[Flashback] Galloping Manic

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Northwest of Sunberth, Sylira 5th Spring, 508 A.V. Flight was a balancing act: balancing in the saddle after days of too many hours spent traveling, balancing speed against the horse's stamina, balancing hope against fear. Sam would endure the pain and ache; freedom that wasn't hard-bought, would never be fiercely loved. The windrunner was fleet of foot, but his previous owner had never pushed him like this. Still, he pushed doggedly on, their rapport growing into a kind of camaraderie. It made Sam ache, though, his first horse since Hasieran died protecting him. And he wasn't sure when it would be safe to assume that his pursuit had given up on him. It was late morning already, but he was giving the horse a bit of extra time to relax so he wouldn't founder later. He tied him to a tree with enough give to reach more grass than he could eat. Now was a good time to start thinking things through. If he remembered correctly, he could ride northwest, parallel to the sea coast, and eventually find the mountain road through the passes to reach Zeltiva. Or he could eventually turn northeast and reach Nyka, but he had heard terrible things about that place. There were countless villages and farms between them all. He stripped off the dead man's clothes and walked into the stream, using the sandy, gravelly river mud to scrub at his skin. Gasping at the chill of the snow runoff, he scampered out as soon as he felt clean, and stood shivering, blue-lipped in the spring sunlight. The warmth grew, though, promising the eventual summer, and he fell into the warm grass to nap, not realizing how truly exhausted he was even after a night's sleep. A noise from the horse startled him awake, a welcoming sound from an animal that didn't yet realize Sam was the only one he should think of as a friend. The boy pulled on his livery, nothing to do about it. The black-blooded finery got shoved into a saddlebag and the saddle quickly thrown on to the startled horse. He had packed fast like a nomad born and raised, and none too soon, for he heard the clop and clatter of more than one horse. Three, to be precise, and the canter broke into a full gallop after someone shouted excitedly. Sam grit his teeth and set the horse to running, fighting back despair with the will to survive and to do so with his freedom intact.

[Caelum]

There had been little to attract Caelum to the lawless city of Sunberth in the five years since he had shattered the seas off the coast of Black Rock. Although he had been based in Zeltiva, having the need to set up something resembling a home and stability after meeting Lillis De'Nerys, he had traveled often from that city of scholars and shipwrights in order to chase windmills caught in the forms of hidden knowledge, lost secrets and forgotten arts. It was, ultimately, that endless and impossible quest of his that had brought him to Sunberth at last. Farouk, a Nuit whose acquaintance he had made years previous in a very strange series of events, had written him about a grimoire in the possession of a gem merchant in Sunberth. If Farouk was not incorrect, it was the very tome of which they had been discussing a whole three years previous, and in that case, certainly invaluable to Caelum himself.

Three days he had spent wheedling and wagering with the merchant, doing the dance steps of the greedy game the merchant insisted upon. Finally, Caelum had walked away with the grimoire and a considerably lighter purse. He was ultimately grateful that the man had no concept of the book's actual value and, as it was, Caelum had gotten away with a fine bargain.

Glad to let Sunberth diminish in the distance behind him and eager to be home, he had ridden hard from the city gates. The journey home, thus far, being uneventful, the sound of whooping shouts and thundering hooves startled through him. It had his horse snorting uneasily as he reined in, eyes narrowing against the glare of Syna's grace just in time to watch a solitary figure burst out of the trees in obvious flight maybe but twenty yards ahead. The sounds of pursuit were hard on the stranger's heels, and it did not require a genius to deduce from the invectives the pursuers were shouting that it was a runaway slave they were after.

Slavers left an ill taste in Caelum's mouth. They brought to mind Lillis' wide, clear eyes and a starfish gripped in multiple, lifeless hands as grave dirt spilled and splattered onto perfect, pale faces. It left him thinking of the time he had been woken by her nightmares, of blood running thick and sweet down his own dagger held in hand. He did not think. He was, after all, the sort who tilted at windmills. This level of stupidity was a common theme, and he acknowledged it often with bitter sardonicism. The bow was loosened from it's strap and, shifting in his saddle with a hissing cluck of his tongue to the horse, he knocked an arrow and drew.

The first slaver to escape the cover of the trees found his horse collapsing beneath him. Caelum had been aiming for the slaver's head, not his horse. He liked horses, after all. He just had terrible aim.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

The sight of the bowman startled Sam as soon as he saw him, and the typically Drykan draw of his bow, though inexpert was clearly recognizable, though he could not see much with the man's hood up. Then a thrill of fear: was the nocked arrow aimed at him?

The mystery man loosed it, and Sam felt something in him vibrate with the plucked bowstring, something he hadn't felt for eight years, but not something he had time to meditate upon just then. The pained death-scream of a horse behind him tore at his heart, but that meant one less rider pursuing him and he throbbed with an unspoken prayer to the gods for a horse's soul. And gods willing it was no horse for which he had ever cared.

It appeared, though, that he had an ally. He urged his windrunner to a new course, to give the archer a clearer shot at the remaining horsemen. If one more went down, Sam could turn on him with his scimitar and give survival one more go. In preparation, he unbuckled his scabbard and prepared to wheel about and draw. The sooner the men were dead, the sooner Sam could put the wounded horse out of its misery.

But until the hooded man could loose another arrow, he put his head down and rode as if his life depended on it. Because it did.

[Caelum]

The shrill, equine scream shot through Caelum like an arrow itself, causing him to flinch. It also left his own horse shuffling beneath him, restless with eyes rolling back, forcing him to grip harder with his knees. Hastily, he shook his head in an attempt to clear it and reached for another arrow.

The shaft slid through his fingers, out of place in comparison to, say, a scalpel; murder, no matter the cause, never sat easy with Caelum. It was against the inclinations of his very soul which had, though he only recollected clips and phrases, spent life times ascending, and no small part of that moral mountain had been climbed with healing skills.

He summoned up other memories by sheer force of will, memories of holding a hunting bow, of being taught the correct way to stand, the correct way to shoot from the saddle. Memories gathered like ghosts, cloying and clinging, and he sucked in a slow breath, narrowing one eye in the shadow of his hood, and drew back the arrow.

His second shot caught one of the pursuers in the throat.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

The man's gurgle was enough for Sam, who swung his windrunner around and drew his scimitar in one motion. The horse paused and it took a moment for Sam to persuade the confused beast to charge back in the direction they had most recently been fleeing, back toward the sound of his brethren dying. It was a testament to his riding skill that he managed to get him moving again at all.

They closed the distance between himself and the last mercenary in no time at all, and the hired sword seemed shocked that their murderous runaway slave had the balls to react with violence. Their swords rang and their mounts wheeled about as quickly as they could, maneuverability obviously lying in the windrunner's favor. As such Sam scored a graze to the man's shoulder before he could get his guard up entirely.

But if the windrunner was of a better pedigree, the mercenary's horse was better trained to battle. It reared, and the windrunner followed suit, terrorized by the unfamiliar hostility. Blow after blow passed between them. The mercenary had a shield and more training, but Sam was quick as lightning and his eyes burned with years of pent up grief and rage and a newfound thirst for freedom that a few days had not slaked.

A recovery turned into a sloppy punch, but the mailed fist caught Sam and knocked him out of his saddle but a desperate swipe of his scimitar as he was falling sent the mercenary struggled back.

The ground rushed too quickly to meet him and the contact nearly blacked him out. Bleeding and unmoving, he tried to identify the drowning sound, but he could not. Dazed, he lay there.

The windrunner fled the scene, riding back toward the hooded man and his horse, who seemed unaffiliated with this violence. The mercenary slumped in his saddle, bleeding out from the neck.

[Caelum]

A curse kissed the air as Caelum swung down from the saddle, the hem of his cloak whispering against whipping tails of grass. Weathered boots splattered in puddle of blood the earth could not soak up fast enough and he loosed a dagger from his hip. It was weighed in a calloused palm before he sank down and used the full force of his body to draw the razor end deep across the struggling horse's throat. Within seconds, the agony along with the life emptied out of big, innocent eyes and Caelum heaved a thick breath.

"Hell," he swore, twisting around on a heel to observe the scene before him. Three corpses and an injured, runaway slave. He blinked back the encroaching images of different scene in a different clearing, filled with white limbs and gemstone eyes gone cold. Wiping his hands on a dead man's corpse, he shot to his feet to retrieve his medical kit.

"Shh," he murmured to his horse, carefully calming the beast. Medical kit in hand, he slid to the ground beside the fallen runaway.

"Don't be afraid," he found his words echoing up through the years while he sought the source of the blood. "They're done for. It's just you and I. Where does it hurt?"

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Fear wasn't really part of the equation just then. The world was swimming and everything was out of his hands. He could see the the outline of a head, but it looked rather misshapen, and it was haloed by the sun. It seemed to him that Syna was winking at him, and so he started to laugh.

Meanwhile his stolen windrunner was huddled next to the medicine man's horse, a firm believer in strength in herd numbers.

The young would-be freedman as bleeding mildly from several cuts, but the worst was the blow to the head from landing on the ground, which, if the gods were kind, had not made him simple.

[Caelum]

A bemused stare was given the young man when he started to laugh. Caelum blinked and then shook his head, reaching for hit kit. A pad of muslin was drawn out along with a neatly labeled vial whose contents he poured onto the clean fabric. He shot a glance towards the horizon, concerned about the possibility that there might be more slavers.

A breath was taken, however, and he dismissed the notion of there being any soon, at least, and the skittish horses presently huddling together would undoubtedly alert him to an approach.

Carefully, he mopped up the minor scrapes with carbolic, golden eyes narrowing in the shadow of his hood. The cuts seen to, he tossed the blood stained cloth to the ground and with his fingers began to feel along the young man's scalp.

"How's your vision?" He wanted to know, fingertips running lightly over the bump. A sigh of relief was expelled when he felt no damp signifying blood and, thus, an actual break in the skin and possibly deeper. He leaned in close in order to peer into his patient's eyes and ascertain the size of his pupils.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

The carbolic stung, but the pain helped bring him back. His vision began to uncloud and as the adrenaline started to ebb, he began to feel his injuries. He moaned something or other, and blinked. The figure above him still looked like a faceless messenger with Syna's halo, so something was still off.

Was that a horn?

He reached out under the man's hood like a child reaching for his mother.

Blinking again, he retracted his hand. It was a man hovering above him.

"I'm, ah... It's a little blurry, but... it's getting better."

[Caelum]

Caelum did not realize he was being reached for until the young man was already drawing back. It had him peering down at him, noting the color or lack thereof in his patient's cheeks.

"All right, listen. We should move along swiftly. I think you're going to be good to ride, at least for a bit. If not, I'll put you in the saddle with me. Here," an arm snaked behind his shoulders, shifting the young man upright. "Dizzy? Feel like you're going to throw up? Do me a favor, don't throw up on me."