The shockwave hit. The camp — the hide tents, the bone fences, the fire pits — was flattened. Not destroyed — flattened. The air pressure pushed everything downward. The fires went out. The tents collapsed. The men — hundreds of muscular, scarred, battle-ready men — were driven to their knees.
Gharuk staggered. His bull-like body — seven feet, three hundred pounds of muscle and bone — was pushed back. His feet dug into the earth. His hands found the rock. He held.
The shaman — the tribe's spiritual leader, an old man with a buffalo-skull cane, his body thin and covered in ritual paint — fell. Not to his knees. To the ground. His cane — the buffalo skull, the sacred object — clattered from his hands. He looked up. Through the dust. Through the force.
At the sky.
At the light.
At the figure.
