The man approached the pens. Drusher edged towards the feed store. The raptor bashed at the wire, snapping at him.

‘Please be quiet,’ he whispered to it, putting a shushing finger against his lips.

It glared at him with fathomless, jet-dot eyes and resumed its assault on the wire.

A light shone in. The door opened. Drusher saw the man silhouetted against the night.

‘Show yourself!’ the man called out. The stab-beam swung. ‘Throne’s sake! Are you in there? Are you hiding?’

The man took a step forwards. Drusher shrank back, his shoulders against the door of the feed store.

‘Take w-what you want!’ he cried. ‘I don’t have much, but just take it!’

He’d heard that if you allowed the road-mobs to pick you clean without arguing, sometimes they let you live.

‘I don’t want anything,’ the man replied. He sounded surprised. The stab-beam found Drusher’s cowering, flinching face. ‘I’ve come for you.’

Well, that was it, then. He was done for. Might as well just string him up from a fence by one foot like a broken umbrella.

At least he knew, now. At least he knew all hope was gone. It gave him an odd sort of strength, a resolve that he’d only managed to summon a couple of times before in his entire life. There was nowhere left to go. His back was against the wall. Well, literally, the door of the feed store, but metaphorically a wall, unyielding. He was cornered, trapped.

As on those previous occasions, the sudden resolve unlocked something in him. A will to live, an anger towards the world that thwarted and frustrated him at every last damn turn.

He wrenched open the clasp of the end cage. The sea raptor came out like a summoned fury in a blizzard of feathers. Keening, it went for the light and the open door.

The man in the doorway yelled out in alarm. The raptor hit him, pecking and raking. He yelped, covered his face and tried to fight it off. Its wings slammed at him. He lost his footing and fell sideways, the back of his head bouncing off the doorframe.

The raptor burst past, up into the night air, wings wide.

A second later, Valentin Drusher followed it out of the pens with equal determination, leaping over the body of the man sprawled in the doorway. He saw the raptor high above, its powerful white-fletched wings beating as it banked towards the sea. He felt as if he were flying too, flying free, leaving the horror of the world behind and soaring high into–

Something hit him across the mouth and clothes-lined him onto his back. The impact knocked his spectacles off. He was stunned for a moment, his head spinning, his mouth full of blood.