the hovel, its movements frozen in series of lightning flashes. There were other shapes in the flickering light. Dozens of them, and dozens more. Familiar creatures: erdlus, kanks, giant spiders, and unfamiliar escapees from a madman’s nightmare. They were all panicked, stampeding beneath the Tyr-storm, trampling everything in their path.
Including the hovel.
Pavek skidded into Yohan just as Akashia and Ruari emerged, as terrified as the stampeding creatures around them. They both ran toward him, Yohan, and the hobbled kanks, which together were large enough and solid enough to deflect the stampede to either side.
With her robes flailing around her, Akashia scampered toward the safety of Yohan’s open arms. Ruari, hidden behind Akashia’s billowing silhouette, tripped or slipped and disappeared. When Pavek saw the youth again, he lay writhing in the mud, head thrown back in anguish, arms wrapped around an obviously injured knee. A lightning flash of exceptional brilliance left Pavek blinking—blind, with the impression of an erdlu leaping over Ruari frozen in his mind’s eye. Another flash, another impression: a kank veering, saving its balance at the last moment, and sparing Ruari’s as well. The third flash and Ruari still writhed in the mud, but there was blood on his face: he’d expended a lifetime of luck and fortune in a few heartbeats.
Nearby, tightly confined by Yohan’s arms, Akashia was screaming: the same sound Pavek had heard before. The veteran wound his hands into her hair, forcing her face against his shoulder. There was nothing she or her druid spellcraft could against the panic of a Tyr-storm. There was nothing any of them could do, except watch in horror. Pavek forgot to breathe. It wasn’t compassion that filled his lungs with fire. If there was a word for what he felt as the Tyr-storm roared, that word was outrage. Outrage because water, the most precious substance in all the world, had become deadly and life could be extinguished for no more meaningful reason than a slip in the mud.
Then he saw Ruari’s staff, unbroken, almost within reach and, without an intervening thought, outrage became action.
Every would-be templar had to master five weapons before he wove his first messenger’s thread through the hem of his sleeve: the sword, the spear, the sickles, the mace, and a man-high staff. The smooth hardwood was familiar in Pavek’s hands. He cleared a path to the injured half-elf, planted his feet deep in the mud and, with a fierce bellow, defied the minions of the storm.
None of the panicked creatures, including the nightmare predators swept up in the stampede, was interested in a challenge, nor were they running so thick that they could not avoid a noisy, moving obstacle in their path. Pavek bashed at anything that came too close or seemed to hesitate, but the greatest danger came from Ruari, still clutching a knee and thrashing into his legs at unpredictable moments.
But he kept his knees flexed and retained his balance until the last immature erdlu had raced by. The Tyr-storm itself still raged. He feinted at the wind until Yohan appeared in front of him, shouting his name.
“Pavek! Back off, Pavek. Danger’s passed.”
Suddenly his arms were lead and the staff was the only thing keeping him upright. He stood calmly while Yohan, scooped the moaning youth and carried him to safety.
Then the shaking started.
He couldn’t accept what he’d done. He had nothing but contempt for the fools of Tyr who’d challenged a dragon, yet he’d done something just as reckless and for less reason: for Ruari, who was a callow mongrel with a streak of cruelty cut through his half-wit’s heart, not worth a moment’s mourning.
Yohan came back: one comradely hand between his heaving shoulders, steering him out of the fading but still-potent storm, offering a small-mouthed flask. He took a swig without thinking, just as he’d picked up the staff. A camphor-laced liquid made his eyes water. When his vision cleared, so had his mind. He sat on the ground, with Ruari’s staff resting across his thighs.
There were fresh gouges all along the wood and a fractured chunk of chitin as long as his forearm wedged near one end. He traced the jagged edge with a trembling finger.
“You saved his life, templar—Pavek.”
Akashia, beside him, didn’t have to shout in order to be heard. The thunder was receding, and compared to what they’d been, the wind and rain were insignificant.
Pavek grunted, but kept his attention focused on the chitin chunk. His mind held no recollection of striking the creature who had lost