“It’s the skycaptain!” Vorr bellowed. “Get him! Hurt him, but remember, we want him alive!”

The Imperial soldiers rushed at Sagar.

He brought both his swords down through the air. A gust of wind flew out from where they moved, flowing across the deck, knocking the soldiers over, making Vorr stumble and pressing Ryn back against the rail again.

What?

“Ryn!” someone called. “This way!”

Ryn looked over the rail. Nuthea, Elrann. They had run round to the other side of the ship and were beckoning for him to go with them.

His legs remembered how to move again and he ran to the place in line with the handholds on the siderail and scrambled over. He flew down them, but slipped and lost his grip a few metres from the ground, dropping and landing on his side with a roll as the breath was knocked out of him.

“Quick as you can, please, Ryn!” called Nuthea as with a wave of her hand and a crack she sent a lightning bolt back at the soldier coming down the handholds after Ryn. He screamed out and fell to the ground from a much further height than Ryn had.

Ryn did not need to be told twice. He made it up again and dashed for Nuthea and Elrann. They sprinted full titlt away from Wanderlust, through the burning ships. Now Sagar joined them, running too. Shouts and cries followed them, but these were soon lost in the noise and chaos of the burning, beseiged city. They made it out of the airfield, into the residential area that bordered it.

“Follow me!” Sagar took the lead.

Ryn kept pace with the others, his lungs prickling agony. His fire-hurl had sapped most of his energy, but it had not completely exhausted him this time, and he still had just enough left to run for his life. But it hurt like hell all the same.

Gradually the brick houses changed to steel warehouses, to wooden shacks, to a slum of tents, most of them now abandoned, to grassy fields. Their pace slowed a little once they had made it out of the city and they looked round to check that they weren’t being pursued, but still Sagar did not let them stop.

Ryn ran on, though his legs were starting to seize up and he thought he could taste blood at the back of his throat.

Run, Ryn, run. Run Ryn, run away, live to fight another day. Live to train another way. Live to find Vorr again and make him pay.

That was the rhyme that formed in his head and bore him on.

Finally when they were under the trees of a little wood at the foot of a hill and had gone some distance into it, Sagar let up and allowed them to stop.