“Are you sure, Kinsel?” hissed a voice. “I’ve heard there’s mines—”
“Shut up, halfwit. Follow my lead, and if ever—” A smack of a palm on skull came.
Kaboom!
An explosion racked the air and flesh and body parts flew everywhere. Miko felt blood on his skin. He caught a glimpse of stringy limbs flying from a cloud of smoke. Flesh smacked against the cliff behind them.
He grimaced as a boot rolled in front of them in the dusty soil with a mangled foot in it.
Star wrinkled her nose. Fenli blinked.
“As I was about to say,” scoffed Sket. “You wouldn’t have made it a hundred yards before being blown to a thousand pieces.”
There was a fierce scrambling and yelling of men where the tunnel gaped out into the desert.
Sket hissed, “Nor would you have gotten far past the desert rats and snakes that vie for territory with the jackals.”
“This sounds like a pleasant place,” grumbled Miko.
“The rats’re vicious,” said Star. “You saw what those young boars did in the pit. They’re—”
More rustling came from below. Spare figures in dark, loose pigskins came edging out of the shadows.
“Outcasts,” breathed Sket. “They suffered the worst of the mutations.”
“Doesn’t your precious B & D take care of them?” muttered Fenli sardonically.
Miko’s eyes strained in the mauve shadows below. An encampment dotted the desert floor with low tents, fires lit by flickering lamps. Wafting to his nostrils came the smell of smoke and roasting meat.
“They use natural gas for light and gas vents to cook what food and meat they find,” Sket said to Miko’s unasked question. He turned to Fenli. “B & D is the rebel leader who controls the tunnel. Even he cannot govern these independent nomads. Nor does he venture here. Contamination.” He paused, seeing the fearful looks on their faces. “It’s a shortcut we must take. If we’re careful, we’ll beat those fools to the intake pipe.”
“Then what?” snorted Fenli.
“Beasilmus knows....”
“You talk in riddles!”
“Beasilmus is—god of the hunt—the desert prince and saviour hero of the wretches who live here.” Sket winced from the tingling agony of his cut. He pressed on his bicep.
Star stirred and moved in to help him, but was knocked aside by advancing outcasts in robes and cowls.
Miko drew his weapon. Figures materialized out of the shadows like ghosts. Not even a crunch of pebble announced their presence. Soon a ring of bodies, no taller than shoulder height, surrounded them offering no chance of escape.
Fenli brandished his machete, challenging them with a feint.
“That will be useless against them,” said Sket.
“Says who?”
“Where come ye?” A grizzled old man croaked in an ancient voice. He lifted his hand that held a curved stave with a sharp, gleaming end.
He had an eye slanted askew, nearly sewn shut, giving him the appearance of a cyclops.
Miko saw desert folk and lepers wrapped in woollen robes and hides crowd around them, bearing various knives and wooden clubs with stones tied with tongs on the ends. Cowls hid their deformed faces. Their garb ran from neck to toe.
“From the tunnels,” murmured Sket.
“And ye were fool enough to cross the barbed fence? What ails you?”
Sket shook his head. “Wasn’t us.”
“They’re hurt, Iasan,” cried an older woman dressed in a grey cowl, motioning to Miko and Usk and Sket.
The elder frowned, grunting, his tone softening. “Come! No doubt victims of B & D’s sordid tricks. The bearded lady strikes again—and her debauched brother. We’ll take you to our shelters.”
“We have other things of priority, old man—”
Sket silenced Fenli with a sharp slap to the back and a warning glare. Fenli fumed, allowing himself to be trundled along, as the desert folk closed in, like leprous gnomes. Fenli gave them wide berth, to avoid possible contamination.
More came filtering in out of the darkness and staring in wonder.
The mismatched group moved toward the smoky settlement, avoiding the line of curled barbed wire that ran down into the desert. The crunch of pebbles underfoot echoed in the gathering dusk. Miko saw hovels, battered yurts, low, blunt-topped tents and listless packbeasts. The animals hung their three-horned heads but otherwise looked similar to the shaggy yaks from old Earth.
Fenli spat. “Made for midgets.”
“They are low, so the wind doesn’t take them,” reprimanded Sket. “Sometimes there are storms here—the sand kicks up for a hundred miles!”
Four select attendants led Miko’s band to a common area stretched out in the sand. Mats were laid out and fires licked from blackened pits, heating the black bottoms of dented stewpots and cauldrons boiling broths and aromatic herbs. A pang of longing hit Miko on sight of the lights of Skullrox winking ten miles away. Hard to believe only days ago he and Fenli had been in the Skull Palace gambling their lives away and drinking with the best of them.
Miko frowned. “Seems weird that all this high tech and civilization are so close, but then these monkish folk with their spartan dwellings live in primitive squalor.”
“It’s like this everywhere in the galaxy,” muttered Sket. “Been like this since the very beginning.”
“I don’t think—” began Fenli.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” interrupted Star. Miko heard the emotion rising in her voice. “If I could fight for my people, I would. It’d be a worthy cause.”
“You’re doing it right now,” growled Sket, in a tone radiating pride, not sarcasm.
Several members of the band ushered Usk over to join a meal in progress. The locust had not uttered a chitter, likely wary or anxious that he might be the object of persecution at the hands of the strange nomads. To everyone’s surprise, they had taken Usk under their wing, like one of their own, as if he had been
