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Ruki Provos’ caravan moved at a decent clip. Mike figured the awkward steam tank was treading ground at about thirty miles an hour. He also made the mental conversion to approximately forty-eight kilometers an hour. Army training put to good use. He looked out the window at the same dusty, sparse plains that hadn’t changed much in the hour they’d been riding. What else was he going to do?
Ruki and the security detail all shared the first wagon of the caravan. It was linked directly to the engine; Ruki, wearing goggles, sat up front steering the contraption. Mike was in the back with an ant dude, the one who wore a loud ass red shirt instead of the drab brown of the other ants. Runt took up a side all by himself. Directly opposite of Runt sat Taldin and his remaining henchman, whose mouth hung open because of an overbite.
The wagon was really just a covered canopy with benches inside, more open windows than walls. Mike hated looking outside the wagon, cause everything was so damn bright in the daytime, but when he did look, he saw nothing but desert shrubs in any direction.
Occasionally, Taldin would lean toward Ruki and tell him directions. He must’ve been going off of rock formations cause wasn’t no street signs out here. The ant dudes would look at each other often enough, but they’d never speak. Mike was never one for small talk and Runt seemed to be the same way, which suited Mike fine. But there was something he was curious about.
“Yo, Runt.”
“Yo.” The big man acknowledged him with a quick glance and a raised eyebrow, but mostly he looked straight ahead at Taldin and Overbite.
“I’m curious. How’d you know what this meant?” Mike asked, holding up his closed fist again, the close range engagement signal for “freeze”.
“I didn’t. What does it mean?”
“It means to stop. So how’d you know to chill?”
“You looked at me and made a sign. Took it to mean you were aware of what was developing behind you and had a plan. Otherwise, why make a sign?”
“Well, what if I had wanted you to do the opposite and bust him up?”
“Protecting your back was the standard action, Mike Ballztowallz. There would have been no point to look at me and make a sign.”
Mike had to admit, the logic made sense. He settled back on his bench, squinting out to look out over the dry flats as the little tank that could chugged along. As far as he could see, nothing moved out there. The whine and ga-gunk ga-gunk of the engine filled his ears and the warm, dry air lashed his face.
Taldin and his ant goons remained quiet, sharing eye time with each other. And kept sharing, eyes looking back and forth between the three.
“Yo, Runt, why these dudes keep staring?” Mike could have asked Taldin directly, but he had no respect for the clown. Besides, the ant bastard had called him a twee. Fuck Taldin.
Runt didn’t take his eyes off of the two in front of him. “They look to indicate who they are speaking to and to acknowledge who is speaking to them. Same as us.”
“But they not talking.”
“They all follow the aian god, Yol. Yol gives his followers ant qualities. Armor. Strength. Hive mind.”
They were all talking inside each other’s heads. By the look of their eye trades, they had been talking a lot.
It’s paranoia if a scheme’s going off in your mind... when others are having whole conversations in their minds around you, well, that’s when someone’s plotting on you.
Mike looked at Taldin. Taldin was looking at Mr. Loud Ass Red Shirt beside Mike. None of these ants had bothered to chime in while him and Runt were talking about them. They had nothing but idle time on this ride, plenty of opportunity to butt in and explain or correct them, or even to just tell the two of them to mind their own business.
Maybe the time wasn’t idle. Maybe they were busy talking about something... something so important that they didn’t even hear the conversation Mike and Runt were having outside of it.
At this rate of speed, an hour’s ride provided a solid distance away from Tirys. Nothing out here but thirsty shrubs.
Mike looked at Red Shirt. Not his eyes; despite what they talk about in movies, eyes don’t tell you squat. Mike watched his hands. His right was creeping, ever so slowly, almost as if by the accidental jostling of the wagon, toward his dagger.
“Ambush!” Mike yelled. That was the trigger to an explosion of action.
Taldin and Overbite pulled out their swords and jumped from their bench. Runt sprang to meet them, elbowing the henchman and fighting to deflect Taldin’s sword. Mike grabbed Red Shirt’s hand as he freed the dagger from its sheath.
Red Shirt leveraged his weight to pin Mike down on the bench. Both of Mike’s hands were holding the dagger arm, trying to keep the knife from stabbing him in the face.
“What the hell is this madness?!” yelled Ruki’s voice over the whine of the steam engine.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mike saw Runt punching Taldin. But Overbite had recovered and was approaching Runt’s back with his sword.
Mike kicked out with his little legs. They scored Overbite’s hand, knocking the sword out of his grip.
That’s all the help he could give Runt. Red Shirt’s dagger was edging closer to his face. The bastard was strong.
Instead of pushing the hand away, Mike pulled it hard toward him, moving his head as far to the right as possible. The dagger found empty wood, and Mike turned his head to bite the ant’s wrist.
Megrym teeth are sharp. Mike clamped down, driving them through the ant exoskeleton. He felt the shell splinter and crack, tasted the metallic salt of aian’s blood, and heard Red Shirt’s roar of pain.
Red Shirt’s grip weakened, Mike pushed the aian off and grabbed his club. He saw Runt trying to manage Taldin, who still held a sword, while Overbite had his arms wrapped around Runt’s neck and was squeezing.
Mike leapt off the back bench and brought the club down onto Overbite’s head. That got him off of Runt’s neck and put him face down on the floor of the wagon.
“Duck,” Runt said. Mike hit the deck on top of the laid out henchman as Runt tossed Taldin towards the back of the wagon. Taldin collided with Red Shirt who was trying to work his knife out of the wood. Mike saw Red Shirt fall out the open window and heard him scream as the wheels of the trailing caravan car rose over the sudden bump of him.
Ruki was slowing the caravan down. Taldin pulled his former henchman’s knife out of the wood and whirled to face Mike and Runt. He held his ground, pointing the knife back and forth between the two of them. The engine came to a grinding halt.
“You can either walk off or get your corpse tossed off,” Mike said. “Make the call, Taldin, you slowing us down.”
Taldin was smarter than Mike thought. After a moment, he tossed the knife out the window.
They let him collect his unconscious henchman. It’d be a stroke of good luck if Overbite would ever contribute anything useful to the hive mind again.
Taldin glared at Mike as he stood out in the dry flats. He carried his limp henchman with an arm draped over his shoulder.
“I’ll get you for this.”
“What you need to get is a move on,” Mike said. “It’s a long walk back to town with you dragging that bag of vegetables.”
Mike waved goodbye to Taldin, cheesing a smile the whole time as Ruki cranked the engine back to life. The caravan shot a cloud of dust over Taldin and continued on its way.
Ruki yelled over the drone of the engine. “This direction should take us all the way to Maltep. If not, we’ll be in a bit of a bind trying to figure out where we are on the maps I brought.”
Mike nodded; wasn’t much to say to that.
Ruki continued to yell despite the fact that Mike was standing right next to him. “How’d you know Taldin was setting me up to rob me?”
“Game recognize game.”
“I seriously want to know. If I wanted nonsense gibbered back to me I would have just asked the engine.”
Mike sighed. “I grew up in a place like Tirys. Looked different but the vibe’s the same. We was thugs on a come up, every one of us. Point being, I knew what Taldin was about cause if I was Taldin I woulda done the same thing.”
That seemed to settle the matter for Ruki. He nodded, adjusted his goggles and returned his attention to driving. Mike took up the seat across from Runt.
Runt looked at Mike. “You grew up in a different place than the land of suburbs your brother spoke of.”
“Much different.”
By the time dad’s business allowed them to move to the burbs, Mike was halfway a man and definitely all knucklehead. He’d probably be locked up right now if it wasn’t for the army. But his upbringing came in handy out here. The last thing he thought he’d need was survival skills when he agreed to play Melvin’s stupid game.
No one talked for long moments, letting the engine’s whine fill the silent spaces. Runt had his head down and eyes closed. Mike squinted out at the desert, seeing the dust dance on swirls of wind.
“Hey!” Ruki craned his neck and yelled back to them.
“Yo,” Mike answered.
“I’m still not paying you guys.”
It took about another hour and a half to reach Maltep. At first Mike thought it was just some kind of supply stop at an oasis. There wasn’t but six buildings or so, all of them made out of mud brick and resembling giant beehives. They were sandwiched between a small lake and a few hills that were almost big enough to be mountains.
As Ruki took the caravan around the lake to the buildings, Mike wondered what was worth the trip. That’s when he saw bunches upon bunches of people emerge, but not from the crummy buildings.
Holes dotted the hills. It looked like most of the town of Maltep lived in homes they had dug into the hillside. Now that the caravan was fixing to pull up, the townsfolk were coming out in droves. All of them wore similar tanned leather pants and long-sleeved shirts. They weren’t human, aian or megrym.
“What are these guys?” Mike asked, looking at folks who looked back with eyes spaced far apart on their heads like deer.
“Nasran,” Runt answered.
Big ones walked and little ones ran toward the caravan on legs that bent forward at the knees, like a stork. Their hands only had four fingers, but each finger was long and slender, ending almost at a point that was icicle sharp. They had fluffy little tails that poked out of the back of their pants where holes were cut.
“They don’t eat megryms, do they?”
Mike was about to find out. Ruki brought the caravan to a stop and stepped out of the wagon. He was greeted by swarming nasran kids. The kids cheered and shouted and held out their long-fingered hands.
Ruki seemed to enjoy the attention, patting kids and smiling as he cut a path through to get to the second wagon. Rummaging under the burlap tarp over the wagon, he finally pulled out a big glass container that held red licorice. The kids cheered even louder as Ruki started handing them candy.
Ruki paused long enough to pull his goggles up to rest on his head. Trail dust made for a dirty face with two clean circular spots around his eyes.
“Uncle warned me about this kind of thing,” he said, beaming a smile.
By this time the older nasran had made their way to the caravan. They waved the kids off to play and enjoy their candy.
The one leading the adults, an old dude if gray hair was any indication of age with them, offered his hand to Ruki. “You are well received in Maltep, Provos Trading Company.”
“You’re just saying that because I have wagons full of stuff for you,” Ruki said. “But I’ll take it,” he finished with a smile, taking the hand and shaking.
The nasrans fell to unloading the wagons while Ruki and the elder talked. Every now and then Ruki called out to the handlers to be careful with one box or another. Mike sighed; this looked like it was going to take awhile.
He felt Runt’s hand on his shoulder. He looked up at the giant.
“We are here and idle. And no town is without a bar.”
Mike could get with that. He was halfway scared Ruki was going to pull off and leave them stuck in Maltep, but he figured nobody was crazy enough to ditch free employees.
“Let’s make it happen.”