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"How long have they been holding?"

"Eight minutes. Maybe nine."

"They have four left." He put his back to the wind so she could hear him. "There's a shelter half a mile north. Cross corridor, then the notch, then two hundred yards up the wash."

"Half a mile in this?"

"Half a mile in this, or you stand here and watch four warriors lose their wings over the top of you." There was no time for a gentler version. "Ambassador, I need the decision now."

She didn't take two seconds.

"Fold the wall," she shouted down the line. "We're moving. Warriors on the outside, humans in the center, one hand on the person in front of you and do not let go of them. Chen, you're on my belt. Korvath, if you drop, I will personally end you."

"I am not on this patrol," Korvath said from somewhere inside the wall.

"Then who is holding the third position?"

"I am holding the third position."

"Then you're on this patrol. Move."

* * *

The half mile took nineteen minutes.

Varek went first, because he was the only one who knew the ground, and Athena put her hand flat between his shoulder plates and kept it there the whole way, and behind her the line came along in a chain, everyone gripping the person in front of them.

Visibility dropped to about fifteen feet and then to about four. The air was full of mineral grit moving fast enough to strip exposed skin, and he could hear the humans coughing behind him even over the wind. He navigated by memory and by the shape of the rock under his free hand. Corridor to notch, notch to wash, wash to the crack in the northern wall that didn't look like anything at all until you were six feet from it.

He got them in.

They came through the narrow entrance one at a time until they were in the chamber. The wind was a scream on the far side of nine feet of rock instead of a thing tearing at their faces.

Nobody said anything for a minute. There was just breathing.

Varek did a headcount twice. Seven. Then he did it a third time, because two years alone had made him distrust his own math under stress, and he counted seven again.

"Everyone," Athena said. "Sound off. Injuries, be honest, I will find out anyway."

They sounded off. Two warriors with membrane scorch along the trailing edges, painful and slow to heal and not permanent. One human with grit abrasion down one side of her neck. Chen had a burn across the back of one hand from grabbing a rock that had been sitting in the wind too long.

Athena had both forearms raw from the wrist to the elbow.

"You," Varek said.

"It's abrasion."

"It's a second-degree radiant burn with abrasion over the top of it."

"It's fine."

"It is not fine, and there's water at the back of the chamber, and you're going to go put your arms in it for ten minutes." He pointed at the back of the cave. "That is not a suggestion, and I have no standing to make it an order, but I am going to keep standing here saying it until you go do it."

Athena looked at him a second. Then, to his considerable surprise, she went.

* * *

The storm lasted six hours.