Beneath Ceaseless Skies #27 Read Online Free

the most dangerous thing a person was likely to encounter out bush was dingos, or the occasional mob of unfriendly natives, unless they were unlucky enough to lay out their bed roll on top of a brownsnake. Now the snakes and wild dogs were gone, and the surviving natives had retreated to the towns with everyone else.
            Used to be, Agnieska reflected upon her tired feet, that a person could ride horseback across the desert, not have to walk. Her grandpapa had learned to ride, growing up in the days before the False Moon came and turned the horses into man-eaters—them and most of the rest of the world. Used to be , had been grandpapa’s favorite way of starting a sentence.
            Even so , Olly would say, when he got tired of the old man’s complaining, we’ve got it better than some. At least here men are still ruled over by men . And he’d stare grandpapa down until the old man subsided, grumbling, into his chair. Then Olly would turn to Agnieska and wink and they’d share a secret grin.
            The chain in her hand jerked. She turned in time to see Carrick stumble over a spinifex tussock and topple forward, full-length into the dirt.
            Agnieska swore, reaching into her pocket for the hooks as she kicked him over, determined to use them this time. He twisted awkwardly, the weight of the lead mitts keeping his hands where they were. His head lolled. Agnieska stooped to lift one of his eyelids.
            Damn. Out cold. She straightened, then unhitched a water canteen, took a swig, and washed the stale water around her teeth while she fretted over the ground their pursuers would gain.
            In truth, her own legs were shaking with fatigue. And even if Carrick’s mates weren’t just as tired, they couldn’t make up too much ground on foot. But the songdogs were out there, too, still making their presence known.
            “Not much to be done about it,” she said, aloud. Alone, she would’ve kept going until she found a more defensible site. But it was too late to use the calf hooks now, even if she’d been willing.
            Too soft, Aggy , Olly would’ve said.
            She ran Carrick’s chain through the branches of a stunted mulga tree and padlocked it, then shrugged off her pack to rummage inside for warding irons, which she dotted around in a rough circle. The irons would deflect scrying eyes, now that movement no longer concealed them, and protect them from at least some of the desert’s nocturnal predators. She scattered caltrops and set spring-traps that might do for some of the rest. For whatever else was smart or lucky enough to get through, it was her carbine and the likelihood that Carrick, out in the open, would be attacked first.
            The ritual of laying out her defenses settled her. And then there was nothing left to do but lie herself down under the low canopy of another mulga, with her pack for a lumpy pillow and her carbine cocked in her hands, and hope that she slept lightly enough to wake in time.
    * * *
            Agnieska came instantly alert but remained still, both habits born of walking the bush alone. She watched through her eyelashes as Carrick stirred. His breath came in sandpaper gasps.
            Beyond him, the air at the boundary of the warded circle was thickened as though by wisps of mist. The wisps extended limbs, probing the wards for a point of weakness. Riders, more than likely from the abandoned farmstead, seeking a host to sate their yearning for their lost humanity.
            A gunshot would scatter them, but it would also mark their location for the songdogs and Carrick’s mates. Slowly, Agnieska eased back her coat and slipped a carbine shell from the row on her belt. Carefully, wincing at the creak of her stiff joints, she raised herself onto one elbow so that she could throw. The riders continued their mindless search.
            She flicked the shell