Alexi wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me warmly. Ponies or no ponies, this was an exquisite moment.

“Dmitri, I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. Ah, such a beautiful deep voice, and the same delicate dark skin. “So very glad. You will allow me to go down to the village with you.”

“Oh, most certainly,” I said, holding him to my heart. “Alexi, you look as fit and happy as you were the day we rode out of here.” Indeed he did. His auburn hair was long, curling, and beautifully groomed, and his face was fresh and rested and his dark eyes brilliantly clear. He was attired in burgundy velvet, a short tunic and leggings and boots, and he wore a great gold chain around his neck with a disk on it. There was writing on the disk. I knew there would be time for him to explain its significance to me.

“Come on, let’s go. We can talk on the way,” Alexi said. “You look positively dazed, my friend. This chariot was made specially by King Laurent in the fashion of olden times.” He gestured to it, and indeed it was grand. “I believe it’s called a quadriga.”

The silent grooms were looking us over furtively, but their eyes were mainly fixed anxiously on the sixteen ponies.

“Perhaps you’d like to see the ponies first, Prince,” said the Captain, but it was said in a cautious respectful voice, and once again, I heard the old voice behind it, the voice that had commanded me to the village stables when I’d returned from the sultanate. “The Queen wants all that exotic softness cleaned away,” he’d said back then. So firm, so quick with the strap.

I forced myself to look into his blue eyes. “Yes, I do want to see them,” I said. He was still a striking man, not the youthful golden god he’d seemed in those days, yet perhaps more powerful, more intriguing.

My stomach felt weak, but the desire in me was rising and when that happens I feel nothing in my head or stomach.

We walked slowly towards the team. It was four across and four rows in length, all strongly built men, gorgeous men with muscles oiled and gleaming, clearly matched for beauty and size, all of the same impressive height, and even their luxuriant hair was trimmed identically at the back of the neck and combed back out of their faces. Ah, a chariot for a team of four across, and now I understood the word “quadriga.”

Never in all my time in the village, pulling wagons or carts, or even the occasional fancy coach, had I ever seen a team of men of this size or so lavishly ornamented. I was utterly dazzled. I saw gold and scarlet everywhere I looked, and jewels sparkling in the afternoon sunlight.

We’d been lowly beings, the work ponies of the village. These were ponies of a royal equipage. Maybe the pretty girls of the mayor’s small stable had been so turned out, but never us, except in some meager fashion on race days.

Every male stood proud and tall, harnessed in bright gold-and-scarlet decorated leather, with gold blinders at the sides of his eyes, gold lacings covering his arms as they were folded behind his back, and a gleaming gold band around his forehead.

Even the anal plugs were gold with the long thick horse’s-hair tail dyed red, and gold were the boots that ran halfway up the calf of each steed, with red jeweled buttons and loops. And added to that were bits of gold in each mouth, and the gilded reins that ran back to the chariot.

Countless adornments enhanced the harnessing and straps everywhere that I looked, tiny gold bells dripping everywhere, and gold and jeweled buckles and rosettes decorating all connective links, and the straps that ran over the shoulders and down between the legs, anchoring the butt-plug horse tails and binding them to the tight lacings that bound the erect cocks and shining oiled scrotum of each pony. How I remembered the feel of all this, the delicious snugness.

Even the hair of the ponies was dusted with gold, and their pubic hair as well. And the blinders, I saw now, were not solid gold at all, but stiff coverings of gold silk for the eyes, through which I could easily see the eyes staring forward, which meant that the ponies could see where they were going. And they could see me studying them, though they didn’t dare to look at me.

Only the four at the very head of the team lacked these blinders. As I stood before them, I felt my own cock stirring in my trousers, and I wondered if my face was visibly burning. I was grateful to be well hidden under my loose Russian garb. There was something overwhelming about the sheer size of the team. Sixteen proud ponies tethered to one chariot, and how many ponies might there be in all?

“Now, this is the King’s own team,” said Alexi. “That’s why you see the gold and scarlet everywhere, because these are the Court’s colors.”

“This is exquisite work,” I said. “I’ve never even imagined anything like it.” It was painted as well as carved leather, much of it. “But why the blinders for all except the first row?”

“These are the King’s favorites,” said the Captain as Prince Alexi deferred to him for the answer. “They don’t need blinders to calm them down. This is Caspian, Bastian, Throck, and Carnell. They are always at the front of the King’s team, and well experienced already and eager and frisky.”

As I expected, the ponies gloried silently in this praise, tossing their heads, making tiny gold bells all along their harnesses jingle, and shifting in their harnesses, not struggling, no, but shifting and leaning on one horseshoed boot and then the other. I could hear the horseshoes striking the stones. There wasn’t a tear on any of the faces of these four mounts and they stared straight forward. Only Throck, the darkest of all with his golden-brown hair, looked faintly bored, eyes roving the blue sky overhead, but he was essentially expressionless.

Slowly, unable to resist, I walked back and forth in front of them and studied them one by one. Their calf and thigh muscles were powerful. I remembered that, the sheer strength I developed as a pony.

The Captain had thought it such a crude debasement when he’d brought me to the stables. Yes, to have all the softness of the sultanate scrubbed away, as the Queen thought, but I had absolutely loved it. Obeying, submitting, that is what I’d found hard in my service under Queen Eleanor, and that is what I’d learned in the sultanate. But being harnessed, with one’s arms bound tight to one’s back, with a bit in my mouth? That had made everything profoundly simple. And if only I’d been allowed a set of gold silk blinders, covering my eyes, covering my gaze, covering my tears, that would have made it all even easier. I’d loved being a pony. One didn’t have to think, one didn’t have to submit. It was all done for me.

As I inspected these men now, I could see they loved it. Nipples were painted in gold, and even their lips stretched over the gold bits, and in their navels were bright red garnets—yes, red and gold—and never once, any more than soldiers at attention, did they acknowledge my inspecting gaze.

“Now, this is Caspian,” said the Captain embracing the pony nearest him with his right arm, and there was the old affection he’d showed to us so often, embracing us, crude as we were. “The King never rides out with a team without Caspian or Bastian.” And Caspian shivered all over as though he loved it, his blond hair gleaming with the dusted gold. Even his eyelashes were tinged with gold. Bastian was also fair, though his hair was darker and he had a thick fleece of chest hair as well, surrounding his gilded nipples and jeweled navel. He too seemed supremely happy and eager to run, pawing the ground in a stylized way that I’d learned so well long ago.

The Captain kissed Caspian’s face and I could see Caspian smile in spite of the bit, and then the Captain’s large hand, the hand that had struck me so many times, closed over Caspian’s right buttock and squeezed it hard.

Only now did the waiting grooms, all young men, with those straps in their hands, look a little restless.

“And you’ll notice that all have been well paddled to make their pretty hindquarters blush,” said the Captain in a smooth slow voice. Tentative, gauging my reaction.

“Yes, I see that.” I walked back slowly along the row.

They were all red indeed, and their thighs had been spanked as well.

“That’s how the King demands it,” said Alexi. “Ponies are under strict discipline. I believe all are strapped every morning and evening, regardless of how they perform.”

“It keeps them in condition,” said the Captain. Again, his voice was gentle, not that commanding voice of old, but I knew that voice still lived in him, like a lion ready to spring. I could feel it.

“Now this second set of four,” said Alexi. “These too are dedicated ponies like Caspian and the others, are they not?”

“Yes, absolutely,” said the Captain. “The King loves them. But when we get now to this third row, well, these are Punished Ponies, little boys who have been placed in the King’s team to learn humility and dignity. And here you’ll see the wet eyes and faces. This fourth row are very bad little boys, boys who’ve only just worked themselves up to the last row of the King’s teams—the King has several teams—after having pulled refuse carts in the village.”

Refuse carts. Yes, those I recalled very well.

The Captain’s hand went out again, to squeeze the backside of one comely blond-haired boy who was obviously struggling to conceal his sobs. Why had I not seen this earlier? The Captain had a napkin out to blot the boy’s cheeks. The soft sound of the muffled sobs ignited my blood.