the wind, and a growing crowd gawked around it.
It was true. It was all true.
Gwen turned and ran to the other end of the parapets, looking East, searching desperately for Thor and the Legion. She spotted them on the horizon, hundreds of them, all on horseback, a great army, kicking up dust. The cloud was growing higher and higher, and she could see Thor among them, galloping with the others, so desperate to earn his glory. She thought of Gareth’s words, of Thor being sent into a trap, sent to be ambushed. And as she watched him gallop away, she knew there was nothing she could do about it.
“NO!”
She screamed out to the heavens, sinking to her knees, wailing, pounding the stone, wishing it were anybody else, anything else. She couldn’t imagine the thought of it. Gareth could kill her, could sell her away, could destroy everything in her life-but she could not imagine the thought of Thor being harmed.
“THOR!” she screamed.
She wished that he could hear her, that he could somehow turn, on the horizon, and return to her.
But her cry was picked up by the wind, carried away, and soon it vanished into nothing.
