They had just crossed the crest of the Curridgians, discernable by the fact that all streams now flowed westward instead of to the east, when they heard the first roll of thunder.
“Hunkapa no see clouds, no see storm.” The hirsute hulk had his head tilted back while he squinted at the sky.
“It does not sound like that kind of thunder.” Holding fast to his spear, Ehomba strode along in front, maintaining the same steady pace as always.
Simna ibn Sind cocked his head sideways as he regarded his tall companion. “There’s more than one kind?”
The herdsman smiled down at him. “Many kinds. I myself have been trained to identify dozens of different varieties.”
“Hoy then, if it’s not a far-off storm clearing its throat that we’re hearing, then what is it?”
“I do not know.” A brilliant black-and-green spotted beetle landed on the herdsman’s shirt, hitching a ride. Ehomba admired its glossy carapace and let it be.
“I thought you said you knew dozens of kinds of thunder?”
“I do.” Ehomba’s smile thinned. “But this one I do not recognize.”
Whatever its source, it grew louder as they began to start downward. Its measured, treading rhythm was abnormal, suggesting an origin that was anything but natural. Yet the percussive volume was too loud to originate with anything man-made.
Only when they came around a cliff and entered a small alpine valley did they see that both of their assumptions were correct.
It had not been much of a village to begin with, and now it was in the process of being reduced to nothing at all. The stately thunder they had been hearing was caused by the concussion of hammer against stone. The stones ranged in size from small boulders to chinkers light enough for a child to move from place to place. The head of the hammer, on the very much larger other hand, was bigger than Ehomba.