30 Ashan 721
Oram had seen plenty of storms. He had been in plenty of storms. They would roll in from the sea behind the black ranks of squalls, or assemble among the summits of the Scalvoris Mountains before descending upon the lowlands. Sometimes the weather would be overcast and wet for trials, growing gradually darker and more intense until the wind howled and the rain fell in torrents. Yet he had never seen this.
The traveler had been looking out the window in his ranger office that overlooked the bay. It was one of the most pleasant trials all season, fair and warm and sunny; he had been considering going for a walk and leaving his maps, letters, and debrief reports for a break or two. Then, the heavens just disgorged these huge inky masses of thundercloud from horizon to horizon, producing them from nowhere Oram could trace. Wind hissed and howled and swirled. A spiteful buffet blasted past Oram and blew half the papers that cluttered his desk onto the floor. The door to the adjoining room, which had been lightly propped open, nudged aside its makeshift doorstop and slammed shut with a loud clap. The hunter barely had just turn to look at the source of that sudden report when one of the shutters of the window he was standing in smacked him smartly on the back of the head.
Hastily, he scrambled to fasten the shutters together, after which they took to rattling angrily. The room was suddenly dark, and the sounds of the tempest outside were muffled. For a few trills, Oram stood in the gloom, calming down. Then, a flash of light shone through the chinks in the shutters and hard behind it a new sound came, a frightening sound, a loud, crackling, ripping sound as if the building were a giant crate being torn apart with a monstrous crowbar. Oram had heard thunder. He had been in plenty of storms. Yet he had never heard this. When the awful tearing noise resolved into a gut shaking crash and boom, it was almost a relief.
The next sound, which came in atop the howling wind and pealing thunder, was a deep, oppressive drone that seemed to beat down from directly overhead, while at the same time feeling like it was everywhere. The air grew noticeably colder and more damp in trills. Then followed another flash of pale light and another air-rending, ear-rending thunderpeal. It hummed all around the traveler as he gathered up the scattered papers to restack them, leaving them on a pile on the floor under the window weighed down by his chair. While gathering them, he found the small wodden disk with Vhalar's sign on it, dislodged along with the papers upon which it had rested. He shoved the token deep into his trouser pocket.
Usually, when Oram faced a storm as severe as this, his instinct would be to simply hunker down and wait it out. But there was something different about this maelstrom, he felt, not to mention different about his situation. He had responsibilities now, people to look after. To say nothing of his animals. Against all his natural inclination, Oram steeled himself to go outside. He tightened up his gambeson and made sure his trouser legs were well-tucked into his books. Not having a suitable rain hat, he elected to go out bareheaded.
The door tore itself from his hand, and almost from its hinges, the instant he opened it. A blinding blast of wind and water met him as he stepped out onto the landing. Once outside, he did not so much close the door himself as latch it opportunely once it swung to on its own. Rain came down so hard he had to lower his face in order to breathe without coughing and spluttering. He could not see more than a few feet around him. Only a slight difference in texture on the ground told him where the path was that lead into the main part of the Ranger compound. He began to trudge his way there while wind and rain buffeted him. His gambeson hugged his torso tightly and resisted the gale’s attempts to tear at his clothes, and while going out bareheaded presented its share of problems, it would not have mattered much had he worn a hat; the storm would have torn it from him right away.
A spiderweb of blinding white light crazed the black sky, and there was another earthshaking rumble of thunder. The lightning gave Oram a flickering glance of the other buildings, and the flat-topped silhouette of the surrounding wall. It took him an eternity to get into the compound, then to the nearest building.
Looks of dismay and astonishment from the rangers within greeted Oram when he entered. He must have looked a sight. Wind and raindrops whirling in behind him as he held the door open to keep it from battering him, he shouted out: ”Report!”
He would have a number of buildings to visit, and instructions to give those he found within: douse flames, gather buckets, all buckets. Not so much for leaks, but for fire brigade. The compound stood on a rise, and the chance that lightning would strike one of the buildings had to be considered. It was a saving grace that the buildings were all low. The watchtower of old had not been rebuilt, nor, if Oram had anything to say about it now, would it ever be.
He lurched from dormitory to dormitory and then went to the kitchen. The kitchen was crucial. It had all the pots and buckets, and also the biggest fires, and thus the greatest risk of fire damage. He had expected the cooks to argue with him when he shouted at them to douse all the cooking fires, but to his surprise they were all-too-happy to comply. And they responded well as well to the suggestion that they assemble any and all vessels that might be used to contain water, to be pressed into eventual fire-brigade duty, as well as to be used to capture the water from leaking roofs.
Then he remembered the stables. Mule, the poor goats, the horses must be frantic in this storm. And they might rear and hurt themselves. He needed to check on Herman and find out what help he might need, if indeed he could even offer any. Perhaps simply having additional humans in the stables would help calm the animals down. Or they might at least calm Herman down. Relying on opportune lightning flashes to point him to the stables and kennels, Oram shambled soddenly from the kitchen to the stables, dreading to learn what situation would find him there.
