The Horseless Horsemen, Book 3: Germaine

Prologue

She walked down the street with supreme confidence and a rhythm, as if she owned the world. At this point, she almost did. Not quite yet was that the case, but … very soon. She would become one of the most important and influential people on the face of the planet. …and not that very far into the future. …at which time, she would probably have to seriously think about doing something about the others. But she would burn that bridge when it got here.

The only thing that wasn’t completely certain in her mind was the two different movie scenes jockeying inside of her head for the position of most appropriate to the moment.

This temporary bout of indecision had started with Richard Gere’s scene at the beginning of American Gigolo. It had just come out a week ago, and she watched it last night just after she had come to the decision that would be directing her actions this morning. As she picked out her clothes to get ready, the song Call Me by Blondie played in her head, just as it had in last night’s movie. Now that she was walking toward the place she needed to go, the scene from Saturday Night Fever ran skipping across her brain as she stepped to the beat of Staying Alive the same way that John Travolta had when she watched that one just a few short years ago.

The relevance that the two different scenes had to her was the deliberate confidence with which those characters made their choices and the naturally fluid movements that accompanied the attitude. The dissimilarity was that neither of those movies were real life, and the human ego would always crumble given the just right push. Humans, even without being broken, would always give the more dominant personality complete and utter control.

Her own ego was not prone to that weakness. …nor would it ever be. That flaw had never existed in her. Her confidence hadn’t even remotely been shaken in the last nearly fifteen millennia. She had always been the one who had grasped that bull by the balls and had taken that complete and utter control of others.

And they always submitted to her.

That being the reality of the situation, she knew neither one of those songs actually fit who she was and what she was all about. The song she would have picked for her own theme, if she were starring in a movie about herself right now, hadn’t been written yet. It wouldn’t be for another thirty some odd years. The people who would make the song Tornado popular were mere children at this point in time. The band, Little Big Town, wouldn’t even be formed for another nineteen years.

Things and times being here and now, she had come to the conclusion only five minutes ago that she could match the falsetto of Barry Gibb more easily than she could the sharp tones of Debra Harry.

In this body, anyway.

Staying Alive won. …even though, and not just simply in spite of the fact that she had recently heard far more people singing Call Me out on the street since the movie was so new. She’d even heard the Muzak version in most of the stores she had gone into in the last few days. The Bee Gees’ song was still more appropriate to her current circumstances, though. In a short while, it would be a tossup again. …but the Bee Gees won for now. So she marched in time to the Brothers Gibb and hummed the tune to herself. …and she was quite satisfied with that.

John Travolta hadn’t spun while he walked in the movie. That would become popular in a concert, when Michael Jackson danced to Billy Jean, which had only been released last year. At this point, he was parting from his brother’s group, The Jackson Five. He was accomplishing that in a hugely successful way with his Thriller album.

She had always loved that little spin. Every now and then, when everything was going just wonderfully, she would perform that spin while she walked. That twirl was always one of the first things she would train herself to do when she took a new body. …that and his double spin for when things were moving along at breakneck speed in just exactly the direction she had planned them.

She did that spin now as she walked.

A group of boys who were dancing … if you could call those excellent exercises in free-style gymnastics dancing … on the sidewalk were watching her. Some of the people who passed her looked at her as if she was strange. Many moved a little to the side, so when they went by her they could a void her by a wider margin. …as if she might be carrying a communicable disease. Some of them ignored her completely, as people on city streets will do so they can continue to delude themselves into feeling that it was at all possible to remain safe and secure in their own little personal universe of one. …all the while, desperately trying to maintain that Universe of One in the middle of a City of Seven Million.

She knew people watched her as she walked. She knew they could sense the power in her personality. …that they could see the animal force in the way she moved. She could tell just by the expressions on their faces as they watched her. Both men and women had as their topmost layer of thought just how much they would love to find themselves in bed with her. Occasionally, someone with an ego far bigger than his penis would whistle at her.

She didn’t ignore them. They would know that she had heard them, anyway. Ignoring them would allow them think they had some effect on her. Instead, she made it clear to them that they were no more important to her than the insects between her shoes and the sidewalk. Without refocusing her attention from straight forward, she would lift her hand to where they could see it. Then she would hold up the ends of her thumb and forefinger only a half an inch apart. …a clear message as to what she thought of both their ego and their penis.

Sometimes her target would shout in response.

At that point, she won.

And they knew it. Their response was always quite limited in their choice of words, completely unimaginative, and physically impossible without radical anatomical modifications that weren’t quite perfected in this day and age.

Ignorant. Peasants. Each self-important. Each self-absorbed. Each willing … metaphorically if not quite exactly literally … to stab the next person in the back to achieve exactly what they want. I’m working very hard on the literally part, though. …and almost every one of them is exactly where … I … want them to be.

Soon enough, they would find out where it would all lead. They would all find out what they were bringing themselves to. …where she, over the millennia, had brought them to bringing themselves. …and where she would push them to from here.

For right this minute, though, she was on a different mission. Her long-term goals were well in place and on schedule. Humanity was climbing over themselves in a mad rush to get to where they believed their open-mindedness … their independent thought … their … ability to think outside of the box … was taking them.

Onward and upward!

Her laughed her snarky laugh.

Snarky.

Although that term had been recorded more than three quarters of a century ago, it wouldn’t actually become popular for another fifteen years. A few short years later, she would make that single word become a most-desirable way of life.

But they’re thinking outside of the box!

That whole concept was only the ultimate in self-delusion.

Because of their infallible open-mindedness, their capacity to think outside of the box was so limited they refused to allow themselves even to consider recognizing the inside of an even smaller box they’d caused to be formed around them. Because of their sheer invincibility, they wouldn’t recognize the traps they willingly walked into until it was far too late to do anything to get out of them. Even if they managed to see those traps, their pride wouldn’t allow them to do anything other than rush headlong into it, picking up speed the entire way.

Like a runaway freight train. Rather than apply the brakes, which they refuse to acknowledge exist, they dump their fuel bits at a time. When they realize they need to move on from there, and there’s no fuel … no motivating factor … they sit in wonder at why and how it could possibly be that they are where they have found themselves.

And they blame everyone else around them for it. All and everything is responsible except for the one true cause. …their own stupidity.

She laughed again, and spat a sticky wad of mucus straight up into the air.

People noticed and jumped to the side. They kept on going when they quickly decided that they were not in danger of being hit by it. The barrier walls protecting their Universe of One remained unbreached.

The wad flew impossibly in a circle, looping up and back, then coming back toward her. It landed in the face of man she had passed walking in the other direction only a few short moments ago.

The black and white of a Roman collar showed through the open top of his jacket. He stopped and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the mucus from his glasses and cheek. He lowered his face, shook his head, and sighed sadly. This was exactly the direction that he saw the world going. Even this country. And he was powerless … personally … to do anything that might correct that course.

People bumped into the priest repeatedly as he stood there. He was in their way. He was another … obstacle … in their never-ending pursuit of expanding their Universe of One. Expanding, but not with people. No. That would completely destroy their Universe of One. Let one person in and now there might be … gasp … God forbid … a Universe of Two.

Utter destruction!

No. Instead, they safely expanded their Universe of One with … toys.

Toys!

He who dies with the most toys wins.

The ultimate distraction.

Toys were a distraction from the painful fact that their Universe of One was … lonely.

Toys were a distraction from the impossible idea that their Universe of One was ultimately the cause of their unhappiness.

But, no, that can’t be right…

She laughed as she thought that if self-delusion had a tangible mass, all these …self-proclaimed extremely enlightened … people would be compressed into the size of a mustard seed.

Which is about the entire size of the useful volume of their atrophied and underdeveloped brains.

Toys were the only distraction from the completely natural, yet ultimately self-destructive, conflict between perpetuating a Universe of One and needing other people. …and not just toys.

But they are heading exactly where I have guided them. It won’t take much from here. That will be in another thirty years, though.

I have to keep my priorities right.

First … him.

The next stop on her mission of the moment was a specific Starbucks. There was a young man there who she needed to meet. She didn’t know him. He certainly didn’t know her. But she knew he was there. And she knew at which table he would be sitting.

It would take another ten minutes for him to get there. It would take her ten more than that. …long enough for him to get spread out and comfortable.

*****

She pulled the Starbuck’s door open. The wind whirled around her in the entryway. She paused in just the right place. Her hair was caught in the gust. It twirled up and around her head. She waited only for a moment. It was a dramatic effect that had been completely calculated to get him to look at her as she entered.

And it worked.

…just as she knew it would.

She locked eyes with him very briefly, through the mass of hair with her face tilted slightly down. The breeze moved on. …and so did she, as her hair fell back into place. The door swung closed behind her. She made her way to the end of the line at the counter.

He watched her. …just as she knew that he would. …just as she knew he continued to watch her from his corner table as he sipped his warm brew on this chilly morning.

She was gorgeous, and she knew it. But she acted as if she didn’t. She had played this part so many times in so many different bodies over the millennia that it took no conscious effort. She knew what men liked. It was the same thing they had always liked. The same thing that always drew them into her web.

He wanted her already. She knew what his thoughts were. They were always the same, every time. She looked straight at me! Who is she? That was the effect she always had, regardless of who her target was. …regardless of which woman’s body she wore.

It hardly mattered who she was, though. He wanted her. The expression in his eyes let her know that this was all that was on his mind. She could see it when she glanced sideways at him for a short moment.

Why was he important? Who was he … to her?

A complete nobody, as far as she’s concerned. A non-entity. Less than nothing. He had nothing in his past to recommend him. He had no present and no future. …not any more, anyway. He wasn’t really even all that good looking.

Yet, he was perfect. Exactly what she needed.

As she moved closer to the counter, she stood sideways to it so he could see her body profile. She made a show of going through her purse for the money for her order. At the same time, she lowered her chin toward her chest a little and quickly glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. She played the part to its limit. Organized, but not anal. Modern, but not on the edge. Looking, maybe, but not hunting. Not on the prowl. That demure sideways glance could be taken as either an invitation or a cautious search for danger.

She would clear up that question shortly.

He would think she looked to see if he was watching her. She didn’t really have to do that. She already knew he was watching her. Closely. He was hooked. Now she just had to reel him in.

She ordered and paid for her coffee, then turned to search the tables for a place to sit. It was crowded, as she knew it would be. The available places were limited.

He hurriedly moved his books and papers out of the way to make the area on the other side of his table available. He was still watching her.

She looked directly at him and smiled.

He smiled back at her and motioned toward the chair opposite him.

Her next steps took her directly to his table.

Care if I join you? Verifying, but not bold. Unafraid, but not presumptuous.

Please!

Only a little too eager. Just a little. That was fine. He would get exactly what he wanted. …and far more. The more, however, wouldn’t be anything even close to what he wanted.

*****

They were in her bed.

They had spent only a few minutes at the Starbucks table, before she had made it very clear that she was willing to take what he was willing to give. …even if, in his mind, he saw it as the other way around. She hadn’t given him her name or asked for his. He had volunteered his, though.

Oh, the power in so small a thing as a name.

She let him feel like he was in control. She let him be on top for a while. He wasn’t inept, but he was … rather limited. It was even moderately enjoyable.

But just like everyone else on this forsaken planet, he wanted to be controlled. So, she accommodated him there too.

She started squirming, wriggling sideways, pushing lightly on his shoulder until he got the hint and rolled over onto his side, then his back, switching their positions neatly as she rolled with him. Now, she was straddling his hips, and he was deep inside of her. It felt good as she pressed down hard on him.

She would miss this. On the other hand, his part was done. …not that he had finished. It was just that his active participation wasn’t actually required from this point on.

He didn’t say anything when her fingernails dug into the muscles of his chest. He thought that squeezing her nipples harder helped to cause that display of enjoyment.

She leaned forward and moved her hands up his chest to his shoulders, making her breasts even more accessible to him. As she continued to ride him, she wrapped her hands around his throat. …lightly, at first. As she moved up and down on him faster and harder, ramming herself down hard so that his attention was focused solely on that, she also increased the pressure with her hands.

He tried to fight her for a few seconds when he finally realized the danger he was in.

But it was far too late.

She was far too strong.

He couldn’t push her off.

He couldn’t loosen her grip.

He hit her.

Twice.

Three times.

And once more.

Her closed eyes remained that way and her expression never changed.

All the while, she kept slamming down into him.

He spent himself inside of her at just about the same time that he lost consciousness.

His hands fell to the bed.

A little while longer.

She pressed down hard on both his groin and his windpipe.

She stayed that way, completely immobile, for a few minutes.

Her face was down and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

She could feel his life bleed away after his heart slowed to a stop.

That … all by itself … felt far better than what they had been doing for the last fifteen minutes.

She barked a breathless noise with the sensation of his soul exiting his body. …and leaving that body completely available for her.

*****

The young man came out of the shower, and dried his hair as he walked back into the bedroom. He didn’t have to search through her closet. One man’s suit hung there, out of place among all her clothes. He knew it would fit him well. That was why it was here to begin with. She had gotten it just for him. …just for this occasion. …just for now.

He tied the silk tie meticulously, using a very old style knot that no one had used in centuries. He noticed the bruises on his throat as he lifted his chin so he could adjust his collar. They would go away in a few days, now that his heart was beating again.

He put on the jacket. It slid over the silk shirt easily. The clothes he had worn here were folded and rolled into a nice little bundle. He quickly ran one of her brushes through his hair.

He gave a final glance into the mirror. The suit fit perfectly, even though it hadn’t been tailored and he hadn’t tried it on before.

There were only a few things he wanted to take with him. Everything had been carefully placed before she brought him here. There was a thin travel bag hanging from a peg in the closet. He pulled it out and stuffed the bundle of his old clothes into the bottom.

He felt around the bottom of the bedframe and removed the long glittering key that had been hidden there. He looked at the key for a moment, turning it to watch the light reflect off the facets.

This key is the access to everything.

He put the key in his pocket and took the shoebox of cash from under the bed. He didn’t count the bills, or look to see what the denominations were, because he already knew. There were four stacks of two packs on top of twenty-six packs, standing on edge, with two more packs standing along the side. All the packs were of hundred-dollar bills. The tightly taped box held well over a third of a million dollars.

She had set that up for him just before she bought his suit.

He put the shoebox into the bag. While the box was a convenient size for him to carry, the amount it held was sufficient to help him get everything set up that he needed to have from this point on.

Nothing like starting over. …again.

He laughed at that deliberately oxymoronic thought.

He looked around one more time to make sure the tableau was correctly set. The woman sprawled across the bed, face down.

How cliché. The only thing missing is the pool of blood. Ah, well. I don’t have the time to be creative.

He went over and put his ear on her still warm, bare back. The heartbeat was slowing. The deceleration would be imperceptible to anyone else listening to it. …but he knew. His heartbeat had been constant for fifteen millennia. Every body he wore was always regulated to match his own rhythms. He could easily tell when it was different. While she wasn’t completely dead yet, nothing was in the body anymore to drive it. Its autonomic systems would fail as the body ran out of enough of itself to cannibalize for nutrition. It would die in a matter of a week. Once dead, it would take only a few days before the smell of the decomposing body would bring someone to investigate.

He kissed her bare back. The spine was already starting to deform, to revert to its original length. Her leg twitched when the stretched cartilage let the loose vertebrae slip out of alignment and pinch a nerve.

All the items that would bring the authorities to the right conclusions were exactly where she had left them before leaving for Starbucks. Everything was nice and neat. No clues existed to imply that anything might be missing.

He was quite satisfied.

The condition of her spine and much of the cartilage throughout her body would leave many unanswered questions for the police. Those questions would remain that way. …at least, they would have no answers anyone would ever remotely want. The answers they would be able to find would be more than just a mild distraction from the more important questions.

Confusion. Simple confusion. Not even much of that would be more than enough to serve his purpose. It always had.

Just before he left the bedroom, he looked back at the woman he left there.

He waved his hand.

The DNA that remains from this body … the fingerprints … there is no connection here from her to me.

His fingers itched, just like they always did, as the ends reconfigured the prints. He used the edge of his suit jacket to open the door to the outer hall, and let it lock behind him as it closed.

Yes. Today was a very good day.

He didn’t spin as Staying Alive ran skipping through his brain again. It always took a little practice before he could do that well with a new body. He’d start practicing that tonight, after he found a temporary place to stay, where he could think about the next steps in his plan.

He wore the same snarky smile that he had worn only an hour ago, shortly before the wind had blown his … her … hair up in the Starbuck’s open doorway.

It felt good to be inside a man’s body again.

*****

Part One

I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder,

Come!

-- Revelation 6:1

Chapter I

The youngest brother went nervously back and forth, as if he was trying to wear a path into the floorboards. Why anyone would want ruts in their floorboards was beyond the older brothers, but they did understand the reason why Harald was making a concerted effort at it.

He paced while they sat calmly. They had all done this before. They had all gone through it a number of times each, in fact, since they were that much older than Harald. His brothers watched him, having nothing much else they could reasonably do until everything was done. And maybe not even then. But they still needed and wanted to be here with him at this time.

While they each had the things that they could and did do for their small community, Harald was especially gifted at building things. He made them each chairs for their own homes that matched the ones that they sat in here. Golo, being half again older than Harald, had the newest chair of them all. It had mostly been a joke, but Harald still put the time and effort into the rocking chair to make it a beautiful joke.

Golo absolutely loved his new rocking chair when Harald presented it to him. He had to make the second for when Golo came over to visit, as he so often did for various reasons. …not the least of which, now, was that none of the other brothers had such a fine rocking chair for him to sit in.

Golo’s oldest son was only a few years younger than Harald himself.

They knew their youngest, if not the littlest, brother’s concerns. It was his first time. They each had their first time once, too. So they knew exactly what he was going through. Old hands at this, they spoke to him gently and joked about his steady pacing, attempting to divert his attention.

Baby Brother, sit down!

Till couldn’t exactly call him Little Brother, since Harald outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. Rather than carrying that weight in his belly, like Golo did, Harald carried most of it in the nearly foot more height that he had on Till. But Till still had to show that he was older, so he continued to call Harald Baby Brother even after they all stopped growing.

She’s a woman. Women have been doing this for thousands of years. Resi popped our first one out so fast, they almost had to catch Handel in midair. Everything will be fine.

Till, the middle brother of the older three, had nine children of his own already. Till was the one in their community who sat through the night with the horses when they were giving birth, sometimes having to be up close and personally involved in the process. But while Harald wouldn’t have even begun to consider questioning Till’s part in that process with a horse … it was Harald’s wife that was having the baby.

Harald cocked his head at Till and looked at him wide-eyed. Little Brother, Harald said quietly in his deep rumbling voice. Harald had started calling Till Little Brother as soon as he had grown larger than Till, while still in his teens. It was his way of getting Till back for being called Baby Brother for all those years. …and that reason still stood. Women are not quite the same as horses. …as I’m sure you must have noticed by now.

He continued to pace, undiverted in his worries.

Wendelin has good wide hips, Brother. She was built for this. It will be easy. That from Ralf, the youngest of the three older brothers, who already had four of his own.

Ralf was smaller than Till, and his hair grew at an incredible rate. Very often, Ralf would have to tuck his beard into his shirt to keep it from getting caught in things. …like kids, who tended to gravitate toward Ralf. The fact that he could warble his whistling like a bird, and could often call specific species of birds to him with his imitations of them, probably had something to do with the children’s attraction to him.

Golo, the oldest and largest of them all, just nodded as he rocked gently in his chair. He was the first to have a child. Although he had only five, he had been through this with each of his brothers. This would make his personal count for being present at births a total of twenty-three. …including his brothers. He knew just as well as they all did that sometimes things go wrong. It was up to the will of God whether someone’s faith would be tested or not.

Patience, Little Brother. Come. Sit down. Relax. …unless you want to be in the middle of it too, like Till is with the horses. …which I would not suggest, by the way. I know you’ve watched him working. While on a smaller scale, the mechanics are still the same.

The brothers laughed.

Wendelin is being very well looked after. Golo added. His deep voice sounded like it almost came from his boots. But maybe that was why he often spoke so softly that you sometimes had to strain to hear him.

Harald sat down in the spare chair next to his oldest brother. He sat back and crossed ankles. His feet were well out into the floor. He tried to relax.

Golo patted his arm gently.

There was a yell from the other room. It wasn’t a scream, but it was loud enough to make Harald jump and start pacing all over again, after sitting only a few brief seconds. Harald tugged at his beard, knowing everything was in God’s hands, but still having a weakness of faith moment. He prayed silently for forgiveness, for strength, for his wife to come through this okay, and for his new baby boy to be born healthy and strong.

Your face will end up bald if you keep doing that, Ralf called over the noise from the other room.

Towels! The older midwife stuck her head through the bedroom door. We need the rest of the towels, she said seriously, her eyebrows pinched together.

Harald grabbed the entire stack and nearly threw them, giving them to the old woman.

A baby’s cries began from the bedroom. They were loud enough that the boy sounded as healthy as a baby could be. The brothers grinned at each other.

The old midwife came out a few minutes later. I’m so sorry, she barely managed to say as she rushed past and out through the front door. A good deal of the clothes that she was wearing, and almost the entire apron that she held up to keep it from dripping, was a deep and wet red.

Harald rushed into the bedroom. Most of the towels were in the washtub on the floor. They were soaked with blood, as well.

The young midwife sat holding the baby, rocking it back and forth. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Harald ran to his wife. He knew what had happened. A complication with the birth caused her to bleed to death. It happened now and then. No one knew to whom it might. It was in God’s hands. …it was always in God’s hands.

He knelt beside his young bride, put his head on her chest and cried silently, shaking with his quiet sobs. He held her hands tightly.

His brothers stood at the bedroom door.

Wendi. …my Wendi, Harald said softly. He brought her hands up and he kissed them. He spoke more for his own comfort than for anyone else’s when he said, I give you God’s Peace, Wend. Walk with Jesus, my wife. Lord, please welcome my Wend to you with open arms.

God’s Peace. His Papa had given that gift to him many times when he was a child. Being the far youngest of the brothers … almost ten years younger than Ralf … when Harald was young, he’d always worked hard to be equal to them all. It had often frustrated him greatly when his efforts failed simply because he was that much younger and smaller. Although those words never did much to comfort him when he was a child, his Papa’s presence did. Eventually that one sentence became the very gift his Papa always intended it to be.

All four of the brothers gave the gift of God’s Peace to anyone who might momentarily forget that God had a reason for everything he allowed to happen. The Lord had a plan for the world. We might not understand it or agree with some of the minor details of it, but it was God’s plan. Everything had a purpose, whether to test someone’s faith or help someone else not directly involved to understand some particular lesson or another.

It still hurt, though, when those lessons sometimes took someone close to us.

Like Wendelin.

Like Papa.

Like Mama.

Like Karl, the oldest of the five brothers who had always kept Harald close by. Karl had taught him how to take a job that looked like it would be an impossible amount of work for someone Harald’s size and age, and break it down into separate small steps that would allow him to complete the task. Karl’s methods might take much longer, but doing it his way, Harald always got the jobs done.

*****

Harald had complained to Karl when one job had taken all day. Any of the older brothers could have finished it in only a few hours.

But you did it, Har, Karl told him, as he sat on his heels so that his eyes would be on a slightly lower level than Harald’s. He put his huge hand on Harald’s shoulder and gave it a shake that was far more gentle than anyone would have expected it could be, considering the size of those hands. And you did it all by yourself, Little Brother. You didn’t need any help from me, or anyone at all. Papa will be so proud of you. Karl paused only a moment, then he added, I am. He smiled from behind his big bushy beard. When you get bigger, you’ll be able to figure out how to make it go more quickly.

Harald continued to complain, though. Karl had said he did good, but Harald felt it really wasn’t anywhere near good enough.

I give you God’s Peace, Little Brother, he said, just like Papa always did. Karl reached out and pulled Harald in gently for a hug.

Harald didn’t mind when Karl called him Little Brother. They were all Little Brother to Karl.

Besides, we have bigger things to worry about, the big man said.

His voice wasn’t quite as deep as you’d expect from the size of him, and it was always soft. Even still, you could always hear him, even if you weren’t close to him.

Like what? Harald asked, not quite yet mollified by Karl’s support.

Like if those brothers of ours … who don’t work half as hard as we do, mind you … if they might have left us any of Mama’s blackberry pie.

Harald’s eyes got big.

I’ll race you to the house, Karl challenged.

The dust from Harald running was all the response the young boy gave his oldest brother.

Karl grinned and got up slowly. More than just his muscles were sore. He had worked hard today, moving the rocks in the field. The community was getting large enough that they had to expand the growing area, again. There were a number of men working with them in this hundred-acre patch. Cutting trees and moving the logs over to the mill. Digging up and pulling out stumps. And moving the rocks that they could, like Karl and Harald had been doing all day.

Karl could have used some help with a few of the bigger rocks. But he knew the larger task. They would all work together to move the biggest rocks in a few weeks. He knew what his horses could do, though. He’d pushed them almost as hard as he’d pushed himself. He brought levers that he used to roll the rocks onto the low sledge that the horses would pull when he had it loaded.

Harald used the same types of levers, only shorter, to move the small, but still quite heavy rocks, Karl asked him to. While Karl had the horses and a sturdy sledge to get the bigger rocks off to the side, Harald had a smaller flat bottom sled that he pulled by himself. He moved one at a time, and brought them each back to Karl.

The last rock Karl moved had been a stubborn one, but it was one that he wanted to get out before he stopped for the day. He had to dig out around the base, and found the rock was a little bit bigger than he originally thought. It took Karl a few more levers and a couple of Harald’s rocks to get it up and out of its hole, but it finally moved. He had a small scare when the rock rolled back at him off the sledge, but he was able to dance out of the way quickly enough without getting crunched in the process. It had been an effort to get it to stay up on the sledge, even though it was the only one on it.

He probably should have let that one sit for tomorrow.

But Karl got up as quickly as his sore muscles would allow, and he began to lope after his youngest