The Great Soldier snorted, impatient as a bull. “Talking car. There’s good reason horses don’t talk.” Did you chuckle, reader? A guard beside us did, but I could not, for fear has long since made me memorize my Homer. One of Achilles’s horses spoke once, granted speech by white-armed Hera, and prophesied the hero’s coming doom, before the beast was struck mute by those same Furies who will claim me when my own turn comes to face the famous horseman Death. It was no joke to us.
