The Endless Gallop: Sequel to Torn From Hope
Chapter Four: Pain
By starzsong magick

A/N: Sorry, my back was aching while I wrote this and it made me kinda grouchy... which kinda resulted in me doing some mean things to Daine and Numair. Don't worry, this has a happy ending and no one (that's in TP's books) dies.

Disclaimer: You know what goes here. Nothing is mine.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Chapter Two: Signs

It seemed to be around midnight when Daine awoke with a throbbing head. Eyes closed, she could feel a gentle breeze sending goosebumps up her arms in the autumn chill. She groaned and rolled over to her side and felt grass beneath her. Rubbing her arms to warm them up, she suddenly gasped out in pain. Her left lower arm felt as if it were full of needles, and upon opening her arms and looking at her hand, she winced when she noticed it was covered in blood from her arm.

Sitting up, she glanced down and nearly cried out in shock. Her arm was broken, and as the pain (which had been numbed when she was unconscious) set in, Daine began sobbing quietly. It was then that she looked straight ahead into the distance.

She was in a meadow, with large stone walls surrounding it. Craning her neck around, Daine guessed that the fort which enclosed them was about a half-mile in area, maybe slightly less. But mathematics made her head pound nearly as bad as her broken arm. She dreaded finding out what the knock on the head had done to her.

The wind picked up again, and Daine shivered. She desperately wished she'd put on something warmer that morning — apparantly breeches and a loose shirt weren't enough in this weather. The cold tears running down her face weren't helping.

Someone groaned to her right, and Daine jumped slightly. Using the light of the full moon she could make out Numair, spread-eagled on the ground. He stirred, then spoke. "Daine? Where are you?"

She swallowed the urge her broken arm created to yell, and said hoarsly, "I'm here. Sit up."

Apparantly Numair had not been injured as much as she, because he immediately jumped up to where Daine sat when he saw the blood pooled on the ground beside her. "Good gods... what happened?" he whispered, staring.

"I don't know," she gasped, "I woke up... and then I saw this."

"We need to get you to a healer," Numair said, "Now."

Daine looked at him, an expression of sarcasm on her face. "You think there's any healers around her? Or even a hedgewitch?" She beckoned to the free meadow land around them with her unhurt arm.

"That still doesn't erase the fact that you still need a healing," Numair remarked, frowning. "We'd better find one — somehow or another. Is that old blood, or are you still bleeding?"

She shook her head. "I don't know." Glancing at her arm, she went on, "I think it's bleeding still, but not as freely as before." Daine nodded at the spot of dark blood on the ground.

Numair stood, and she did the same. "First we need to get that into a sling," he said. Sighing in resignation, he ripped off a whole sleeve of his shirt, and once he was done tearing it in several other places, he motioned for her to come forward.

"Bend," he directed, and Daine bent her arm until her elbow pointing out. Tears began running down her face once more as she bit her lip, trying not to cry out. Once the sling was finished, Numair looked at the wall around them, the closest section being about 100 yards away.

"Who put us here, and why?" he wondered aloud, and Daine found herself wanting to know the exact same thing. Suddenly he set off toward an area of wall which appeared to have crumbled with age.

Daine treked through the knee-high grass behind him, trying to take her mind off her throbbing arm. It was then that she realized something, in a more normal state of mind, she should have thought of first.

—Is anyone around here?— she called out in her mind-voice.

As if in reply to a question not asked to it, the wind blew harder than ever, and Daine found herself shivering uncontrolably.

—Hello?—

There was no reply, which struck Daine as odd. How could this meadow, and the large dark forms of the trees she could spot in the distance, not be a home to any kind of wildlife?

Her head pounded harder than even in response, so she decided she'd try and find the reason later — after her arm was healed.

At last the reached the wall, and upon inspection, she found it to be about ten feet high. Ten feet of crumbling, slippery stone, in the blackness of night with only the moon to guide them. Daine was about to open her mouth to say so when Numair shook his head at her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I don't know what we did to deserve this." For the second time that day he drew her in for a hug, this time being careful around her injured arm. They stood for a moment, then at last turned to the task before them. "I'll go first," Numair said quietly, then began to cautiously step over the rubble and climb the wall. Daine held her breath as he slipped once, then twice as rock crumbled underneath him. A knock on the head, which had already been knocked into earlier, could possible mean fatality.

He reached the very top of the wall and, gripping it tightly, nodded for Daine to follow. She found her first foothold and heaved herself up onto a small ledge. The emptiness of sound, other than the wind and her and Numair, scared her. Shuddering, she made herself again forget about her wild magic problem and focus at the task at hand. One handed was bad enough... but to lose concentration too...

Numair held out a hand to her from the top, and Daine was just stretching up when she heard a sudden crumbling.

"Oh no," she gasped, and the stone above her, on which Numair was leaning, gave way. He toppled to the other side, leaving Daine still grasping the remaining portion of the wall in shock, still reaching up for Numair's departed hand.
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A/N: On a happier note... If anyone who's reading this is someone who comes back for chapter updates, you're welcome to leave your e-mail (in a review of course!) and I'll gladly let you know when a new chapter is on. Just make sure you say so.