MUD AND WINGS

Darkness. The heavy smell of rotting wood. And the deafening rhythm a horse leaves behind in the mind, galloping until its heart bursts...

The boy jerked awake, lungs filling with damp air. His hands groped instinctively for something to hold, as if he were still atop a bolting horse, and his body trembled like prey about to be caught.

But there were no soldiers in colored glass around him. No death-spewing hounds, no caravan guard searching for somewhere to flee.

He blinked himself back into reality. The sky had settled over the forest like a thick, gray shroud. The earth, having drunk its fill of rain for days, was now vomiting it back up, turning this side road toward the Brothers' Pass into a hungry, clinging sea of mud that seemed eager to swallow anything walking over it. There was no wind — only a heavy, suffocating humidity hanging in the air.

"Hyah! Move, you cursed animal! Hyah!"

Garrick's hoarse, exhausted voice tangled with the horse's pained whinny. When the boy looked out from the back of the wagon, he understood just how dire things had become. The right rear wheel was buried in a deep pit, sunk nearly to the axle. Worse, the forest's thick damp had soaked into the wagon's wooden frame, swelling the boards until the whole thing weighed twice what it should have, dry.

"Push harder, Commander!" Broc shouted from behind the wheel, sunk to his knees in mud. The big man's face was a mess of grime and sweat. The thick veins of his neck bulged as though they'd burst from the strain of shoving. "This thing isn't wood anymore, it's swollen up like a sponge! You're going to break the horses' legs!"

"We're already wasting time dragging this out, Broc!" Garrick roared, dropping the reins and leaping down from the wagon. His boot slapped down into the wet ground and sank. He looked around with irritation. "Where's Elara? And more importantly — what in hell are you doing over there?"

Garrick's gaze swung toward a wide, mossy stretch of rock at the side of the road that had, by sheer luck, stayed clean.

Vance sat cross-legged atop the rock, the hem of his robe fastidiously gathered above his knees so it wouldn't touch the mud. In one hand he held a fine file, in the other his own fingernails. His expression carried all the noble, weary detachment of a man entirely unconnected to the chaos around him.

"What I'm doing is perfectly obvious, Captain," Vance said, blowing dust off the file. "I'm protecting my hands. You know — the precious hands that prepare those potions that save your lives, the ones that stitch your veins back together when they tear open."

"If you don't put those precious hands of yours under that wheel, I'll break them myself and make you drink your own potion!" Garrick took a step toward Vance.

Vance didn't so much as flinch. "Threatening me doesn't change the facts, Captain. I weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. If I try to push that wheel, I'll either snap my spine or drown in the mud. Either outcome would be a tragic loss for the medical sciences of the empire. Besides—" he tilted his head slightly toward Broc, "—we happen to be traveling with a walking mountain for this sort of brute labor. Tell him to prove all that dried meat he eats every morning wasn't wasted."

Broc grunted. "Lay you under that wheel as a ramp and the wagon'll come out easier, you skinny windbag."

"What military genius," Vance shot back with a mocking smile. "And this is precisely why you're standing in the mud and I am sitting on the rock."

Garrick took a long, patience-begging breath and went back to Broc's side. "On three. I'll drive the horses, you put everything you've got into it. Understood?"

Broc set his massive hands against the wheel. "May Qysdes lend us strength."

"Three!" Garrick cracked the whip; the horses lunged forward in pain. Broc threw himself at the wheel with a roar that matched his enormous frame. The muscles across his shoulders strained as if they might tear, his boots sliding backward across the ground. The wagon rose a few inches with an agonized groan... and then the mud sucked it back down like some giant leech.

The wheel settled back into place with a heavy slop. The horses whinnied and stumbled backward in exhaustion. Broc leaned against the wheel, gasping for breath.

"It's not working," Broc said, his chest heaving like a bellows. "I swear it's not working, Commander. The bed's soaked through. It's like there's stone packed inside it."

Just then, a heavy chain rattled in the back of the wagon.

Krazoc rose for the first time since he'd boarded the wagon. The thick iron shackles on his wrists clanked together with each step. The boy watched with wide, colorful eyes as Krazoc's massive silhouette dropped down out of the wagon. The mud rose to his knees, but it didn't seem to register with him at all. There was no strain on his face, no complaint, no expression of any kind. He simply moved with purpose, silent as a machine.

Broc stared in astonishment as this quiet giant approached. "Careful," he said, still catching his breath. "The wood's swollen bad. Grab the wrong spot and you'll snap the axle."

Krazoc didn't answer. He moved to the other side of the stuck wheel, to where the mud ran deepest. He threaded the thick chains binding his arms skillfully through the wooden joints of the wagon and set his enormous hand directly beneath it, against the buried axle itself.

"What are you—" Garrick's words caught in his throat.

Krazoc wasn't pushing. Krazoc was lifting.

The muscles across the big man's back and arms swelled and pulled taut in a way that defied human anatomy, like steel cables drawn to their limit. The veins in his neck stood out, but his expression remained that of a tired farmer hauling in his harvest. His eyes were empty, his breath steady, and his strength was terrifying.

A heavy crack of splintering wood echoed through the forest. The wagon — that water-swollen mass two horses and Broc together hadn't been able to budge — rose straight up out of the ground with a deep sucking sound.

Broc's eyes went wide. The man before him wasn't pushing — he was lifting tons of dead weight clean out of the earth with two hands.

"Drive the horses!" Broc shouted, shaking off his shock, and threw himself under the wagon to help hold it up.

Garrick snapped back to himself and seized the reins. As Krazoc and Broc held the wagon aloft, the horses lurched forward, relieved of the weight. The wagon glided free of the pit and settled onto solid, rocky ground a few yards ahead.

Krazoc let go of the mud-slicked wood like a machine that had simply completed its task. He drew a deep breath, straightened the chains on his arms, and began walking back to the wagon, toward the boy, as though he hadn't just performed an impossible feat of strength.

Broc looked down at his own massive hands, then up at Krazoc, who had already taken his seat in the wagon bed. "That wasn't... that wasn't human strength, Commander," he whispered to Garrick. "He didn't lift it from the wheel. He lifted it straight from the axle. Those chains alone weigh fourty five pounds."

Even Vance, still seated on his rock, had stopped filing his nails, his mouth hanging open in astonishment as he stared at Krazoc. As a scholar, he was better placed than anyone to know exactly which laws of physics he'd just watched broken. And what he'd seen obeyed none of them.

He quickly composed himself and cleared his throat. "My theory that muscle mass devours brain cells has been proven once again," he muttered, though the tremor in his voice betrayed his shock. "I'm writing it down here and now — this brute is going to tear us all apart one of these days."

"Shut your mouth, Vance," said a voice from just above the trees.

Everyone looked up sharply. Elara dropped from the branch of a thick juniper tree, landing on the solid ground below as light as a cat. Her usual mocking grin was fixed on her face. Her eyes swept first over the gasping Broc and Garrick, then back to Vance.

"You missed the mud bath, doc," Elara said, slinging her bow over her shoulder. She tilted her head slightly toward the pool of mud. "And here I thought a herbalist like you could've dried this whole mess out with Essence of Being. Wouldn't that have been easier than running mountains of men like horses?"

Vance rolled his eyes and gave a disdainful sniff. "Of course it would have been easier," he said, with all his usual nobility. "All I'd have needed to do was find a few suitable saplings deep in the forest, plant them one by one in this filth, and perform an Essence Augmentation to make them drink up the surrounding water. Which would have meant gathering enough essence from the plants nearby to cast the spell in the first place — meaning sticking these precious fingers of mine into this disgusting muck and getting them filthy."

Vance tucked the file slowly back into his pocket, glancing sideways at Broc and Garrick. "Besides, you have to admit, Elara... watching them thrash about in that mud was far more entertaining."

"I'll hang you upside down from that tree and let the forest damp soak right into you, windbag," Elara said with a chuckle, her hand drifting playfully to the hilt of her dagger in mock threat.

"Enough," Garrick cut in, brushing the filth off himself roughly. "Tell me what you found up ahead instead."

The cheer drained from Elara's face in an instant. Her eyes turned toward the north, where the forest grew darker, more oppressive. "I found a side path that lets us skirt the Brothers' Pass, but a little further into the woods... there's something strange out there, Captain."

Garrick's thick brow rose. "An ambush?"

"No, a creature," Elara said, her voice a tangle of confusion and curiosity. "It was thrashing around on the forest floor. Its body was like a massive serpent, but on its back..." Elara furrowed her brow, trying to piece together what she'd seen in her own mind. "...it had enormous wings, covered in bright, colorful feathers. I think it's caught in some kind of heavy trap."

At Elara's words, the boy in the wagon suddenly lifted his head. His eyes widened, every bit of his attention turning toward the forest at once. For the first time in days, the boy looked genuinely interested in something.

A sudden burst of energy followed Vance's relaxed posture atop the rock. The herbalist's eyes flew open in disbelief. "A massive serpent... with feathered wings?" Vance shot to his feet, careful not to step in the mud, and leaned toward Elara. "Were the tips of the wings red, with the roots the color of parchment?"

"Yes," Elara said. "Why does that interest you so much?"

"Because what you just described is a legend!" Vance said, unable to help himself from showing off. There was a kind of pure wonder in his voice. "A Quatl! By the gods, forget seeing one — there are barely any people left who even know they exist. Its essence is so potent that a single one could fill hundreds of Putridglass vials. They're the purest, most ancient predators nature ever made. Feathers as hard as steel, but light as silk."

As Vance's description went on, the boy's eyes in the wagon shone brighter still. He gripped the edge of the wagon in excitement, leaning toward the direction Elara had pointed.

The boy's sudden, intense interest sent a clear signal echoing through the void within Krazoc. The big man slowly turned his head toward Elara.

"Where?" Krazoc asked. His voice wasn't merely a question; it was a decision already made.

"A chance like this won't come again, Captain," Vance said, understanding exactly what Krazoc was implying. The excitement was audible in his voice. Documenting a creature like this could be the very thing that opened the academy's doors back to him.

Garrick let out a long, weary sigh. Every alarm bell in his head was ringing, but the moment he saw the unshakable look in Krazoc's eyes, he understood arguing would be useless. He couldn't fight a man who'd just torn a wagon out of the mud by its axle. Not now, at least.

"We'll just go take a look," Garrick said, raising the white flag. He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. "If anything looks wrong, you turn around and come straight back to the wagon. No second glances."

But Krazoc had already taken his first step toward the trees. Garrick noticed, as the boy in the wagon watched him go, something in those eyes he hadn't seen in days.

It wasn't fear.

It was a kind of recognition.