Pros fic - The Loosed White Horses by Slantedlight

[byslantedlight]

Hey, I did it! This one's for milomaus... *vbg*

The Loosed White Horses
by Slantedlight

for Milomaus, whose prompt was “One of them tackling a rider. In full speed or so”

The world moved at half-speed, Doyle’s heartbeat loud in his ears, hard against his chest, breath an effort of in and out - and then the Capri was a bare strip of metal under one foot as he pushed himself away, felt nothing but air, and then landed with a thump that he’d feel in his thighs - and other parts - for days. But the horse was a solid, living thing under him, the wind rushing around him again and the ground below a blur of green, and he fell into the desperate, headlong rhythm, holding tight with his legs, one hand reaching to clutch the beast’s mane, his other arm wrapping itself around the girl who rode in blind terror, pulling her back against him, the blast of Guigan’s shotgun no doubt still reverberating through her mind and her imagination.

From the corner of his eye he saw the Capri sloughing across the field now that she was taken care of, as silver-white in the brilliant afternoon sun as the stallion beneath him, away towards the bushes where they’d last seen Guigan, all deadly intent against a girl barely old enough to know what she’d seen, let alone be a credible witness against him. She felt as lifeless now as if she’d fainted, though her fingers still held the reins loosely, and as the horse calmed under them, against his extra weight, against the familiar feel of a rider insisting on control, he managed to take them from her, to start convincing their mount to slow, to canter, to trot, to walk…

And there, to their right, was emerald green grass sloping down to the edge of the cliff, to the sunlit, shining sea, not to death after all. but to gentle walks and to summer holidays. A seagull rose on a lazy twist of wind, hung for a moment, then swooped back down out of sight with a cheerful cry. In the distance, somewhere behind them, a wail of sirens grew louder and he turned the horse back towards the sound, saw the Capri parked aslant against a stone wall, and Bodie on the other side of it, holding a Guigan who looked as if he’d rather fall down in one hand, and the skeleton stock of a Mauser in the other.

They reached him only just before the police did, on Bodie’s side of the field, so that he barely had time to lean the girl forward and slide off the horse, reaching to lift her down after him, and letting the horse wander off to its own kind of rest and refreshment, pastures green and endless. It startled slightly as a car door slammed, then put its head down again and carried on grazing, excitement over, its world at peace once more.

The girl moved suddenly under Doyle’s steadying arms, turning to look at him, all wide eyes under her short bobbed hair. She was too young for all this, should have been left to dancing with her horse, to the safety of a world where the worst thing she might suffer was a broken bone or two, or the embarrassment of falling off in front of her mates.

He left one arm around her shoulders, looked her in the eyes. “You know, you’re very good at that.”

She gazed at him, uncertain.

“Riding,” he clarified. “I don’t know many people your age who could have kept their balance like that.”

“I do vaulting…” she began, “You have to balance…”

“Lena!”

“Ma-ma!”

Doyle let her go, and she rushed towards the wall, where a tall young policeman lifted her over and into the arms of her parents. She was, he noted with amusement, as he made his own leap unaided over the mossed stone, already looking more excited than scared. It took some people like that - maybe she’d be alright after all, with nothing more than a summer adventure to tell at school. George Cowley stepped across his line of vision, reaching out a hand to the girl’s father, and bent to speak to Lena. Whatever he said, she nodded with certainty, and then looked towards her mother for approval.

“Bet you anything he’s recruiting,” a voice said beside him, and there was warmth pressed against his shoulder and his arm and all the way through him, and he didn’t need to look at Bodie to know that his lips were twisting in a half smile. “He’ll have a team of horse vaulters on the squad before you can say hay net.”

“No bet…” Bodie’s fingertips brushed against his own, so lightly, so casually, so barely there for anyone to see, a slowed-down half-heartbeat of a moment, and the sun warm on his face. “Though in case you didn’t notice, I’m chief vaulter in this outfit.”

“What, that thing you did from the car window?” Bodie did look sideways at him now, and Doyle turned his own head to meet him, to catch his eye and his smile and the triumph in his voice. “I wondered what that was. Thought you’d got tired of watching my superior driving. Have an nice ride?”

“Might have been the last riding I do for a while,” he admitted, moving to flex the muscles in his legs, feeling them stiff and sore already. “I think my gluteus maximus has had it, mate…”

“Ah no,” Bodie protested, and though his eyes were sliding over the dispersing crowds in front of them, police and parents and Cowley and all, Doyle could feel his awareness, his heart, the air that he breathed, all for him. “It was my turn with them this week - had plans, I did.”

“Unless those plans involve a hot bath…”

“Hot bath, warm hands, bottle of massage oil?”

“Now you’re talking.” He turned his head to catch Cowley’s gesture to them as he ushered the family towards his Rover, where Sally stood waiting - back to Hq, get your reports done! - and nodded - understood. “In that case I might even let you tug my fetlock…”

“Forelock,” Bodie said, giving him a shove to get him moving towards the Capri. “You tug your forelock, not your fetlock…”

“You can tug anything you want as long as you take it easy over those bumps on the way home…”

Behind them, away to the cliffs, the gulls wheeled and soared, the waves crashed white foam against the shore, and the horse grazed steadily on.



14th October, 2015



White Horses
by Rudyard Kipling
Where run your colts at pasture?
Where hide your mares to breed?
'Mid bergs about the Ice-cap
Or wove Sargasso weed;
By chartless reef and channel,
Or crafty coastwise bars,
But most the ocean-meadows
All purple to the stars!

Who holds the rein upon you?
The latest gale let free.
What meat is in your mangers?
The glut of all the sea.
'Twixt tide and tide's returning
Great store of newly dead, --
The bones of those that faced us,
And the hearts of those that fled.
Afar, off-shore and single,
Some stallion, rearing swift,
Neighs hungry for new fodder,
And calls us to the drift:
Then down the cloven ridges --
A million hooves unshod --
Break forth the mad White Horses
To seek their meat from God!

Girth-deep in hissing water
Our furious vanguard strains --
Through mist of mighty tramplings
Roll up the fore-blown manes --
A hundred leagues to leeward,
Ere yet the deep is stirred,
The groaning rollers carry
The coming of the herd!

Whose hand may grip your nostrils --
Your forelock who may hold?
E'en they that use the broads with us --
The riders bred and bold,
That spy upon our matings,
That rope us where we run --
They know the strong White Horses
From father unto son.

We breathe about their cradles,
We race their babes ashore,
We snuff against their thresholds,
We nuzzle at their door;
By day with stamping squadrons,
By night in whinnying droves,
Creep up the wise White Horses,
To call them from their loves.

And come they for your calling?
No wit of man may save.
They hear the loosed White Horses
Above their fathers' grave;
And, kin of those we crippled,
And, sons of those we slew,
Spur down the wild white riders
To school the herds anew.

What service have ye paid them,
Oh jealous steeds and strong?
Save we that throw their weaklings,
Is none dare work them wrong;
While thick around the homestead
Our snow-backed leaders graze --
A guard behind their plunder,
And a veil before their ways.

With march and countermarchings --
With weight of wheeling hosts --
Stray mob or bands embattled --
We ring the chosen coasts:
And, careless of our clamour
That bids the stranger fly,
At peace with our pickets
The wild white riders lie.

. . . .

Trust ye that curdled hollows --
Trust ye the neighing wind --
Trust ye the moaning groundswell --
Our herds are close behind!
To bray your foeman's armies --
To chill and snap his sword --
Trust ye the wild White Horses,
The Horses of the Lord!

Comments

[jessebee.livejournal.com]

Lovely! Very evocative, I could feel the wind *g*

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Thank you! *g*

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

That had a nice mix of the dreamlike and the very pragmatic indeed. I always wonder how Ray learned to ride. :-)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

So pleased, that's rather what I was going for.. *g* And yes - I wonder about Doyle riding too! We don't see a hint of Bodie riding, I don't think (though we do in photoshoot pictures). Maybe in Doyle's strange childhood there was a time... *g*

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of the theory that he learned during that 'repetitive' experience of living off a rich woman. :-)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I like it... *vbg*

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

I like that idea, yes!

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think it's easy to imagine Doyle - 1950s Derbyshire childhood and all. If you extrapolate in a sort of 'bunk off school, roam the moors, friend is from a farming family' sort of direction, anyway. These days it's all quadbikes, but even in the eighties I remember knowing farm kids who learnt to ride by being dumped on the back of a horse and just learning for themselves. And then showing all their friends :) I do remember I was just about to get my turn on one of these poor beasts when my parents said it was time to go. I was quite miffed!

So if we give Doyle family there around the fifties, and go with the impression from ITPI that either he or his parents moved around a lot and that at some stage he escaped boring stuff by heading off to cousin's farm... given all that, then it would be easy for him at least to learn to the level of bareback/manky saddle and a halter. Doubt much in the way of aids and the different bridles, though! Definitely need a stables for that. Culture clash ahead...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess I just always see Doyle as such a city boy, even if that city was Derby or any other of the places he might have grown up (judging by ItPI). I have to make a conscious leap to get from that to horseriding somehow, even though we see it in the eps. I quite like Mab's idea, mind, that he had to learn when he was "living off" that older woman... *g*

knowing farm kids who learnt to ride by being dumped on the back of a horse and just learning for themselves
And ha - that's exactly how I learned to ride when I was a kid (basically the same way I learned to bicycle, cos we didn't have either thing in my family when I was growing up). I'd go and visit mates who lived on farms, and at some point they'd let us ride their horse - you'd walk, and maybe trot, and as you got older you'd get brave enough to canter around the field... *g* Was a total culture shock when we first moved to the IOM and a friend said "I go riding with some friends on a Friday, want to come?" - well, I imagined just riding out on the beach somewhere, but it turned out to be in a covered riding school, and round and round the sawdust, and a bit of caveletti work, and the whole idea of "riding properly" rather than just getting on and working out how to stay on and get the horse to do what you needed... *g*

Doyle seems much more posh (*g* - maybe I should say proper or "correct") on a horse than I'd imagine if he just grew up being thrown on one now and then... but that's me going back to him being from a dodgy family, somehow... In theory he could as easily have had posh mates, come to that - just cos he carried a knife for the street corners doesn't mean he wasn't from a good family... but that doesn't seem to fit with so many wee things about him... and "street corners where I grew up" implies something else too... I think I put his anger down to that kind of upbringing too - tempers tend to beget tempers, I think and he's definitely got one, for all he 's so good-natured at other times!

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

Ah, grin, right - that must have been culture shock and a half!

Yes, I think BC's original remarks on background - which I found on the CD, are they online at all? - anyway, those definitely go with the city childhood. I just found myself really taken with the Derby remarks right from hearing them the first time. No idea why!

Still love the idea of a politicised family background there - old uncle Clem who has to be sat on before he recounts his part in the Kinder Scout trespass in front of young Raymond again, perhaps... :)

Long way from waves and seashores now, though, so I should stop there! And go and drowse about thundering hooves...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

anyway, those definitely go with the city childhood. I just found myself really taken with the Derby remarks right from hearing them the first time. No idea why
That sounds like you're not thinking of Derby as a city? Hmmn, according to Wiki it had 132,408 people in 1961 - not exactly London, but I reckon bit enough for Doyle to be more a city-boy than a country-boy growing up (depending entirely on what we want - there's no reason he couldn't have grown up on a farm by Derby either, I guess! But still... Derby-city-boy is what i see...who p'raps learned to ride to keep up with that older woman of his... *g*

Although I do like old Uncle Clem, and I can well imagine him in fact... Plus Doyle had to get his more thoughtful side somewhere... *g*

I shall wish you dreams of Doyle thundering across a beach to Bodie... bit like in A Beach to Walk On, come to think of it, but the other way around... *g*

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

I think I tend to conflate Derby with Derbyshire - most of the people I have known from the area are from the outlying villages, not the city itself.

Dreams have been most enjoyable, thank you!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

There are some rather lovely Derbyshire villages - I always thought it was a shame that we didn't venture to Derby itself when we had the Writing Holiday up there...

[unbelievable2.livejournal.com]

Fantastic description here. I loved the 'sloughing' of the car, and the look/feel of Doyle on the horse with the day and landscape all around him. Plus a plot! Wow, you've packed a lot into very few words, and very expertly! :))

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It was fun to write, and it actually flowed the way that writing is supposed to... well, that I reckon it's supposed to...*g* Thank you very much!

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

Is it me, or have we had a sudden rush of lads with horses? Well, okay, three, perhaps :) I am really enjoying them and particularly loved the sensations in this, the feels (ahem)... and then Bodie's sly interjection, and course he's right, and ooh... Very dreamlike, although that may partly be me reading it very very late last night.

Loved the prompt and loved the fic. Now off to learn about horses and vaulting. New one on me :)

Also, a book rec occurs to me for you. A couple in fact, all by the same author, Patricia Leitch. The Horse of the Black Loch, and the Jinny series. They weren't called YA at the time, but they probably are now. Very different from Jill Has Two Ponies and the like, full of wildness and coming to terms with scary things like death, and the importance of leaving some mysteries to mystery, not profit. Hope not too derailing, but I know you read YA, and hope you will like these!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't know - other recent Pros stories with horses? I'll have to go and scout around, by the sounds... The horse-y connection here came via milomaus rather than me thinking of the lads and horses - in fact it was only afterwards that I thought maybe one of the photoshoots with horses might have fit with it! Vaulting was new to me too - but looking it up online, there's more of it around than we might think! *g*

Dreamlike was the rhythm I was writing last night, really - but hopefully mixed in with the lads' real-worldliness enough for it to be them as well... that weird moment when an accident happens or perhaps when someone does something very risky and fast, and everything slows down enough for thoughts and thoughts and thoughts - and yet it's over in a bare blink of the eye to anyone watching... *g*

Thanks for the book rec too - d'you know the name Patricia Leitch is very familiar to me, and I wonder if I read them when I was a kid - in fact the Jinny series sounds familiar too... although looking at these covers nothing seems familiar there, so maybe I just saw her name around alot, but didn't actually read them. Either way you're right, they do look rather my thing, so I shall have to see what I can get hold of - thanks very much! (Nice to see you around, too - thoughts and wishes to you...)

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

Somewhere, somehow, I replied to this, and LJ has eaten it. I'm a bit vexed about this because the formatting was hard. Grr! I really don't have time to do it all again. So you will need to poke around on AO3, I'm afraid.

But there have been:

a longish AU by boothros in which Doyle has started again as a stable owner and Bodie meets him while looking for an outdoor job: I think there's a gorgeous vid, too, with bonus Arabians. If Wishes Were Horses.

dawnebeth's Big Bang is a Pros/Dick Francis crossover. With another vid by boothros.

loxleyprince (eyes username - I think) - ah, drat, no, she has an Ilya with white horse (found in comments to her Poldark era Bodie), not a Pros horse one.

And definitely more! But I haven't been keeping track! milomaus may have been, of course :)

[milomaus.livejournal.com]

milomaus has been a bad agent lately and not kept track of any stories at all.

She is extremly fond though of her little Maus, getting on a big horse all alone in full gallop. While the horse is galloping, too. *gg*

That's why I was totally gone, when this story turned out to include a small girl and vaulting. *gggg*
byslantedlight must be a mind reader besides her insight on the Lads.

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

Oh hee, I bet!

[boothros.livejournal.com]

My 'sudden rush of lads with horses' was entirely coincidental as I wrote 'If Wishes were Horses' on a whim and then thought to myself 'I fancy doing a vid for this', which of course I did. Then came the Box of Tricks Big Bang summaries and what was in the story I chose to do art for? Yep those Arab horses yet again.
Funnily enough, in my story, even Doyle doesn't know what prompted him to want to ride horses as a kid in Derby.
I was somewhat stunned to hear someone else mention the 'Jinny' series when you did so to me Mead. (NOT that there's any earthly thing wrong with 'Jill Has Two Ponies' of course!). I still have all those pony books and even though my older eyes can't copy with all that little text any more, I shudder to think of parting with them.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nice! A fast rescue, and just enough from Bodie and Doyle to know just exactly is going on with them.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Thank you - and I'm very glad that what's going on with Bodie and Doyle is clear, cos in my head it's always going on with Bodie and Doyle... *vbg*

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

What a gorgeous little story, thank you! I love the closeness of the lads, and how you have them (so completely in character) communicating without looking at each other... and Doyle leaping onto a horse! I always wonder about how, in apparently rough, city childhood, he managed to fit in learning to ride? I love that he does, though, and you describe it perfectly.

Ta ever so again.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you!

And yeah, I was just saying to moonlightmead above, I see him as a rough city childhood type too, so the riding always throws me, even in the eps - he looks so proper about it... I like Mab's idea, about that older woman he "lived off"... *g* But yeah - I love that he does (and drives a boat, and knows his way around a helicopter, and... *g*)

[golden-bastet.livejournal.com]

...And *that* is your vrsion of knocking out a quickie, LOL.
This is amazing! It evokes the feeling - the sense of being.there, of what Doyle felt both physicality and emotionally. Very cool.

Thanks!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hee - well, I suppose it was a relative quickie, but it still took a few hours for the number of words that it is! *g* But thank you! That's just what I was hoping would come through...yeay! *g*

[milomaus.livejournal.com]

I can't believe what you did with this!!

There is still a smile on my face, miles wide, I laughed so hard, I spilled my tea this morning.
Sorry for commenting so late, I enjoyed it so much and thought about it all day!

The pics you create in my head and the FEEL of it all, and their togetherness is so fantastic, WOW!!
Thank you!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you like it - phew! *g* Sorry about the tea, though... *vbg*

Yeay! *g*

And thank you for your inspiration - I'm so excited that I wrote fic... that I wrote!

[sagittas.livejournal.com]

I may be already biased about cars, but what a sparkling image is this "From the corner of his eye he saw the Capri sloughing across the field now that she was taken care of, as silver-white in the brilliant afternoon sun as the stallion beneath him"
And speaking of characterizations, their interaction just feels so smooth and natural.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the idea of a sparkling image - thank you! *g* And I'm so glad it rang smoothly and naturally to you - it rather did when I wrote it, which isn't always the case. Yeay! *g*

[sw33n3y.livejournal.com]

I really liked the combination of atmospheric description and action here - it painted such a vivid scene. I also enjoyed the way you used banter as a resolution to the initial drama. Nice work!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I'm so pleased it worked for you! Yeay! *g*

[dollidaydream.livejournal.com]

This is fabulous! I love your first, breathless paragraph, which you manage to make look like one long sentence with that crafty "but" in there! You really create a sense of action and movement and urgency. I love the fact that the reader is immersed in the story straight away, matching the fact that the action is in full tilt. I feel like I'm reading the end of a story and have already read the remainder that comes before. You give us enough world-building for that. I love the way the lads interact. I love the way you describe (and observe) their (on screen) body language. The dialogue is perfect! I can utterly hear the words coming out of the characters' mouths in their voices, and it's so true to their on-screen banter. Forelock/fetlock - LOL! I really love this. Thanks for much for writing it.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

What a lovely comment - thank you, I'm grinning all over! *g* And heee - the number of times I type "'but' is a conjunction, and should not normally be used..." - lucky for me fic isn't normal, eh? *g*

[ali15son.livejournal.com]

thankyou for this ..that was just what i needed ..our lads together x

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Thank you - our lads together always helps, doesn't it... *g*