Basia felt the exact moment Ruin locked onto the jump. It was a physical shift in the animal's tension. His ears pinned flat against his skull. His stride lengthened, devouring the yardage with a predatory focus.
He wasn't afraid of the barrier. He was entirely furious. He was going to conquer the stones simply because it dared to stand in his way. 10 yards, five.
Basia grabbed a thick handful of coarse mane, buried her bleeding knuckles into his sweating neck, and stood slightly in the stirrups. She threw her heart over the wall and trusted the monster to follow it. Ruin collected his hindquarters. The massive coiled muscles beneath the saddle bunched together.
He struck the frozen earth one final time, a sound like a cannon firing across the empty moor, and launched them into the winter sky. Gravity simply ceased to exist. The sheer violent upward thrust stole the breath entirely from Basia's lungs. They kept rising.
The air grew suddenly silent. The thunder of hooves replaced by the sharp whistling hiss of wind rushing through the horse's stiff mane. Basia looked down. Beneath her right boot, the treacherous moss-covered top of the stone wall flashed past.
They were clearing it by mere inches. She smelled the damp decay of the ancient lichen, a sharp bitter odor of dead things. For one impossible suspended heartbeat, they flew. Then the world tilted violently downward.
The ground rushed up to meet them. Basia leaned back, slipping the heavy leather reins through her burning fingers, throwing her body weight far behind the saddle to keep them both from somersaulting over his massive neck. Ruin hit the frozen earth on the other side. The impact was catastrophic.