It was nothing that he had known the band only since morning.

They were his kind, they were his people, they had accepted his rule; and now he was emptyhearted, a king without a people.

The grey mare, the fleetest and the wisest of them all, remained; but she was only a reminder of his vanished glory.
Remembering how Cordova had been served, might he not find a way of harming those men even as they had harmed him?
He slackened to a trot and finally halted.

His companion kept on until he neighed.

Then she came obediently enough but swinging her head up and down to indicate her intense disapproval of this halt.