An elder sat down on a hide before a cookfire and sighed. He motioned to a young, cowled server and drinks were brought by waiting attendants. Miko and Sket moved somewhere nearby, taking the clay cups of spicy hot tea with gratitude. Usk and Star fidgeted while Fenli stood stiffly, arms-crossed, waving off the steaming drink, as if it were beneath him.
“Engines that hum in the night like killer bees... Machines that never sleep.” The elder shook his head and spat. “We live in a world gone mad. Even though we live here without technology, no engines, no noise and filth and death with their doom-giving flames, we yet live in a world yet where our children hop the barbed wire fence and get their legs blown off.”
Fenli snorted. “There is no way to avoid progress, old man. The universe has its way. If we were supposed to live like primitives—”
The old man merely continued. “What are your hopes, warriors? Your dreams?”
Sket gestured. “We mean to strike out for Farfan mesh,” he said grimly.
“’Tis a fair ways.” The elder shook his head with concern. His eyes grew distant, gleaming with a faraway sadness. “Always the same, you men come and go, never to return, seeking the winds and shadows of destruction. Only death lurks at Farfan, you should know that. Machines, humming death, metal and wires boxed up in crates, all to create winds and churn water from poison pools. They make this place a ‘civilization’, they call it.” He spread his arms with sullen contempt. “You would do best to stay with us. B & D won’t harm you here.”
Sket’s lip twitched. “He may not, but we have a mission, Iasan.”
“Then you will suffer grief. There are demons there, at Farfan—demons that fly and breathe crimson fire.”
“You rave, old man,” jeered Fenli.
“Flying demons, Skull Rocs, the hooded guardians, we call them by many names—flying condors, fresh spawn from this evil age with claws and fire, death-bringing eyes.”
Sket frowned. He bit his lip. It seemed to Miko that the outcast thought the chief no fool.
“Have you heard any word of Karem and Sarl?” Sket asked weakly.
“Naught.” Seeing the look of despondency in the outcast’s face, Iasan laid a hand on Sket’s shoulder.
“B & D must have sold them off-world,” Sket spat. “There will be a reckoning.”
The elder nodded fatalistically. “Ah, Zera. Come, child.” He motioned. A young woman came to sit and indicated that the bereaved man should bare his arm. Her large brown eyes blinked meekly and she set down her healer’s kit and smoothed her brown robe with its white sash.
She cleansed the wound with a soft cloth while Sket watched on with piercing eyes, the occasional twitch of cheek being the only sign of his discomfort. Her healing stitches patched the wound, but Sket winced as a needle dug in deeper than needed and drew blood.
“Here, give me that.” Star caught up the needle and thread. “I’ve had some training in first aid.”
The woman blinked deferentially and relinquished the tools, then moved on to Fenli, who grinned in anticipation, peeling back his tattered garment to bare his gashed hip.
Miko was impressed, for it seemed that Star could not only fight, but stitch with equal prowess. The more he studied this spunky woman, the more he liked her for her intelligence, courage and determination—and her backside wasn’t bad either.
She finished the last stitch and wiped away the last blood with water. She chanced to brush against Miko who had crowded close.
It was a surprisingly intimate brush and Miko stared anew at the brunette’s enticing curves. It was impossible to miss the lithe swing of hips, the pleasing shape of slender, taut body and sturdy thighs. “You weren’t really going to offer your body for money back there at the pawn shop, were you?”
She snorted. “What do you think? I was hanging around that joint looking for marks like you to get me off this bare rock. I don’t need sex to gain leverage over men. I’ve got my wits. Seems I have bad judgment in men though, landing here with you as a slave of an ‘unwanted’.”
Miko grunted. “You said it, not me.”
She harrumphed. “What about you? What’s your story? Never met a man who has gills.”
“Bet not. I’m a nobody. A lost spaceman, chased by aliens, trying to find himself.” Miko grimaced wryly, his words having more profundity than he intended. “You, on the other hand, are a minx in sparrow’s clothing. But a limber and beautiful one,” he added, ignoring her mocking grunt.
“If you ladies are done,” muttered Fenli.
Star sighed, her tough veneer crumbling. “I keep remembering that witch’s voice. To hear it crackling over the com, made my skin crawl.”
She shivered. “Kinkiest thing. It’s her, that hag, Beardly, who rules the roost. Drek is just a puppet. Wanted me to whip his guards’ bare asses while those creeps of Siamese filth watched. Then the pavutts were brought in.” She shuddered involuntarily and glanced idly at several boys who were playing at a nearby campfire with young yappy dingos that looked remarkably similar to younger versions of the desert jackals.
“Pavutts?”
“Those things we saw earlier. The boars, or desert swine with gruesome tusks, whatever they are. They had rings through their noses and their legs chained. Beardly’s lackeys weren’t that stupid to let them wander free.”
Miko had nothing to say. Sket sipped his tea stone-faced while Fenli wore his idiot’s grin.
Attendants brought food over on low trays, served in clay pots. “Ah, the pigs,” grunted the old man. “We know much of these grisly creatures.”
Outcast and fugitive shared hard bread and a thin, spicy soup in a moment of silence.
“This stuff is good—” Fenli
