Kevin's Watch

Donaldson uses horses a lot in his fiction, although in the first series horses were considered rare and there are no Ranyhyn in the second.

My ancestors were horsemen. Well my mother's side has Arabic blood.and we are Persians-- enough said.

My father's side were Norman conquerors, who used horses to their great advantage.

Yet I have only ridden a horse as a tourist, guided by someone holding the reigns.

I had an opportunity to change this during a sojourn at a ranch in Wyoming, but the animal and I never bonded.

Perhaps if it had been a different horse things would have been different. I don't know.

Maybe I'm just bad with horses.

TC was bad with horses too LZ so don't feel to bad about it. Plus the learning of 'horsemanship' is a slow thing, not a million miles from learning to drive a car - but much longer. To 'bond' with horses is not really something you do. You first learn to ride them, then to handle them and last of all to understand them. If ever you can be said to bond with them (and I doubt the expression has meaning in the understood sense) it is at this point it might happen - and only then with a particular individual horse who you know very well. What you felt was a healthy beginners wariness of an animal that could pretty easily kill you.

You live in New Mexico and you don't know how to ride!

I'm trying to think of other SRD writings with horses-Reave the Just had a unique bond with his horse, but the horses in Mordant's need (except for maybe Geraden's & Terisa's in one particular scene) were, pretty much, utilitarian...