The Darkest Blizzard

The night that the blizzard descended upon our village was one that I would not soon forget.

I was visiting my sister who was with child. Her husband was the only other person in the home when we were about to have dinner. Her water ruptured, and her pain seemed to come on cue. I remember looking out the window and noting that that all I could see was white. Snow had been falling for half of the day now, and the roads were obstructed. How would I summon a midwife through the obstructions? And why had I not thought to have one with us on this night? My lack of foresight could prove to be my sister's undoing.

My sister shrieked in a pain that I thought would shatter the windows of our cottage. This was not an earthly scream. Something was dreadfully wrong. I had heard that things could go wrong with pregnancy and birth. Friends of mine had regaled me with drunken tales of the births of their little ones, many of which had taken days to come to fruition, their wives screaming bloody murder and cursing the loins of their husbands. I had heard these stories and I had shuddered to think my sister would go through such a fate. Was this what was happening?

My sister's husband, Dougal was visibly unnerved by her screams. His chair crashed to the ground as he sprang to his feet, and I vaulted over the dinner table to her other side. Together we carried her to their room and we placed her as gingerly as we could on the bed. Dougal ran to fetch several towels, and I sat with my sister, urging her to breathe, as her screams subsided slightly into muffled cries.

"Dougal. Where is Dougal?" She sniffled, looking around frantically.

"He has gone to fetch both dry and moist towels, little sister," I responded. I was worried. Her sudden pallor made her sunken eyes look rather ghoulish. For a moment I thought I was talking to a corpse. the thought terrified me, and I waved it aside like a pesky horsefly. What in God's name was keeping Dougal from his young wife of two years?

A sudden crash from the living quarters made me spring to my feet, the short sword at my hip instantly removed from its scabbard without a second's hesitation. My sister screamed again, and I quelled her with an urgent look. I heard what could only be described as the heavy footfalls. A man, I assumed of enormous stature, was walking boldly into my sister's cottage with no invitation, and Dougal was still unaccounted for. The unmistakable sound of a weapon being removed slowly from a scabbard caught my ear, and my heart quickened. Dougal be damned! I had to act.

I crept slowly to the door of sister's room, signaling my sister into silence. By some miracle or by her sheer strength of will, she remained silent. The door was slightly ajar. I could feel my heart thundering in my ears as I bided my time, waiting for the moment to surprise this intruder and possibly finish him in one move. The near silence that followed, broken only the sound of my breathing, sent a chill up my spine. What was this intruder waiting for? Why had had he come? A homicidal fiend would have just attacked at will with no hesitation. This was different. He was waiting on the other side of this door, a coiled serpent just anticipating the moment that he would strike his emerging prey. My fear now turned to anger, and my muscles tensed under my tunic. I was ready to send this creature to the depths of hell from whence it came.

A resounding "crash" burst through the miasma of silence, and Dougal's grunts were clearly audible in the cacophony that followed. "Damnit," I yelled as I burst forth from the room, my sword raised. Dougal was now struggling with a tall, hooded figure. Swords clanged together frantically as Dougal and the intruder each fought to get the upper hand. Interference at this point had to be carefully timed, or it could spell the end of Dougal and myself. My sister screamed in her bedroom as I followed the intruder's footwork and timing, paying careful attention to his head. I could not see his face, and some horrible notion took hold of me and held my feet fast to the wooden floor. I did not want to see his face!

Suddenly, Dougal managed to turn the attacker's back toward me, and I knew my moment had come. Like a coiled spring, I launched myself at the attacker, covering the space between us both in the blink of an eye. My rage had carried me to the back of this man so quickly that I nearly forgot my purpose as I grasped his shoulder and sank my short sword into almost to the hilt into the back of his neck. To my great surprise, the attacker did not even slow down. He fought Dougal off formidably with his sword arm and simply tossed me, completely bewildered and off balance, off of his other arm like a rag doll.

I crashed heavily to the floor , my sword still embedded in the back of the intruder like a large skewer in a roast pig. To my horror, Dougal suddenly lost his balance. Before I could think what to do next, the intruder's sword arced through the air with blinding speed, finding its mark on the back of Dougal's neck! Dougal's head did not fly off of his neck as I had almost expected, but simply fell to the ground with a sickening thud. Blood began to gush everywhere, forming a red lake at the attacker's feet as Dougal's body fell with a thunderous crash , but the attacker was not phased. He simply turned toward me and laughed softly.

"You cannot win this," he said.