The Horse

THE HORSE AND HIS BOY
BY
C.S. LEWIS
v1.0 (April 2nd 2000) If you find and correct errors in this text, please update the version number by 0.1
and redistribute.
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 sisterswere 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 orso 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 veryslowly 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 perhapsa few birds in it.
Sometimes if Arsheesh was there Shasta would say, "O my Father, what is there beyond that 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 tobusiness 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 verypractical 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 withsilver. 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 withbosses 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 kneelingbefore 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....