The Horse and His Boy

The Horse and His Boy
Pauline Baynes

C. S. Lewis

Illustrations in this ebook appear in vibrant full colour on a full colour ebook device, and in rich black and white on all other devices.Narnia . . . where horses talk . . . where treachery is brewing . . . where destiny awaits.On a desperate journey, two runaways meet and join forces. Though they are only looking to escape their harsh and narrow lives, they soon find themselves at the center of a terrible battle. It is a battle that will decide their fate and the fate of Narnia itself.The Horse and His Boy is the third book in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia a series that has become part of the canon of classic literature, drawing readers of all ages into a magical land with unforgettable characters for over fifty years. This is a novel that stands on its own, but if you would like to return to Narnia, read Prince Caspian, the fourth book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

THE HORSE AND HIS BOY

C.S. LEWIS

Illustrated by Pauline Baynes

To David and Douglas Gresham

Contents

Cover (#u375071ba-e578-5eb6-b141-ff993ba03614)

Title Page (#u356dd354-89b9-5e94-82f3-2945be15a64a)

The Horse and His Boy

Chapter One - How Shasta Set Out on his Travels

Chapter Two - A Wayside Adventure

Chapter Three - At the Gates of Tashbaan

Chapter Four - Shasta Falls in with the Narnians

Chapter Five - Prince Corin

Chapter Six - Shasta among the Tombs

Chapter Seven - Aravis in Tashbaan

Chapter Eight - In the House of the Tisroc

Chapter Nine - Across the Desert

Chapter Ten - The Hermit of the Southern March

Chapter Eleven - The Unwelcome Fellow Traveller

Chapter Twelve - Shasta in Narnia

Chapter Thirteen - The Fight at Anvard

Chapter Fourteen - How Bree Became a Wiser Horse

Chapter Fifteen - Rabadash the Ridiculous

Prince Caspian (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author

Also by Author

Copyright

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

THE HORSE AND HIS BOY

A surprising friendship leads to a wild gallop north for Narnia... and freedom.

NARNIA . . . where horses talk and lions roam the desert . . . where four unlikely companions unite to save a kingdom.

Just when the boy Shasta is about to be sold into slavery, he makes a surprising friend – a talking horse! The two decide to run away north, to the land of Narnia. On the way they meet two other travellers as unusual as themselves. When they discover an evil plot to invade and conquer Narnia, the four companions’ escape to freedom becomes a race against time and peril to save themselves and everything they have come to love.

Chapter One

How Shasta Set Out on his Travels

This is the story of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Narnia and his brother and his two sisters were King and Queens under him.

In those days, far south in Calormen on a little creek of the sea, there lived a poor fisherman called Arsheesh, and with him there lived a boy who called him Father. The boy’s name was Shasta. On most days Arsheesh went out in his boat to fish in the morning, and in the afternoon he harnessed his donkey to a cart and loaded the cart with fish and went a mile or so southward to the village to sell it. If it had sold well he would come home in a moderately good temper and say nothing to Shasta, but if it had sold badly he would find fault with him and perhaps beat him. There was always something to find fault with for Shasta had plenty of work to do, mending and washing the nets, cooking the supper, and cleaning the cottage in which they both lived.

Shasta was not at all interested in anything that lay south of his home because he had once or twice been to the village with Arsheesh and he knew that there was nothing very interesting there. In the village he only met other men who were just like his father – men with long, dirty robes, and wooden shoes turned up at the toe, and turbans on their heads, and beards, talking to one another very slowly about things that sounded dull. But he was very interested in everything that lay to the North because no one ever went that way and he was never allowed to go there himself. When he was sitting out of doors mending the nets, and all alone, he would often look eagerly to the North. One could see nothing but a grassy slope running up to a level ridge and beyond that the sky with perhaps a few birds in it.

Sometimes if Arsheesh was there Shasta would say, “O my Father, what is there beyond the hill?” And then if the fisherman was in a bad temper he would box Shasta’s ears and tell him to attend to his work. Or if he was in a peaceable mood he would say, “O my son, do not allow your mind to be distracted by idle questions. For one of the poets has said, ‘Application to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly towards the rock of indigence’.”

Shasta thought that beyond the hill there must be some delightful secret which his father wished to hide from him. In reality, however, the fisherman talked like this because he didn’t know what lay to the North. Neither did he care. He had a very practical mind.

One day there came from the South a stranger who was unlike any man that Shasta had seen before. He rode upon a strong dappled horse with flowing mane and tail, and his stirrups and bridle were inlaid with silver. The spike of a helmet projected from the middle of his silken turban and he wore a shirt of chain mail. By his side hung a curving scimitar; a round shield studded with bosses of brass hung at his back, and his right hand grasped a lance. His face was dark, but this did not surprise Shasta because all the people of Calormen are like that; what did surprise him was the man’s beard which was dyed crimson, and curled and gleaming with scented oil. But Arsheesh knew by the gold on the stranger’s bare arm that he was a Tarkaan or great lord, and he bowed kneeling before him till his beard touched the earth, and made signs to Shasta to kneel also.

The stranger demanded hospitality for the night which of course the fisherman dared not refuse. All the best they had was set before the Tarkaan for supper (and he didn’t think much of it) and Shasta, as always happened when the fisherman had company, was given a hunk of bread and turned out of the cottage. On these occasions he usually slept with the donkey in its little thatched stable. But it was much too early to go to sleep yet, and Shasta, who had never learned that it is wrong to listen behind doors, sat down with his ear to a crack in the wooden wall of the cottage to hear what the grown-ups were talking about. And this is what he heard:

“And now, O my host,” said the Tarkaan, “I have a mind to buy that boy of yours.”

“O my master,” replied the fisherman (and Shasta knew by the wheedling tone the greedy look that was probably coming into his face as he said it), “what price could induce your servant, poor though he is, to sell into slavery his only child and his own flesh? Has not one of the poets said, ‘Natural affection is stronger than soup and offspring more precious than carbuncles’?”

“It is even so,” replied the guest dryly. “But another poet has likewise said, ‘He who attempts to deceive the judicious is already baring his own back for the scourge’. Do not load your aged mouth with falsehoods. This boy is manifestly no son of yours, for your cheek is as black as mine but the boy is fair and white like the accursed but beautiful barbarians who inhabit the remote North.”

“How well it was said,” answered the fisherman, “that Swords can be kept off with shields but the Eye of Wisdom pierces through every defence! Know then, O my formidable guest, that because of my extreme poverty I have never married and have no child. But in that same year in which the Tisroc (may he live for ever) began his august and beneficent reign, on a night when the moon was at her full, it pleased the gods to deprive me of my sleep. Therefore I arose from my bed in this hovel and went forth to the beach to refresh myself with looking upon the water and the moon and breathing the cool air. And presently I heard a noise as of oars coming to me across the water and then, as it were, a weak cry. And shortly after, the tide brought to the land a little boat in which there was nothing but a man lean with extreme hunger and thirst who seemed to have died but a few moments before (for he was still warm), and an empty water-skin, and a child, still living. ‘Doubtless,’ said I, ‘these unfortunates have escaped from the wreck of a great ship, but by the admirable designs of the gods, the elder has starved himself to keep the child alive and has perished in sight of land.’ Accordingly, remembering how the gods never fail to reward those who befriend the destitute, and being moved by compassion (for your servant is a man of tender heart)—”

“Leave out all these idle words in your own praise,” interrupted the Tarkaan. “It is enough to know that you took the child – and have had ten times the worth of his daily bread out of him in labour, as anyone can see. And now tell me at once what price you put on him, for I am wearied with your loquacity.”