Disclaimer: The Musketeers are not mine. I'm just borrowing the concepts and characters for a little while.
Spoilers: None.
A/N: When I saw that the prompt was "heat," I had to write something about it since I live in Arizona (USA), where high temperatures are your constant companion for about five or six months of the year. :o)
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"You know you live in Phoenix when the four seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and are you freakin' kidding me?"
~~~~~~~Author unknown
"And how hot it is! It seems a veritable Sahara, for it is midsummer, and the heat rises from this vast plateau as from a fiery furnace."
~~~~~~~ George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland, 1917.
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It was all he could do to keep walking.
He could hardly remember exactly why he needed to keep walking, to keep going on and on and on, but he continued on his current path regardless.
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The yellowed landscape looked so wrong to his eyes.
He was used to the land being green and full of life, not this blighted and forsaken vista that was all around him.
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He kept walking.
What passed for a road in these parts was dry and rocky. He'd turned his ankle more than once on various rocks along the way. He had no idea if he was on the right road or even if he was going the right direction.
He could only hope that he would succeed in his mission. If he did not, then lives would be lost.
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He had long ago lost track of how many times he'd wished for a hat to provide him some amount of shade.
It didn't matter how wide the brim; he would've been grateful for any help a hat could give him – no matter how little.
He desperately craved some respite from the unrelenting heat and the bright light searing his eyes.
But he had no hat, and he honestly couldn't remember if he had ever had one before.
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The sun was relentless, the heat not only surrounded him, but it was trying to burrow in under his skin and cook him from the inside out. His lungs felt as if he was trying to breathe fire. His clothes didn't help either as they seemed to soak up the sun's rays and project them straight into his blood and bones. He felt like he was burning from the inside out, and wondered if the rumors he'd heard about spontaneous combustion were in anyway based on fact.
He could see clouds far in the distance. They ran the spectrum from fluffy white to the black of a storm cloud full of rain. He wished that the clouds would make their way in his direction, but they were stubbornly staying away.
Despite the distance between him and the clouds, he could feel that the air had become heavier with moisture as the humidity had risen. All it did was make the heat feel heavy and like it was weighing him down even more as he continued walking. The air around him was still, not even a slight breeze, so the moisture in the air was doing nothing to cool him down. All the moisture did was to amplify the heat of the sun's rays on his skin.
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Some time back he had found a watering hole that he and his friends had used more than once, but almost nothing had been left. Only dry, cracked dirt and some mud at the center had remained.
It had been his last chance for water, and now he could only hope he could reach his goal without it.
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He shouldn't stop. Lives were depending on him, but he needed to…stop.
And when he did stop – just for a moment – it didn't really help.
The heat was continuing to sap his energy. It just seemed to leech out of him with every step he took, and there was no way to stop it. No way to regain the lost energy. When he stepped under the meagre shade of a nearby tree, he had to put his back snugly against its trunk in order to hide as much of his body as possible from the sun's scorching rays.
Though his body was mostly in the shade, the heat had followed him, stalking him as if he were its prey. The sun was just biding its time, waiting for the perfect time to take him down with its heat. He was determined to not let the heat get him. He had made a promise and he would keep it. He would not fail.
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Every breath he takes is made of heated air, which is making him feel as if he had sat down too close to a fire. Each inhale and exhale may bring his lungs the precious air he needs to survive, but every breath sears his lungs. He gets air but it never seems like enough.
The distant storm, which had brought the oppressive humidity, has only worked with the heat to make breathing that much more difficult. With every step, the air itself feels heavier, thicker.
Walking for so long has parched his throat and made his breathing stutter, his exertions making it difficult for him to truly catch his breath. The weighty air was not making things any easier.
Despite the searing heat that was cooking his lungs, and the weight that was keeping them from expanding properly, he kept walking.
He must. He can't stop until he finds his brothers. He must tell them…something.
He can't remember what that was at the moment, but it was…
Danger. A threat to their lives.
He knows he needs to warn them… He needs his brothers to be alright.
They have to be.
He wishes that they were there with him, but he is alone. Utterly alone in this wasteland.
No one is in sight, which he vaguely registers is a good thing, but it means that it's up to him to…to…
He shakes his head a little to try and get his thoughts back in order, but it's no use. He can't think with this heat beating down upon him.
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There was another small group of trees ahead.
He should stop. Rest. Catch his breath.
But he won't.
What use would it be? It was still close enough to midday that the trees barely cast any shadow.
And did that really matter any longer? Because the heat followed him everywhere. He was trapped in a furnace that he can't escape regardless of how hard he tries.
Besides, he has no idea how much distance he's put between him and…them.
He's on foot; the ones that are after him would likely be on horseback. It would be simple enough to catch up to him, especially since he's weighted down by the oppressive temperature of the day.
He should stop, but he doesn't. It is imperative that he keep walking, regardless of the cost to himself.
His life is not worth as much as that of the rest of his brothers. He must save them from…from…whatever or whoever was after him.
One for all. He must keep his brother Musketeers safe. He must survive long enough to tell them about the danger.
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At some point, he hears what he thinks is thunder, but when he turns to look in the direction he'd seen the clouds, he discovers that they have stubbornly stayed at a distance.
There will be no help from that quarter.
No rain means no water.
No respite from, and no end to, this oven he's been walking through for long enough that he can't remember if he'd ever done anything else.
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The next time he hears thunder he doesn't bother to turn and look.
The weather has alternately tortured and tormented him enough to last him the rest of his days, which he faintly recognizes, with a smirk on his face, might be coming sooner than he'd thought.
It's not until he realizes that the sound of thunder continues to come closer and closer that it registers in his mind that it's not coming from the distant storm. In fact, it's coming from entirely the wrong direction.
He finally turns towards the sound and discovers that it's not the thunder which accompanies a storm coming towards him, but the sound of horses' hooves as they pound out a steady rhythm on the dusty ground.
He can't tell yet if friend or foe was coming his way, so he turns back and resumes walking. He has no strength anymore for fighting. He can't run for the same reason.
But he can walk, and so he will. It's a few seconds more of freedom anyway.
He keeps walking even as the thunder – wrong type though it was – keeps coming nearer and nearer.
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Closer.
The thunder is coming ever closer.
He can't stop now. He must find his friends.
He must keep going despite his imminent defeat.
It would only be a matter of seconds before the thunder caught up to him. So be it.
He'll keep going until he can't, until they catch up to him.
More than once he thinks that whoever is riding towards him is saying his name, but that was impossible. How can the enemy know his name?
Walking is all that matters so he ignores the hallucination of his name somehow crossing the heated distance between him and the thunder. Besides, it could be a trick to get him to stop walking, to keep him from getting back to his friends.
Then, suddenly, as if he'd conjured them out of thin air, his friends were there.
Was he imagining them there right in front of him? Did he want them safe and with him so badly, that his mind had been desperate enough to summon them up?
They shouldn't be there no matter how badly he had wanted to see them. It wasn't safe.
He had to tell them about… He had to tell them about the coming danger.
His family needed to be kept safe.
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They were all talking to him at once, holding their weaponless hands either out in a gesture of surrender or as if they were afraid to touch him.
The noise after the quiet of his seemingly endless walk confuses him, but it doesn't mean that he would be adverse to their touch. Maybe it would put to rest the question of whether or not they truly existed.
The ground beneath him was refusing to stay put. It felt like he should be in a boat on the large lake back home and not this dry, rocky path he had be travelling on for far too long.
When the world tilts to an alarming angle, he finally does feel hands on him.
He flinches away at first, doubting the reality of their touch upon his over-heated skin, but then he finds himself simply accepting their presence. With dry, gritty eyes, he sees their pauldrons, he feels the worn leather of the gloves on their hands, and his mind supplies the answer he'd so badly wanted to be true.
They are real, and they were there with him.
The resulting sudden feeling of safety knocks his legs out from underneath him.
However, his body does not painfully meet the hard and dusty road. Instead, someone catches him and lowers him gently to the ground.
"We have you. It's alright. You're going to be alright," one of them says.
No, he wasn't. It wasn't going to be alright. Not until he told them of the danger, the threat to their lives.
He could finally stop walking, but his mission wasn't yet over. He had one more thing he needed to do.
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In between small sips of water, which little by little had begun to quench to fire that the pounding, relentless heat had lit within him, he tried to get the words out, to report on the dangers waiting to befall his friends.
They listened and nodded, seeming to understand his muddled speech. When he was finished telling them all he could remember, they told him that he'd done well, and that he had been successful in his mission. He was assured that the situation would be taken care of, that the Musketeers would be warned and would take action, that everyone he cared about would be well. He sighed in relief, knowing that his brothers were going to be safe and sound.
As darkness began to creep in to the edges of his vision, he realized that he was in the arms of one of his friends. He could see his other two friends preparing to take him out of this hellish cauldron that he'd been trapped in.
He was no longer fighting the heat all on his own.
With them by his side, the heat would not win and he would soon leave it far behind. They would defeat it like they always did – together.
His walk was over.
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The end.
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A/N: Written for the August 2016 Fête des Mousquetaires "Heat" challenge prompt. For rules, judging, etc., please go to the forum page on this site for The Musketeers.
FYI, the record high temperature this summer for where I live in Arizona was 118F/47C. The highest recorded temp for France that I could find was 111F/41C back in 2003.
Many thanks to Celticgal1041 for her help; all remaining mistakes are my fault.
Thanks for reading!