"You're coming with us," she said. "If you even think of lying or deceit, you'll wish you'd never been born. You'll do what you're told to do, when you're told to do it. And you'll leave Ruari alone, no matter what he does or what he says. Understand?"
He nodded. "In my dreams, great one. In my dreams." Akashia cocked her head. She seemed about to ask a question when Yohan called from the doorway of the kank-keeper's shed, and she joined him there without saying anything more. *****
At least he didn't have to worry about controlling the creature. There was no way he could reach the bug's antennae once he'd gotten himself wedged beneath the rack.
"We're not going any farther than we have to," Yohan assured him as he threaded a supple leather rope through man-made holes in several of the soldier-kank's spikes." "We'll dig in as soon as we find shelter."
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 brillianccj 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 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.
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.