Lashan wants to tell him that training one of the Little Siblings to fight gets better results than just smacking it to make it mean - abused hawks either escape or become useless, but she's seen hounds and horses beaten to that purpose. That appears to be how Guts learned and he won't see anything wrong with it, so she lets it lie. She's also not going to let herself think about who and what he could have been trained with kindness, because that's a useless exercise if ever she's seen one.

Instead she grins at the affront to the boy's dignity and lets him pull ahead. Tactical consideration aside he's clearly hoping to shower her with trail debris.

"Oh, she'll decide on that herself if you're both agitated and there's enough targets. She trusts her rider, boy, unless given reason not to. If you're calm, she'll be inclined to calmness. If you want someone dead, well, she won't get it but she'll figure you're on the same side and have a good reason." There's absolutely a couple of specific commands to tell the horse to bite but she doesn't want to tell them to him because right now there's just the two riders and two horses.

The mangling of her language makes her wince. "Break it down into three parts separated like the two parts of 'isn't', first of all." It's going to take some coaching, and Safflower's still not going to do the trick yet. "It's not just the word, it's your posture. You've got to have your weight shifted and your legs clamped enough that she won't throw you and you won't upset her balance and topple her over on top of you. That is not fun, believe me."