02. Riders of the Winds (2 page)

There were the clear signs of a disaster here: broken wagons, half-eaten and rotting corpses of animals and some people, partly crumbled rock walls and ledges, showing what a true heavy rain on the down-sloping plain above could do to anyone unlucky enough to be trapped here.

The Sudog floated overhead and looked down for a distance, until the wreckage and remains ceased, then it floated back, away and to the north, back out again over the Wastes themselves where roads were mere trails through colorful desolation.

Twisting, turning, following the trail it discovered a great rock arch on the downward side and there the remains of more violence, this of a far different kind. A new grave on the rim opposite the arch and overlooking it, and much scorching of the very rock itself. Below, some animals, both nargas and horses, and the remains of burnt-out wagons, and a number of bodies of more recent vintage than those in the canyon had been, bodies not drowned but bloodied and mutilated by shot and shell.

It began to follow the trail, but its energy was nearly spent; it was next to impossible to withstand the low humidity of the surrounding air and the scorching heat of the desert sun for long. It felt itself first weakened, then almost coming apart. The eyes faded, the sliver of crimson that might have been a mouth grew dull, then merged with the clouds, which were already turning from dark to white. Its last impression was the mere hint of life farther on, of horses, possibly, and riders, but no details. It was sufficient, however, for the Sudog's master.

There were four horses farther on, had it been able to get just a little bit closer, four horses but with five very
different riders. Also along was a narga, a four-footed beast of burden that somewhat resembled a cross between a no-humped
camel
and a mule, laden with packs.

One was a very fat young woman, looking because of her weight older than her years but still with youth in her face and complexion, with short black hair. The second was a strikingly beautiful young woman in possibly her late teens with long strawberry blond hair and a perfect figure, her eyes painted or possibly tattooed with the flowing lines of sapphire blue butterfly's wings, and a similar, if much more grandiose, design on her chest from her breasts down to her crotch. The effect was neither grotesque nor overdone, but rather exotic.

The third was an older woman but in very good condition, extremely thin and very tall, certainly over six feet in bare feet. Her hair was black, her facial complexion very dark, but little more could be said, since almost all of her body was covered with colorful and exotic designs that seemed to flow into one another and made her appear outlandishly dressed even if she were nude, which in fact she basically was. In fact, they all were.

The final pair sharing a horse were very young, one in her early teens who was thin and fairly plain, the other, no more than nine or ten, almost insufferably cute. They looked grim and tired, though, as did the others, and their faces reflected experiences that had aged them as none of their tender years should have aged, inside.

They had clearly made what they could out of what they had. The two youngest wore what were obviously pieces of blankets with crude holes cut in their middles to give them basic serapelike protection from the sun. Much the same had been done with a full blanket for the fat woman, white the butterfly woman wore a shorter length tied at the neck like a cape. The tall one with the tattoos wore nothing at all save double pistols on a cut-down gunbelt. Both the big woman and the butterfly girl also were similarly armed.

There was some thunder in the background and the big woman stopped and turned to look back. "They're looking for us," she said tensely. "I can feel it. We have to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and this place as fast as we can." Her voice was very low and gravelly, almost a distinctive and not very melodic young man's voice, straddling the octaves between male and female. She spoke in the nonetheless melodic language of the Akhbreed, but the butterfly girl answered in American English.

"Sam, we're all dead tired, and the girls most of all. We've been through a
lot,
and there's maybe only a couple of more hours of sun left. We can only push ourselves so far and God knows where the next water is. If they find us then they'll find us, no matter what kind of distance we make today. Best if we're all at our best. I say we look for a campsite that seems safe." She sighed. "What a mess. No guides, can't use the main trail, and, considering the horses, maybe two days' worth of water tops. And we can't go back to the border 'cause all of those
things
are blooming."

The plants now flowering on the plain were not placid creatures. They had crushed and eaten people, horses, even wagons that had the bad luck to spill some moisture on the plot of ground above them, and who knew what they were like thick, aboveground, and in full bloom?

Samantha Buell, the large woman, did not bother to translate for the others. Charley could understand the Akhbreed language, or enough to get by, but speaking it was beyond her. There was no need to translate; why get the others more depressed than they already were?

"All right," Sam said, "we'll look for a safe place to camp. I think tomorrow, though, we have to track north until we can find some clear way back to the border. With all those wedges changing all the time if we can get someplace else, anyplace, they'll have a real tough time finding us then."

"Do you think those who seek you won't also have that in mind?" the tall, tattooed woman asked sharply. "Even now they will be sending their minions to patrol the length and will use their pet monsters to deter or discourage us from trying it until they can get there. There are always storms on a border, even one such as this, to breed them. Were Boday your enemy she would keep you in the Wastes and off the roads, running, jumping, and hiding, until the water ran out and the horses died; and, afoot and thirsty, all would be as easy to pick as flowers in a garden."

Sam sighed. "You're right, Boday, and that's probably exactly what they
will
do. Damn it, they're not after you, Charley, or the girls. They're only after
me.
The rest of you are in danger only because of me. They couldn't care less about the rest of you."

"Yeah, but they think I'm you," Sharlene "Charley" Sharkin, the butterfly girl, responded. "Even that sorceress or whatever she was thought so. You're the quarry but I'm the target!"

The Akhbreed sorcerer Boolean had arranged it so that Charley, who bore a superficial resemblance to Sam before the weight gain, had come to look,
sans
butterfly tattoos, precisely like her friend. And a combination of a long wait, depression, and Boolean's pet demon had caused Sam to become more than merely fat, so that one would have to be a very good observer and look very close to take Sam and Charley as virtual twins. The idea, to make everyone chase Charley instead of Sam, had worked well—to Charley's dismay. They didn't know if Boolean's demon and the monstrously beautiful but evil sorceress who had vanished while in combat with one another were still alive somewhere else or in another plane or had destroyed one another. If not, then the enemy for whom that sorceress worked had given a pretty accurate description of Charley to her master, and with Boday's butterfly tattoos Charley wasn't exactly easy to disguise.

Charley knew, too, that the others were still somewhat in shock and that the day's labors had helped put off the inevitable horror within the others. Sam, Boday, and the two girls, Rani and Sheka, had been tied down by a marauding gang of animals in the shape of men and brutally raped; the two girls had further been subjected to the loss of both their parents and probably their two brothers in the flood. Charley, with some help from the girls' dying father, had managed to rescue them and eliminate the gang, but she couldn't know just what they had been through and because of the language barrier she couldn't lead them. She could only lead Sam, and then only to a point.

The two girls had barely spoken all day, and Sam was clearly on the edge. Boday seemed normal for Boday, but the artist and alchemist was more than eccentric, and even rape and torture might not have affected
that
very bizarre mind; but for the same reason Boday was the last person Charley wanted in charge of anything. The only control now was that love potion Boday had accidentally consumed that had caused her to fall madly in love with Sam, the first person she saw after coming around, but even that wasn't as absolute as it always seemed in the fairy tales. When somebody who was both mad and dangerous was passionately in love with you, you had to watch yourself even more than otherwise, as they had discovered more than once.

Boday called a halt and pointed to their left. "Up in the rocks there, darlings! Looks like enough room for us and the animals, at least, and there's high ground overlooking the only trail in these parts."

Sam looked up at it. "Might be rough getting all the animals up there," she said worriedly.

"Perhaps. But it will be just as difficult for anyone else to get to us."

It
wasn't
easy, and the final solution was to walk each of the animals up by leading them and not falling down themselves. All of them were exhausted, all had pushed themselves beyond their limits, and as soon as the horse blankets were converted to beds by laying them out on the hard, uneven ground most wanted only to sleep, although they did have hardtack-type biscuits and invaluable canteens and small casks filled with water and wine.

Charley got out the single-shot shotgun and a box of shells. "I'll take the first watch," she told them. "You get some sleep. When I can't take it anymore I'll wake you up, Sam, and then Boday can finish off the night."

"No," Sam told her. "I'll go first. I don't think I can sleep right now. We at least got some rest thanks to that damned spell or whatever that
thing
put on us. I'll be okay. I got to do some thinking anyway."

The sun was still up and casting long shadows against the forbidding landscape when most dropped off into states more approaching unconsciousness man sleep, but for Charley sleep just wouldn't come. She was overtired; she knew that. She also ached in every muscle in her body including some she had never even suspected before, but that only made it harder. She lay there, looking over at Sam, who was just sitting there staring vacantly into the distance towards the setting sun. She finally gave up, got up, and went over and sat beside her friend.

"I can't get off to steep," she told Sam. "Maybe I should take the watch anyway."

Sam shook her head negatively. "Uh-uh. lake some of the wine. It's not great but it's pretty strong."

"Maybe. The way the animals went at that keg of water, though, I think we should save any liquid until we just have to have it." She sighed. "It's been rough so far, hasn't it? And we only just started."

Sam nodded. "I been thinking about that, and a lot of other things. I just don't know how much more of this I can stand, Charley. Right now I feel—
dirty.
Those filthy, murdering scum playing with my body, getting
inside
of me, getting off inside me, and there was nothing I could do! Nothing! I'm still matted up down mere with dried prick juice. And
her—
that—that
thing—
laughing and cheerin' 'em on. I think she was gettin' off on it herself just watchin' 'em."

Charley sighed. "Yeah, I can imagine how you must feel. At least, though, we learned one thing from it all. We learned just what kind of people and creatures work for this bastard out to get you. Somehow I just can't picture this Boolean being real cozy with that dragonfly queen. You didn't get to see her full, I guess, like I did. Half beautiful woman, half some monstrous insect. Nobody's born like that, not even here. You remember your changewind vision? Of the boy changed into a monster by one of those winds?"

Sam nodded absently.

"Well, I think this one was another like that, only maybe only part way, like part of her was covered and part wasn't and somehow it made a new whole. You can almost see how somebody like that is made. A pretty woman like that, changed into half what she was and half monster. Maybe that
is
the only way she can get satisfaction herself now—by watching it. Maybe she's just gettin' even with everybody, 'specially girls, who can still have what she can't. Even so, she worked for the guy with the horns. She told me so. He might look human, but inside he's gotta be an inhuman bastard, worse than she was.

Imagine this whole place, all of it, dominated and run by ones like the dragonfly queen."

Sam shook her head in wonderment. "Maybe. I think I could have stood it for me, but those
children!.
How could
anyone
defile kids like that? I wanted to do much worse than kill them. I wanted to roast them, live, over a fire and take 'em apart piece by piece."

Charley looked over at the sleeping girls. "Yeah, and they been so quiet. The little one is so full of hate, though, you can feel it, and the big one—you can't tell about her at all. And while I'm glad we saved 'em, I wish I knew what we'd saved them for. They're gonna slow us down and we'll have to have extra supplies for them and protect them in a fight. It's not good, Sam."