A Horse With No Name – Part 2
I am quite sick right now, possibly more sick than I’ve been in many moons. I am going to write, and I am going to edit, but neither thing will be very much or very fast.
Pardon this post for being so late. I’ll make sure Wednesday’s is on time and up to snuff.
A Horse With No Name – Part 2
The Twins arrived thirty minutes early. Normally, a storm arriving thirty minutes early wasn’t a big deal. The Twins operated on a strict timetable, however. They moved according to set patterns, they lasted for three hours and thirty three minutes. On the dot. Without fail, for the last hundred years. When our shamans detect a visitation, they give an arrival time within a few seconds. It’s been that way for generations.
The visitation was early, and it was angry. The children had finished their work of tarping and sealing all the vegetable greenhouses. They were secured in the underground great hall, and it was only the adults stayed above ground to secure house after house as fast as we could. When the dry wind rose to a howling gale without warning, and the air was saturated with the electricity which heralded a Twin storm, we froze momentarily in panic. Half an hour early, and arriving at full strength? Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
We abandoned all attempts to secure the remaining houses. Nothing could survive a visitation. We’d all seen the dried and lashed husks of what remained when a person tried to brave The Twins. They were without mercy or compassion, and anyone caught in their grasp was as good as dead. As I bounded between the tarped and untarped houses, scrambling for all I was worth towards the nearest great hall entrance tunnel, I passed a large avenue between neighborhoods.
The storm was within visible distance, and approaching fast. Tendrils of angry red lightning shot downwards from the storm, dirt and wind formed into miniature tornadoes which dispersed and merged in an undulating ballet. The sky was an angry, boiling purple where the clouds marched at the fore, and the sun’s light was rapidly dwindling. Against this horrific backdrop, I espied something alarming and curiously out of place. A horse, running at breakneck speed, barely out in front of the storm, bearing a child-sized rider on it’s lathered back.
I froze, panic at the hellish maw rushing towards me warring with panic at the person who would surely die if I did nothing. The horse was surely unable to maintain that pace for much longer. I dashed over to the stable entrance at the end of the avenue, and swung back the door set against the rocky hill it was built into. I dashed down, startling the teenager apprentices who were tasked with caring for the animals during the storm. Spying my daughter among them, my hands flashed a command in storm-talk for her to saddle a mount with all due haste. The howling winds had already begun making speech risky at best, and I had no seconds to spare if I was to have any chance at saving the mysterious rider.
My daughter dashed towards a large roan stallion used by messengers and postmen, and I joined her at once, lashing buckles in place, securing saddle and blanket, as well as a cover to keep as much dirt as possible out of the horses mouth. I re-secured my own mask, and within a scant handful of minutes, I was pounding up the ramp and out the large door towards my target.
The roan ran, and I rode as low to him as I possibly could, willing him to more speed and riding as high and light as my small frame could go. The pounding of the horse and the roar of the wind were all that filled my ears, and my eyes remain locked on the horrible vista before me.
The horse had collapsed, either exhausted or dead it did not matter. The small figure was holding an arm horribly twisted at the wrong angle, yet still trying desperately to outrun the storm. The storm was winning.
To be continued…
Roanfully,
Justin
