Darth John snow's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Darth John Snow rode home in the dark, the smell of the burned barn still in his cloak. The girl waited on the porch of the cedar cottage, swinging her feet. She did not ask what had happened. She handed him a cup of water and said the horses were the problem, not the riders. He nodded. One horse could not run from the stone building to the farthest village without breaking. At dawn he tried his plan. He picked the fastest mare and rode the long road south, pushing her hard. By midday she was foam-flecked and stumbling. He walked her the last mile and watched the sun pass overhead. A bell could ring twice in the time it took him to arrive. The plan had failed. He sat in the dust beside her and felt the old doubt return. The girl found him there that evening. She did not scold. She drew lines in the dirt with a stick. Three points along the road. A fresh horse waiting at each. He stared at the lines. Then he closed his eyes and reached for the quiet thing he had been hiding since he was young — the Force, warm and steady, the thing that had shaped the green crystal he kept wrapped in cloth at the bottom of his pack. He built for a week. He raised a small stone-and-timber shelter at the midpoint of the road, with a loft for a rider and stalls below. Further on, where the trees thinned, he set a sturdy oak post with rings and water troughs so a tired horse could be swapped for a rested one. At the farthest village he mounted a polished mirror beacon on a log so any rider crossing the ridge would see the flash and know the village was near. At night, alone, he finished the saber. The green crystal sang when he set it in the hilt. The blade hummed once and went quiet. He tested the route at dawn. He rode the first horse hard to the waystation, swapped at the oak post, and saw the mirror flash across the valley before his second horse was even winded. He reached the farthest village before the bell finished its third ring. A boy at the gate stared at the green light at his hip and did not run. The girl was waiting at the weathered hitching post when he came back. She looked at the saber, then at his face. "Now they can answer," she said. He hung his cloak by the door. The road was a road now, not a gap. The order could reach the farthest bell in time. Somewhere on the line, a rider he had not yet met would ride it without him.