Horse question - what if I wanted to stall somebody?

I honestly don't know, except a horse needing a shoe or shoes isn't something that would take long at all to remedy. And I can't imagine they'd be out of the correct size or type of shoe (something that might trip up a modern day blacksmith) since in your MC's case the shoes in the village would all be hand-forged.

Sorry. Hopefully someone else can help.

One of the horses may come up lame, either from being overtired due to hard riding for two days, or from stepping on something sharp and bruising the area inside the hoof. A horse can be lame and require rest for a couple days or weeks, depending on the severity of the injury.

As Elaine pointed out, replacing a shoe takes very little time, especially for a skilled blacksmith.

Traveling a day and a night is a totally legit reason to rest a horse overnight. A thrown shoe works too-blacksmith is drunk and can't get his forge going until morning, perhaps

I got confused a bit. Did they (the men and horses) travel for two days with a night's rest in between, or did they travel for two days with the second day including all night?

Even in the first scenario, I think it might depend on how fast they are traveling. My gut feeling is that two full days, even if it's mostly at a walk, is a lot. Remember, the horse is carrying the rider.

Also, my instructor once told me that more than 13 hours of riding a week is the breaking point for a typical horse. Those hours of riding will be mostly trotting, cantering, (galloping?) and jumping. Some walking in between.

I asked because someone implied that my riding my horse four hours a week was too much for the horse.

Though a bit garbled, hope that helps.

Any reason for delaying will seem manufactured, and not work for long. A shoe is half an hour of delay. Farrier not available and you just pull the other shoe on the same end. Broken tack and maybe an hour at the most to patch something together. If one of the horses is lame, ride the other and lead the one that is lame. Or leave the one that is lame behind.

Best I can think of is feed both horses some bad corn or grain and let them both colic. If the village animals were only oxen and cows, it's believable.

Personally, I'd buy either a girl or a hangover as more likely to keep him.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

What if one (or both) of the horses ran away? Someone left the stall/corral gate open and the horse wandered out. It probably wouldn't go far, but maybe it could go far enough. Horses typically come back at nightfall, so maybe the MC waits until nightfall for the horse/s to come back.

Based on your scenario, I am with JC. Anything with the horses is going to sound manufactured to anyone who knows a bit about horses.

I would use another excuse, something/someone in the village. Maybe the local Sheriff could be persuaded to lock him up for a night based on what happened. Or a serving girl could be persuaded to give him a mickey at breakfast which makes him sick, or fall asleep.

We really don't have a lot to go on here since we do not know your character, his thinking, his urgency, or much of anything else. But, its your story, use whatever you need to use, so long as it make sense...

Layla Nahar said:

Hi jclarkdawe, thanks for the useful information. Wondering if you can clarify this a bit.

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Layla, please take no offense, but this post and others you have posted show you have little knowledge about horses and horsemanship. No harm in that so long as you research what you need so experienced horsey people can believe in your storyline.

You are writing in what I assume to be a medieval setting. Horses were expensive, both to own and maintain. Therefore, horses were taken care of by those who owned them. And anyone who owned horses know signs of injury, fatigue, or whatever. So..any sudden delay because of the horses, is going to sound manufactured if the rider did not notice these things himself.

As JC said, shoeing a horse is a simple task and will not take all day. If the tack is bad, most riders know how to fix it, even if its temporary. Illness, well, the rider would of felt a horse going lame so he would suspicious I think to suddenly learn both horses have gone lame.

I am more concerned with what occurred in the village and the dead man if I was a village elder, priest, or sheriff. That alone should be enough to delay his exit until matters are resolved and if there was damage to the village, he might have to pay before allowed to leave.

There are all kinds of ways to go with this, and using the horses as an excuse to delay his leaving just does not sit right with me...

Layla,

By manufactured, I simply mean the horses being the reason will seem unbelievable to the rider, if the rider has any horse sense at all.

Look at it this way, the rider has ridden this horse for two days, the last day straight through the night with very little rest. When he pulls into the village, I assume he takes the horse to a local stable. If he is depending on this horse as his get away or to take him to where ever he is going, he is going to take care of the horses. He is going to pay to have them well fed and watered. He may even pay to have them rubbed down with a liniment, and if there is none, with manure. Think of manure as a medieval bengay treatment.

Now, if your character does not know anything about horses then I would think it is he who is going to need the extra day to tend to his riding sores. But you have not mentioned your characters knowledge of horses or horsemanship. So I am just throwing ideas out here...

So you see what I am saying...a lot of what you want to do will depend on your characters-character. IMHO of course...

Layla Nahar said:

Originally Posted by jclarkdawe
Any reason for delaying will seem manufactured

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Hi jclarkdawe, thanks for the useful information. Wondering if you can clarify this a bit.

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With Thothguard having saved me a crap load of writing (thank you), I'll answer this is a slightly different way.

As a writer, you want readers to believe that something happens naturally and in accordance with the normal rules of your world. As a writer, we should always be concerned when something seems too convenient. Here, the horse going lame seems about as likely as how no one sees Superman changing in a phone booth.

Using the horses to delay him works, but just like Superman isn't believable, anyone that knows horses isn't going to buy it.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

espresso5 said:

What if one (or both) of the horses ran away? Someone left the stall/corral gate open and the horse wandered out. It probably wouldn't go far, but maybe it could go far enough. Horses typically come back at nightfall, so maybe the MC waits until nightfall for the horse/s to come back.

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If you have a horse that will run that far, you make damn sure the horse can't run if you're at all dependent on the horse.

Last time my horse broke lose, he wandered for all of fifteen minutes before I caught him. But I know him and I know he's not going to go that far. Otherwise, he'd have been in hobbles as well as tied. (He spooked from someone suddenly popping up behind the trailer and broke his halter. I should have known better then tying him to the trailer. He doesn't like the process and gets into a flight syndrome easily.)

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

You mentioned lightning. Perhaps a local creek or river is too flooded to ford, or a bridge is too swamped to cross? By morning the deluge will have passed?

Have someone steal the horses.

I can't think of anything with the horses that would cause delay that your villagers would have any control over, unless they were incredibly incompetent/don't know crap about horses/bad people who would subject a horse to injury on purpose. There are a couple of things I could think of happening overnight to a horse that might take it out of commission (getting cast in the stall followed by flailing and injury, or getting turned out with an unfamiliar herd and getting injured, colic, maybe illness from tick bite or cellulitis flaring up or something, etc), but these are things that would happen either by chance, or through ignorance/incompetence.

But, there are lots of things that can cause delay...sure you can think of something!

If he's just going to turn back, what's his hurry? It's not like he's in hot pursuit, at this point.
Maybe he wants to stay over and bury his fightingman? It's a long way to travel back, with a dead man packed on the next horse. And, it's not like the family is going to want to see the body after it's been hauled around for a few days.
Maybe the headman sets up a bit of a wake, or at least sympathises, the night before, and makes sure the MC gets a lot to drink.
In the morning, the MC gets up a little later than he figured, not feeling too good, and the locals are already digging a grave, and are setting up a nice traditional funeral for this stranger in their midst.
Why wouldn't the MC stay to see his man sent off properly?
Depending on local burial customs, the climate, etc. In some cultures it's traditional to bury the dead quickly, within a day, even, which would make it impossible to haul his man home.
And, if you want the headman to get the MC to keep on with his mission, a funeral oration would give him a chance to make a stirring speech about 'doing it for X who died in the line of duty'.

If the fightingman was killed, perhaps the MC was hurt as well. Possibly enough to require an extra day of rest for strained muscles. If nothing else, the local healer might bully the MC into staying the extra night.

Another thing, if the MC is now traveling alone, s/he might not want to travel alone back to his/her point of origin. Travel in the medieval period was dangerous - bandits being one threat. Perhaps the MC inquires after a group of people to join up with for the return trip and has to wait until the next day to head out. Particularly if said group has only just arrived in town that day. Think Canterbury Tales. The whole point of that 'story' was a group of pilgrims telling stories as they traveled to Canterbury.

If the horse has been worked hard for a couple of days and then stalled overnight without being cooled properly, then it's concievable that it could tye-up, which could set them back days if need be. If you didn't want to go that far, then you could just have the horse very stiff and needing another day.