Becoming visibly more impatient, he repeated contemptuously to Si'Wren,
"I said, What is this talk we hear from our captives of a great flood?
Answer me!"
Still Si'Wren said nothing.
The great warrior fumed silently, and exhaled audibly before continuing.
"Just as I thought! Too cowardly to speak. The only flood I see," he gestured contemptuously at the red-stained figures of Si'Wren and her stallion, with his white-spattered and foam-flecked, blood-streaked forequarters, "is the blood of our enemies!"
He waited, and then added impatiently, "Well? What have you to say?"
Suffering increasingly from shock and exhaustion from her wound and the hard ride, Si'Wren's face remained unreadable, and her eyes seemed somehow not to see him at all, even as she regarded him steadily.
Suddenly Kadrug raised his spear and shook it menacingly in Si'Wren's direction. Si'Wren remained frozen, trembling greatly, and when he made a fierce, menacing expression of hideous anger, her eyes widened, but she still remained immobile.
Then, tilting his hoary head back in an imperious look of emboldened masculine hauteur, Kadrug lifted his reins and prodded his horse once with his heels, starting the animal slowly towards her.
At last, Si'Wren moved. Motivated by fear of capture—and worse, she jerked sharply back on her left rein and kicked smartly with her left heel into his still-heaving flank. The black exploded into action, pivoting around towards the unseen bank of the river as Si'Wren dug into his sides with her heels and reached back at the same time to strike her horse's rump a quick sharp slap.
The black neighed and surged powerfully beneath her like a living thing of fire and iron, surging toward the edge of the drop-off in a mighty lunge until the ground suddenly fell away beneath his pounding hooves and he had hurled them both far out into the air, high above the river, rider and horse caught in a terrible rush of the wind of their falling.