Storm in the Wastelands
The Tyr-storm hits them in the open.
Pavek is riding under the bone cargo rack on the soldier-kank when Ruari jabs him awake with his staff. Pavek grabs the wood, rams the other end into Ruari’s gut, and throws the staff away. “Do that again, half-wit, and you’ll need a crutch, not a staff.”
A lightning bolt slams the ground nearby and freezes them both. Yohan walks between them, gives one scowl, and they snap out of it. Their shelter is a roofless mud hovel, already melting in the rain.
Yohan points back outside. Someone has to stay with the kanks. Pavek follows the dwarf into the storm. He wraps lead ropes around his waist and clings to the kanks’ clawed legs when the wind hits like a fist. His eyes adjust to the constant blue-green lightning. Time stops meaning anything.
Then he hears a woman scream.
The storm has driven a stampede straight through their camp. Erdlus, kanks, giant spiders, and nightmare things he has no name for, all running panicked and blind. The mud hut crumbles under the hooves and claws. Akashia and Ruari come running out. Akashia makes it to Yohan. Ruari does not.
He trips. Falls. His knee is destroyed. He is lying in the mud with blood on his face while terrified creatures leap over him. An erdlu jumps him. A kank swerves at the last second. He has burned through a lifetime of luck in a few heartbeats, and the stampede is not stopping.
Akashia is screaming, pinned in Yohan’s arms. There is nothing her druid spellcraft can do against the raw panic of a Tyr-storm. There is nothing any of them can do.
Except Pavek.
He sees Ruari’s staff on the ground. And without a single intervening thought, he picks it up.
Every templar trainee had to master five weapons: sword, spear, sickles, mace, and a man-high staff. The smooth hardwood is familiar in his hands. He plants his feet in the mud, stands over the half-elf who has done nothing but insult and hurt him, and bellows challenges into the storm.
He does not do this out of compassion. Not for reward. He does it out of outrage. Pure outrage that water, the most precious substance in their world, has become a weapon. That a life can end because somebody slipped in the mud for no reason at all.
When the last erdlu races past, Pavek is still standing. Yohan appears in front of him shouting his name. “Pavek! Back off, Pavek. Danger’s passed.” The dwarf scoops up the moaning Ruari and carries him to safety.
Then the shaking starts. He has contempt for the fools of Tyr who challenged a dragon, and yet he just did something equally reckless for a person he actively dislikes. His brain cannot square it.
Yohan returns with a flask that clears his mind. There are fresh gouges all along the staff and a chunk of chitin wedged near one end. He traces the razor-sharp edge with a trembling finger. He does not remember hitting whatever lost it.
Akashia kneels beside him. The thunder is leaving. She tends a gash on his shoulder he did not notice. Her druid healing is warm and gentle, nothing like the templar infirmary butchers.
“I think I have misjudged you, Just-Plain Pavek,” she says. “Without hesitation or thought of reward, you risked your life to save Ruari’s, after you twice swore to kill him. There is more to you than a yellow robe. You might be a man, after all.”
A hand reaches between them. Long-fingered and quick. It grabs the staff and pulls it away.
“He’s a templar, Kashi. The worst kind of templar. He pretends to be what he’s not. Wash your hands after you touch him.”
The next morning, the storm is gone. One kank is dead. Akashia and Ruari perform a druid death rite over it together, their wordless chant weaving complex rhythms between their swaying bodies. So Ruari is a druid too. Pavek files that away with interest.
They ride for two more days through dead badlands. Journey-bread runs low. Water jugs run lower. Carrion birds circle overhead, patient and confident.
Then they hit the Fist of the Sun. A blinding white salt plain stretching to every horizon. The others have chitin face shields. Nobody packed an extra for Pavek. He pulls his shirt over his head and waits. Heat wraps around him. Moisture leaks from every pore. He thinks they will abandon him here with the soldier-kank and a few jugs of water that would only buy a few extra days of agony.
When the air cools, he thinks he has died. But it is only sunset.
They ride through the night. Either they escape the salt before sunrise or they do not survive it. Pavek cradles the last half-empty jug in his lap and listens to the liquid slap against the clay. The moons cross the sky. The eastern horizon begins to glow.
Then Yohan’s voice comes through the nothing. “As ever and always, a sight to make your heart sing in your breast!”
Green. Rich, deep, impossible green directly ahead of them, crowned with white clouds. Fields of grain. Brick wells. Trees. Pavek has never seen a tree that was not surrounded by guards and walls. In Urik, ordinary citizens wait all day during the Festival of Flowers just to peek through the iron gates of the king’s garden.
“Quraite?” he whispers.
Akashia turns around with a smile. “Home.”
To the druids it is home. To Pavek, dizzy from heat and thirst and days of brutal travel, it looks like paradise.
Book: The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey Series: Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas, Book One ISBN: 1-56076-872-X
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