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The twelfth year of Alfred's reign was a disaster. A merciless plague took a third of the kingdom's horses in a fortnight; desperate, fruitless culls vied with the virus for the rest. A year of quarantine was declared on livestock in hopes that horses could be re-introduced once the germs of the disease had dissipated with time and the elements.

While we naturally had other beasts of burden and means of transportation, the loss of horses was like a thumb pressing down on every artery of trade and communication beyond a day's walk from a waterway. A number of previously well-situated merchants and minor nobles were unhappy to find their estates suddenly much further from civilization, without even having moved. When it really counted, nothing else could quite match the speed and stamina of the missing animals.

Things only got worse when Alfred hit on a solution.

The king was heading north for the summer in a small carriage pulled by eight former cavalrymen with nothing better to do. An illuminated book of the epics of long-gone nations was his only distraction from the smothering humidity of the southern region he was slowly fleeing.

"Rogoj, I would be your mount, if then we could carry our words of warning ahead of the Slaver Myriad's charge," so the book reported the words of Amaq, Rogoj's sworn brother. Stranded far from home, Rogoj and Amaq were desperate to warn their city of a surprise attack, but had no hope of arriving in time on foot. Without telling Rogoj that he could never change back, Amaq used the last of his magic to become a tireless steed that ran faster than wind.

Alfred looked up from the book to the man who was his advisor and chief magician. "Charles, are you familiar with the story of Rojog and Amack?"

"Yes, they were lovers. Amaq sacrificed his humanity to save the City of Agate."

"Sworn brothers," replied Alfred. "Well, good. Do you think we could learn how Amack did it?"

"How he became a horse? It's an intermediate spell, Sire."

"And you never said anything? We could have been at the summer palace hours ago." Alfred had never taken much interest in magic. Its energetic requirements and the sophistication of modern wards made it impractical for war.

Off guard, Charles struggled for a moment to respond. "But wouldn't the new horses just die?" For the first several months, the king had imported single horses to test the safety of the environment. They never lasted long, nor did any brought in as contraband.

What was once thought to be a terrible but natural disaster began to look like a curse. But no-one who knew of curses could find trace of that clinging malice, and no known wards could hold it back. Some peasants began to heretically attribute the problem to God.

Feeling foolish, Alfred shut up. After fifteen minutes of thinking, he grew excited again. "The horses wouldn't die immediately, would they? We could just change them back when they started to sicken."

Charles looked pained. "Liege, a man made into a simpler being never fully comes back. They remain simple. It's a lot to ask of anyone."

"Damn. Well, I had wondered why magicians don't just go around as birds or horses."

Charles noted that one can live as a dolphin and come back only a little funny. "Sexually boorish, mainly." But this did them no good on land.

Alfred stewed in the thick air for another hour before he broke. Leaning toward Charles, he lowered his voice. "Charlie, which two of our men-at-arms out there would you say are the stupidest?"

Charles' heart sank. When ordered to respond, he gave the names of two unmarried men with lightly blemished disciplinary records. Alfred had the carriage stop and the men brought before him.

"Do either of you know the tale of Rojog and Amack?" They did not. Alfred decided to change approaches.

"You men have pledged your lives to me, yes? So I could order you to die." The plain truth of it didn't make it less alarming for the soldiers to hear. "So I could also ask you to do much easier, nicer things, like pull the carriage." The soldiers looked less worried. This was, in fact, what they had just been doing.

"And so I have. Now, can I expect you to do everything you can to excel in the tasks I give you?" Alfred waited for the men to confirm. "Well, we've thought of a way to make your jobs easier--to make you the best carriage-pullers you could possibly be." Alfred paused for effect. "Charles here has agreed to remake you both as strong, gallant horses!"

The soldiers were back to looking dismayed. The king was asking them to die nastily, and with humiliating extra steps. "Oh, don't make those faces. Charles will turn you back at my earliest convenience, or earlier should you show any signs of illness."

Charles had the men strip off and stand in a clear patch beside the road in view of the carriage's window. The king's advisor sat before them and, by some minutes of meditation, started them off.

Alfred took great interest in the process, sometimes ordering the men to turn around, as though they were modeling new uniforms. They didn't show much sign of physical discomfort, but Robert, the bigger one, began to panic when he lost his hands. Two of his peers came to hold him and soothe him the way they would a startled yearling.

The large man panted and whined in their embrace, the timbre of his voice slowly modulating with his mutating sinuses and vocal cords. Near the half-hour mark, he got abruptly quiet, his attention seized by a fascinating new sensation deep within him. The soldiers were feeling a warmth and a pulsing which grew until it showed itself to the outside world as twitching thighs and restless hips. The men had been hard from nearly the start, but now their erections were impossible to ignore. Rob reached out with a hoof to touch himself and immediately realized his mistake. He would just have to let it stand and shudder as his innards kneaded themselves.

Their bodies were happy to charge along without manual aid. They bucked and writhed and their expressions of fevered distraction turned to shock and then relief as they finally began to unload through their fattening, mottled cocks. Andrew, the other subject, had been stubbornly silent until now. He tried to swear, only to discover that his human voice had already slipped away.

Charles explained that reshaping a living being in this way was necessarily a messy process.

"They didn't mention this in the book," said Alfred.

"Not in the classroom editions, no."

The beast-men spent the next several minutes tranquil and spent, only moving enough to discover comfortable postures for their half-baked forms. When the haze wore off, they showed calm, innocent curiosity about their own and each other's bodies. It was as though their geased climaxes wrung out both their nuts and their higher mental faculties. They spent the remainder of their change lipping at ears, tossing their manes, experimentally rearing and crouching.

When Charles saw it was done, he climbed back into the cabin and went to sleep on the bench opposite the king. The energy cost of his horsecrafting amounted to a sleep debt of eighteen hours. The horses were given more time to acclimate while the remaining human cavaliers got to work fashioning a provisional tack for them out of rope.

Alfred thought he would like two more horses to carry outriders for the carriage, but the men were spared by Charles' exhaustion. One man was chosen as the driver, two more were invited into the cabin. The remaining three had a half-day's walk home and half a week of unexpected leave.

Alfred was giddy as the coach began to move. As it built speed and the wind through the cabin quickened, he silently praised himself as a genius and savior of the nation.

The staff of the summer palace were astounded to see the king arrive before sundown on the day of his departure, and more so with two perfectly healthy horses. They sprung to freshening the disused stables and preparing a suitable reception.

Charles dearly wanted to undo his false horses the minute they arrived, but trying to hoist two large beasts back up the Great Chain of Being in his current state would result in, at best, two extra-chunky negligent homicides.

Alfred was adamant that the horses be left as they were until they showed signs of the plague, however long that may be. He placed a guard on the stables and arranged for constant veterinary attention. If this land were still dangerous for horses, they'd have proof by noon the next day.