Free Timegods' World by L.E. Modesitt Jr. Page A

waiting for the laboring armored steamer to come into my now-restricted view.
    The gray double plates were scratched, some of the scratches almost bleeding with red as the ceramic composite beneath showed through.
The turret had a steel shield around the gun port. An armored steamer with some steel—that was something else. Steel wasn’t that easy to come by any more.
    The acrid odor of old steam, old oil, and hot rubber permeated the area as the armed steamer rumbled past. It was the three-axle type, with shields over the double tires, and the gun in the top turret kept swiveling from point to point, although thankfully not in my direction.
    I stayed in the hollow behind the pine until the ConFed vehicles had disappeared over another low hill, and until the sound and vibration were gone as well. The bitter smell of abused machinery remained.
    I recalled the pearapple. Before I checked out the possibility of fruit, I made my way deeper into the brush, and relieved myself. Seeing the ConFed convoy had created a sudden urge for such relief.
    Then I pushed through the thickets of dead summer brush to the tree. Although the birds and weather had taken a toll, I found two partly good fruits. Using the old knife Allyson had left me, I cut away the rotten parts and ate the rest right there.
    After wiping the knife clean on some dried grass, and then on the hem edge of my cloak, and doing the same with sticky fingers, I made my way back to the edge of the highway and resumed hiking toward Herfidian.
    As I neared the top of a low hill, perhaps the third after the place where I had encountered the convoy, something seemed wrong. My steps slowed, ears alert, eyes looking for a wisp of steam in the air. Sniff … sniff—even trying to detect a hint of the scent of oil and steam.
    Only the sound of a grossjay broke the stillness as I edged forward.
    I shook my head as I saw the emptiness that began just below the crest of the hill. Nothing but a few huge boulders rose out of the circular expanse of dust. It was though a giant lumberman had taken an axe and swung it at ground level in a circle, and then burned everything to dust—except the dust was a fine brownish powder, not gray or black like ashes, and there was no smell of burning. I thought I remembered the place … before … a water station with the old inn maintained more out of sentiment than anything else. My father had claimed the inn still served one of the better evening meals in the Bremarlyn area.
    Where the inn and its outbuildings had stood were only buried lumps, foundation stones covered with shifting dust. The old high firs were gone, as was the steep-pitched barn that dated back to the time of wagons and beasts.
    “ … cccah … cuhh … CHEW …” Once the fine dust got into my nose, I couldn’t stop sneezing until my eyes were thoroughly running
and my shoulders hurt from the violence of the sneezes. Had anyone been around, I would have been helpless.
    Finally, I gathered myself together, just short of the dusty wasteland that seemed to stretch nearly a kay before me. Only the tracks of ConFed convoy through the thinner cover over the road itself marred the dust, so light that it seemed to shift with even the slightest breath of air.
    How the steamers had made it through I wasn’t certain, but there was no way I was going to survive the sneezes and convulsions that each step would generate. Going around the edge would add another kay to the distance to Herfidian—assuming Herfidian was still there and not a dusty wasteland. Assuming I did not run into the ConFed Marines.
    I sat down on a fallen log for a moment to think, to think and to recover from my sneezing attack.
    Something had destroyed the inn, something that had left only dust, and that something seemed to strike populated areas. I had seen the circular spaces from the trail, though none were actually out in the woods. But the presence of the ConFeds meant that some outposts had