Oh, [i]Xristos[/i]. Now you've done it!

Apricot sets his heels in. He's seen enough. The sweet salt is on offer and he will not take a single step until he has received his due. Blasted beast! Idiot girl! That stuff must have come all the way from Arabia in the pockets of a pilgrim who knew better than to drag holy relics, and might have paid for a fine dagger! To give it to a horse!? In front of [i]her[/i] horse!? Where in this blasted, foggy island was she supposed to find [i]sugar!?[/i]

Suffice it to say, she and Apricot were not destined to get along today. He had his demands and she was too impoverished to meet them even if they had been reasonable. Knight and steed lock eyes. He knows he will have no profit from this, and yet he stamps his foot for the principle of the thing mattered.

[Undertake great labour: [b]9[/b]]

There were no negotiations. They both knew they were past that. He had his demands - assault Liana from behind like a brigand and rifle through her pockets for spare sugar. She had the state of her soul in the face of her impending death preventing her. 

So it came to strength once more.

Apricot was an unusually large and strong horse - but he had to be, for Robena was an unusually large and strong woman. He had mass and bulk on his side but she had a lower center of gravity and boots that gripped better on the slippery stone, along with the low cunning to spill water from his trough to make the ground more slippery still. The reins were useless here - if they were the point of contact between the strength of knight and horse they'd snap in no time. Instead she gripped him in a headlock and [i]hauled[/i] as he did his best to bite her. It was hard going, and at one time he got his teeth around her gauntlet and left dents in the steel. But after a morning of sweating and straining and doing her best to keep her vocabulary Xristian, at last she pulls Apricot into the daylight. Immediately his stomach got the better of him and he gave up the struggle to go and chew on the grass by the side of the path while Robena wheezed for breath.

Bastard horse.