Lina sincerely didn't know WHY they bothered telling her and the others about their plans for them, or even the purpose or meaning behind their grunt labor starting tomorrow. They were just masses of muscle to the Snakes, Crocodiles, Alligators, or whoever happened to be in charge at the time.
While Lina accepted the realities of the Food Chain, she didn't care much for snakes... even unarmed, one bite from their fangs was enough their venom to do the deed. And her instincts didn't like them either.
A young stallion named Riven had once stolen armor and clothing of every guard on the farm , forcing the to leave their compound naked, letting their slaves see them as no better than they were.
A couple said they saw him done the armor of the Commander and make some of the naked soldiers march backwards (after all, without their armor, how could they say they outranked anyone?)... Lina wasn't sure about that part. But she couldn't help but smile at the image.
Riven was STILL laughing when they killed him. Many of Lina's fellows concluded it had been a fair trade.
The humiliation the guards had suffered was not something they could undo so easily. An 'old mare's tale' said the Snakes that had eaten his flesh were now haunted by his laughter in their dreams.
Before the crack of dawn, Lina awoke and readied herself how she could.
Lina ate at the trough, filled for her to feed herself along with her fellows, and relieve herself in a ditch that stank of disease and filth that emptied regularly to use as fertilizer.
It was annoyance to the Predators that their Prey to feed their Prey needed to be fed as well, but Horses were better build for labor than the majority of Predators, including Snakes.
Such vanities such as combing her fur and mane were beyond her reach. The Snakes didn't care as long their quotas were met and the Horses didn't give them any trouble. Ironically, Lina had never wondered about wearing clothes herself, she found them gaudy and unnecessary affairs that the Predators busied themselves with convincing each other that they were better than their fellows.
The group that had created this world, would have likely died of shock at the sight before them, as the Horses were treated as barely as much respect by the Snakes as the Horses' non-sapient ancestors had been by the Horses' human ancestors.
Lina and her herd had learned it was always a gamble with action, if you did nothing, you could be punished for not doing what you hadn't been told but the Snakes thought you should know to do. If you did what the Snakes wouldn't want, they weren't likely to listen as they whipped you that you were doing what you thought they wanted.
Lina and the twenty-five other stallions and mares guessed right this time when the guards came for them, and they were herded to the main street of the village and lined up in front of the convoys holding Snakes in armor, weapons, food, extra armor, and countless other things that Lina wasn't expected to know.
Lina was harnessed, thought she had no idea, it would have been just as a mundane horse would have been, complete with blinders. And with a crack of the whip, the Horses began to pull the Snake's heavy caravan.
They marched down the road, Snake families inhabiting houses that belonged to the Crocodiles some years ago, and before that the Alligators, and before that Lina didn't know. Fathers, mothers, and their Snakelings and eggs watching their brave soldiers going off to defend what was theirs, giving the Horses all the mind they would the wheels on the chart.
Sisters and wives wished their husbands fair-well. Lina didn't understand why the Snakes didn't let the females do the fighting, their venom was just as dangerous, maybe it was to keep their numbers up?
As they passed through the first, and then the second gate, Lina realized that she was now stepping beyond what had been her entire world. They marched past the outposts and the farm lands... and the old black cracked roads that had been there before anyone could remember.
History books still existed... but computers, memory sticks, servers, were now just glorified doorstops with no apparent function, and the Predators weren't about to let their Prey know such things, and the Predators barely cared about history now with their endless power struggles against each other and themselves.
Of course, while the soldiers chatted about their great battle to come, other voices their worries of seeing their loved ones again, and others just wanting the violent business over with, Lina and the other Horses weren't allowed to speak at all. They were glorified living engines and nothing more.
Rusted and old metal poles stuck out of the ground along the old black road... to be honest going along the black road hurt Lina's hooves, as it did her fellow Horses, it could lead to them being cracked and bleeding by journey's end, but those in charge had been too lazy, too thoughtless, or too ignorant to provide their Prey/Slaves any such protection.
The marching was an even greater monotony than her field work had ever been, and the blinders of course meant she couldn't see much except the road beyond.
She heard a sound like a small thunder clap, and the Snake at the front seat of the caravan she heard gave a garbled grunt and came crashing down with a thud.
It was a pack of Mongooses, Lina could just barely see. They came out of the tall grass, out of the trees, moving as fast as lightning.
Mongooses were technically Scavengers, but they were far more well know for eating Snakes.
Lina and the others got their heads down as the slaughter began. Lina couldn't see much of anything of the battle. These Mongooses she saw were nearly all snaked except for an occasional piece of jewelry or a leg or arm strap for a weapon: not they needed it that much.
Unlike most, Mongooses were not scared of getting up close and personal with Snakes, their great resistance or immunity to Snake venom made them hated and feared. Snakes normally relied on that fear of most resistant to get in close with a Snake, their bites were as fast as lighting and just as deadly. But Mongooses were just as fast, and Lina watched some actually twist around the Snakes' armor with a bite break their necks.
Another normal advantages Snakes had was their superior reflexes, which Mongooses matched them in too. As for some reason, many of the high rank Snakes present seemed to occasionally just drop dead, each one preceded by a sound of thunder. This made the Snakes panic as the soldiers were left leaderless, and in such a brutal and ruthless hierarchy, this spelled danger.
Not to mention they had been prepared to fight Alligators and Crocodiles (none could ever tell the two apart except them), who used a different combat style and their ambushes were usually via water or buried under a thin layer of dirt and been armed accordingly. Some Mongooses fell to archers who had manages to get some shots off.
There was much more to this chaos, and Lina for her part if not for the bridals and shackles would have likely madly run for it along with the rest of her herd from the violence and insanity that had erupted around them. Lina was used to the cold cruel orderly nature of her life... she had heard that battles were orderly and organized too... this was nothing like that... this looked like madness, sounded like madness and sounded like madness.
The Mongooses paid the horses ironically little mind, though the logical thing to do might have been to kill Lina and the others to make it so the Snakes couldn't escape. But the Snakes hated and feared the Mongooses to incredibly levels, after all, Snakes were Predators were they not? They weren't Prey! How dare the Mongooses eat their flesh!
Then... the screams stopped...
A Mongoose stepped into Lina's line of vision.
The Mongoose was male and naked except for a strap around one legs for a knife, and long metal and wooden rod strapped to his back.
Lina had heard exactly once that mongooses' eyes actually turned fire-red with bloodlust at the mere sight of a snake. He moved too fast for her to be sure.
"Hello Horses," she said politely, "Me and my friends just killed your masters. Hope you don't mind. Horse meat doesn't really appeal to us. If you keep going down this way and take a right at the first fork and then a left at the next you'll get where they wanted you to go. If that's what you want to do. My name's Ricky by the way, you at the front, what's your name?"
She realized he was speaking to her! "I..." Her voice coughed from lack of use. "I'm Lina..."