War for the Gordo clan was different than any raid Lenny had witnessed them perform.

  The clan left Kiva Noon with a large helping of Ammo. Each one wore the small brass bits on them in belts and bandoliers. Lenny wondered if they were afraid that they might blow up at any moment. He didn’t understand it, but it seemed like a terrible idea to wear an explosive like that on your body.

  They brandished their weapons with pride now, and Lenny realized no two weapons were the same. Pistols were small and fired a single shot with every pull of the trigger. Blinkers were a bit bigger than pistols but rattled off all the Ammo it could pack in a single pull. Pipes were long, almost as tall as Lenny himself, and they only loaded one piece of Ammo, but that piece was much bigger than before. Jackmaw favored the heater, a single shot weapon that was smaller than a pistol and loaded Ammo the size of Lenny’s fist. As far as he knew, the warlord was the only one who used a heater, but it was a devastating weapon that shot a fireball that sailed through the air before popping and showering a wide area in flames.

  They made their way to the quarry where the Bone Eaters rebuilt their base. They stalked around it like tiny shadows on the ridge hidden from sight. The Gordo clan was incredibly lucky that Krav and his group had visited them prior. The destruction of their assault had left most of the drones buried, so the raiders didn’t need to worry about being stalked by unseen enemies. They made camp in the same spot Krav had, and they stayed hidden for a time.

  A jabbering raider of the Gordo clan sat for an entire day, watching the last vestiges of the Bone Eaters. They called him the tallyman, and he was more animal than human, crawling on all fours like a spider and clicking his heels together whenever something exciting happened. The tallyman often made Lenny’s heart sink. Calling him a tallyman was something of a misnomer, because he was no man at all, but a small boy. He couldn’t have been more than ten.

  The tallyman stared through a scope and whispered numbers to himself. When the day was over, he crawled his way over to Jackmaw and bucked his back legs up and down like a bronco. He smacked his lips and sucked dribbling saliva back into his mouth as he spoke. “Master! Master! There are forty-seven! I have spotted two that look like a warlord and five potential champions! Come and see master! Come and see!”

  Jackmaw Yapyap pet him like a dog and had him lead. At the edge of the of the cliffside, he peered through the scope.

  “There, master! There!”

  “Quiet! You’ll give our hiding spot away.”

  The warlord eyed his targets. The two potential warlords of the Bone Eaters were gravely aged, but they were dressed far better than the rest of the clan. One wore a hooded robe made of a complete human pelt. The other skulked around, dressed in a royal red head dress, but nothing else besides a loin cloth. The one with the pelt carried a staff made of human vertebrae and looked like he commanded much more respect from the others.

  As for the champion, there was no question. Jackmaw knew him the moment he laid eyes on him. The tallyman pointed out a few tall, lanky individuals that seemed to be slave masters, whipping the surviving laborers that were busy rebuilding their base. They weren’t champions by any means, just common raiders with a bit of authority. No, it was the burly one. The one who wore a helmet made from a human skull and wielded a mace that looked to be made from a mammoth’s long, heavy femur. He would often be seen coordinating with the man Jackmaw already assumed was the warlord. With a nod, he collapsed the scope, handed it off to the tallyman, and pet him before the boy scurried off.

  “What’s your plan, lord?” Shi-Toh asked.

  “Prepare the war sage. There’s a lot more than I was expecting.”

  Lenny was already within earshot, sitting on a crate watching the winds shift the sand dunes nearly a mile away. When he heard the words “war sage” he perked up like a marionette with all of its strings pulled taught at once. The Gordo clan had given him the mercy of removing the strange mask, but now it seemed they were prepared to put it back on. Shi-Toh already had it in his hand when he came stumbling around a tent. He wiggled it in Lenny’s face like a treat for a dog.

  “Be a good boy and put this on.”

  The mask peered at Lenny with its dark circular eyes. The hose running from its mouth seemed to hiss and taunt him. The boy hated the mask, but he took it anyways. There was something profoundly wrong with the thing, and the longer he spent away from it the better. But now the clan needed him, and he needed to prove himself useful. Without protest, he slipped it over his head and followed Shi-Toh into the spirit lodge where all the lieutenants and Jackmaw waited.

  The ritual was performed the same as before, only this time, there was strategy involved. Jackmaw had his most legible lieutenants eagerly drafting strategies on pre-drawn maps. They discussed the ramifications of each other’s plans, often coming to blows over whose idea was best. Lenny sat between Shi-Toh and Jackmaw. He felt incredibly small, and the drug he was breathing through the hose made him feel even worse.

  When the war sage closed his eyes, he felt like he was given a bird’s eye view of the land. It was a perspective he had yet to experience, and he wondered whose it could be. Wind whipped his face, contrasting the deadly heat of the sun like a cool air conditioner on a hot day. Then he realized whose eyes he was seeing through, and it made him sick. He was looking through the terrible gaze of the mega vulture, and he didn’t like what he saw.

  The bird had incredible eyesight, able to parse information about the enemy combatants with the precision of a drone. It picked out how many Bone Eaters there were, and it even chose which ones it was planning to eat. Lenny could feel its animalistic hunger boiling within its stomach as it waited in anticipation. Whenever Lenny watched it from the ground, it looked like it was soaring lazily above them, but now, he could feel the wind in its wings. It was moving at incredible speeds for something as large as it was. He had to open his eyes to cut his experience short. He could no longer handle the terrible truth that the bird was more than just powerful. It was almost omnipotent in its abilities.

  “So, what have we got?” Jackmaw said. He clapped his hands together and leaned on his knees. He looked like an overly eager boss.

  “Full frontal assault!” yelped one lieutenant.

  “Ambush! Ambush!” cried another.

  Jackmaw’s devilish grin soured. “You scab heads think either of those will work? We’re going up against another raider clan! One that brought Kiva fucking Noon to its knees! We need tactics and strategy! Some brains for Karma’s sake! Shi-Toh, please tell me you’ve cooked up something better.”

  Shi-Toh frowned and shook his head. “We outnumber them with men and weapons. I don’t see why a direct attack wouldn’t work.”

  “Not enough flair! I don’t want to lose a single man in this raid, and I want any survivors on their end to know what it means to fight the Gordo clan. War sage?”

  Lenny looked up at him. The chemical fumes he was breathing made Jackmaw look a god of war. His enormous form was like a great statue casting its shadow over Lenny. Red skin began to glow and emanate an aura of violence. Lenny got the very distinct feeling of standing too close to a fire when he saw Jackmaw like that, but he took a deep breath, sucking in the chemicals, and spoke. “You want them to be afraid of you?”

  The boy’s voice sounded lost in the mask. Jackmaw grinned at him, and he had to fight the urge to look away.

  “Afraid of us? I want them shitting their pants begging for their lives! If any of them live, I want them to scare the shit out of everyone who hears the story!”

  “Then you don’t need my help. You know very well how to illicit that feeling from people.”

  Lenny turned away finally, the blood in his neck pumping hot against the seal of the mask. The small exchange was enough to make him want to throw up. It wasn’t as bad as the first time he wore it, but he still hadn’t been used to the strange drug they forced him to ingest. He occupied his hands with the folds of his robe, gripping and kneading to keep himself grounded.

  Jackmaw seemed to like that answer. Lenny felt his hand come down on him. Under the effects of the mask, his red hand looked like a demon’s claw. The warlord bent to reach his ear, and his voice sounded like it dripped with pleasure, “You’re right, kid. I don’t need your help. I don’t need any of them. I’m the fucking king of the world.” He stood, and all of his subordinates stopped what they were doing to focus on him. “Fuck this tactics bullshit! Grab your weapons! I want pipes on the ridge waiting for my signal, the rest of you with me. Make sure each of your squads is on a heavy dose of zerker and follow me!”

  There was a roar that rang out in the tent, loud enough that it would surely give away their position. Jackmaw Yapyap didn’t mind. He helped Lenny to his feet. “Maybe Shi-Toh ain’t the smartest guy I know after all.”

  Garth of the Bone Eaters heard the fanatical cry at the top of the quarry and grit his teeth. The rest of his men didn’t seem to notice yet. They continued their rebuilding efforts. In the time since that kid and his friends collapsed the spire, they began construction on a new base, admittedly of a lesser quality than the spire. It was during the second week that they began to sack Kiva Noon. The best of their warriors that survived the fall of the spire went and fought them with strange tactics presented by Voll.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The warriors would ring their weapons along the wall all night long, driving the residents mad within. When a group of guards came out to investigate, they would be kidnapped and sent back to the spire for construction. They continued nightly raids until someone got the idea to attack the gates once they opened. One of the warriors launched their weapons into the hinges as it closed to allow the residents of Kiva Noon to retreat. The weapons jammed the mechanism and caused so much strain, they ended up snapping and coming apart. After that, it was a simple game of rushing the city, kidnapping the citizenry and killing the guards. It was pretty easy until they started booby trapping the place.

  But now they were mounting a counterattack, no doubt. Garth heard the excited hooting of maybe twenty voices. It was reasonable to assume that the rest of the town came to defend their honor one last time. Let them come, he smiled. They had all the slaves they needed to finish the spire and raise a new army of cannibals. It was the perfect opportunity to dash the hopes of those slaves, to make them watch as the last of their friends and family were butchered here and now. Then no hope would be left.

  But then he saw the bird, and his heart sank. There was something about the creature. The way it hung in the air above them, as if it knew something he didn’t. Garth was nearly running to Cathartes Voll now. The feeble old man had reddened beneath the sun, and he scratched at the flaking sun burns. Garth was almost out of breath as he approached. “We have to rally the men.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t ask why, just do it! Slaves to the front and fodder behind them. Keep the lieutenants close to you and disperse the drones to attack as they see fit. I’m going to lead from the front.”

  “You can’t do that! We need those slaves to build the new base! I won’t spend another minute in the sun if I don’t have to.”

  “There won’t be a need for a base if we’re all dead!” he turned from Voll and shouted his orders to the rest of the clan. They seemed to hesitate at first, but once they felt the earth rumble and the cry of an army coming down the ridge, they scrambled to their positions.

  “You can’t do that! I’m the warlord here!”

  Garth glared at Voll and raised his new augmentation to the old man’s throat. On the stump where Krav had removed his hand, he sported a tibia sharpened into a finely honed blade. It’s serrated edge drew blood from Voll’s paper-thin neck. “We’ll discuss who gets to be in command after I win us this fight. Now listen to me as your champion! If you want to live, get behind your lieutenants!”

  The Bone Eater’s organized into Garth’s formations, and he came to the front where his fodder soldiers were dressing themselves in bone armor and readying their weapons. The slaves were armed with only the tools they were given to work the land. The lucky ones had spades and pickaxes, but most held a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other. A few had gotten wise and sported large wooden planks as shields. Garth ordered them to the front.

  “What are we up against, Garth?” one of his fodder units asked. The Bone Eater was barely in his twenties; his eyes lost after years of eating human flesh. In that moment, however, fear returned to them, and he looked much more human.

  Garth didn’t answer. He was staring out at the entrance of the quarry where a small army was gathering. He couldn’t tell what clan they were from this distance, they looked like a rainbow of strange colors not native to the wasteland. He looked back up at the giant vulture in the sky and could tell they wouldn’t be victorious. “It’s just a scrap, kid. I’ve seen it a million times. Stay behind the slaves and you’ll be fine.”

  He lied.

  Suddenly a voice boomed across the quarry. It was impossibly loud, and the slaves at the front of the battle line looked like they were ready to run into Garth rather than the enemy. It wasn’t good.

  “I AM JACKMAW YAPYAP. I’VE COME FOR YOUR HEADS.”

  Garth saw their legs buckle and shake. He shouted above them, the command to move forward and charge the enemy. A handful of them did as they were told, charging without caring who came with them. They were the ones sick of life as a slave, Garth thought. Better they be the ones to die first, to see what their enemy was capable of. The ones who still valued life were valuable slaves, they could be driven to do more work.

  The fodder forced the rest forward, enthusing them with weapons in their back. They shouted their battle cries and rushed, Garth close behind.

  The Gordo clan rushed as well, the horde of multicolored demons descending like a wave of death. Not a single one of them fired their weapons. Not until the signal, and none of them were to hit the one-armed Bone Eater. The armies closed in, the slaves fully determined to get the first killing blow. Then Jackmaw appeared out of the thick blend of color.

  The warlord grinned and shot a fireball into the first wave. As it exploded and bathed a group of slaves in flames, others watched in horror. The slaves writhed and screamed, trying to put the flames out as they melted into the desert sands. They begged their allies for aid, but the ones who had seen the attack were frozen in fear. No one had ever seen anything like it.

  That was the signal. Suddenly, the Gordo clan unveiled their arsenal. Blinkers and pistols erupted and fired a hailstorm of lead into the opposing army. Pipes high up on the ridge revealed their positions. They bathed the Lieutenants near Voll in bullets.

  Bone Eaters in every direction spasmed at the strange weapons. Holes appeared in them as if out of nowhere before they crashed onto the sand. Garth was confused, but he raced for the raider that fired the first shot, the big red one. Meanwhile, Cathartes Voll shielded himself with the corpse of one of his lieutenants.

  Jackmaw Yapyap and Garth saw each other on the battlefield. They were like twin titans amongst the chaos. Jackmaw put his heater back onto his belt and charged the champion. Garth cried out, barreling his way through raiders that seemed to ignore him as they turned their guns on his men.

  Kill the biggest one. He thought. Kill the biggest one and they’ll all start running.

  They collided. Garth opened with a slash from his newly implemented knife arm. When it missed, he followed it up with a swig from his massive mace. Jackmaw dodged that too. The warlord teased him, dodging strike after strike, studying Garth’s movements. Indeed, this was the champion.

  Another slash from the blade nearly caught Jackmaw’s abdomen as he leapt backwards. That was it, he thought, that was too close. As Garth prepared another strike with the bone mace, Jackmaw caught it mid-swing and kneed Garth in the stomach. The blade came back up, threatening to stab Jackmaw just below his chin. He craned his neck to avoid it. Then he snatched the blade.

  It was a finely crafted weapon, made by the bone smiths they still had left. It was jammed into his sump and cauterized into place, then bound with leather straps. It was enough to hold while he fought, even though every strike caused immense pain. It was not, however, strong enough to survive contact with Jackmaw Yapyap.

  The warlord gripped the blade in one hand and the stump in the other. He tore it away, not caring for the gash it made in his palm. Garth cried out in pain, and Jackmaw silenced him with a heavy hook to the face.

  Garth was down, breathing heavily as he tried to stand. Another blow kept him on his back, then another, and another. He was being smacked down by his own bone mace. His ribs cracked under the assault. His shoulder popped out of place. His collarbone splintered. Even his hip bones were turned to dust as Jackmaw hit him over and over and over again. The sound of crushed bone and tenderized flesh was quiet among the gunfire and battle cries. But Garth could hear it well. He could hear it pounding in his skull with every strike. It surged through his dying body, rattling his teeth and throbbing his head.

  With one last hit to the stomach, Jackmaw released the bone mace and turned his eye to the whittled knife. His blood-red gaze met Garth’s, and the Bone Eater knew what was to come. He was sure he was making the same face every one of his victims had before he split them apart. It was dishonorable for a champion to show such cowardice, but Garth of the Bone Eaters was also just a man. And most men would make that face at the inevitable.

  Jackmaw plunged the blade into the soft neck meat. It went in like a spade cutting through soft soil, only stopping when it hit the spine. The warlord dragged it at an agonizing pace, and Garth could do nothing to stop it. When it had cut a path through his throat, Garth’s head hung by the fibrous strands of muscle that knitted his spine in place. His trachea clutched and gasped as it desperately tried to gulp a lungful of air. All he managed to swallow was his own blood. Jackmaw towered over him, his grin widening until the blood stopped spraying and spurting. Then he reached down and grabbed Garth’s head.

  With a cry of victory, he tore the Bone Eater’s head free. A cluster of vertebrae came with it, and ragged meat hung like a drape. Jackmaw held the trophy high, and all his men who saw it echoed his roar. All of his enemies looked on in utter terror. They tried to surrender, dropping their weapons and falling to their knees. It only made them easy targets for the Gordo clan.

  They fought their way to Cathartes Voll, the battle turning into a mass execution as the Bone Eaters will to fight died with their champion. It was then that Shi-Toh walked Lenny out onto the battlefield. The boy walked past the mountain of corpses he had seen in his vision. They all bled out onto the sand, and under the effect of the mask, he felt all of their eyes crawl all over him. He felt their hearts cry out and beg for another chance at life. The only thing keeping him composed was Shi-Toh’s hand on his shoulder. Having another person there to guide him was reassuring, but that walk from the spirit lodge to Cathartes Voll was terribly long, and terribly quiet.

  When Lenny and Shi-Toh finally caught up to the rest of the Gordo clan, they had a handful of slaves and Bone Eaters at their mercy. They were on their knees, staring at Jackmaw as he held Voll up by his thin neck. They were completely encircled by the clan, and even the mega vulture had descended to begin its feast. The only noise came from the crunch of bone and beak, and the muted jabbering rumbling through the clan. Then Jackmaw spoke.

  “You’re the Bone Eaters’ warlord? You ain’t much, scab head.”

  Cathartes Voll squirmed in his grip. He tried to look at his men who had survived, tried to command them to free him, but what could they do? Their entire clan had fallen to them in a matter of minutes. When he saw that they offered him no hope, he smiled at Jackmaw. “The warlord? No. No, my warlord is Garth of the Bone Eaters. He was at the frontlines; you probably got him already.”

  Jackmaw Yapyap looked like he was boiling beneath his mask. His grip tightened on Voll’s neck. A finger shot towards one of the slaves. “You! Is this man the warlord of the Bone Eaters or not?”

  The slave dug her gnarled fingers into her robes, kneading them for comfort. Lenny recognized that gesture. He was used to it by now. She didn’t look up as she spoke. “The others call him lord.”

  Suddenly, one of the captured Bone Eaters threw himself on her. He was snarling as his hands worked to strangle the traitorous slave. Jackmaw let him pin her down in frustration before letting out a sharp, low whistle. There was an eruption as no less than four raiders stepped forward and emptied their weapons into him. The Bone Eater collapsed on the girl and leaked all over her as she stayed there frozen in shock.

  Jackmaw wasn’t smiling when he returned to Voll. The old man squirmed in his grasp. Lenny could feel his anger now, and a piece of him was able to understand. If there was one thing Jackmaw detested, it was weakness. Even Miss Minnie would gladly die for the Gordo clan. This man, this weak, frail excuse of a man, was supposed to be their leader. It was bad enough that he looked like he couldn’t lift a rock over his head, now he was a coward too. His hands found Garth’s bone knife.

  The knife plunged into Voll’s kidney. The old man screamed and one arm fell to his side. Jackmaw dragged the blade around his stomach and ripped into his other kidney. Voll continued to cry out as Jackmaw ripped his entrails from his body. His last sight was Jackmaw with a fistful of his gore. “There they are!” Jackmaw rejoiced, “So you do have some fucking guts!”

  Lenny had to turn away to keep from vomiting.

  Jackmaw smeared the intestines all over himself and gave the order to release the prisoners. As they disappeared over the horizon in every direction, the clash with the Gordo clan was forever seared into their minds. For months, each would have nightmares about the weapons, the depravity, and the red devil of the Gordo clan.