[This post is from Thom’s point of view.]
The drums echoed off the trees, off the wall, still distant but growing closer as Thom stood on the flat span of ground before the gates, before the walls, scanning them for signs of weakness that needed to be shored up before whatever was coming arrived. It had been a project they’d been working on and abandoning on and off for weeks. Now he was angry at himself for not just seeing the fix through to the end.
I should have made it a priority.
His guts had tangled into a knot in his belly, coiling more and more tightly with every heartbeat that he lingered outside the safety of the walls. It wasn’t the act of being outside their confines that concerned him, though—he was armed, and he wasn’t that far from safety. The gates stood open for him, had stayed open when the Wild Hunt sent their scouts out to determine who they were facing, where they could come from, how large the force would be.
It wasn’t even worry for his wife and unborn son, though he knew that by rights he should be terrified for them, for their safety in the coming hours.
No…it was some formless, nameless dread that gnawed at him, tormented him, slowly wearing him down like waves against a shore, against old, porous stone.
And yet there was a significant part of him that didn’t want to learn the source of the feeling, the reason for it, as if something that lived in his lizard brain screamed that he was safer not knowing. Maybe.
Maybe not.
Thom closed his eyes, exhaling slowly.
If I’m meant to know—I will.
He opened his eyes and started walking back toward the gate.
“Just another storm,” he muttered under his breath. “We’ll get through it, just like every one before.”
