About This Book
"I am a Desert Knight." He declared somewhat weakly through all his pompousness, "How dare you stand up to me?" Risland laughed aloud as he ducked under the blade, the force of his momentum terrific. He grabbed at the figure's legs as he surged forwards, sweeping the knight's feet from under him. He gathered up the force weapon as the metal-clad figure clattered to the ground, ending the fight with surgical precision before turning off the lethal tool. Elizabeth peered up at him as he heaved the figure out of the room, rattling in its armour. She lent him a hand as he dragged the dead weight up the long passage, out into the dusty barren waste beyond the cave mouth. They thrust it down the path; it rolled and rattled down the precipitous slope toward parts unknown. They stood for a moment together, looking at the sea of sand and the buttes and mesas that loomed horribly tall all around them before going down the path to where the body had lodged itself. The light of the sun, high in the noon above their heads, was a dull and menacing scarlet, the orb swollen to fifteen times the size they remembered. The heat was huge, the air dry but a hint of moisture carried on one of the hot breezes spoke of greenness somewhere not too far away. There did not seem to be any settlements close by. They heaved the body down the slope to the sand at the foot of the mesa, rolling it into a depression and shovelling sand over it. They looked again all around them at the scarlet landscape, feeling the heat, the heavy and oppressive sense of a sick world; old and very tired. "Not a good start." Risland muttered.
