The merchant pushed until the sun had almost dropped below the horizon before they came to an inn.
Laurent supposed the man must have known the inn's location, or else he left a lot to chance. Barking dogs, nipping around Laurent's hooves, alerted the innkeeper who arrived, with a couple of boys in his wake, to welcome a long-time customer.
"Welcome monsieur," the keep said.
"Greetings keep," the man said, lighting not all that lightly from his horse.
"See that the horse is tended," the merchant began giving directives as soon as he had his boots on the ground. "The packs will have to come off the ass, but be careful not to damage my merchandise."
Laurent, who had been following with his snout behind the horse's ass for the entire day, was thrilled to find an alternative view. He was also glad when one of the boys took his bridle and led him toward a barn. The other boy took charge of the horse. Working together, the two boys quickly led both horse and donkey into a barn. There, they removed the horse's saddle and divested the donkey of its heavy load.
He had to wait, impatiently, looking with sad, drooping eyes at a water trough, as the boys removed the heavy books. He realized with some bitterness that, had Claudia's plan not misfired, this stop would have been his opportunity to eat the magic oats, regain human form, and purloin the merchant's merchandise. Instead, he now faced several more days of being used in the most grueling fashion as a lowly beast of burden. His entire body ached right down to his hooves.
In the meantime, the merchant got taken into the inn, no doubt to receive drink and food. Laurent flared his nostrils and detected an aroma of roasting meat in the air. Even after divested of the packs, he stood in a weary stance and mostly got in the way as the boys filled a manger with hay. The horse trotted to the manger and began to consume the feed. It was at that instant that Laurent, practically drooling from the scent of the roasting meat, realized that he was expected to feed from the same manger on the hay.
He wrinkled his snout and smelled a musty, earthen odor that made the freshness of the hay somewhat suspect. He put off feeding in favor of stepping to the trough and slaking his thirst on the water. He felt better after a long drink, but the hay remained unappetizing. Finally, realizing the horse might eat everything if he didn't claim his share, he lowered his snout into the manger and pulled some of the dried grass into his mouth. The hay didn't taste any better than it smelled, but his jaws worked well at consuming vast amounts of the hay.
His jaws worked strangely. Instead of up and down, he found himself chewing outside-to-inside on a slant. He had to work the hay between wide molars. He chewed slowly and found it took him a surprisingly long time to chew each mouthful of hay. He then swallowed and took another bite of the hay. He watched the horse, which ate in almost exactly the same manner. At an unhurried pace, they slowly consumed the hay doled out by the innkeeper's boys. Laurent found that if he didn't think too hard on tasks that the animal's own inclination took charge. Else, he figured, he might well have starved trying to eat hay in the same way a human might eat.
He was also surprised that the hay seemed to fill his stomach and ease the hunger that had gnawed at him all day.
He was lulled into a dull state by the action of eating. Perhaps it was the tedium of the process, but he was so intent on the task of eating that he hardly noticed when some other natural functions occurred without his having any say.
When he realized that he had just produced a load of manure that tumbled onto the barn floor, he stopped eating and brayed in distress. He needn't have gone to the trouble. The horse and the boys ignored him.
That didn't make it any better. To the two boys completing a few chores, he was simply a dumb animal doing what animals do. The fact he might have to spend the next several days behaving as an animal struck home. In an odd solidarity, perhaps, the horse also contributed to the deposits accumulating on the barn floor.
But the horse was a dumb animal. He wasn't!
He heard heavy wooden doors slam. The boys had left and locked him up for the night with the merchant's horse.
He brayed again, which elicited a whinny from the horse before they both huffed and shuffled around the open space in the barn. Laurent felt tempted to try to escape the barn. Claudia was only a day's journey.
But anyone he came across would see only a lowly ass. If he stayed with the merchant, the arrangement was to return him to Claudia after the journey's completion. He would be foolhardy to tempt fate.
With a final huff of air from his nostrils, he resigned himself to his current circumstances. Soon enough, which might have surprised him, he fell asleep on all fours.