Summer Storm

Chapter 2

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Falen slid from Yrsa’s back and scrambled down the bank, slipping in the mud.

“Hang on!” she shouted.

The man’s pale hands twitched, lost their grip and the current swept him away. Falen scurried along the bank, trying to keep pace with him. She slipped and stumbled on the rocky shore, face and clothes scratched by overhanging branches. 

The shoreline widened and Falen pelted across the hard-packed sand, managing to get downstream of the man. She threw herself into the river. The sudden cold stole her breath. Falen plunged under into darkness, robbed of all thought and sensation. But then her boots struck the sandy bottom and she kicked, shot upwards and broke the surface, gasping.

She spotted something red moving swiftly towards her. Falen threw herself forward, closing the distance with powerful strokes. The man seemed to be unconscious, floating face up with his mouth open, collecting rain. As the current carried him past, Falen snagged the man’s sodden robe and pulled him closer.

She managed to flip him over and pull his arms over her shoulders so he rested against her back, his chin on her shoulder. She kicked towards the shore. Despite her best efforts, his head kept bobbing under the surface and the cold settled into her limbs, making every movement slow and excruciating. 

She pulled a breath into burning lungs and forced her tired legs to kick once, twice, three times, four. On and on until at last, she felt the riverbed scrape against her knees.  She crawled through the shallows and onto the bank, dragging her burden out of the water.

The man wasn’t breathing. Falen pressed her ear to his chest. No heartbeat. Gathering what remained of her strength, Falen clasped her hands together and hammered them down on the man’s chest as hard as her exhaustion would allow.

Nothing.

She thumped his chest again. Still nothing. With mounting desperation, Falen thumped him a third time. The man’s eyes flew open and he coughed gouts of water from his mouth and nostrils. Falen helped him onto his side, allowing him to vomit up all the fluid inside him. His eyes met hers briefly—they were a rich brown like earth —before he sank down again into unconsciousness. Falen pressed her ear against his chest again. His heart beat steadily and his breathing sounded normal.

The man looked slightly older than her father, in his sixties perhaps, with a bald head and wrinkles around his eyes. From the long robes and the amulet round his neck, she guessed he must be a monk or priest, though certainly not one who served The Mother or The Great Warrior.

Where might he have come from? The river came straight from Black Seza, but surely he couldn’t have come from there. Could he?

Sighing, Falen climbed to her feet and looked around. She had been swept far downstream and there was no sign of Yrsa. Falen raised numb fingers to her lips and whistled.

She waited, not wanting to sit for fear she wouldn’t get up again, as the rain lashed down and the wind howled. Eventually the thump of hooves sounded through the deluge and Yrsa trotted out from the trees. His ears were pressed flat and his lips peeled back to reveal his square teeth, obviously annoyed at being abandoned.

Giddy relief washed through Falen. But her heart sank as she wondered how she would lift the man onto Yrsa’s back. She had no strength left. Yet, as she bent and grabbed him under the armpits, she found the man weighed little more than a child. She dumped him unceremoniously across Yrsa’s back and then climbed into the saddle behind him.