Difference between revisions of "Keanu"

Latest revision as of 04:05, 8 June 2019

Geoff has always been a strange one. He was there on the night of the fire and if not for him I would be among the ashes.

I was lingering at the Luchd Deuchainn. My training was complete but I was without purpose. I spent my days lounging on the steps and chatting up the apprentices. Eventually the maesters would lose their patience with me but they weren’t pushing yet. Not very hard anyway.

The fire took some thirty students and all five of the maesters. It would have been thirty-eight if not for Geoff. Some apprentices, young and scared had found me in the halls. Honestly I was in a state, when they showed up with their eyes wide looking for answers, it forced me to manage my nerves and give them some. I didn’t have a real plan but I shouted for them to stop blubbering and follow me to the mess hall.

That was a mistake. The walls were curtains of fire and all of the benches and tables were burning. I had probably picked the worst place possible to take shelter. The youngest one, Mercy, asked me about the maesters. I told her that I had found them but they were all dead.

“Burned?” she asked? There was an innocence to her eyes, and she was struggling to hold on to it. I couldn't bear to be the one to put it out.

“Yes” I lied.

“All of them?”

“I found all but Maester Grodin but I don’t think we are making the east wing unless you are made of ice.”

I set them to shoving the burning benches to the outside walls and cowering in a ring at the center. This might have worked for a while but that’s when the beautiful gabled roof started to give way and so we were dodging fire from five directions now.

We were cowered at floor level gasping for air when a cloud of superheated steam blasted through. The cloud parted for a murder black horse with fire in his mouth and I thought it was Old Spit himself come to collect. The horseman threw a rope at me and shouted that any of us that wanted to live best hold on tight. The little ones were too weak so I tied a slip knot on their wrists and yelled GO.

It is completely possible to drag someone behind a horse until they die. I will tell you right now, it would not be a pleasant way to go. We were bumped around for maybe a hundred yards and I was ready to crawl back into the fire. I saw Mercy take a stone to the head and blood poured out of her eye as she went limp. I yelled for the horseman to stop but either the horse was panicked or the rider was. I managed to reach my smallsword and I hacked at the rope until it failed and then poured as much healing as I could muster into poor Mercy's deflated head, trying to push the bones back where they belonged.

I was going over the others, eyes darting back to Mercy's unconscious form as I made excuses to not burn my last spell until I knew she was clear of her dance with Ralishaz. The rider circled back to us and I noticed that the fire in the steed's mouth was still there. Whatever this rider was, he was master to a Nightmare.

I screamed at the rider. "Why do you attack our school demon? We are entertainers, not priests!" My hand was on my long blade, but it was not steady.

The rider barked back at me. "Keep it in the dark, boy! Ye cross steel with the likes of me, it won't end well for ye. What fool be you to think I would set that blaze just to blast in and drag your ungrateful carcass from it? Ya think me some fool glory hunter?"

I showed him my palms and gulped hard. "Uh... no?"

"Good. Then get the children up. That fire ain't about to stop at the gate. Likely to take this whole wood and I don't mean to stay in it to find out."

He eventually told me that his name was Sir Geoff Krakenstooth, and that the horse was an enchanted figure, one of the fabled Obsidian Steeds. He inducted me into the Knights of the Holy Shielding, sworn enemies of the Old One. I traveled with him, attending him as a squire for three years. Not once did I see him smile. I saw that horse smile more than once. Usually meant it was getting ready to bite me.