In night, in firelight, the void roared toward them.  The nothing.  The Great Devourer.  Where no mortal hand could stop them, the Prince of Hell had sent his black chariot to stay them from their task.

It widened toward them, a ravenous shadow, the splintering of blackened timbers mixed with the tumultuous hissing of sand.  Impossible.  Unignorable.  Kolbe's papers were taken by the desert wind, the stew upturned and forgotten with a clattering of pottery.  He snatched up the standard, hurling himself toward the hut which sheltered the horses.

Captain was shouting to untie them, mount up.  No.  No time.  Cannot outrun the earth itself.  Reached them.  Rearing, heaving at their tethers, screaming in fear.  Drew his sword, sliced though the cords in two desperate strikes, cracking hard through the wood.  The animals bolted, dragging chunks of carpentry, instinct driving them to safe ground.  Good soldiers.  Good soldiers.

Captain shouting again.  Panicked.  No time.  Hut built by the rock that buttressed the hill.  Only chance.  

Kolbe roared and drove the standard, the pillar of Areta, into the rock, driven by hysterical strength.  The vicious pike-end jammed deep into a thin crevise, wedging fast, the plated shaft nocked in the crook of his arm and clenched tight in one mailed fist.  His other arm locked hard around the still-bellowing Captain's, holding on with every ounce of strength as the tide slammed into them, and house and horizon fell away into that dark, malignant funnel.  

Sand and ash and timber cascaded around them, pounding them with terrible, bone-shaking force.  The earth groaned, an echoing din like the lament of some vast desert demon.  And a hoarse, shuddering voice answered it in mad defiance from behind worn steel plate.

[i]"Though I stand within the very teeth of Death,"[/i] it rasped furiously against the punishing tide, [i]"I will fear only failure-"[/i]

Kolbe's sickening voice was a wounded, airless scream against the battering of the storm.

[i]"--I will not suffer the unwinnowed bushel or the bent rod--"[/i]

The stars vanished in a running river of dust.

[i]"--will shake off the ashen words of the faithless--"[/i]

The shaft creaked and shook against his nerveless arm, the banner snapping violently like an unfurled sail in an ocean tempest.

[i]"--holy Areta--"[/i]

He held until his hands were numb and his lungs were choked with dust and every lacerated muscle burned beyond endurance, and still there was nothing but the relentless, earthen scourge and the terrible, white noise.

[i]"--for ever and ever--"[/i]

In the merciless storm, the croaking litany went on.

And on.

And on.