't resist as the tied her to it and began the build the fire- pyre- beneath her feet. The voices raised in exuberant celebration buzzed in her ears... And Joan of Arc fainted, for the first time in her life.
When she awoke, the sun barely clung to the sky. A cooler breeze blew now, and Joan felt a coldness on her shoulder. Looking down, she realized that she had been crying unconsciously. Then an expectant hush fell over the soldiers as a man strode forward with a flaming torch. He raised it above his head, and the sky split with the soldier's compounded roar. He touched the torch to the wood beneath her. And Joan saw another vision in white barrel down the hill behind the men.
The flames licked against the flesh of Joan's leg, tasting her salty sweat and tears. It reached higher, and singed her clothes. Twisting her vibrant hair with it's heat, the fire illuminated Joan's beauty while consuming it. With a skill keener than any torturer's knife, the fire drew forth the most illicit pain- but Joan focused her eyes and thoughts on the white horse and uttered no whimper. The fires roar deafened her to the whispers of the crowd, "She is truly a witch- no mortal woman could stand such pain." but she saw their shocked faces through the undulating waves of heated air.
Like from behind swirled glass, Joan saw the men part before the white mare's charge. Now Joan's eyelashes were flaking, her fingernails curling, and her skin melting. The the white mare had reached her, and Joan of Arc smiled through the pain she hardly felt, and whispered through the dry lips her first words in captivity, "You made it after all; my valiant, valiant savior." Then Joan's eyes rolled back into her head and she fainted for the second time in her life.
The white mare screamed and men stepped back with their hands over their ears. Still shrieking, the mare lunged into the flames, stamping them out with her hooves. The mare's eyes rolled in her head with pain, but she didn't pause until only smoke and soot singed her once-white coat in spots. Then she shoved the fire-eaten stake over, and freed Joan from the pole.
"Look, the devil sent a demon to save the which!" shouted one men in the baffled silence. His companion cuffed him acrossed the head,
"That's ain't no demon ye idiot. No devil-spawn could be so pure." He walked forward and reverently laid Joan across the horse's back. "Best 'O luck ye miracle" he murmurred to the horse. Then he stepped back and declared, "I anti gonna do no more fighting fer no nobleman! God ordered that girl saved, and the most pure and valiant soul saved her. I won't lift no sword against God!"
In waves the men dropped their swords, lances, maces, and axes. And the white horse carried away the precious hope of the French to ready her and carry her into the battle she had seen herself leading. And who knew how the world would be shaped then. No one but a snowy white mare, as valiant as any knight.
congratz!
