Thunder thumped an angry rhythm inside of ‘Tj’Chin’Ker’s head. And in his neck. And his shoulders stretched painfully, each attempting to pull themselves from his body in slow, deliberate fashion as his wracked body hung suspended in agony. His fingertips ached with the throb of each heartbeat.

  For what felt like hours now, he had been trying to scream out his pain and frustration as too many portions of his form protested their fiery state. His jaw had been locked open in a rictus of the failed screaming that only produced a slow, bloody, burbling, wet exhale.

  His mind rebelled at the torture it now had no way to properly process, without any idea of what was being done to him, nor when it had started, nor even how. There was a part of his mind that longed for the sedate tortures he had experienced in the Father’s dungeon by his two moronic and bumbling captors. Those had been pain’s he had understood, and from that understanding there had existed a platform from which his mind could direct his body to ignore the lesser wounds, knowing they meant nothing, and to aid him in suppressing the greater wounds, knowing they would either kill him or they wouldn’t. Meaning he would survive, and in doing so ‘Ker could reach a point of freedom or revenge.

  Here, in this neverending state of Now, there was just unrelenting pain. He could not even feel how his body sat, or lay, or if it had been somehow hung from an impaling hook like some great, gaffed fish being dragged through the tide beside a wallowing boat as the uncaring sailors brag of the catch they were taking back to some distant shore.

  There was something wet on the side of ‘Ker’s head. The slow, warm trickle of it crept from the inferno of pain at his ear to to his left cheek. It moved like tree sap in the early Spring, and felt much like he had always imagined it would be like using the side of his skull to forge arrowheads.

  ...precision work it may be, but certainly there were better made tools for that job than a tender temple… he mused as his pulse pounded out a hideous rhythm in every vein. And then the thought came back to him, and yammered for his attention …the warmth moves down from … it bubbles and slips and then makes its way… ah, yes …but it drips and oozes from my left ear to my left cheek… that tells me how my head is positioned if not the rest of my body…

  With that thought resolving itself clearly in his mind several other thoughts slowly and sluggishly followed, flowing sap-like into some semblance of order, sloppy and incoherent as they may have been. The backing of his scrambling willpower to aid him in tying what loose threads he had access, ‘Ker was able to at least partially orient himself. It was probably blood that dripped from his ear to his cheek, and so, that told him the orientation of his head. At least somewhat. He couldn’t feel a constant drip onto the side of his head, so the spreading warmth was most likely his own blood.

  …glad it’s moving slowly… not flowing freely… no gushing… I like it… Okay. “Like” is a strong term to use here, but things could be worse…

  From his head to his neck, where it was held twisted to the left in a vice-like grip. Held or wedged, whichever made little difference as he couldn’t move his neck or even his jaw at the moment, and ‘Ker wasn’t able to tell if his eyes were open, and it was just black, maybe his head in a sack, or if his eyelids were actually closed. Either way, he couldn’t see anything.

  His hands were unmoving, and he couldn’t feel them, nor his arms past his elbows, but with the position of his neck, and the angle of his shoulders as they pulled at his neck muscles, he could tell his arms were being held behind his back.

  …progress…

  Slowly, so as to not make a move that others in his proximity might not appreciate, he inhaled. It was the slowest, most carefully choreographed movement he had ever attempted to do in relation to simply breathing, and with a pain laced creaking of his sore ribs he was able to inflate his lungs, and from the spread of his ribcage and flexing of the muscles of his waist it showed him that he lay mostly on his right side. ...no bubbling of the breath... no immediate need to cough... good...

  He slowly let his breath seep out through his nose. His very sore nose.

  …no broken ribs… just bruised… and lots of bruises and scrapes… and a broken nose...?

  He tried to remember what had happened. The memories were rough, and in brighter colors than reality allowed for, like a child’s drawing of things they had seen. Drawn with exuberance and all the palette they had access to, more so than any kind of accuracy.

  Banner remembered running, and a strong, full bodied jump. A leap that had been meant to carry him to …safety? The wonder of that free feeling as the body was thrown from one place to another in a state of not-quite flight before… something. Bright, staring directly at the sun pain, and the void swallowed him up. And now, here.

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  There were the sounds that Banner now associated with the carriage-like vehicles of this era. The deep thrumming vibration that moved through his body as the autos… the larger ones, the levautos…? aerottos?... erao-atteauxs…? Ellen had said they were sometimes called plains... weird...

  Whatever they were called.

  … Ellen called them “khaers”... and once she had pointed at a few larger things, calling them bhusan, and lorries… is she…? Where is she..? Does the Dancer have her? Keeping her safe…? Gods of the Fathers she’s so pale… Gods of the Mothers, she’s so tall, but not a Wahruhme… if she could have shed her Glamour and become a three stride tall Battle Maiden I’m certain she would have long before now… I hope she is safe…

  Fighting back the depression and tears that might mean he had accepted the loss, ‘Tj’Chin’Ker slowed his heart before it could start to race in his chest, and forced his lungs to breathe as slowly as he could make them.

  Listening would have to be his immediate plan.

  Past the vibrations and thrumming of the carriage in which he lay, Banner could hear the breathing and minor shuffling adjustments of three other people.

  One was directly in front of him. Measured breaths, and near his face a movement of soles in the floor of the carriage.

  Behind, also near his head, the occasional catch of breath and suppressed tittering of someone amusing themselves with… something. They kept their vocalizations as quiet as they could, possibly not wanting to draw the attention of others. A bored soldier playing with a toy or puzzle to pass the time.

  Beside that man there was another bored soldier who breathed so slowly and deeply that ‘Ker wondered if the man was on the verge of falling asleep. The draw of this man’s lungs made it sound like the rare but occasional bobble of the moving vehicle over the road was the only thing that now kept him fully awake.

  And somewhere near his feet, there was another form. Another bundled captive, or another soldier? He wasn’t certain. Whoever they may be, they sat on the bench with the two soldiers behind him, but their breathing was different. It was lighter, and had just a hint of sighing on every exhale, like a sleeper who dreamed lazily in a chair while Banner remained tied and bagged like a market day piglet on the floor.

  He let his ears do their work in patient near silence as the carriage thrummed its way along whatever road the driver of the lumbering thing chose as ‘Ker worked out what his next move should be.

  That these men who had taken him were the mad god Amra’s was not in doubt to Banner in the slightest. They had him trussed like a ptarmigan, and his ability to move at all was either suspect, or purest fantasy on his part.

  In his youth these zealots were called the Shavai. In their own language, he had been told, it meant “Soulless.” According to the youngest of his older brothers, ‘Tj’Arr’Dne, who many called Greymantle, they had been promised that they would serve their Master long after death would have taken the souls of any other mortal men. They believed their bodies, and even their minds were destined to serve their Hawk God in their Eternal Desert that lay beyond death, and that by giving their souls to him, they would know eternal bliss.

  The eldest of his elder brothers, the man who now wore the mantle of Father to the ‘Tj’Shea, the man who had sent him through the FIre Gate to this Sun-lit world, had once speculated that the Mad Hawk God ate the souls of his devoted followers for strength, using up their potential for magic in this world in exchange for their service until their physical forms were worn down to bloody pulp, ground down like soft grain porrige in service to their mad god.

  The promise Amra made to his Shavai sounded like an utter crock of shit to Banner. He had been raised around too many gods to take such promises at face value. The few remaining Greek and Roman gods he had met in his youth were rarely pious in any way that one might have expected. And the gods of the Keltoi and Pictii peoples were more craftspeople, teachers, and warriors than anyone who worried about the dispositions of people’s souls.

  The carriage started a spate of small maneuvers as it slewed from side to side, accelerating and decelerating intermittently. Banner learned then that his ankles had been bound, and he had been tethered to some fixed point in the cabin as the vehicle moved and jounced about, causing him to roll listlessly at the end of his tether. His toes wrapped in their warm stockings and bound in the hard cases of his brogans had not lost any feeling. He could wiggle them freely within the shoes. So, the restraints wrapped about his ankles while hard and unforgiving things, were not simply ropes. Some kind of manacle.

  From the bench behind him, down near his feet, the person who had until now slept let out a quiet little "...hem..." and there followed the fabric on fabric sounds of a body sliding and slumping down on the bench.

  A loud, chiming “>BEEP<” noise almost startled Banner into revealing his wakeful state. The soldier who sat in front of Banner spoke to the others in a rapidfire patois of Angl-ish and Kmet.

  “Be ready, we’re boarding and loading directly into the aero. Cabin crew will secure the car. We stay here and watch the prisoner.” It took a moment for Banner to parse the meaning of what the man was saying, as he spoke a weird mishmash of tongues. And Banner would have to admit that he was still not fluent in this modern Angl-ish.

  “”...delay?” one of the men positioned behind him was asking.

  “We launch for Home once the doors shut.”

  Two other voices listlessly chorused “Sir.”

  The vehicle stopped abruptly, causing Banner to again roll forward. His nose landed on the boot of the man in front of him. He blessed the cloth of the hood that covered the irritation on his face.

  Several mechanical sounds reverberated about the carriage in rapid succession.

  A moment of quiet lasted a full three heartbeats before the force of acceleration pushed on Banner, slamming his bound form back onto the boots of the two men who sat behind him.

  The voice of the soldier who occasionally giggled could be heard saying “Ayyyyyya!” as the pressure in the carriage changed and Banner’s inner ears began to pop.