Tugarin

Location: Dawn Stables, late evening.
Time: First day after arrival. *

• The clatter of hooves on the wooden floor echoed, drowning out even the sound of the rain outside. A heavy, staccato sound—not a rhythmic step, but the nervous pounding of a caged animal.

Tugarin stood in the far corner of the stall. His large head was bowed low, his nostrils flaring, noisily inhaling air saturated with the scent of sawdust, hay, and... someone else's presence. Every second, his body trembled. It wasn't the tremor of fear—it was the tension of steel before a blow.

He was beautiful in that terrifying, wild way that can't be washed away with a brush or hidden by a horse blanket. His iron-gray coat, streaked with dark tan marks, his sides sunken, but with steely muscles rolling beneath the skin. His mane—a tangled, stiff felt, tangled with burrs and the gray dust of the roads. And his eyes... His eyes were black as the night sky, and there was neither hope nor submission in them. Only cold, animalistic malice and a readiness to kill.

When the man stepped forward, Tugarin didn't neigh. He hissed. A strange, low sound, more like a dog's growl, erupted from his throat. He slammed his hoof against the wall so hard that the boards shook, revealing a white stripe of sclera in his eye.

He came from the slaughterhouse. He knows what a sharp knife and the smell of blood are. He knows what a merciless lash is. And this man before him is just another warden who will try to break him with a whip.

Tugarin turned his back to the bars, flattened his ears—thinner than those of ordinary horses, almost wolf-like—and froze. His posture read, "Come here. I'm waiting. We'll see which of us tires first."