Behind me, the sporadic sounds of gunfire continued to disturb the mountain air, and I could still feel a dangerous mind at large.

I hate running from a fight.

As it turns out, I wasn’t.

THE MAGOS

THE MAGOS

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life.

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

– Religious verse, Terran, M2

One

ONE

The Bone Coast

Sometimes, at night, the lights would wake him.

It didn’t happen often. These days, there wasn’t much traffic on the Bone Coast Highway. Cargo convoys, now and then; the occasional freight tanker, once in a while; perhaps a fast transit, purring up the coast road to Delci, or down to Tycho. By day, he’d glimpse the dirty sunlight winking off their hulls as they rattled past. He’d hear their engines and the thok-thok! of their heavy wheels on the highway’s broken rockcrete. The sounds of other lives with places to go, rushing past him, Doppler-distorted.

At night, sometimes, passing lights backlit his window blinds and drifted across the ceiling of his little bedroom.

Very rarely, the passing lights slowed down, perhaps hoping his little roadside property was a tavern or machine shop. They’d speed up again as soon as they saw their mistake.

Rarest of all, they’d stop. If they knocked at his door to ask directions, Drusher would answer them as politely and helpfully as he could. He didn’t know much. He hadn’t had much direction of his own for a very long time.

Some didn’t knock. He’d hear them outside, prowling around, trying doors and windows, boots crunching on the chalky gravel. Reavers, that was his guess, road-mobs. There were more of those these days, chancers and migrants from the lawless zones of the north. He’d hide in the back room, one hand on his gun, until they went away. He’d heard stories. He knew that, one day, they’d do more than just try the door.

They’d kick it down. They’d come in.

That night, he woke to lights on the tatty blinds. They drifted above him, right to left, across the water-stained ceiling. Something southbound.

It slowed, then was gone.

Drusher lay back on his lumpy pillow and sighed. He stared up at the blank darkness and found it no less fathomable than his life. He’d been dreaming of something, something better than this. He wondered whether, if he closed his eyes and willed it, he could find his place in the dream again and pick up where he left off.

The lights came back, left to right this time. They stopped. The same vehicle, reversing. He recognised the throbbing engine tone.