Ironhand (Taurin's Chosen Book 2)

and squeezing through a gap I could’ve sworn was too small for it.
Cobble crunchers pursue it, but Leap looks at me, a grimace twisting his face.
“The bugger’s too fast, Ironhand.”
Kunj issues a stream of what could only be invectives and spits on the floor.
I look at the gap where the thing disappeared, feeling as if it’d just skittered over me.
It looked like a bigger version of the tiny spiders, those too-small-to-be-seen-by-the-eye machines, that live inside me.
I am a stain on a rock, a shadow in the desert. How long I’ve been here, I don’t know, but it could’ve been hours, days, years.
All the time in the world could’ve passed before I realized that I was not part of the landscape.
That I was I.
I feel battered and bruised, as if I’ve been whirling in the winds. Perhaps I have. There’s sand in my teeth, under my nails, between my toes. It prickles on my lashes and smears over my cloak.
The night sky above me is awash in stars. I tilt my head up and they look down at me, noting me in their distant way.
My head feels empty, as if everything I’ve held on to all my life—all memory, all faith, all thoughts—has poured away like handfuls of sand falling through my fingers.
I remember nothing and I do not care.
It’s enough to be alive and aware, just a small part of the scene, like the mountains surrounding the bowl-shaped valley below. Pale light scatters on white at the bottom. A steady wind blows my hair into my face, and brings with it a taste of salt on my lips.
Salt on my lips. I know this place.
Then I realize what it is, this jarring and thrumming in my bones, the vibrations in the ground.
Behind me is the Horn of Reckoning.
And it’s blowing.
I slide and skid down the slope. Urgency has set my heart thumping, though my mind hasn’t caught up to the danger yet.
And now I’m at the bottom of the valley, looking out at the salt flats. The wind’s stronger now, great swathes of it blowing all over the place like gauzy draperies. Salt’s awhirl in the air, cracks cover the surface.
I stand at the edge, on tiptoes, neck stretched out, a throb going through my entire body.
Something bad, really bad, is happening.
A movement in the salt. Something crusted with white thrusts its way through the crystals. A dark hand, as big as my own body.
Its fingers clench into a fist.
It drops like a hammer. Salt fountains up.
A head rises like a small hill. Eyes like lamps, burning orange, sweep the area.
Find me. Pin me, like a moth to a board.
Kato!
I’m on the edge of the scattering. I have to get back to Kato. Have to warn him.
But I don’t. I can’t. If I scatter again, I know I won’t be able to pull myself back together.
So I run. Feet sinking into sand, salt burning against my skin, finding rock, dragging myself up the slope, cloak catching on rocks.
I run.
Please let me not be too late!
 
Tremors rack Kaal Baran all night, rumbling deep beneath the foundations. I can’t sleep, so I wake Daral, gather a bunch of eerie men, and take them hunting in the early dawn.
The eerie men are strong and fast, but they waste a lot of energy in their rough play. They’re slapping backs and tripping each other and mock-fighting all the way out of Kaal Baran.
I say nothing.
Experience is the better teacher in this case.
The desert gives way to a kind of patchy grassland, dotted here and there with short trees. I point out the herd of antelope with long, straight horns, some nibbling grass, others stretching up for leaves.
I expect to direct them, but they don’t need the help, these eerie men. Gone is the loud play; they work together in a pack, surrounding the antelope, giving chase, running the animals into each other’s teeth and claws, bringing them down.
It’s the least work I’ve ever had to do on a hunt.
Daral and I watch. Every now and again they bring another antelope carcass and drop it at our feet. Leap’s keeping up a running commentary to me, “… Gash’m gunnin’… big bloater… eh, Ironhand?…” which I barely understand.
They’re meant for the open plains. How did eerie men find themselves inside Highwind? What did they hunt and eat in the city streets?
I’d never wondered about their origins or their eating habits before. In Highwind, they were just another strange creature of Deep Night—out here, they’re more real, more solid, full of leaping life and strong emotion.
But they’re used to colder climes, and as the morning wears on, they’re tired, thirsty and panting. I ration out the water, then send most of them back to Kaal Baran, an antelope on each one’s back.
There’s a lot of complaining and whimpering as they do so.
“It’s hot out here, with little water,” I tell them. “Think about how much of your strength you wasted on your way here.”
Leap chortles, still bright-eyed and brimming with life. “That’ll learn ’em!” He cuffs an underling on the head and the man staggers. “You hear Ironhand?” Leap bellows in the unfortunate’s ear. “No hi-jinxing around!”
We watch the eerie men trail fort-wards with their burdens.
I resist the urge to call out that they’re not to eat all the meat before I get back.
I’m headed out to talk to the sheepherders, with Leap showing the way. Grip’s coming because I don’t trust him running loose in Kaal Baran without me. I’d rather deal with his hostility out here than with a coup when I get back.
I put Daral in charge of scavenging a suitable blood gift. He picked out a small marble statuette of a bird, still in good shape, though you could see where it had cracked off from a relief, a box of Highwind matches, and a bottle of perfume that had been among Sera’s things.
I said nothing as he wrapped the whole lot in a poly groundsheet. I had boxes of Sera’s things