How many times had they done this? Even at the epicentre of all the alien strangeness of a foreign world, it stroked his sense of home. It thawed him enough to flash his teeth in a grin that came like summer lightning, splitting the shadows that had gathered across his face.

"Lead on!"

He tucked what the Fool hadn't taken from his hands under one arm, canting his body to hide his face from the pursuers, and was up from his crouch like a wolf springing to the hunt. The uncertainty had become a joy hot enough to ease the evidence of his advancing age from the corners of his eyes.

I'm not packless here.