Chap. 84 An evil wind

Chap. 84 An Evil Wind

The day was oppressively hot and muggy, without a breath of wind. They'd been surveying long enough that everyone knew what to do without a lot of discussion. This was grind work, now, as the steppe was completely featureless at this spot. 

K'ndar wasn't finding much, but, he reflected, B'rost, as the unofficial geologist, was finding even less.

"Not much in the way of rocks out here," he'd moaned. He was helping K'ndar take soil samples. "Makes it that much harder to make a cairn."

"I'm running out of designs to make each cairn individual," K'ndar said.

"I know. I think I'll start making two, one next to the other, so that we can number then 10 and then one, etc. But if this continues, we'll have to bring IN rocks!" B'rost looked around, noting their dragons taking their ease on the steppe. 

"Odd," B'rost noted, "the last few weeks we've always had animals in the distance, but nothing today. Not so much as a bird."

K'ndar felt a bit embarrassed. He'd not noted it. 

"Thanks for pointing that out," he said, "I'd not noticed it. What I AM noticing is that the grass here is clipped short. I mean SHORT. And yet, I see very few hoofprints. We must be a very long way from water that there aren't any herbivores here. Yet, the grass has been eaten. By something."

He knelt down in the short grass and aimed his combination bino/microscope. Zooming in, he noted that the grass looked as if it had been gnawed rather than clipped off with teeth. 

He noted that in a notebook.

I'm filling these notebooks up in a big hurry, he thought. 

He was finding a few dead insects, of a type he'd never seen before. He collected several of them and put them in a specimen bag. He dug around and found what he knew now were larvae. Was of the same species?

Siskin, always willing to dig, came to help. He took a bite of one of the larvae and then chittered. It was good, apparently, as he began to eat others.

"Supposed to COLLECT them, Sis, not EAT them."

Siskin's eyes whirled an amused green.

D'mitran straightened up from his work, bending backwards to get the crick out of his back.

"It's hotter than a coal," he said, "Wish we'd get some breeze." 

As if he'd conjured it, a breeze suddenly picked up, not cooling anything, but at least it was moving.

"You'll have to teach me that trick," D'nis said, appreciating the wind even if it was hot.

"Not my doing," D'mitran said. Then, looking to the southwest, he said, "That's odd," drawing the attention of the others.

"What's odd?" D'nis said, getting up, too. This site was done and he was glad of it. It was totally unremarkable. Only his scientific discipline kept him from just saying ignore this spot, let's continue.

"Look at the sky.  Far off, to the southwest. I've never seen clouds build up like that, come up so fast."

They looked. K'ndar felt a thrill of fear run up his spine. Was it…was it? He searched his memory. He'd only seen this a few times, as a child, and that was when he wasn't aware of what it was. Now, though, he knew.

"That's got to be the ugliest thing I've ever seen," D'nis said. 

"Shards, it's dark. What happened to the sunshine?" D'mitran said. He pointed the datalink at the sky and took readings.

He gaped at the results. "This can't be right. Let me do that again."

He repeated his first shot of the sky.

"Same thing. This is strange. Strange."

"What?"

"When we first got here, I took readings of temp, humidity, all that, to include barometric pressure. We've been here, what, half an hour? And the barometric pressure's dropped. In fact, it's dropping right now, like a stone. No, this can't be right. It's reading just below 1000. This thing must be affected by the heat."

K'ndar, his stomach knotting up, said, "no, it's reading true. It's right."

"Why?"

"Looking at that bank of clouds, reminds me of what I saw as a kid. The barometric pressure drop…thanks to B'rant pounding meteorology into my thick head, means we've got a tornado coming."

"Tor nay doh?"

"Look at those clouds," he said, watching the bank of clouds racing at them. "I remember seeing the sky fill up with a gigantic cloud, dark. Green. It hung so low, almost as if you could reach up and touch it. And it circled. We've got a tornado coming and we need to get out of here immediately."

He started stuffing gear into his backpack. The others did so, too. As if it heard him, the clouds  quickly took on a look of sodden sheep.

The dragons began to react.

I hear…something Raventh said. Siskin began to chitter anxiously. 

"What's a tornado?" B'rost said.

"Did you sleep during that class?" K'ndar snapped, sharply.

"NO. I don't remember B'rant saying anything about a tornado. I don't know what a tornado is." B'rost bridled. K'ndar normally wasn't so curt or rude.

"Ease off, K'ndar, I don't remember learning about tornadoes, either." D'mitran said.

"Sorry, B'rost," K'ndar apologized, his eyes riveted on the menacing, hideous cloud filling the sky. "B'rant didn't, because…well, none of you are steppe bred, like me. I've only seen a tornado a few times. It's a…funnel cloud. It sticks out from the underside of a cloud that looks an awful lot like this one coming at us, and it's destructive…far more so than a hurricane."

"Really." D'nis said, wondering why he'd never heard of it, either.

The clouds picked up speed, rotating in an ever tightening circle. 

"By the egg, it's racing towards us at green speed," D'mitran said. 

The dragons began to fuss.

We need to leave.

"A 'funnel', like a water spout?"

"Aye, but instead of being over water, a tornado is only on land. Water spouts are kittens in comparison, power wise. Tornadoes only form on the steppe. They only form..if I remember correctly, they only form when there's HOT thermals rising from open land, but there's cold air above it. Forest or jungle don't support them. I remember seeing them touch down as a kid, but we were tucked away in the foothills. Even so, I remember going down a watercourse after a tornado came through and giant trees were ripped up and broken in two like it they were withies. And transported KILOMETERS from where they'd grown. These things are powerful.   And…if I remember correctly, they go FAST and they usually have hail before they…"

As he spoke, a thin, violently spinning finger of cloud  protruded from the bottom of the clouds, twisting and snaking it's way downward.  

 Before it even touched the ground, a cloud of dust and dirt was sucked up to meet it, forming a cloud of debris around the tip. 

 On the forward edge of the funnel, a hissing black sheet of cloud reached the ground.They could hear the sibilant hiss of something solid…not rain…striking the ground. The wind picked up quickly.

"HAIL. Let's GO." D'nis ran to Corvuth, stuffing gear into his pack as he ran. He leaped aboard his eager bronze.

A bolt of lightning hit the ground just as the funnel did, too.

"Back to the weyr, everyone," he shouted, "Launch!"

________________________________________________________________________

They come out above the weyr. The air was still and hot…but no ugly cloud hung over it. 

Are you alright? Did you get hit with any hail? he asked Raventh.

No. Neither did the others. Let's not risk that again. I never saw such a thing before. The air felt…like it did in the hurricane. But different. 

Trust me. I won't let it happen again. I'd forgotten about tornadoes. 

Once they'd recovered from their fast retreat, the four met in the weyr's fledgling library. The second of K'ndar's datalink was there, and fortunately, not in use at the moment. 

Rendel met them. "Tornado? Never heard of it, but, let's type it in. How's it spelled?"

And thus, they saw what a tornado was, how it formed-and how dangerous it was.

"I can't get over how fast it formed," D'mitran said.

"The right set of conditions can set it up in a big hurry, if this is any indication," Rendel said.

"LOOK at that," B'rost pointed. One of the stills showed a hut at the base of a tornado, just before the funnel cloud engulfed it. The hut looked to be the size of a thumbnail, the tornadic cloud so immense it filled the rest of the sky above the hut.

"They're…that big."

"Yes. Enormous." K'ndar said, still a bit shaken. "I have to apologize again, B'rost. I wasn't snapping at you, I was upset with myself. I've always kind of held myself proud to be steppe bred, but I forgot all about tornadoes. Showed me up, didn't it?"

"It's okay, K'ndar. No problem. I'm …well, I'd love to be able to just watch one, if I didn't have to worry about being killed!"

"I know the feeling. I've only seen two or three, and they were far out on the steppe. The noise was incredible, even so. So loud you had to cover your ears.  I always wanted to go out to see it. Mum thought I was daft. But she taught me something about them: she warned me if I ever was out on the steppe and couldn't get back in time, to watch the tornado. If it moved left or right, then I would be okay, because they only travel in a straight line. If it didn't move then it was coming right at you. I never dared to find out if it was true," he said. 

D'nis said, "When I was a kid, we'd see a big storm come up, so we'd take cover in the rock shelters we'd built, and I'd watch the lightning and listen to the thunder. I love a good thunderstorm, but only when I know no one and nothing's going to get hurt."

"One more thing for B'rant include in his meteorology classes for the new Weyrlings," D'nis said. 

D'mitran shook his head. "I, for one, won't trust the steppe again. But you know, the animals told us. We just didn't listen, did we?"

"They can tell. I just wonder where they GO," K'ndar said.