Inkslayer

Chapter 6: Makin' for the Mounds

Nox rode that hyper-hog like it was his own, but it wasn't his, and it made him aware of that at every moment. It didn't shift like his monowheel, and those two wheels beneath him reacted very differently to the sand than his one giant, wide-treaded wheel. The vehicle fought him, as if it knew he was not its owner, not its master. It fought him like everything and everyone fought him, conspiring with the Wild North to toss him off into the wastes, and better yet roll on over him, crushing him into his grave. You could do all the rituals in the world, but that didn't make you a real member of a gang. Often, you had to kill. Well, Nox could do that. Hell, he'd made a ritual out of it too.

He'd only ever passed by Sermon Hill, the tallest of a collection of hardened dune-hills called the Mounds. The weather tried to wear them down, but the earth kept propping them back up. You see, the battle of life was happening everywhere. You were a soldier, but so was everyone and everything else. You might've thought you could pick a side, but life'd already divided up the teams, and everyone was losing. The land fought the sky and the sun, and more than anything it fought you for ever daring to place your dust-covered boots upon it. If the land had boots, it'd sure as hell stand on you.

The wind was picking up fierce, fighting the Coilhunter as much as his hyper-hog. He pulled his goggles over his eyes to protect them from the hail of sand. It was times like this that you'd pull your neckerchief up over your mouth and nose too, but he didn't need that. The fire his family burned in had gifted him a mask, and the oxygen tank and chemical mixture on his back and gifted him a way to breathe without the constant stab and ache. That event was what made him. The criminals had crafted him, just like he used to craft toys so many years before. And now, well, you can bet that he brought his own gifts too.

It was the shank of the evening now, but the weather made it more like night. It was as if the Inkslayer had signed a pledge with nature, and it'd promised to give him a sky full of ink. But those alliances were always fickle. The enemy of my enemy. You just had to remember that the Wild North had no friends.

The sand was shifting fast under the gale, and Nox was starting to struggle with the engine beneath him. Those beasts were coveted by gangs throughout the Wild North, but they weren't much better than a scrub horse if they were in the wrong hands. The Coilhunter would've said it was the gangs who had the hands of the wrong, but that mattered little in a war with the weather. You could click your barrel empty and it'd leak your body-barrel dry. That was a moisture you could always count on in the desert.

Nox was pulling hard here and pushing hard there, trying to stop the bike from toppling over. He adapted quick to many things, but often that was because he got a chance to make his own adaptations. You couldn't do that when you could barely see in front of you.

It was in this haze and flurry that the Coilhunter thought he saw the silhouette of a figure in the distance. He couldn't trust it, because the land made you a desert-doubter, but he thought it more desert real than desert lie when it collapsed into a pile right before him.

He swerved, and the force of his pull sent him sliding, with the hyper-hog skidding through the sand. He dove off and rolled to avoid being crushed beneath it, and came up with a pistol drawn and his gunslung eyes facing off against the hunched figure that'd dismounted him.

It wasn't moving, but that could mean a lot of things. Maybe it was dead, or maybe it was plotting your end instead. You had to be careful about being too eager to help in the Wild North. The helpers and the hopers and the sand-worn saints all had their own pretty holes in the same graveyard. There were even some do-gooders there helping to carve the gravestones. Don't think they were done now. Why, they were carving one for you.

Nox braced against the bashing breeze with his right arm, squinting against the sand to make out who or what was before him. His left hand held his pistol to his hip, low and ready, using his own body to shield that arm and steady his aim. With so many enemies out there, you made everything you could into an ally.

"Stand up now," Nox shouted over to the figure, if it even was a figure and not some phantom. The weather was working up a fury now, and it was hard to even hear that shout.

Nox kicked a loose stone over, which nudged an exposed leg, but they didn't even flinch. The Wild North attracted the playwrights and actors that were shunned by the culture-hating Iron Empire down south, but if this was acting, then it deserved an award. Too bad you could expect any gold-plated trophy of yours to be taken from you, and maybe used to hammer in your head. Doubly so for iron. Triply so for lead.

"Are ya hurt?" Nox called out, but there was no answer. He was edging over bit by bit, grain by grain, muscles spasming, fingers itching. When you were so close to the chasm, you had to edge.

"Speak or—" But Nox cut himself short, because he got a glimpse through the gale that stole his breath. He could see a girl there, maybe in her early teens, gaunt as a ghost, with her sunken eyes looking up at him, if they looked at anything at all. Some folk said you could see a light. Some folk said you could see the dark. Some folk saw the Devil. And some folk saw the Coilhunter.

"Who did this to you?" he asked, as the Wanted poster started to form in the Bounty Booth of his mind.

"The ... Pastor," she said, exhaling the words with her final breath. The avaricious wind threatened to rob those words and take them away forever, where no one would ever hear them, and no one would ever know who.

But Nox heard.

And Nox knew who.

And Nox was already on the hunt.