As Hakkon had stated, the tribute was very generous this year—five horses more than were actually required. Ten of the horses were Chargers, ten were Fleetfoots, and ten were Sweetfoots, and leading them all were the two False Golds. The Emperor did enjoy horse races, and of course he enjoyed always winning, so one third of the tribute was always in Fleetfoots. Kordas had cleared out the general stable to put them all in one place for the convenience of seeing that they were in top condition, their hooves were trimmed, and they were properly shod. This was not an easy task, since the False Golds, the Fleetfoots, and the Chargers were all stallions. Mature stallions. Fortunately, they were also all well trained, or things could have gotten chaotic or worse.

The Fleetfoots pretty much had to be stallions; there is no point in racing a horse you couldn’t send out to stud if he was a winner. And the Emperor’s dunderheaded idiot Knights of the Throne would refuse to ride a mare or a gelding. This made absolutely no sense at all, of course. If Kordas had been an enemy commander, one of his first moves would be to send a loose, wild mare in heat out onto the battlefield as soon as the Knights put in an appearance, but in the Empire, when masculine ego came into play, logic flew right out the window.

The only reason the entire yearly undertaking didn’t descend immediately into chaos was that there were no mares in the herd. Since the Emperor had never expressed a preference for the gender of the Sweetfoots, the Duchy always sent geldings. There had never been an objection, so he saw no reason to change that now.

Merrin’s spies were bumbling around the place like fat flies, standing out by always being in the way, until Grim got sick of them and put them all to cleaning stalls. Two of them vanished as soon as Grim turned his back, and the third looked thoroughly miserable, which cheered Kordas up no end.

But he should have realized that extreme interest meant that something was going on, other than Merrin making daily reports. What that something was, he discovered when at last the herd got put into harness and he and Grim sorted them into their “strings” for the trip.