Empire of the Saviours (Chronicles of/Cosmic Warlord 1) by A.J. Dalton

distraction, he couldn’t remember and couldn’t be bothered with extracting it from the shapes of the thoughts around him. Minister Baxal, wasn’t it, or was that the one who’d died some years before? He resolved to pass an edict whereby all Ministers would bear the same name from now on. ‘I am leaving now. The others will wait. Out of my way.’
    ‘But—’
    Saint Azual turned the full fury of his burning eye upon the simpering priest and, using his connection, the Saint squeezed the other’s mind. With a shriek, the retreating Minister tripped over his own heels and landed heavily.
    Azual ignored him and moved with purpose in the direction of the gates. People threw themselves out of his path or fell on their faces in front of him. He trod on them as necessary and without a care. His destiny awaited him, and he moved towards it as a wolf would come for a deer.
    His blood churned and his muscles twitched as the magic he’d recently drunk demanded release. He loosened his long limbs and began to flow across the ground at an ever-increasing speed. He was soon flying along the road to Godsend. Now let the hunt begin!
    Looking back on it now, it was almost as if the gods had conspired against him, to see him exiled from his own people. What sort of life or meaning could there be when both gods and mortals turned their faces away? He did not know and was not sure he wanted to find out either. Maybe he’d be better off not moving from this exposed spot on the mountain – he could instead become a part of the stone itself, unmoving and unmoved. It endured, separated gods from mortals, and eternity from fragility, and yet was unanswerable to either. He would sit and slow his thoughts and breath to almost nothing, where there was no difference between one moment and the next, whether alive or dead. Except then his stomach would growl peevishly and ruin everything …
    And it had been his damned stomach that had got him into trouble in the first place. He’d been about to head for home with the young mountain hare he’d managed to snag after a long day of otherwise fruitless hunting, when he’d suddenly spotted a deer straying above the snowline where he currently lay. As it had drifted back again for the better foraging, he’d begun to stalk it.
    The deer had led him a merry chase for hours. Several times he thought he’d had it cornered in a ravine, only to find that it had scaled an impossible, sheer rock face. He’d then had to spend an age finding a way around and back up to it. It was only when he’d sensed the weather beginning to close in and had admitted defeat that he’d turned round to find it waiting docilely for him. It was almost as if it now wanted to be caught.
    Carrying the carcass back up the mountain was far harder work than he’d anticipated, and far slower too. He glanced anxiously up at the sky: it was a flat white without any depth and the wind was high. He could feel the temperature falling by the second. He’d spent his sixteen years of life here in the high mountains, and everything he knew told him that there was a cruel and terrible storm coming, the sort that reminded all men, women and children that they were not the most powerful things in this world, that they lived only so long as it pleased the gods, and that any right-minded person would be wise to pray to and bend to the will of those gods.
    He prayed fervently under his breath as he deliberately planted one foot ahead of the other, and as the snow began to fall thick and fast. If he didn’t reach the high pass soon, he would probably be cut off from his tribe’s villages for weeks. Worse, if he found it impassable, he would be surrounded by snow as well as exhausted, so his chances of survival would be virtually nil.
    You’re a fool, Aspin , he remonstrated with himself and dumped the deer on the ground. It’s not worth dying for. Now get moving! He leapt into the face of the storm, his short powerful legs propelling him