Pavek nodded with more confidence than he truly felt. The dwarf tied the rope to the back of his saddle. Akashia led the way through the unguarded gate; Yohan followed, Ruari brought up the rear.
They weren’t the only travelers who’d decided that safety lay in small, familiar groups beyond the village walls. Pavek lost track of the number of likely places they approached only to be warned away by well-armed men and women.
The Tyr-storm was almost above them. Lightning ringed the horizons and the thunder never ceased. Winds gusted from every quarter, sometimes bearing sulphurous grit from the Smoking Crown or sharp-edged pellets of ice. His companions huddled beneath thick, wool cloaks; Pavek had the shirt Oelus had given him. Cold, wet, and miserable, he curled up like an animal, eyes closed, enduring what he could neither control nor change. The kank’s six-legged gait had no rhythm his body could decipher. He slipped into a thoughtless state midway between sleep and despair and did not notice when the insect finally came to a halt.
“Move your bones, templar.”
Ruari’s snarl penetrated Pavek’s stupor. The rude jolt of a staff against his ribs roused him to action. He grabbed the smooth wood, noting with satisfaction that he’d recovered his strength. The half-elf twisted and tugged, but he couldn’t free his weapon. The Tyr-storm winds swallowed Ruari’s oaths as fast as he uttered them.
Pavek didn’t need to hear, he could read the words by lightning-light. Never mind that his former peers had put a price on his head, to Ruari he was templar, and personally answerable for all the many, many crimes his kind had committed. He straightened his arm, ramming the opposite end of the staff into Ruari’s gut. The youth staggered backward. His hands slipped from the wood and, in the flashing blue-green light, his expression changed from insolence to fear.
“Do that again, half-wit, and you’ll need a crutch, not a staff,” Pavek shouted and hurled the stick away.
He eased down to the ground. His muscles were cold-cramped, but nothing like before. He glowered at Ruari, confident that he could deliver his threat if the youth was foolish enough to make a move toward the staff.
A bolt of lightning slammed the ground a few hundred paces away. It stunned them both and left them standing like angry statues until Yohan strode between them. One lightning-lit scowl from the veteran dwarf brought them to their senses. Ruari ran away, leaving the staff behind. Pavek took his first conscious look at what his companions called shelter: the roofless remnant of a peasant’s mud-walled hovel, abandoned, no doubt, after an earlier Tyr-storm and melting as he watched.
He grimaced, Yohan scowled. Then they hobbled the kanks together, frontmost legs of one to the hindmost of another, and unlashed the harness from the soldier-kank’s back. Cursing and slipping, they wrestled the bone rack through the mud, into the remains of the hovel where Akashia and Ruari were already huddled in a leeward corner. Pavek thought there was room there for two more, but, before he could join them, Yohan struck his arm, pointing outside, where they’d left the kanks.
Size and strength conferred their own, sometimes futile, responsibilities. Following the dwarf, he returned to the storm. The bugs, which had circled so frantically in their Modekan pen, obeyed different instincts now that the storm was directly above them, crowding close together to make their own shelter from the pelting hail. He overcame his distrust and, with the lead ropes from two of the smaller kanks wound around his waist and wrist, clung to their clawed legs when the wind struck like a giant’s fist and thunder thumped; his gut.
His eyes adjusted to blue-green brilliance leaving him blind in those rare moments when lightning was not flashing. His ears grew deaf to the ceaseless thunder clash. Time and place lost meaning, yet, somehow, he was aware of a woman’s scream and cast aside the ropes. He strained his battered senses, but the only additional screaming came from the Tyr-storm itself.
He found himself ten long paces from the kanks, but couldn’t remember moving his feet. His heart shivered; he hugged himself for warmth, reassurance.
This is how madness starts.
The thought, not quite his own, floated through his mind as he returned to the hobbled kanks and Yohan.
He was halfway there when the first erdlu ran by, so close that its scaly wings brushed against his arm. Then another flightless bird raced between him and