The settlers were dead the moment they left their vehicles.

The large transport, what these soft people called a camel, emerged from the curtain of dust, its engine audible from far away. It was flanked by two smaller ones, the kind that preferred to come first and alert the settlers to another resource to plunder. The kind that flipped so easily.

The vehicles came to a stop and shut down, the sudden silence even louder than their roar. Moments later, a stream of settlers emerged, their black armor betraying their movements against the pale sand and rubble.

Kellan laughed in his mind, though his face remained as impassive as the rest of his body. So much treachery these settlers suffered! Awa’s informant had been true again, giving the Lynx clan more than enough time to prepare their ambush.

The intruders fanned out, spreading themselves thin. Through the gaps in his woven hood, Kellan saw two kinds. The settlers were predictably furtive: skittish, glancing up from their scanning devices as though they already scented the Lynx in the sands around them. But these were escorted by others, the new kind. Loud men brandishing heavy blades and shields, while foolishly leaving their real weapons strapped over their backs. Warriors, as bold as they were careless.

A mixed party drew near, almost to arm’s reach, but Kellan waited. He let his breath become the desert wind, one with the Great Mother’s. The Twice-Forsaken were Her favored children, not these thieving, fat cowards who plundered the world their ancestors had broken. His people had faced Her wrath, and in so doing, had earned Her forgiveness.

There would be none for these settlers. Kellan was the Huntmaster, and they were prey.

The party passed him by, but he marked their position by the scrape of their boots. He listened as they took inventory. He cast his senses out, feeling the mood of his pack. They were disciplined, controlling their eagerness until he gave the signal. Already, his skirmishers were creeping toward the settlers’ camel, cutting off escape—

A lone settler came rushing down the transport’s ramp, tugging his mask on. He stumbled, and through careless misfortune he fell with a curse on top of one of Kellan’s hunters. For one instant the two regarded each other; then the settler cried out.

“Locusts!”

Kellan responded with a feral roar of his own, and his pack sprang up with him. He flung his cloak aside, opening fire as he whirled about to face the party that had passed him. Two men fell as their blood took to the wind, but one, their warrior, crouched behind his shield.

Staccato gunfire pierced the air, followed by the screams of the dying. Kellan kept his enemy pinned until one of his fellow hunters, Nali, slipped behind the warrior and slit his throat. She laughed as the body fell, glancing up at Kellan with bright, hungry eyes before sprinting off to her next target.

Kellan followed her, but inwardly he was cursing their luck. The intruders hadn’t gone far enough afield, and now a group of warriors had set up a barricade, finally using their own guns to cover their allies’ retreat. The Lynx hunters shot many as they fled up the camel’s ramp, but not all. Not enough. The camel’s engines roared to life again and the great beast tore away, out of reach.

The remaining warriors held their ground, unafraid, as two sprinted for one of the smaller vehicles.

“Pin and stagger!” Kellan commanded, joining his pack. “Turn them to dust.”

His hunters moved with perfect coordination. One group laid cover fire as the next slipped forward, alternating until they were close enough to fling grenades into the warriors’ midst.

Half the enemy died in a flash of light and fire, but the survivors drew their swords and rushed forward in a doomed charge. The hunters’ next grenades flew too far, and the warriors began cutting them down in melee.

It was knife work from there. The small vehicle escaped, while the remaining warriors carved a bloody cairn for themselves before they were finally overwhelmed.

The pack gave a triumphant cry as the last warrior fell, and all eyes turned to Kellan. He stepped up to the fallen man, clutching his sword as though death was only a temporary setback. There was still a fire in his glazed eyes, a resilience as troubling as it was impressive.

The Huntmaster pried the blade free, but he did so respectfully. These new settlers, these warriors, were no mere prey. They didn’t belong here any more than their weakling allies, but they at least had something of the heart of the Twice-Forsaken.

“Take what you need,” Kellan told his pack. “We move at dark.”

Three hunters moved to the lone remaining vehicle, but as they opened its hatch, a ball of fire rushed out, consuming them and searing Kellan’s face. His pack roared and raised weapons, but the hiss of snipers’ fire killed two more hunters, silencing the rest.

A man’s voice called out from nowhere. “Congratulations on your victory.”

Kellan whirled about, but there was no one. No one but the Lynx, injured yet alert. “Show yourself, prey,” he growled.

The voice turned cold, thin. “The Diamond Lord is no one’s prey.”

Curses drifted through the pack, but Kellan raised a hand. “Diamond Lord. You are the traitor, the one who spoke to Awa?”

“It is enough that I speak to you,” answered the voice, seeming to come from behind the vehicle’s wreckage. “I have an errand for you.”

Kellan scowled, twisting his clan markings into a death mask, but without a target, the gesture was meaningless. “The Twice-Forsaken do not perform errands.”

Now the voice seemed to come from behind him, and its pitch was changed. Higher, female. Harsh. “You do now, if you value your miserable lives. Tell me, what is your assessment of the war?”

The Huntmaster silently directed two people to the voice’s new source. “We have advanced on your settlement. None have stopped us.”

The voice scoffed. “You measure success differently. Discounting the benefit of our information, your combined nation hasn’t successfully attacked a single Central scouting mission for a month.” Two more bullets sliced the air to drop the searching hunters, and the voice resumed from a third location, now a scornful bass. “Surely even you have noticed the change in our personnel.”

“We have seen the difference.” Kellan struggled to keep his voice level. The arrogance of this creature! he thought. He counted his remaining hunters, noting with pride that they stood unafraid, then scanned the nearby roofs for the snipers. “What can you tell us about these new warriors?”

“I can tell you they are many,” the voice said, a hard edge honing the words. “Over a hundred million.”

“Million?” Kellan repeated, uncertain. “Many tens? Hundreds, even?”

“Yes, savage. Many, many tens, just waiting to be roused and sent to annihilate you. Already, the few which have emerged have changed everything. It is they who build our new weapons, and they who die so nobly for their homes and delusions.” Two more hunters fell to the invisible predator, and the voice shifted yet again, to a lilting alto. “At present, the rest are as helpless as you are. I would prefer they remain in that state.”

Kellan snarled, then dismissed the remainder of his pack. If he died, they would tell Awa how it happened. “What is your errand?”

The voice chuckled. “So you do learn. Here’s your next lesson. Every advantage the Centre possesses is rooted in electronic technology. We’re completely dependent on it, for everything from life support to transportation. Disrupt it, and we are vulnerable. Remove it, and we are defenseless.”

Kellan’s eyes narrowed, but he waited until he heard the engines as his pack reached their trucks. “Why do you not disrupt it yourself?”

“Because our numbers are as yet insufficient for a full mutiny,” the voice replied, obviously frustrated. “Thus, what we cannot produce, we must scavenge. Fortunately, our ancestors were adept at creating the kind of device we require.”

Something beeped, less than thirty paces from Kellan.

“Go on,” said the voice, now seeming to come from the same position as it returned to its original quality.

Kellan glanced at the rooftops once more, and this time he saw a man standing. A hundred paces away, but near enough to see long black hair and settlers’ armor. And a rifle, trained on him. Cursing under his breath, Kellan moved to the sound and picked up a device not unlike the settlers’ scanners. It was thin and flat, with a glowing screen that currently showed a man.

The man was also thin: not a warrior or hunter. His face bore a prominent crooked nose under dark hair and narrowed eyes. His frail body wore gray, with a silver pin on the left breast in the shape of a circle behind a vertical line.

“At last, we meet face to face,” the man jeered. “Take this tablet. On it, you will find the description for a weapon capable of crippling every electronic device in the Centre, as well as a map detailing the most likely places to find it.”

Kellan lifted the tablet, turning it over in his hands. “You slit your own throat, with this. What is to stop us from using this great weapon to kill you all?”

“Aside from your technical incompetence?” The man smirked. “Because unless my people repair the broken systems after our coup, the Centre would be merely one more ruin.”

This time Kellan laughed. “We are comfortable with ruins.”

The man glared murderously, impotently, from his screen. “You are fools! Parasites, living a miserable existence on the bleached bones of your ancestors. Help us take the Centre, and you will have a reliable, permanent source of food and shelter.”

As the man spoke, the hunters’ truck approached, with two gunmen riding the top.

Kellan crossed his arms, concealing his hand from the settlers as he silently indicated the sniper’s roof. “We will consider your offer,” he said to the tablet man. “But finding this new weapon will require much in time and resources. The clans have heard the call, and we have many mouths.”

Kellan saw the man tap another device, then heard a shout as his hunters opened fire. He looked up just in time to see a rocket streak toward his pack, and he barely took cover before the explosion.

“Do not attempt to haggle with me,” the man said coldly, unmarred by the blast. “You have your orders. Contact me when you have the weapon; use the frequency on the tablet. I’ll be waiting.”

The tablet’s screen darkened. Kellan cast it aside to search for survivors among his pack, but there were none. Nali’s scorched body was behind the steering wheel, her face grimacing in a final snarl.

As he pressed his brow to hers and pledged revenge, a third small vehicle tore out of the sniper’s building, taking the structure down in its wake as it raced into the desert.

Growling, Kellan retrieved the accursed device, smearing his people’s blood across its screen as he activated it. It rewarded him with a map of ancient military outposts, where this Diamond Lord’s weapon might be found.

But where one weapon was, surely there were others that could be put to better, more immediate use. These settlers were arrogant but weak, hiding behind their devices and electronics. Their continued existence, especially the traitor’s, was an insult to the Great Mother.

Kellan put the tablet in his pocket. He would take it back to his alpha. Awa would find the weapon, and the Lynx would lead all the Twice-Forsaken to conquer the Centre. Then, once the devils in the walls had repaired their damage, they would be eliminated as well. All of them, settlers and their pet warriors alike, were caught up in the storm of vengeance, just like the ancients who’d driven the Twice-Forsaken from the promised land of old. Each death, each injury, each offense was a grain of sand blown in the eye, to be repaid in kind when the winds inevitably shifted.

And the Diamond Lord would bleed for the hunters that died today. Kellan would ensure that.

He flicked his hood up, then began the long walk north to rejoin his clan.