he knew equated the two—out to challenge the Dragon. And, against all odds, the hero-fools had succeeded. Now the storms came, about as frequently as the Dragon had come for his toll of mortal life.
The Dragon’s toll had been paid in slaves; anyone with a bit of luck or coin had nothing to fear. But the storms ravaged everything equally with wind, hail, and rain. No one could buy luck when blue-green lightning filled the sky.
So why not name the storms after Tyr? Someone had to take the blame. Smoking Crown had been belching as long as anyone could remember, but the smoke hadn’t bred storms until the fools of Tyr had slain the Dragon.
Between the blindfold-bandage and the straw, he couldn’t see the blue-green lightning, but, straining his ears, he heard the now-and-again rumble of thunder. Dread greater than any pain filled his heart: he’d sooner be dead than confront a Tyr-storm trussed-up as he was.
“This is as far as we can go without a decision,” Yohan, the third member of the trio said with a sigh.
The cart tipped as the old dwarf lowered the traces. Pavek slid forward, helplessly, toward the dwarf and the ground. Bolts of agony, sharper and brighter than the unseen lightning, racked his joints as the rope between his bound limbs and cart snapped taut. His ribs contracted and, with his not-inconsiderable weight suspended halfway in, halfway out of the cart, he tried to howl, but the sound strangled in his throat.
“Earth, wind, rain, and fire!” Akashia swore.
Yohan put a hob-nailed sole against his chest, shoving him backward as the cart leveled. Pavek could breathe again, and scream as the wheels swiveled, bounced, and rolled rapidly through the darkness.
“Hold these!” the dwarf barked, and the two-wheeled cart tottered as one of the others took his place between the trace-poles.
Straw was swept aside, and a massive, strong hand clamped over his forearm to haul him out of agony with the rude courtesy one veteran expected of another, even when they were on opposite sides.
“Look at his hands,” Akashia whispered from somewhere near his head.
Her tone, midway between horror and disgust, was enough set him struggling, but Yohan’s grip was firm.
“You’ve come close to crippling him,” Yohan snarled, not toward the woman, so it was the half-elf, the whiner, who’d spit-tied him. “Give me that knife of his, Kashi—”
A moment later, he felt cold steel against his right arm. He heard the unmistakable snap of stretched leather as steel sliced through his bonds and guessed that Ruari had tied him up with wet thongs. It was a templar tactic: leather shrank as it dried. He couldn’t control his arms or legs as, one after another, they went from freedom to spasms. He ground his teeth together in a vain attempt to remain quiet, and when he could not, he swore vengeance against the half-elf scum.
“Easy,” Yohan counseled, shoving and pulling until he was sitting erect. “Water?”
Another pair of hands, Akashia’s, unwound the cloth from his eyes. He blinked a moment, adjusting to the twilight, and gasped when he saw his swollen, discolored hands. Growling like a maddened beast, he lurched toward the lean silhouette at the corner of his vision. Yohan stopped him with one hand.
“Don’t be a fool,” the dwarf hissed.
He let the fight go out of him. With no control over his fists, no strength in his legs, he was a fool. He slumped against the side planks of the cart.
“It’s going to tip!” Ruari shouted, grappling with the traces—though whether to help or hinder was beyond Pavek’s guessing.
Yohan planted his foot against the opposite side. The danger passed. “Water?” he repeated.
Of his three captors, the dwarf was clearly the most dangerous, but the two of them were playing by the same rules, by templar rules: victor and vanquished, power and prisoner. Right now water was more precious than life itself, but accepting it would establish the hierarchy between them, with him inescapably on the bottom. Pavek hesitated. The dwarf uncorked a jug and, tilting it recklessly, allowed water to trickle along his chin as he drank deep and loud.
“Yes—water.” Pavek surrendered. With effort and concentration, he got his jelly-boned arms to move, but Yohan had to steady the jug as he drank. The liquid restored his will and cleared his thoughts.
Lightning lit the heavens with cool brilliance. Pavek braced for the gut-punch crack of thunder, which did not arrive for several moments and was distant—sounding when it did. The Tyr-storm would be violent