Rain; that was all Jergan could see from his post at the gate. Rain that poured from the sky in torrents, rain that sloshed down the keep's walls and puddled at their bases, rain that found its way into the finest of cloaks and soaked a man to the skin. Jergan hated it. He huddled in the little wooden shack that was meant to keep the worst of the weather off of him, and marveled that it was still standing in a storm as bad as this one. The wind - though it was a constant this far North in Hardorn - seemed doubly angry tonight; it drove the droplets of rain before it like an aggressive sheepdog. It changed directions as often as a sheepdog might, first driving the rain westward, then south again, where it splattered water through the door and into the sodden guard's face. Unfortunately the lord of the keep had never allowed a door be added to the shack. He had insisted that a man who could close himself in was a man who could neglect his duties, and there were times when Jergan readily agreed. This was not one of them. What with the howling wind and an occasional burst of thunder, Jergan doubted that any man out here in this post would be able to sleep.

Somewhere out in the distance, a streak of lightning lit the sky. Jergan reminded himself to turn his eyes away from the source, lest his night vision be temporarily lost. He'd been set out to watch for a pair of riders, come all the way from a holding on Tyrant's Route. While the guard himself had no real care for who the guests might be, he knew that his master did, and if one wanted to live long enough to retire from a military career and raise grandchildren, one did not disobey Master Fitral, the lord of this keep and the man whose guests these mysterious riders would be. Nevertheless, it was no easy task for the man to remain entirely focused upon his duty. Especially not when the lightning made all number of odd shadows spring out on the landscape, and the wind sounded entirely too Otherworldly for comfort.

There was a leak in the roof of the shack that let water drip onto the small coal brazier he had been allowed for warmth. The continuous sizzle-spit noises the water made as it touched the hot metal sounded exactly like the evil hiss of a creature one would expect to find in the Otherworld, too. Jergan shuddered, and pulled his cloak more tightly around his body, even though it was already soaked through in most places. He was thankful - and not for the first time that evening - that it was a woolen cloak, for wool was the only fabric that stayed warm while it was wet.

Thunder snarled off in the distance, and for a moment Jergan thought he heard another, odd sort of noise within it. For a moment, he dismissed the sound as part of his imagination, and went back to feeling sorry for himself. Then the noise came again. Carried on the wind and distorted by the rain, he couldn't quite make it out. It was with a sigh that he begrudgingly admitted to himself that the best way to figure out the source of the peculiar sound was for him to investigate it himself. The hood of his cloak slopped over his head as he drew it up and went out.

No sooner had he left his shack than a gust of wind tore through the keep and threatened to tear the poor fellow right from the wall he was stationed on. He ducked low and scuttled to lee side of the wall. Again, the wind seemed to carry with it a strange sound, but this time Jergan thought he could make out parts of words. He peeked over the edge of the wall in time to see a rider cup his hands around his mouth and shout upwards, "Halloo-oo-oo!"

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