The Lost Prince--A Ponygirl Epic

CHAPTER TWO—THE STABLEBOY

Leaving the reins in the carriage Daka grabbed the bit of the nearest mount and led the team around the building to the stable's wide double doors. They stepped in unison even for him, stopping at the slightest pressure.

He opened the stable doors, then unhitched the team from the carriage's T-bar one at a time. It was a connection of a type he hadn't seen before, simple yet sturdy. Each pony had a steel ring set into its harness in the center of its back. At the corners of the T-bar were springloaded steel clips that hooked onto the harness rings. Very simple, yet strong.

The carriage rolled so smoothly on its bearings it took his breath away -- he almost fell trying to pull it into the stable, expecting more resistance. He found he could guide the carriage with two fingers, and even coated in gritty road dust from the long journey the wheels turned soundlessly. He parked it in a corner of the stable and chocked a wheel with a wood block, then went back outside to collect the ponies.

After a lifetime spent as a stablehand Daka, consciously or not, considered himself something of an expert on ponies. The two before him were like none he'd ever seen before, although he'd heard stories.

Most teams that worked the Wash were lean and dark and stringy with muscle, built for long hauls through the desert heat. Most were mixed stock or bred from ponies of dubious quality to begin with, overworked, underfed, and poorly trained (if at all). As a rule they were painfully thin and covered with the gritty dust that blew incessantly across the desolate flatland. The Wash was not a rich land by any means or measure, and its residents had to make do with what was at hand. Daka more than a few times had to deal with first generation ponies broken (more or less) to the bit. They'd been captured and put to work, or sold into the bit to pay off a debt. They were usually nothing but trouble, but he never had a sharp word for them – he didn't know how they managed it, pulling a wagon through the Wash. He suspected many couldn't, and died from the heat.

These two were of the finest stock he'd ever seen, at least tenth generation he was sure (he'd never seen anything higher than purebred sixth), raised, trained, and bred to the bit. They weren't desert ponies, thin and burned the color of stained wood, that much he'd seen when they were still a quarter mile out. Their legs were freakishly thick with muscle, totally out of proportion to their bodies, and while they were lean they couldn't come close to the veined stringiness of true desert runners. Even though their legs were more muscular than any he'd seen, he still didn't think they were broadmares. Even though he'd never seen one, he'd heard stories about the high-gen draws, about how big they now were, and these two just didn't have the bulk. Sprinters, perhaps, or a racing team. If they had, in fact, done the trip from JoTown in less than four hours, that confirmed Daka's suspicions. They'd been panting and sweating, sure, but not nearly as much as they should have been. The teams he regularly saw would have been exhausted after such a run, cramping up, but he suspected it was just the latest leg for these ponies in a journey that had begun far to the east of JoTown.

As he studied them he wondered perhaps if they were sisters. They were identical in every way, so much so that he worried about mixing them up. Left should stay on the left when he rehitched them to the carriage. Switching sides might confuse them or slow them down, depending on how they'd been trained.

After a minute's study, Daka noticed that the right one's ownership mark was further down inside the hollow of its left buttock. It was a symbol he didn't recognize, flames inside of a circle about the size of his palm. He suddenly realized their marks were tattoos, not brands. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen that before, a sure sign the ponies came from wealth. For his own purposes he began to think of them as High and Low.

While he was studying their tattoos Low began to get a little restless, shifting her weight back and forth and looking at him with her big brown eyes. He knew immediately what was going on and led her a few steps from the stable door. She wasted no time, squatting and quickly defecating two small stools into the dirt. They were small and hard and nearly black to Daka's eye, indicating a steady diet of good quality PonyMix. He kicked dirt over them and made a mental note to shovel the dung up later. They stored it in a pile and composted it, later using the compost to fertilize the garden.

Daka led the two highbred mounts into a cleaning stall by the reins still hooked to their bits. He unhooked the reins and draped them over the shoulder-high wall. The cleaning stall was cinderblock walls covered with ceramic tile, and a concrete floor with a drain in the center. Big enough to fit two ponies side by side with room for him to move around without banging into the walls. Inside, he could smell their sweaty musk, and the heat coming off their bodies.

The tie bar was already attached to the pulleys, so Daka ran the chain hand over hand until the bar rose up to eye level. He unhooked High first, unbuckling the wide strap than ran across her collarbones and kept the armsleeve from slipping off. Once the strap was undone all he had to do was loosen the laces at the base of her neck and the sleeve holding High's arms slipped right off. Her wrists were cuffed together behind her back, tucked up between her shoulder blades, the backs of her hands together. The cuffs were simple bands of leathyr, and more traditional than necessary – once the armsleeve was in place her hands weren't going anywhere, cuffed or not. Daka unhooked them, unfolded her arms, then brought them around in front of her and hooked her wrists to the steel bar hanging before her. She stood docilely by as he freed her arms and then resecured them, but then of course he would have been astounded if she hadn't – only first generation ponies ever thought to struggle. Some of the captured mounts the nomads brought through . . . Daka shook his head at the memory. Some actually tried to talk to him, begged him to release them. If their owners heard the result usually was a beating, or worse. He'd learned never to unhook the bit of any mare that looked fresh to the life.

He quickly did the same for Low, removing her armsleeve and hooking her to the bar, then cranked the bar up until their arms were fully outstretched. The two were side by side a foot and a half apart, and stared blankly at the pitted wall of the stable. He didn't know if it was fatigue or training that kept them from paying him much attention.

Daka examined the armsleeves with curiosity. At first glance they seemed to be just the standard black leathyr pony gear, but his fingers told him that it wasn't leathyr, at least not the type he was used to seeing. It was thinner, and seemed stronger. It took a year before the acidic ponysweat started pitting standard leathyr. He was sure this leathyr would last longer.

He kept their gear separate in case they wore slightly different sizes. Next he unlaced the steel reinforced corsets with the T-bar rings in back, noticing how perfectly they fit. He knew now that the gear was custom made for these individual mounts. The corsets were made from the same near-leathyr, reinforced with contoured inch-wide vertical steel strips, what used to be called "boning". Since the corsets fit so snugly the laces didn't have to be nearly so tight. Daka appreciated the workmanship, and not just because it would make his job easier when it came time to lace them back up. Their stomachs when revealed were flat walls of muscle, slightly concave from a lifetime spent in corset.

Next he unbuckled the stiff collars that kept the mounts' heads up, and began unlacing High's right hoofboot. They were unremarkable in appearance, just the standard heel-less style, knee high, with a protective shield protruding upward to protect the knee, but when Daka pulled the first one off he was surprised at its weight. It was so light! Half that of a standard boot.

He turned it over and pressed a thumbnail against the inch-thick sole. There was the right amount of give, but it wasn't the standard rubber. Much lighter, perhaps a racing boot, but it seemed to be holding up on their trek across the Wash just fine. Daka unlaced the other boot to below High's calf and pulled it off also. She flexed her toes and wiggled her feet in relief. They were pink and sweaty, and he wondered if taking the boots off had been a good idea. What if their feet swelled up? It could happen, especially if they weren't used to long runs in such heat. Getting the boots back on then would be close to impossible – he knew firsthand about that.

The muscles of High's legs were taut and almost trembling. He put a palm against her thigh, evaluating, finally deciding the ponies were just dangerously dehydrated. Her feet were in fine shape, no blisters at all, and any worries he had about them swelling vanished.

Daka eyed High's legs with an expert's authority. Her calf muscles were high and round, shapely and clearly defined. Up close her thighs were just as massive as they'd seemed as she'd trotted up the road, the biggest he'd ever seen. His seemed twig-like in comparison. Her buttocks were as high and round as some black-skinned ponies he'd worked on, and hard enough to crack walnuts between them with one flex.

He deftly unlaced and pulled Low's boots off, finding they were made of the same unusual material. In bare feet the ponies were only a few inches taller than he was, but he was taller than most men. Of course, they were standing on the balls of their feet, as if they were still wearing their contoured heel-less hoofboots. He supposed if he kept them out of their boots long enough, perhaps three or four days, they might sink down to their heels, but he'd never seen it. Ponies never stayed that long at the depot. In their boots they were a good head taller than he, another sign they came from good stock. Longer legs meant a longer stride, and ponies were bred for a purpose.

Finally he unhooked their headgear, gently removing the rubber coated metal bits. While he hunted up a bucket, bar of soap, and a soft-bristled brush the ponygirls worked their jaws and licked their dry lips. Their teeth were bright white and perfectly even. Daka didn't know what to make of that – usually only young ponies had good teeth, as the bit tended to spread and grind down the molars and incisors, but these girls obviously had been in harness awhile. Three-year-olds was what he'd guessed before, and hadn't seen anything so far to change his opinion. A pony's age was calculated from the time it became physically mature, reached its full height -- that was the point at which ponies were generally considered capable of work, even though they were put to task as soon as they could walk in most cases. Five- to ten-year-old ponies were usually considered the most desirable, as they had they right combination of strength, experience, and endurance. Most fifteen-year-olds had already lost a step or two, and so went down in value and desirability. Daka wasn't as confident in his guess as to the age of the mounts as he might otherwise have been. These two looked like three-year-olds in the face, but they ran like ten-year-olds.

The water bottle was suspended from a steel arm in the corner. Daka swung it over to the cleaning stall and lowered it so High could reach it. It was equipped with a bite valve, and she lost no time wrapping her lips around the rubber-tipped steel drinking tube. She thirstily sucked down the cool water in huge gulps.

"Not too fast, you don't want to cramp up," Daka admonished her. He undid the black strings restraining both their blond manes, then grabbed the rubber hose. It was hooked up to a thirty gallon gravity-feed tank in the rafter that Daka had topped off that morning. He removed his dusty robe and kicked off his sandals, nude but for a loincloth.

Aiming the nozzle Daka squeezed the trigger and began rinsing off Low. As the cool water splashed over her hot skin she shivered and gooseflesh rose over her whole body. Some splashed onto her teammate, who shivered also but never stopped drinking. Low's big nipples knotted up under the cold water. Brown water began trickling into the drain.

When she was good and drenched Daka dropped the hose, lathered up his hands with the bar of soap, and started with her hair. Since they were heading back out he only lathered it once, making sure to rinse it thoroughly. Then he rubbed the soap onto the brush until its soft bristles were good and foamy and began scrubbing the dirt out of the ponygirl's skin. He'd stop every few minutes and relather the brush, but the mounts didn't require much scrubbing. Mostly it was just sweat and churned up road dust caked on their legs. As it ran off them down the drain he saw they were much paler than the ponies he was used to. Their shoulders even looked a bit red from the sun under their light brown tans.

It wasn't until he was face to face with them that he realized how large their breasts were. Most mounts in the Wash had small breasts if they had any, usually burned brown from the sun, pancaked flat and stretchmarked from the constant bouncing. These ponies' breasts were not only large, they were firm as well. As he ran the brush over them he was surprised at their bounce. They barely folded over at all, and were big enough that he wasn't sure he'd be able to reach around one and have his fingertips touch. He didn't remember seeing them bouncing wildly as the carriage drew close, and with their firmness he could see why. Another sign they were young. He became more confident in his guess at their age. Their broad, sloping breast-tops were only lightly tanned, with nipples just half a shade darker than the rest of the breast.

Both High's and Low's nipples sported the traditional gold rings of upper class mounts. The rings had the normal two inch inner diameter and were thick as pencils. Real gold, too, at least as far as Daka could tell. The weight hadn't made their nipples sag at all. Most ponyrings were a little thinner in gauge, but even so usually caused ring bulge, a permanent enlargement of the nipples. These mounts had it, but not to the extent of some that he'd seen.

Low's legs were hot and hard as stone. He used the brush to clean them thoroughly, her feet too, before using a wet rag to get between her toes and the folds between her thighs. They were both bignoses – among the higher gen ponies, it was fairly common to find the tiny nub between their legs had grown to the size of the end of a big man's thumb. These ponies' were half again as large, and they weren't even engorged. Surrounded by its fleshy hood such an oversized nub looked like nothing so much as another nose between the pony's thighs. Bignose was his private nickname for them, not that he saw too many in the Wash's desolate depths.

The few upper class mounts he'd seen had belled nipple rings that jangled as they ran, but these two didn't. However, there were wear marks on the bottom of Low's rings, like the bells there had been removed. From their rosebuds they were no strangers to tailplugs either, but they'd apparently gone without them this trip. Big ones, too, if he was any judge. He didn't see any sense in using the purely decorative extravagances on working mounts, especially in the Wash where life was hard enough, but all the royal racing mounts wore them, so . . . Running with a tailplug in place quickly calloused and enlarged the muscle ring on a pony. The longer they wore one the bigger and more pronounced their rosebud got, even at rest. Some ponies never got used to running with one, and it slowed them down. On long journeys, such as the one he suspected his new charges were taking, it made much more sense to run the ponies bareback.

Daka used the soapy rag to scrub Low's hard buttocks and between her legs. High had finished with the water bottle and as he knelt behind her teammate he watched the pony piss on the floor. The urine was dark yellow, almost orange, sure sign they'd needed a water stop.

He rinsed the last of the soap off Low and then swung the water bottle over so she could take a drink. Almost immediately she released the contents of her bladder, and Daka sprayed her legs off again as soon as she finished.

As he began expertly lathering up the second mount's blonde mane the green eyed visitor, who'd been silently watching him for several minutes, glided forward.