All His Wrath

Arguing with Anders had been a reflex action and surprised Paign. It left him unsettled, confused and very agitated. After his bitter departure from Anders, Paign hiked for many hours, mindless of weather and totally unaware of his location. When he stopped, it was only to seize a fallen branch to shatter across the nearest tree or to hurl a rock at a nearby innocent, unsuspecting—and then very frightened—animal. Haunted, Paign muttered terrible things, hateful and vile things, at his cousin, at his friends, at his mother, even at his dead father. By the time he had utterly vented his rage, Paign’s hands were bruised and bloodied from the bark of a particularly rough, sessile oak branch twisting in his hands as he slammed it into a boulder. Dirt from the hurled rocks had wedged into the wounds caused by the coarse bark. His voice had become raw and hoarse by the time he finally sat on an outcrop not far from the high cave on Ruar’s Ridge that Freida had discovered the year before.