Lindsey stared at the road where Aubrey had ridden just moments before. He’d expected to find him struggling to regain control over his spooked steed, or laid out in the mud whilst Parsival galloped off for the hills.
But to find Aubrey simply gone, as if faeries had plucked him out of reality, was more unnerving than the worst Lindsey had imagined.
Lindsey dropped the reins, slipped his boots out of his stirrups, and swung himself out of the saddle and down. Atalanta didn’t like that, on top of her spook. The moment Lindsey splashed into the mud, she bolted.
This wasn’t so worrisome. She knew the way to the stables as well as any other beast and could seek shelter on her own. Better to not have to worry about keeping a frightened steed under control. He could focus on finding Aubrey.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Lindsey, wary of being the tallest thing in an open field during a storm, abandoned the road for the moment to seek shelter in the shadow of a boulder. Crouched down in the grass and muck, he reminded himself that he couldn’t very well help Aubrey if he got himself struck by lightning. Running out into danger now would make him no better than the foolish horses. He had to keep his head. To think.
A difficult task, when his mind screamed at him that his Aubrey was gone, gone, gone.
Rain poured down. Lindsey watched the clouds rolling overhead, shielding his eyes from the rain with one hand. Lightning split the sky again and again, chased by deafening thunder. He tried not to think of the possibility that any of those strikes might have hit Aubrey.
He knew not how long he waited. Rain soaked him through, spilling down the collar of his coat into his shirt, sticking his breeches to his legs, and draining into his boots. His knees ached with crouching.
Then, at last, the thunder rolled away and took the lightning with it. He counted the seconds without a strike. The seconds turned into minutes. In those minutes, the rain slowed from a driving downpour to a mere steady stream. At last, he felt satisfied that the worst was over, though it yet rained, and stood up to begin his search.
The turf, soaked through with sudden rain, proved no match for Parsival’s hooves. Every panicked stride had carved deep into the mud.
Lindsey wasted no time in following the trail.
The gouges in the ground led him from the road across the field—every step sucking at his boots—over a fence—a worrisome thought, that Parsival had taken a panicked leap with Aubrey upon his back, though Lindsey saw no sign that Aubrey had become unseated in that particular adventure—and across another field abutting it. Lindsey slogged through it all, his eyes fixed upon the ground before him, hunting out the next track, until the mud and grass underfoot turned to damp dead leaves, and he looked up to find himself on the edge of the woods.
Lindsey tried to take heart. By fleeing into the trees, Parsival, and by extension Aubrey, would be sheltered from the rain and lightning alike. Yet the ground, sheltered by those very same trees, did not show Parsival’s passing so clearly as the muddied fields.
Now glancing up for broken branches as well as down for hoof-prints, Lindsey plunged into the woods. His mind raced ahead all the while. Atalanta, fleet-footed as her namesake, would doubtless have reached the stables by now, provided she met with no accident on her way. The arrival of their master’s horse without their master in the saddle would prompt the grooms to send out a party to search for him. On horseback, they would catch Lindsey up with ease, and then he could enlist their services in helping him find Aubrey. And with their assistance, Aubrey would be found without delay.
Yet he couldn’t quite keep from worrying about what Aubrey’s condition might be once he was found.
Lightning strikes aside, horseback-riding was not without its perils, particularly as an inexperienced rider astride an out-of-control steed. Members of Lindsey’s own hunt had snapped their spines riding neck-or-nothing within living memory. Aubrey might fall and break every bone in his body. Or he might fall out of the saddle without falling out of the stirrups, and be dragged along to bash his skull against every rock, root, and tree-trunk in the county. Or, even if he fell without catching his foot in the stirrups or cracking his head open upon impact, he might not roll out of Parsival’s way in time to avoid being trampled underfoot. The number of disasters that could’ve befallen him in the time it took for the storm to pass seemed endless.
Still, Lindsey had found no blood or scraps of clothing or man-sized craters in the earth amongst the broken twigs and hoof-prints that marked Parsival’s passing. Perhaps Aubrey had remained in the saddle after all. Perhaps Lindsey hadn’t given him enough credit as a horseman. Perhaps all his worries were for nought.
The comforting thought had hardly passed through his mind before the sound of thunder again reached his ears.
No, not thunder. Hoofbeats.
Lindsey looked up sharp from the wet leaves just in time to see Parsival dashing towards him.
With an empty saddle.
Lindsey stared in hopeless shock. A panicked whinny from Parsival reminded him of his own danger. He ducked behind the broad trunk of an oak. The gelding dashed past, heedless of his master. Thundering hoofbeats echoed away into the incessant patter of the rain.
If Atalanta returning riderless didn’t prompt the grooms to act, Parsival following close behind her with eyes rolling white and foam flying from his sides ought to spur them. Lindsey tried to take comfort in this as he forced his gaze away from where Parsival had gone and towards the path the gelding had taken to pass him.
Fresher tracks proved easier to follow. Less easy was the knowledge weighing upon Lindsey’s mind, that Aubrey had indeed come unhorsed and now lay alone somewhere in the forest. Even Lindsey’s ebullient optimism couldn’t hope Aubrey had performed an emergency dismount similar to his own. And he had nothing but the noise of rain drizzling down through the leaves overhead to distract him from his fears.
Nothing but the rain, and another, softer sound, barely audible above the constant dripping of water, yet one which, once perceived, pierced Lindsey’s hearing like the scream of a hawk.
The sound of a man calling out, “Who’s there?”
Lindsey bolted upright. The voice—faint, weak, and tremulous though it might be—could only belong to his Aubrey.
“Aubrey?” he called back.
As moments passed without response, he feared he’d imagined the noise. Then, just on the edge of his hearing, came the most welcome sound of all. “Lindsey?”
Lindsey dashed ahead, but halted as he realised the crunching of leaves under his boots quite overpowered any other noise.
“Where are you?” he cried out instead.
He strained his ears for the answer and was rewarded with the reply, “Here. In the clearing. By the fallen log.”
Lindsey glanced around for any of the landmarks Aubrey had named. The trees thinned ahead to the north, and corresponded with the disturbed leaves and branches marking Parsival’s passing. He wasted no time in darting off towards them, leaping over tree-roots and stones in his path.
At last, the trees parted into a clearing ahead, and a fallen log lay within it, beside which Lindsey found a sight which sent his heart flying into his throat—the dark lump of a man crumpled upon the ground.
“Aubrey?” he gasped.
The lump shifted. A pale hand emerged to wave at him like a tattered banner above a parapet.
Lindsey ran.
Aubrey lay half-upright, propped on one arm against the fallen log. His features had gone bone-white and pulled into a grimace, and his gray suit had turned black with muck and rain, but his soft brown eyes focused upon Lindsey’s with determination—and no small measure of relief.
Lindsey fell to his knees and embraced him.
~
Aubrey had never yet seen a more welcome sight than his Lindsey emerging from the woods and dashing to his rescue. The embrace that followed would have felt more welcome still, had it not aggravated his injuries. He tried to stifle his groan of pain. Evidently it didn’t work, for Lindsey broke off the kiss abruptly to look down upon him with deep concern.
“Your head—” he began.
“Haven’t hit it,” Aubrey rushed to reassure him. Every breath felt like a knife in his ribs, yet he spoke on, wanting to banish the worried look from Lindsey’s face. “Nor my back, neither. I tried to roll, like Fletcher told me, but I’m afraid I’m not much of a natural at it. Cracked a few things on the way down. But my head and neck are all right.”
Lindsey looked very doubtful. His hands remained on Aubrey’s face, and one thumb stroked his burnt cheek. The warmth of his palms radiated through Aubrey’s rain-chilled skin. “What happened?”
“Parsival didn’t take kindly to that lightning-strike. He bolted straight off. Did my best to stay on, and managed for a bit, but—” Aubrey shrugged, wincing at the resulting stab of pain through his shoulder and down his collarbone into his ribs. “Once he reached this damned log, he leapt over it and didn’t quite take me with him. I’m just glad I got my boots out of the stirrups before I smashed my skull against it.”
This last phrase had a disturbing effect upon Lindsey, whose face drained of colour as Aubrey spoke.
Aubrey, not wanting to dwell on his failures as a rider, hurried to change the subject. “What happened to you?”
“Much the same. Atalanta spooked, and by the time I’d got her under control, you were gone.”
Lindsey’s voice broke upon the last word, and Aubrey’s heart with it. He hated to have caused so much distress in one he loved so dear.
“Well,” said Aubrey, struggling to find something sufficient to comfort his Lindsey, to make amends. “You’ve found me.”
It sounded lame to his own ears, but nevertheless, his efforts were rewarded with a bark of laughter from Lindsey, a sound as much cathartic relief as genuine joy.
Lindsey quickly stifled himself with a cough and resumed stroking Aubrey’s rain-soaked hair. “Can you stand?”
“I think so, if you give me your arm.”
Lindsey immediately rose and reached down to assist him. Aubrey clasped his proffered arm with both hands and struggled to his feet. He held his breath as he did so, wary of the stabbing pain in his ribs that came with every breath. Despite this, he thought he managed rather well, until he put weight upon his left leg—at which point thunderbolts of agony shot through his ankle to lay him low. He’d have fallen entirely were it not for Lindsey’s support. Lindsey, apparently readied in case Aubrey should collapse, swiftly ducked under Aubrey’s arm and turned himself into a human crutch. The end result must have looked awkward, were there anyone around to see it, given the stark difference in their respective heights. Still, it allowed Aubrey to take the weight off his left leg and stand up. He leaned into Lindsey, who wrapped his arm snugly around him in response. Aubrey appreciated the gesture, though it was, perhaps, a little too snug for his ribcage.
Aubrey winced, sucking in a breath which only made the pain worse. “Not so tight.”
Lindsey loosed his hold, but the furrows of concern in his brow only tightened. “Is your collarbone broken?”
“Ribs,” Aubrey corrected him. “Cracked, not broken.”
Lindsey appeared unconvinced. “We’ll have to call on Dr Pilkington to make sure of that.”
Aubrey didn’t argue, though he well recognised the horrible grinding sensation. It felt the same as it had when he’d cracked his ribs in the Rook Mill explosion. Then, he’d had his burns to distract him from it. Now, his attention flitted freely between ribs and ankle as they scraped and throbbed in turn. He grit his chattering teeth, turned his mind to the strong clasp of Lindsey’s hand on his arm, and leaned into his warm bulk as they limped back to the house together.
~