Chapter Sixteen - Keeping Your Ears Keen

I shook hands with Akx. The kobold’s grip was firm, even if his strange, paw-like hands were only half the size of my own. I always felt a little strange dealing with shorter races. Dwarves and gnomes and kobolds and the like. I wasn’t the tallest woman around, but I towered over them.

“It’s good to do work with you,” Akx said.

I nodded. “Likewise.”

The nomads behind me were scaling over Rusty, their mechanics already getting to work, and the rest of them, most young with the yellow bandana of apprentices around their arms, were carrying tools towards Rusty. Three of them were hefting the bent and burned form of that gnomish thermogun I’d grabbed.

It hurt to part with it, but the thing was fairly heavy, and I doubted I could do much with it as things stood. I had a few more, and bigger, pays coming down soon.

“Let me fetch my friend out of Rusty,” I said. “Is one of these walkers a saloon?” I asked.

Akx barked and shook his head. “I wish. We don’t have the water to waste for that. But there’s a little kitchen out by the front. You can make yourself comfortable, but the liquids cost their weight in copper, got?”

“Got,” I agreed.

I moved back to Rusty, jumped up the ladder still leaning against the edge of the cabin, and poked my head in. Clin was at the back, fighting with my coat. “Oh, you’re back,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Pass me that box there.” I pointed.

He grabbed at a box, noticed the cord holding it in place, and undid it before handing it over. I set it on the edge and opened it, revealing five handguns and twice as many magazines all set neatly together. “Thanks,” I said as I closed the box.

“Guns?”

“From our gnomish friends,” I said. “Traded them for some work on Rusty’s periscope gantry and some of the cabin’s wiring. Traded an old mech gun I won to replace the hydraulics on Rusty’s right leg and for a quick look-over the rest of him. Come on, they have a bar here, and I have a few copper to spare. We can get a bite to eat.”

Clin hesitated, then moved to the edge of the cabin and when I climbed down, he did the same.

I handed the box-full of guns to one of the nomads, a short-furred, grime-covered kobold who was going topless despite the sun. “Give these to Akx, would you,” I said.

We moved off the rear deck and into the mecha proper.

The nomad walker mech was one hell of a machine. It was the sort of thing that was probably built as a heavy-duty industrial platform. A look at the joints and the way the servos were set up hinted at its dwarven heritage. An under-ground mining mech?

It had to be two or three generations old, maybe older. There was a rat’s warren of passages and rooms inside it. There were certainly plenty of nomads crawling around, twenty or so in the rear section alone.

“Stay close,” I said to Clin as I pushed past a doorway covered over by a woven blanket. The interior stank of the sweat of at least three different species. We had to shove over to the side to let a pair of nomads move by. They, all kobolds, stuck their tongues out of the side of their mouths as they passed. I nodded to them and kept moving.

“I’m not that familiar with kobolds,” Clin said. “I’ve seen some, in the trading cities, but never really interacted with them.”

“They’re good folk,” I said. “It can be hard to read them though. Look at the way their hips move, and their tongues. You’re a clever sort, you’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll certainly try,” Clin said. He ‘eeped’ as an old woman, human surprisingly, walked out of a side passage and cut right out in front of him before moving on.

There were rooms off to the sides, mostly just storage from what I could tell, with a few tight rooms that had hammocks hanging in them. This was a lived-in sort of place, probably just under a hundred beings squeezed in together and doing their best to get along.

It took a bit to get used to the walker’s gait, but I was a pilot.

Clin, wasn’t.

The elf was swaying from side to side, almost crashing into the walls and his long legs made him have to duck everytime we passed a bulkhead. He looked like one of those water birds that got confused and arrived in the Vastness. They always seemed so pitiful. Then they seemed tasty.

We arrived at the very front, where the passage split apart. On one side, a set of stairs led into the bridge. A pilot was sitting on a sort of sofa, a complex gantry around his head and multiple needles in his neck. The seat had a hole cut into the back for the kobold’s tail, and I could see his paws flexing as he worked through the careful pattern required to move six legs in tandem.

There were others there too, nomads looking over maps, or filling ledgers, or just sitting next to the windows at the front and having a meal.

The other part of the corridor led down a level. That’s where I pulled Clin.

The dining area wasn’t that impressive. A long table to one side, a kitchen on the other. The place was open all the way to the back, with large metal crates sitting pretty with straps over them under a ceiling obviously meant to be opened from above. I supposed that the cranes on top of the walker could pull things out of here and bring them to other walkers or the dune buggies without stopping.

There was a space to the side with a wheeless dune buggie in it, tools scattered around it, but no one working.

I checked the room over real quick for trouble, but it was safe. Nomads were quick to shoot, but quicker to run. Not cowards... people that rode small dragons around for fun weren’t the cowardly sorts, but they weren’t ever keen on fighting.

The kitchen had a long counter separating it from the rest of the living space. I walked over to it, ducked under a pipe, then sat down on a stool bolted to the floor. Clin sat next to me, his knees barely fitting under the table.

Didn’t take long for someone to show up. An orc.

I paused.

The orc stared.

He was a big guy, with a loose shirt that didn’t hide the scars and burns across his torso, or the decade--maybe centuries old--tattoos under greenish skin. “Just a chef,” he said. “Got?”

“Got,” I replied before glancing at Clin. The elf looked nervous. Not sweaty or anything, but he was sitting as if the rod up his rear were even tighter than usual, and his ears were twitching back. Elves had issues with orcs. Long feuds, generations of fighting. “Calm yourself, he looks old to me.”

The orc scoffed. “Older than the two of you’s age added together and doubled twice over,” he said. “I’m Vox.”

“That’s not an orcish name.” Clin said.

“No, but it’s a nomad one,” Vox said.

I grinned. “Charlie,” I said. “From Galenook.”

Vox nodded. “Been over a few times. Quiet place.”

“We like it that way,” I said. “Too hot for noise. Got any food?”

“Got,” he said. “How much do you want to burn?”

I laughed, reached into a pocket, then placed a silver on the counter. “I like just a splash. Don’t know about the elf.”

“Bah, elves can’t handle any real spice,” Vox said. “Too much milk drinking.”

“I’m certain I can handle a little,” Clin said.

The glint in the orc’s eyes should have sent shivers down Clin’s spie, but the elf didn’t seem to notice. “Two meals, coming up,” Vox said. “We’ve got wyrm-egg milk, water, and all the drinks you’d expect from a good nomad crew.”

“Got any sand run rum?” I asked.

“That’ll give you the jitters,” Vox said.

I reached to my hip where I still had two flasks. One was nearly empty, and after I downed the rest of the water within, I put it on the counter. “Fill that up, and I’ll take a plain tea with the grub.”

“There’s tea?” Clin asked. “I’ll take that too.”

Vox nodded and went off to the far end where soon he was moving pans around and making the sort of racket you’d expect from a kitchen.

“His name,” Clin asked. “That’s not orcish?”

I shook my head. “Nomads change their names fairly often. A name carries some honour with it, so if you do something dumb, you can lose yours. Do something great, and you’ll get a new one. They can change names on a whim, but it’s not too common. Makes keeping things straight hard sometimes.”

“I can imagine,” Clin said.

“Hmm,” I replied.

“What’s with the ‘gots’ you and the nomads keeps saying.”

“It’s their way of saying that you understood or agree with something. And that’s with them speaking common. Nomad’s have got their own tongue. It’s a mix of a bit of everything else. Mostly understandable if you speak common, but it can be hard.”

Clin took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and slumped, just a little. “I’m realizing that perhaps I don’t know as much about the world as I’d thought.”

“Then learn. Just keep those pointy ears of yours open, and you’ll figure things out.”

***