Page 33 of The Sunlit Man

Nomad slammed the accelerator beneath his left foot, zipping forward. He couldn’t directly attack this fellow, even if he did get close. His best bet was to get right on his tail and push the man to be reckless.

The lava tube spat them out into a canyon a moment later. Nomad wove through it, noting how the rock walls were pocked with holes caused by escaping gases as the magma cooled. He could imagine this whole place forming as rainwater poured through the lava flow—stone solidifying amid explosions of steam as hot and cold clashed.

The scout glanced over his shoulder, showing a face with a long mustache. Then he accelerated in a sudden burst—frantically banking around a tight curve. Nomad followed, closing in, trying to getclose enough to breathe down the man’s neck. Indeed, as the two of them burst into the next section of canyon, the scout glanced over his shoulder again—and was startled to see how close Nomad had gotten. He sped up, even though this portion was narrower, and full of jagged lava stone occlusions.

Engines aflame, twin roars echoing down the canyon, they slipped in and out of shadow as tall peaks alternately obscured and revealed the rings.

The knight wonders, with increasing uncertainty, if his faithful servant has any storming idea what he is doing. He does realize what he is doing, right? Getting into a high-speed chase with someone who lives on a planet full of expert pilots?

They might be expert pilots, but Nomad was an expert in being chased. While he doubted he was as good a pilot as his quarry, the scout’s motions were becoming increasingly erratic. He took turns too sharply, speeding up into curves instead of straightaways. Constantly checking over his shoulder.

Such a familiar feeling. So many times, the Night Brigade had nearly gotten him. Right at his back, their sights on him. Nomad knew that sense of panic, that scrambling burst of adrenaline. The dangers ahead of you suddenly trivial compared to the one behind you. You fixated on it, taking greater and greater risks.

It was the story of his life.

The scout knew the sun’s pursuit. It too gave chase—but in a slow, inevitable, overbearing way. Not quick orimmediate. Not like this. Nomad whizzed a little too close to a rock formation, felt it whoosh next to his head. At these speeds, a small miscalculation would cause a big explosion.

Unfortunately, just when Nomad was sure he was about to win, they burst out into an open section of the canyonlands. Surrounded by mesas and peaks, this flatter region was essentially the floor of a large crater. That let the scout maximize his speed. Their cycles were matched in that regard, so Nomad stayed in close pursuit—but there was little he could do if he caught up. He needed to—

Lava erupted from the ground nearby. A geyser of brilliant orange-red heat sprayed flakes of fire, ash, and soot. Sparks washed over the front of Nomad’s cycle and kept burning, even when the wind should have extinguished them.

Damnation, the knight exclaims. Voice full of emotion. The surprised kind.

The scout probably should have taken them higher to avoid the eruptions. But he wasn’t thinking clearly, it seemed. Instead he turned, trying to swing out closer to the steep crater walls—perhaps thinking the ground might be more stable there.

Another section of stone exploded, hurling chunks of melting rock into the air. They fell around the cycles, shattering on the ground and bursting like fireworks. Muttering a few curses, Nomad broke off from direct pursuit as an entire wall of fire erupted from the ground just ahead—a wave of crimson stone that sloshed back down, parts of it immediately blackening and slumping like wax. Other parts kept glowing, like the heat of life itself.

He swerved around the obstacle, barely spotting another eruption from the buckling ground in time to dodge it. Reluctantly he pulled upward—out of the dangerous region, high into the sky. There, he resumed his pursuit, but the scout was far ahead. Too far. He’d almost reached the far side of the crater. Where—

A shot of light from above blasted the man off his cycle. The body dropped, sending the machine itself tumbling across the earth in a dusty, end-over-end collapse.

Nomad looked up to see Rebeke on her cycle a short distance ahead of him, rifle to her shoulder. Right. Hehadtold her to get ahead, hadn’t he?

He pulled up next to her, breathing deeply, heart racing. What had caused those geysers of magma? They were basically as far from the sunlight as one could get. This should be themosttectonically stable region of the planet, though maybe none of it was all that stable. Extreme convection or tidal forces might cause all kinds of issues with the crust breaking and—

Nope. Stop.

None of that.

He wiped his brow as another molten geyser erupted below. “Your planet,” he said to her, “is rather emotional, isn’t it? Never met one that I could rightly say has tantrums.”

She barely seemed to be paying attention. She stared down at the fallen scout.

“Rebeke?” Nomad asked.

“I…” She looked at him. “I shot him.”

“Storms. Was that your first time?”

She nodded. “I’ve shot before. At people. Never hit, though.” She shivered visibly. “I’m a hunter. All of us who can shoot are hunters; it’s how we get meat. But to shoot at people…I mean, the Cinder King’s people do it, but that’s always seemed so…awful.”

And you’re right again, the knight tells him. About the hunters. How do you do it?

A lifetime of paying attention.

“I don’t feel different,” Rebeke said, “but I feel like Ishould. Does that make sense?”

Nomad shrugged. “My first time was with a spear. I had to keep fighting, didn’t even get time to pause as his blood ran down onto my fingers.” He shook his head. “That night, at stew, it just felt like a surreal day of training. I barely remembered the moment itself.”

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