‘Not a profession I’d choose,’ said Anderson, gesturing back to the encampment with his thumb.
‘Why?’ asked Tergal, eyeing the lance.
‘Dangerous job now, what with all the quakes.’
Tergal choked back his laughter. When he was finally able to speak he asked, ‘Why don’t you use your carbine? On the automatic setting it should do enough damage.’
‘But would you bet your life on that?’ Anderson asked. ‘I’ll want to at least bring down a second-stager with it before countenancing something like this.’
The lance screwed together in four sections, each a metre long. Tergal studied the framework Anderson had erected beside his saddle on Bonehead’s back—the frame’s feet mated into socket plates that had been both glued and riveted into place—and then turned his attention to the final section of lance Anderson picked up.
‘Nasty,’ he said.
‘Obviously the point is for penetration,’ said the knight, running a sharpening stone along the edges of the ten-centimetre triangular-section point. ‘These blade hooks run in a spiral.’ He now began sharpening the forward and outer edges of the blades spiralling back along the rest of the section from its point. From the rear of each of these axe-head pieces of steel protruded sharp barbs. ‘As it penetrates the lance screws itself into the creature, right down into its rear breeding segment. What finally kills it is when it tries to pull away.’
‘The barbs rip out its insides,’ Tergal observed. ‘But surely the point might glance off its armour?’
‘Not if you hit it in the mouth,’ Anderson explained.
He screwed the final section into place and picked, up the lance in one hand. ‘Here.’ He held it out to Tergal, who took it in both hands, then upon discovering how light it was, held it in one hand only.
‘Plaited fibres from the stalks of amanis plants, bonded in epoxy,’ Anderson explained. ‘Very light, and stronger than any wood. The metalliers manufacture some alloys just as light, but they don’t have the same strength.’
‘And if it breaks?’ Tergal asked.
‘It broke only once, at one of the screw points, but by then most of it was inside the third-stager I’d impaled. The creature managed to saw off the stub protruding from its mouth as it died. It didn’t attack again—just stood there trying to figure out what was wrong with itself. Sleers are not as bright as sand hogs.’
Anderson took the lance back and, with it resting across his shoulder, climbed up onto Bonehead’s back. Once seated, he put the lance down with its eyed butt dropping over an iron pin and resting back against a pad in the framework, its weight supported by rests protruding ahead of him. His carbine now rested in a makeshift holster on the opposite side of his saddle from his fusile. While Anderson was doing up his lap straps, Bonehead turned on his crawler limbs to face down the canyon to which Chandle had directed them, then rose up onto his hind limbs.
‘You don’t have to come,’ said Anderson, as Tergal stepped up onto Stone.
Plumping himself in his saddle Tergal replied, ‘I know, and don’t think I didn’t consider staying back there, but I’d never forgive myself for not seeing this.’
Anderson nodded, picked up his goad, and tapped it against the shell extending in front of him. The hog reluctantly folded its sensory head out and up, opened out its eye-palps to observe him for a second, before swivelling them forwards as it set out. Tergal glanced at the obvious trail they were following. Anderson had already told him the third-stager would not be far away, as they did not require wide territories in which to find something to eat. Within an hour, they came upon the remains of one of its meals.
‘Sand gulper,’ Tergal observed, as they passed the scattering of carapace. Little enough remained for identification of the creature, though Tergal did recognize the chitinous shovel it used to scoop up the sand it passed through its throat sieves and the big flat forefeet it used for digging. The predator had sawn all the main sections of carapace into pieces no larger than a man’s torso so that it could munch out every soft part with ease. As far as Tergal was concerned, even creatures like this were best avoided, yet what they were going after just ate them up. It occurred to him that his education first as a gully trader’s child and a minerallier, then as a traveller and thief, had been sadly lacking. That had only concerned the dangers he might face travelling between the settled areas in the more heavily populated human areas of Cull. Until now the greatest alien danger had been from what he had known as adult sleers, and he’d thought little of any other creatures his parents had mentioned.
‘Ah, this might make things a little more interesting,’ said Anderson abruptly, breaking Tergal’s introspection.
Cold winds whipped down the canyon, hazing the air with sand. Tergal looked up to their right, where Anderson was pointing. Over the buttes a line of darkness was rising, boiling along its edge.
‘Should we turn back?’ Tergal asked. ‘You don’t want to be facing this thing in a downpour.’
‘A little late for that.’ The knight now pointed ahead and to their left.
Tergal felt something tighten in the pit of his stomach. The third-stager was black against a vertical sandstone cliff, swinging its awful head from side to side, its huge pincers gleaming sharp as obsidian, and its jointed carapace saws scrabbling at the stone, sending pieces of it tumbling down the face of the butte. Tergal suddenly realized that his nice new handgun, his crossbow and his punch axe were woefully inadequate should this monster get past the knight. He watched it move along parallel to the ground, its antlers coiling in and out, then abruptly turn and come half falling, half running down the sandstone face. It landed on its belly in a cloud of dust, came up high with its legs at full extension, and curled its tail segments up over its head, its ovipositor drill visibly revolving.
‘Ho, Bonehead, let’s take this fucker!’
Anderson lifted his lance from its rests and its rear peg, and directed it ahead between his sand hog’s raised eye-palps. Bonehead folded out its tail plate as a counterbalance, and broke into a loping run. Tergal did not need to tap his goad behind Stone’s head to make it halt. It had already done so and, making small bubbling sounds, was beginning to back up. In that moment Tergal doubted the sanity of the knight—anyone who looked for this sort of action had to be five legs short of a desert ride. It also occurred to him that anyone thinking of robbing such a man was of questionable sanity too. Just then, something clattered against Stone’s carapace, leaving a chalky smear, then again and again. Hailstones the size of eyeballs were soon rattling and smacking down, bouncing down the faces of the buttes, shattering on exposed rocks. Tergal pulled the chinstrap down from his hat and secured it, took his chitin-armoured gauntlets from his belt and pulled them on. He did not halt Stone as it withdrew its sensory head and continued retreating.
‘Ho! Ho!’
Anderson was bouncing up and down in his saddle as if this might make Bonehead go faster. The old sand hog was kicking up clouds of dust as it accelerated, its feeding head now extruding underneath its sensory head and clunking into place. The monstrous sleer accelerated also, oblivious to the white rain shattering on its own carapace. It made no sound, no hissing challenge; just opened out its pincers wide enough to encompass three men, and levelled its tail.
‘Lunatic,’ Tergal whispered. But he saw that, despite any unevenness in the ground or in Bonehead’s gait, the lance remained utterly level and true. Then they struck.
The lance went perfectly between pincers and saws, the point passed into the creature’s gape without touching the sides, the barb blades smashing one of its mandibles. In it went, and Tergal saw Anderson briefly relax his grip to allow the lance to spin, its butt pushed back against the pad, the spiralling blades screwing it inside the attacking monster. The impact put Bonehead down on his tail-plate and lifted the sleer off the ground, its tail cracking up and down. Coming down, it now whipped its head from side to side, trying to free itself as Anderson re-engaged the eye-butt at the back of his lance.