the interruption, but pressed on. “Yes, I suppose, a choice.”
“Cut to it,” Max said. Three words that brought all possibility of further pleasantries to an end. He was through waiting.
Charlie paused, then shrugged. His face settled into something altogether more apathetic. “You know who we are. You know what we can do. You must have seen enough fire on the horizon by now. Your allies are gone, and now it’s your turn. So choose: you can join us, or you can burn.”
“Join you in what?” Bill said.
The squat lupine man grinned, a terrible, wicked expression that made Max sick to look at. “Killing scum, that’s what.”
Charlie held up a hand, though visibly withered when his companion bared his teeth like an excited dog. Max had the impression that the true balance of power between them was far from equal. “Our quest,” he said. “We have a mission—to rid the land of the greed and injustice it’s been shown by the dominant powers. These civilised people with their morals and books and history, waltzing into everyone’s lives and taking what they see as theirs, leaving a trail of destruction behind.”
Bill scowled. “It’s been a bad year for everyone. The famine would have kicked everyone’s arses whether Cain and his people were around or not.”
“Yet those who could have helped the starving and helpless instead chose to help themselves, to further their own plans, their little schemes to bring back the Old World.” Charlie laughed cruelly. “Leaving behind a trail of destruction and death wherever they went.” A bitterness had infected his face. He changed tactic. “There’s no need to make this hard. People talk highly of this place for miles around. Lay down your weapons, fall in line, and none of you will be harmed.”
“We’re not laying down anything,” Max said before Bill could utter a word.
“Think about it. Things might not be so tough anymore, but the damage is done. People are starved, the Old World supplies are spent, and it’ll take months for the next harvest to come in. The lands are empty.” A note of genuine anger flashed on Charlie’s brows. “Trading posts aren’t much use if there’s nobody left to trade. You rely on your clientele for your own supplies. What do you think will happen to you now?”
They didn’t say anything.
“There would be no shame in it,” Charlie said. He even offered a hand, as though he were a brave sailor plucking floundering fools from stormy seas.
“No shame in bowing down to bully-boys and intimidation?” Bill muttered.
Charlie ignored him. The fingers of his proffered hand waggled. “We were all different, once. We were all just like you.”
Max found himself leaning back away from that hand despite the twenty feet between them. “Somehow I don’t believe that.”
The hand dropped. The kind expression flickered, revealing the ugliness lurking beneath. “Don’t be fools.”
“The fools here are those who wandered into this town with nothing but an itty bitty knife to threaten us and expected to just walk out of here.” With that, Bill raised an arm and swirled a hand above his head, signalling Jordan to blow them away. Max didn’t bother trying to stop him. There had been too many pyres of smoke afar of late. The time for mercy had passed.
In unison, the armed guards atop the stalls and homes all along the thoroughfare braced their stances against the lips of the many roofs and took aim. Snaps, clicks and twangs filled the air as they cocked their weapons. Max readied himself to pick one of them off if Jordan’s high-calibre rounds failed to kill on impact. “I’m sorry, but we can’t take any chances.”
Neither man moved, nor did they show an ounce of surprise. Instead, they stared directly up the hill towards the observatory, straight at where Jordan would have been perched in the service hatch. They knew they were being watched.
Max made to turn to Bill and the others, alarm bells jangling behind his eyes, but before he could do more than start with shock, the squat man moved. Max had never seen anyone move so fast, so blurred as to be almost imperceptible. It would have looked as though he had only twitched, if it weren’t for the hunting knife vanishing from his belt. All that remained was the bare leather holster. A short whistle accompanied a wisp of air that blew against Max’s face as something passed by very close. For an instant he might have perceived an amorphous spinning glitter of a