choking for air. Once, when she surfaced, Beramun saw the stormbird transfer the screaming man from its jaws to one taloned claw, then its head darted down and seized another man.
A sandbar in midstream rushed up, and Roki managed to plant her feet, stopping their headlong rush. They clung to the sandbar and watched in terrified disbelief as the monster crushed a man in each claw, then dropped the bodies in order to capture two more screaming victims.
Upstream, Opet and a few others gained the shore out of reach of the stormbird, but they weren’t safe from its wrath. The creature opened toothy jaws wide and, with a roar greater than a hundred panthers combined, expelled a stream of green vapor from its throat. The cloud swallowed the escaping plainsmen. Some dropped where they stood. Others stumbled forward a few steps then collapsed, writhing in agony. Ten men soon lay dead.
Only Roki and Beramun remained in the river. Over the noise of rushing water they heard Zannian yell, “Come back, you women! You can’t get away!”
“We must return,” Roki said, her chattering teeth not hiding the bitterness of her words. “Better those two- legged beasts than the stormbird!”
Beramun, nearly fainting from exhaustion, didn’t move. “I don’t think I can make it to either side.”
Roki hugged her friend closely for both warmth and comfort as the stormbird dropped onto all fours and prowled down the bank toward them. When it was opposite their position on the sandbar, it halted. Roki’s arms tightened convulsively on Beramun.
“It’s coming!” the older woman gasped. “Spirits, save us! It’s coming!”
The creature did indeed rise up on its hind legs and spread its wings, but it did not take to the sky. Instead, it brought its foreclaws together, talon to talon, and slowly furled its wings tight to its back.
Before Roki’s fear-filled eyes, the river calmed. The current slowed to a gentle flow. When the stormbird pulled its claws apart, a channel opened in the water, growing deeper and wider as it approached the sand spit. Water receded from the sandbar, leaving a walkable passage in the raging river.
“What’s happening?” asked Beramun groggily, trying to lift her head.
Roki swallowed hard. “The monster is parting the river!”
Soon there was a dry channel as wide as four horses abreast. Zannian led his men into this trough without fear or haste. By the time he reached the sandbar, Roki had pulled Beramun to her feet. The two women stood waiting for him.
The raider chief gestured, and Hoten appeared with new bonds. This time the raiders not only bound their wrists, but hobbled the women’s ankles as well. Unable to take more than short, shuffling steps, Roki and Beramun made their way down the sandbar to stand miserably beside Zannian’s horse. Roki was still supporting the younger woman, and Beramun’s violent shivering shook them both.
Zannian’s eyes narrowed. Reaching behind, he pulled out his bedroll — a coarse, horsehair blanket — and dropped it across Beramun’s shoulders. Thumping his bare heels against his mount’s sides, he rode on.
Beramun stared after him in surprise. “Why did he do that?” she asked as they pulled the rough blanket around themselves.
Roki gave her a disbelieving look that slowly changed to sympathy. “You don’t know, do you?” she said gently. “You’re a good-looking girl, Beramun. Beware of him, especially when he’s kind to you.”
The surviving captives came shuffling toward them, hobbled and chastened. Beramun and Roki fell in at the back of the line.
When they reached the west bank, the prisoners were ordered to stop and forced to kneel in the cold mud. The stormbird, near enough they could smell the lingering stench of its poisonous breath, broke the spell on the river with a twitch of its scaly shoulders. Water crashed back into the trough and resumed its course.
A common tremble ran through the captives, now under the black eyes of the stormbird. Zan and his men didn’t seem afraid of it. In fact, the young chief rode up to the beast and saluted with his spear.
“Hail, Master!” he exclaimed. “Your arrival was well timed.”
“Lucky for you,” intoned the monster in a rasping but surprisingly humanlike voice.
“We would’ve caught them again,” Zan said. “Not as easily as you, great Master, but we would have. We thank you.”
While Zan reformed his men, the stormbird gazed down on the cowering captives.
“Why do you rodents try so hard to escape?” it asked, tail tip switching back and forth. When no one dared answer, the monster seized a captive plainsman. The man was bound to the next prisoner, and he to the next, and so on, so the entire line of terrified captives was dragged aloft.
The man in the taloned claw screamed piteously. His tormentor looked at him with the glee of a child holding a captured beetle.
“Why do you risk death to escape?” rasped the monster, shaking the man. The fellow’s head snapped back and forth. “Why, little beast?”
“To b-be f-free!” the man blubbered.
The stormbird tossed its head toward the empty plain. “You’re not free out there. You must hunt and scrounge and fight every day to keep the breath in your flimsy little bodies. How does that make you free, eh?”
“Because we go where we will!”
The words were torn from Beramun’s lips by a surge of anger. That anger changed to fear as the monster dropped the terrified man and thrust its reptilian face to within an arm’s length of her own.
“And where do you go?” the creature asked, showing entirely too many ridged yellow fangs.
The hot, stinking breath on her face made her sick. “Wherever — ” It came out so faintly, she had to clear her throat and begin again. “Wherever the Great Spirits guide us.”
“Spirits? Ha! Who are these spirits?”
Why had she spoken? Beramun wondered miserably, terror welling up inside her. Yet the stormbird expected an answer, so she stuttered, “They are th-the makers of all things — the s-sun, the moons, the plants, and the beasts of plain and forest.”
“And I?” said the hideous creature, its face coming even closer to hers. “Was I made by your Great Spirits?”
“Yes,” she said faintly, her legs wavering like grass in a strong wind.
The black, slit-pupiled eyes widened. The monster threw back its head and roared. It took Beramun a heart-wrenching moment to realize the beast was laughing. Curiously, this display of mirth made the raiders draw together, anxiety evident on all their faces.
“Pretentious vermin!” the stormbird bellowed. “No one made the dragons! We were born from Chaos, forged of fire and fury! The world is ours, and you worthless insects are merely pests to be tolerated or exterminated as we see fit.”
The monster stretched up to its full height. “I am your master now. I am Sthenn, the Wakeful One, the Shadow Who Does Not Sleep, called Greengall, Deathbringer, and the Terror of Night. You live by my whim alone, and my whim is that you serve me. Is that clear, vermin?”
Zannian rode up, his skull-topped hood propped under one arm. “Patience, Master,” he said, an edge in his voice. “They all struggle at first. They wouldn’t be plainsmen if they didn’t try to escape, but they’ll give no more trouble, I promise you.”
Sthenn gazed down at the mounted man for a long moment, and his angry posture relaxed.
“More and more,” he said, “I understand Duranix’s interest in humans. Such amusing, infuriating creatures. It will be delightful to discover whose are best — mine or his.”
Beramun understood none of this, but seeing the stormbird’s anger fade helped her own fear subside, and her heart slowly resumed a normal beat. When Sthenn had reared up, she thought her life was over. Fortunately, the great beast was easily distracted, as Zannian’s intervention proved.
She looked again at the youthful chief as he got his band moving again. Thief and killer he was, but he was brave, facing the dragon’s rage like that. In some savage way, he might even be honorable.
Drawing the borrowed blanket close around her shoulders, Beramun hobbled along with the rest of the captives. She did not notice Roki frowning at her, nor did she remember the older woman’s warning about being wary of kindness from her human captor.
