Death's-head snippet

Someone suggested to me that Death's-head should find a mate.  Actually, I'm thought of that.  Here it is:

Several days later, Jame went out in search of Death’s-head.  The rathorn colt hadn’t been seen since their return to Tagmeth and she was worried, given how hard the ride south had been.  Moreover, recently her blood-link with him had been unusually chaotic.  She had wondered before how stable he was considering all of the times, accidentally on purpose, he had tried to kill her. What was wrong with him now?
Behind her, likewise, she left a keep in disarray.  Rush had dispatched his Kendar to the gates already opened except for the one leading to the oasis, which she had forbidden.  Rush had scowled at that. 
“My lord said that all doors would be open to me.”
“I doubt if those were his exact words.  This is my keep.  I determine what happens here.”
“Humph.  He is your lord as well as mine.  Who are you to deny him?”
“And you, of course, speak for the entire Kencyrath.” 
Such sarcasm, she suspected, was lost on this diminutive Kendar.  One said that, but actually he was bigger than she was and moreover tended to balance on his toes when they talked, the better to loom over her.  On the last of these occasions, Brier had come up and put him in her own intimidating shade.  Jame was beginning to hope that Brier meant what she had said at Gothregor about accepting her, Highborn or not.  She would trade any amount of aggravation for that.
Now here she was, on the top cliff above the keep, on her stomach, having crawled to this vantage point under tangled boughs.  To the north, the Silver roared down the ravine from the escarpment, throwing up a spray that, even at this distance, flecked her face.  Below, the river frothed southward.  In between was Tagmeth on its tear-drop of an island.  Her bond to the rathorn had brought her here.  Where was he?
The branches behind her rustled.  Something snuffled.  Before she could edge away from the drop, her boot was seized and she was jerked backward.
Jame twisted over onto her back and lashed out with her free foot. 
The first time, it tangled in undergrowth. 
The second, it made contact, answered by an enraged snort. 
One jerk more and she was out in the open, looking up into a pair of furious red eyes.  Fangs bared.  A white nasal tusk brandished before her face.  She kicked again and caught her assailant below the horn, in the nose.  Her foot was dropped.  Hooves drove down, barely missing her head as she rolled aside.  The other reared, black against the sky, and struck again.  Jame scrambled back between dancing hooves, noting in passing that this was a mare, but she had already guessed that.
Kindrie’s voice came back to her:
“The Randir were riding thorns – you know, those female offspring of horses and rathorns, yes, just like the ones that the Karnids rode to attack Kothifir.  Well, one of them escaped just south of Mount Alban….”
And that, Jame reckoned, was what she faced now. 
The thorn wheeled on her haunches and charged back at her.  Such speed, so much power on the hoof, was terrifying.
A rushing wall of white cut between them as Death’s-head shouldered the thorn aside.  They circled Jame, the mare outermost, the stallion blocking her, snapping at each other, until she subsided with a grumble and a glare.  Jame suddenly wondered if she was in foal.
“So now you have a mate,” she said to the rathorn, who snarled at her over his shoulder.  “All right.  That’s your business.”
After all, she thought as she walked away, deliberately not looking back, he had been lonely for a long time.  She should be glad for him.  But oh lord…!