My two protagonists must push their horses hard towards the climax of my WIP, and I need to know it if actually works.
The characters travel for four days on a disused road, at a moderate pace, then lead the horses on a ship and sail to another country, which takes about a day.
You need to define 'moderate' here.
I used to do long distance riding, and the top races cover 100 miles in 24 hours. But, and I stress this as being VERY important, both the horses and the riders are very fit and well prepared and have spent a long time building up to this and factoring in stops and rests and pace.
So, over say, 3 hours, a level mix of canter and trot would be 'moderate' but over 10 hours mostly trot with periods walk and complete rest would be 'moderate'
Wild horses will cover a distance of up to 25 miles a day on their own, mostly at a walk. Horses are nomadic animals and are designed to travel long distances.
Dehydration will be your biggest issue here. Horses sweat A LOT.
This is where you are going to have issues. After 4 days of constant moderate work - ie. all day long, then basically resting, then you can also run the risk of azoturia, which can be pretty unpleasant - Azoturia is also caused when the muscles are worked for long periods without a chance to rest - think of carrying on running with a stitch. This can cause serious damage to the horses muscles. A horse exhibiting this needs to be rested.
There they uses the horses for a couple of short trips but otherwise they get to rest for three days. THEN the characters are forced to move very quickly and they sail back to where they came, and then ride as hard as they can for several hours, with a brief stop so as not to kill the horses before reaching the destination.
A typical horse can do 2-3 miles at a gallop okay. A fit horse can maybe do 5-6.
But that amounts to mere minutes work of riding.
If they are going to push back as fast as possible and do it without their horses dropping dead, then they are going to be confined to mostly totting with some periods of canter and walk with, and I hate to tell you this, rest stops for rehydration.
Anyway, they reach the destination but some unexpected stuff comes up and an hour later they must again ride against time, for about an hour.
See above.
Is it feasible that a horse could be put through this or do I need to add an extra horse for each character, so they can switch between?
having a rider or not won't make a massive difference. It's just too much work for a horse to do at the speed you want it to go.
Depends on the type of horse as well.
There is an interesting bit in one of the later Paksenarion books (Elizabeth Moon) where two groups on horse back are travelling together.
1. A group of mercenaries who fight on foot but use horse transport to get to the fight.
2. A company of heavy cavalry.
The latter is designed for a massive charge, not all day travel. Jogging along at the mercenaries transport horse pace isn't possible for the cavalry.
I'll explain the science behind this - there are two types of muscle fibres - fast (type 2) and slow (type 1) twitch.
Slow twitch use aerobic metabolism to produce energy for endurance. They are
Fast twitch use anaerobic metabolism to produce energy for speed.
All horses have a mix of both, but in varying quantities. For instance, and Arab has more slow twitch fibres, which makes it perfect for long distance riding. A thoroughbred on the other hand has more fast twitch which makes it ideal for racing - which requires short bursts of energy.
Then you also have to take into the physical build of the horse. You have cold, warm and hot blood horses.
A hot blood is a fine, light build such as an Arab or a TB, a cold blood is a heavy draft type horse such as a Shire, and a warm blood is a general riding horse that is somewhere between the two, such as the Hanoverian. In the UK warm blood are sometimes referred to as Sport Horses.
Now, if you have a cold blood and you need to get somewhere fast, good luck to ya. But if you want something that can patiently plod on for days and week at a time carrying a lot of weight, then they are ideal.
And this is all assuming that your horse has no conformation or medial issues that would influence things, and assuming you don't get an injury etc.
And, and I REALLY CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH, horses need to go to the bathroom too! While they can poo on the move, they HAVE to stop to pee - they can't go while moving.
Also depends on how your ride them - my understanding (could be wrong) that rising in the stirrups in time with the trot (posting I think it is sometimes called) is easier on the horse than just sitting still in the saddle. But if you are going to trot for more than a few minutes while rising up and down in the saddle, you need to have had plenty of practice and strong legs.
It depends on how good a rider you are. A bad rider posting is just as bad as a bad rider sitting. A good rider won't impact the going. A lot of working horses have a jogging pace, think a sort of slow trot, which covers ground but conserves energy. Perfect for long periods of riding.
