Vanasar Ai'esti, The Pale Rider - Chapter Three

[Vandic]

The next morning dawned crisp and bitterly cold. The heavy gray clouds had been driven southward by the wind overnight, leaving a pale blue sky with a low-hanging sun that never shined overhead in this far north country. Vanasar’s red-veined eyes were trained to the northeast, where the towering peaks of the Spine of the World gave the horizon a saw-toothed edge.

Kallanis stood at the doors to the monastery as Vanasar mounted Shola, his powerful mare. Another night of worry appeared to have deepened the wrinkles on his face that he tried to cover with a thick woolen hood to fight back the chill. There were no words exchanged between them – each knew the gravity of the task that lay ahead, and neither would dare to admit that the words they shared might be their last.

Vanasar drove his steed relentlessly through the morning light, the sun’s brilliance reflected on the freshly laid snowfall. The trail laid out on the map seemed a well-defined path through the lower plains, but as Vanasar neared the foothills it became nothing more than a pair of worn ruts in the frozen earth.

Vanasar scanned both sides of the trail as he rode Shola through the gently sloping hills of the northern tundra, looking for anything that seemed out of place among the sparse vegetation and drifts of snow. The only oddity he discovered before reaching the mountains was the frozen carcass of a fallen elk lying some two hundred feet from the road’s edge.

Shortly after noon, Vanasar broke from the ride to rest his mare and take a quick meal of trail rations. His campsite was a wide section of trail around the southern face of one of the mountains, where the jagged granite had been smoothed down by a glacier that now slowly crept towards the sea in a ravine some fifty feet below.

As he sat in the saddle, quietly chewing on a strip of dried beef, Shola gave a soft whinny and stamped her hoof to the ground three times.

Vanasar loved this young mare, one of the most spirited he had ever ridden, and he knew she was not one to be easily spooked. “What is it, girl?” he asked her as he stroked her flowing black mane. His voice echoed, tinny and faint, from every direction, breaking the otherwise eerie silence of the mountains.

Shola reared up on her hind legs, nearly throwing Vanasar from his saddle, and brought her front hooves down again in the same cadence – three stomps, equally spaced.

The clomping sound of the hoofbeats echoed back and forth through the valley until the sound was swallowed again. Vanasar listened intently as the echoes died out, only to be startled when they seemed to begin again from nowhere.

His horse stood rigid, her ears perked. Both she and Vanasar turned to look down at the surface of the glacier beneath them.

At the foot of the incline, the rough, icy face of the glacier sat in shades of white and blue, covered with a pack of dense snow. Vanasar swept his gaze over it, looking for the source of the sound, when it came again. Only then did he notice the T-shaped section of wood poking out from beneath the snowpack.

Shaped exactly like the tongue and yoke of a wagon.

Vanasar quickly dismounted and half jumped, half fell down the rocky incline. The thumping came again as he drew near, faster and more incessant. Vanasar scrambled through the thick snow and began frantically digging where the wooden wagon tongue was still visible. After ten furious minutes of digging, his hands nearly numb from the cold, he scraped against the thick canvas bonnet of the wagon. Unsheathing a shortsword from the scabbard on his belt, he tore through the canvas and gasped at the sight within as the meager sunlight poured through the slit.

The wagon seemed to be laying on its side, all of the neatly boxed supplies having fallen to the bottom. Nestled in one corner were two rigid figures clinging to each other, their faces and hands covered with a fine dusting of snow. It appeared as if they had succumbed to the cold in their sleep, their eyes closed and their mouths curled in tiny smiles as if they had gone on in the midst of pleasant dreams. The third monk lay huddled at the other end of the wagon, shivering beneath a heavy wool blanket, his right hand clutching a small bottle of tonic. He squinted in the dim light, which he had not seen for days, and stared groggily at Vanasar.

“Are you the avatar, come to call me home?” he asked through blue lips.

“No, brother,” replied Vanasar, “it is not yet your time. Let me ease your agony.”

Vanasar crawled through the tear in the canvas towards the wounded monk, gingerly stepping around the crates of food as he went. He noticed the young man’s leg jutting out from beneath the blanket at an awkward angle – almost certainly broken.

“Great Wounded One, let this one’s pain pass to me that he might be delivered,” chanted Vanasar softly, over and over, until his hands seemed to glow with an inner light. He reached slowly for the injured monk’s leg and placed one hand on either side, and the light flowed in tendrils out of his hands and into the wound. The clotted blood on the blanket seemed to quiver as it thawed and began to recede, and the bone repaired itself slowly but steadily, sounding like the crackle of a fire as the fragments knotted themselves together.

The young monk watched in amazement as the light in Vanasar’s hands finally began to fade. He tenderly braced himself with his hands and lifted his leg, flexing his knee and ankle to confirm that they were truly his.

Confident that he had done all he could for the survivor, Vanasar climbed back up to Shola and removed a long coil of thick braided rope from one of her packs. Tying one end to Shola’s bridle, he took the other end back down the slope to the wagon. He instructed the monk, still dumbfounded by his miraculous healing, to climb up to his horse and wait for him. He then tied the loose end around the two frozen corpses and sliced a wide hole in the canvas with his sword. After he gave a loud whistle and a tug on the rope, Shola began backing around the mountain trail, hauling the victims up to the ledge. Once they had disappeared over the rim, Vanasar cut a section of canvas from the wagon and wrapped it in a bundle, carrying it with him as he scaled the face of the mountain back up to Shola and the frostbitten yet living monk.