Razing Pel

Chapter 9: The Outsiders

CHAPTER NINE

THE OUTSIDERS

            "Come on Kaj!" Phos yelled out.  "You're falling behind."  He tried talking over the howling of the wind.  Phos stopped and waited for Kaj to make his way up the short, sandy hill.  In his hand, Phos held a pair of binoculars.  He looked through them.  "Well, well.  There it is."

            "What ... is ... it," Kaj said, trying to catch his breath.  Phos handed the binoculars over to Kaj.  As he looked through them, he could make out a city in the distance.  He became excited.  That was United City Kaj was looking at.  He could see the shield that protected the city.  Also, he could see a ship prepping for launch.  "The ship!"

            Phos quickly snatched back the binoculars to get a look at it for himself.  "Dammit!  We've got to hurry!"  Phos put the binoculars back in his sac before running down the hill with Kaj.

            The two darted across the sand, every step taking them closer to United City.  Even with the mechanical legs that Phos had, he ran far better than a man his age should have.

            "Come on Kaj!" Phos yelled again.  Kaj was still trying to catch his breath and wasn't running at his full speed.

            As Kaj was finally catching up to Phos, something stopped them both from going any further.  Phos dropped to the ground, hiding behind a large rock that was in front of them.

            "Get down," Phos instructed Kaj.  He also dropped to the ground.

            "What is it?" Kaj asked, peering around the rock.  He spotted two rows of identical looking huts with a long path in between.  The small village was right in front of the translucent blue shield that protected United City.  Kaj could see what looked like Daj roaming around the village.  They appeared somewhat different to Kaj though.  Not as clean and healthy as the Daj that lived in his village, but more buffed out and filthy.

            "They're called Outsiders," Phos said.  "Once normal citizens of United City, now turned to bandits.  Most of them were banished from United City, depending on the severity of their crime.  I read a little bit about them while I was stranded in that cave.  There's no way to get into United City except to go right through the village."

            "Will they harm us?" Kaj asked.  After what he just went through, Kaj didn't know if he could take much more of this.

            "Not if we don't provoke them," Phos said.  "As long as we just keep quiet, and proceed to go forward, we should be alright.  But if we're going to do this, we need to hurry.  That ship could leave anytime now.   Just follow my lead, and stay close to me."

            Phos and Kaj rose up from the sand and began to walk down to the village.  Kaj, extremely nervous, was walking very to close to Phos.  He had fought the usual bullies in his village, but nothing to the extent of these bandits.  They would kill Kaj the second they got the chance to.