Fortune's stroke

Chapter 41

The Strait of Hormuz

Autumn, 532 A.D.

A monster fled ruin and disaster. Licking its wounds, trailing blood, dragging its maimed limbs, the beast clawed back toward its lair. Silent, for all its agony; its cold mind preoccupied with plans for revenge. Revenge, and an eventual return to predation.

A different monster would have screamed, from fury and frustration as much as pain and fear. But that was not this monster's way. Not even when the hunter who had maimed it sprang, again, from ambush.

Though, for a moment, there might have been a gleam of hatred, somewhere deep inside those ancient eyes.