CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Gibor’s personal butler was instructed to escort Jane and Trinket to the stables where the stable dwarf was preparing horses for a journey. The butler led the girls through a twist of corridors that ran to the castle square. Outside, black clouds had descended like an army. Lightning lit up the clouds, again and again. Across the square the massive huge timber doors into the stables lay open, with rain sheeting in to soak the sawdust floor. The trio ran through the rain and into the stables. Here the sweet smell of horse and leather was mixed with the smell of dung and straw and oats. Rain thundered against the roof. All down a long row of stalls were anxious horses, whinnying and thumping hooves against timber.

Jane stood just inside the stables door and shivered, cold even though she still wore the thrip cloak.

Gibor’s men were roaring about the business of routing the remainder of the Empire soldiers.

After Gibor’s speech with his voice so loud and furious, the men had rallied. They called the name ‘Gibor’, and they called the name ‘Elion’, over and over until the names turned into a wild chant. Then, with the roars of murder and retribution, the men retrieved their weapons and went into the rain. They cut down the Empire soldiers with a fury and a bloodlust unlike anything Jane had ever witnessed.

While she waited for her horse to be brought to her by the stable dwarf Jane watched an Empire soldier running across the castle square with seven of Gibor’s men in pursuit. When the men caught the soldier they struck him over and over with swords and daggers and axes, while the rain fell.

The butler, standing beside Jane and Trinket, advised: ‘For your safety and the safety of our horses I urge you to wait until the storm passes.’

Right then the storm increased, and the rain now made a roar that shut out all other sounds.

The butler shouted to be heard.

‘This is insanity. Your mission will surely fail in the face of this weather. These winds will bring tornados.’

Trinket shouted back, ‘We are going.’

The wind suddenly shrieked over the castle walls, pulling rain into a spinning column that stood for a moment in the castle square before moving across the square, past the stable doors where it suddenly disappeared, the column being subsumed by the general storm, disappearing like a ghost.

Inside the stables, a dwarf walked from the darkness, his little legs scuffing through the hay on the floor. He had squared shoulders and a crazy beard that tore sideways in the wind.

The dwarf led a stallion, a huge black beast that strained against the bridle. The horse took large billowing breaths, and its chest heaved and its eyes were round and white with fear.

The saddle on the stallion’s back sat above Jane’s forehead.

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The dwarf handed the reins of the two mares to Jane and Trinket.

’Give me the stallion,’ Trinket said to the dwarf.

The dwarf looked up. His eyes could have been made of iron. He didn’t answer. Instead he went to the side of the stallion and reached up to a rope that trailed down from the saddle. With fast, chunky movements, the dwarf climbed the rope, up past the horses belly, until he was able to seize the saddle and swing his little legs over. Now he towered.

‘Are you our escort?’ Trinket shouted up to him, with a note of derision.

The dwarf ignored her. He made a sound in his throat, and the stallion moved forward to the stable door, where it baulked at the sheets of water. The stallion reared, pawing at the rain with its front legs, and the dwarf moved with the horse.

Walking to the head of the mare that she was to ride, Jane pulled the reins so that the horse lowered its head. She put her face up against the horse’s cheek.

‘Hello horse … I am Jane.’

She felt the tremor of presence in the horse’s cheek.

‘We will do this together.’

Jane drew away, and the horse’s large eye watched her.

At the stable door the black stallion reared several times, and the little dwarf moved with a fluid mechanism to stay mounted. Streams of water ran through the creases around the dwarf’s eyes and mouth. Kicking his little feet into the horse’s back, the dwarf urged the stallion into the rain.

Jane mounted her horse. The saddle was slick and slippery. Her knees gripped just above the shoulders. She slapped the rains and her horse followed Trinket, on the other mare, into the furious rain. Immediately she became drenched.

Her vision was blurred, and she could hardly see Trinket on the horse ahead. The horses’ hooves clip-clopped on the cobblestones, across the courtyard and through the castle wall. After crossing the drawbridge they came out onto the road. Here the dwarf urged his horse into a gallop, and the mares followed. The horses’ thundered down the road through the corn fields.

Jane leaned forward behind the rise and fall of her horse’s mane, but the rain still belted her. Trinket’s horse kicked up clumps of mud that hurtled into Jane’s face and neck. Except for the occasional glimpse of Trinket’s horse with its rump lifting and dropping, Jane had lost all vision.

The horses kept up the gallop, their large bodies splitting the storm. Jane tried to keep her eyes open, but the rain and mud filled them, and she blinked and squinted.

The rain increased and the wet and cold seeped through the thrip cloak Jane wore, and as her body chilled Jane began to feel a peaceful rhythm and a blanket of tiredness.

The road made slight turns, but for the most part it went straight between endless rows of corn. The rain that hit the horses turned to steam.

Suddenly the rain stopped. One second the horses were pounding through a solid sheet of water then the next minute there was nothing. The sun had burst into the western sky, watery and pale and cold.

The horses stopped running, bringing their speed down so quickly Jane fell forward against her horse’s neck.

The dwarf on the stallion was a hundred yards ahead. He turned his head, and there was distress in the iron of his eyes.

The day had become eerily calm.

Trinket’s horse stopped and Jane’s stopped as well. A long tremor moved through Jane’s horse, its muscles firing and twitching. It threw its head into the air and whinnied.

‘Something is very wrong,’ said Trinket.