He had to consciously make himself walk away from it. He could already taste the rough cut of the brandy, smell its thick vapor. But he knew what it would do and what he would keep on being if he took it.

Running away into the mind’s own besotted refuges was too easy. He had been damned lucky so far. Nothing dangerous had happened when he had been drinking, or hung over, or tapped in to a stim circuit in a Trough.

But nobody’s luck held forever.

He would have to keep his head clear if he was ever to learn. He made himself go over to where Shibo sat alone. Her high cheekbones caught the dim halflight, shrouding her eyes and making them unreadable, mysterious. As the last Knight, she would always be welcome around the campfires. But she seldom went, preferring to tinker with mech parts she carried in a black knapsack.

He spent an hour with her but it felt more like a day. He had not felt so daunted and humble since the days when he first went out with his father on simple scavenging raids.

Shibo had not merely mastered mechtech, she had made it comprehensible. She could recase her own ammo for her gun. She knew how to realign its bore. From mech scrap she had fashioned a self-loader that folded neatly into the gun stock. It fit snugly into her exskell, so to load while firing she had only to breathe. Killeen admired how deftly she had made her deficiency—the ever-moving exskell ribs—into an asset. Her rate of fire was higher than any Killeen had ever seen.

As she taught, she spoke more than she ever had. She had been fitted with the exskell as a girl. A craftswoman had made her exskell of foam polycarbon, worked from Snout debris. Killeen suspected that had kindled Shibo’s ability to translate mech tangles into human terms. Perhaps this had saved her after the Knight Calamity.

As she taught him she showed no smugness, no preening pride, nothing but a penetrating attention to the job at hand. Many in the Families disliked mech artifacts and tolerated only those clearly shaped to human use. Leggings, calf-clasping shock absorbers, moly-vests—these Killeen was used to. He had to overcome his distaste as Shibo taught.

Then, slowly, he became intrigued. In her hands the alien objects took on a redeeming human dimension. Her quick, incisive thinking opened paths for him, banished mech mysteries. When she said, “Well, done. Sleep now, yeasay?” he was sorry the time was over.

Cermo snored as Killeen passed by him. The big man’s mouth yawned slackly at the sky.

Killeen felt restless despite his fatigue, yet he did not want to join the figures around the campfires. Though he did not mind the stink he carried from days of hard-marching, he remembered his mother’s old rule—bathe when you could, because no one knew how well Marauders could smell.

He found a small stream nearby that gushed out of a horn-shaped rock formation. The water numbed him immediately and then brought pain seeping into his feet. Still he stayed in for long, agonizing minutes, savoring the sparkling lap of more water than he had seen since the Trough.

After, he had to walk awhile to bring the circulation back into his legs and stop the quiet ache in them. That was why he was standing some distance from the fire tent and alone among the Bishops could see the Duster coming, though he was nearly naked, without equipment, and could do nothing about it.

The Duster was on top of them before Killeen, running among the bushes toward his weaponry, could do more than shout. Bishops came spilling from the ruby-walled fire tents. The Duster came in low from the north and was spewing a dark cloud behind it even as it breasted the horizon. It whirred and droned, approaching with stolid momentum. Killeen could not tell if it had made a particular target of them, for it did not appear to slow as it swept over the Rook and Bishop camps. The black fog billowed behind it and then fell with a graceful buoyancy, as though in no particular hurry to reach the ground and begin its work. Killeen saw the darkness advancing and swept up as much of his gear as he could. He took several steps, realized he would do better with his boots on, and so made himself methodically sit down and put on the boots despite the pandemonium which ricocheted through his sensorium from the outfanning Family.

When he stood up Toby was running toward him and the cloud was descending over the Family like a huge black hand. It came down in the Eater’s blue-shot twilight, catching the last incoming horizontal yellow shafts of radiance from Denix, which cut across the descending swarm. For swarm it was now, not the simple layers of corrosive chemicals Killeen had experienced before and which had killed his grandmother. This was not alkaline dust but rather nuggets that seemed to writhe and murmur in the air. Toby reached Killeen and for once the father was glad to see that the ageold and sometimes even endearing sloppy habits of a boy were of use, for Toby’s boots were still on and he had only half-shucked his marching gear.

Toby scooped up his mainbelt and shrugged on his harness, which carried some weaponry. Against chemicals this would have been utter useless deadweight, for the thing to do then was to run fleet and upwind. But they both agreed without wasting breath to speak that this settling threat was fresh. The things that came coasting from the sky hit the ground with rebounding skill. They were no bigger than three hands across. One rushed at Toby’s leg, extruding blunt dowels. It was about to attack his boot when Toby blew it to pieces. But by then three more had landed around them and one more came down on Killeen’s back.

It knocked him flat. A gust of horror shot through Killeen as he grabbed at the thing. He could feel the snub-ended arms press against his neck. A smell like sharp, corroded tin filled his nostrils. His hand slipped on slick cowling and something whirred at his neck. It brought a steel-cold pinprick that spread into a roaring, hot pain. He got a grip on the thing and wrenched hard and down. It held on. He found a hold with his other hand and heaved at it. Still the weight pressed down on him. He tried to roll over but the machine somehow thrust against his roll and held on.

He had not put on his gloves, and when his hand snatched at the two blunt prods against his neck his fingers touched something whitehot, unbearable. Tiny iceknives scrabbled at his face. Going by feel, Killeen tried to imagine what the thing was shaped like. He found the underlip of it and yanked but it did not budge. He twisted and got both hands under the lip and was about to jerk at it when suddenly the weight was gone. He rolled over. Toby had pried the thing off using a shovel. As Killeen got up, Toby smashed the shovel into the squat, square thing. It buzzed and went dead.

Then they ran. The small machines were falling like slow-motion hail. Killeen remembered for an instant—in the frozenframe way that the height of battle could bring—romping beneath snow as a boy, and having it turn to pebble-hard nuggets, sending him wailing back inside the Citadel.

These midget mechs showed no preference for humans. Those who landed on the Family tried to buzzsawbore their way in. Three people were hurt before others could pry the machines off. But the other mechs turned to the rocks and tundra, inspecting and burrowing in. Soon fumes drifted from their labors, acrid foul clouds that did more to drive the Bishops away than had the assault.

They regrouped, calling names until every Bishop was in formation. The machines blanketed the area and the Family trotted to a nearby rutted rise before looking back. The voracious specks were uprooting and converting a lengthy swath that stretched from the far hills. The corridor had missed the Rooks entirely.

“Damned if I ever saw a Duster drop such,” Killeen gasped.

“Looks like they’re eatin’ the rock.” Toby pointed.