(Because why have a blog if I can't put up random stuff I wrote? This is the first piece of fiction I have ever written that I am both happy with and that did not cause me acute pain. For this I am indebted to one Wulfpig whose writing class is unlike any other.)
-----
For
Hobden,it was a day like every other day.
The
forge by the ford in the Heartsing river was the same as ever, the
smell of fire and horses and hot metal all pervasive in the June
sunshine. The village was quiet in the mid-day heat, silent except
for the sounds of contented livestock and the flow of water.
Business
was slow. A few horseshoes, the odd armor repair for a wandering
knight.
The
small village barely supported its one smith, many people wondered
why he remained at all. But Hobden's father had been a smith before
him, and his father before him, as long as there had been a village
there, and some men said as long as there had been a ford.
He
looked out of his workshop, down the dusty, broad swathe of the main
street, unable to shake the feeling that something was about to
happen. The heat haze was making the false fronts of the few shops
waver. Was it only the stillness of a midsummer noon that gave him
the feeling that something dire was impending? His gaze wandered
through the cluster of houses, past the steeple of the small church,
following the road until it wound out of sight among the surrounding
hills. There was nothing there, but he could not shake the feeling
that he was waiting for something.
There
was nothing there.
Nothing
but a small cloud of dust. And a faint scream that was coming closer.
And a larger cloud of dust behind that. A cloud of dust made by
something unnaturally tall and broad, like a man but taller than any
of the houses.
The
small screaming dust cloud reached the far end of the village,
identifiable now as one of the children who had been out watching the
livestock. The townsfolk began to emerge from the shops and houses,
wondering at first, then breaking into panic as they saw what was
bearing down on them. Hobden could see the panic spreading toward him
in waves. Everything on legs was running, trying to get away from the
monster bearing down on them. Now he could see that it appeared to be
an armored man. Only larger than any man could possibly be.
It
was effortlessly, almost casually, wrecking everything in its path.
First one house, then another was leveled; bludgeoned apart by the
monster's metal fists. Fire ignited as more buildings were torn
apart. Everyone was running.
Something
snapped in Hobden's mind, and, hammer in hand, he began to run too.
Toward
the giant.
It
was a moment of blazing clarity.
This
was what he had been waiting for.
Waiting
his whole life.
….....
The
story is that he ran up the side of a building, ran over the roofs
and caromed off the church steeple before bringing down his hammer
onto the giant's head in a blaze of lightning.
Whether
the story is true, I cannot say. He appeared to have no memory of the
incident when I spoke to him, years later. He only talked a little
about his work, that business was bad, that the feeling had been
growing on him lately that he was waiting for something.
What,
he could not tell me.
