James Axler: Warlord Of The Pit

He reached for the back of her neck.

Without otherwise moving, Brigid lashed her right hand up, caught the man by the thumb and secured a kote gaeshi wristlock. Twisting sharply, she took a swift step back and kicked the man behind his left knee. He dropped her guns to the floor.

His leg buckled and he went down awkwardly, catching himself by his right hand. Gritting her teeth, Brigid locked the man’s wrist under her left arm and heaved up on it, hoping to dislocate it at the shoulder. He cried out in pain.

Captain Saragayn lifted his right hand, the fingers sparkling with jeweled rings. “Our guest does not understand either our language or our etiquette.”

In Magindano, Brigid said, “I understand the one and have no tolerance for the other.”

Outlanders ®

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I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

—Revelation 9:1–2

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

As the naked girl waded out of the water like a pearly-skinned Aphrodite, water cascaded from her limbs, the bright sunlight sparkling in the droplets.

For a disoriented instant, Brewster Philboyd felt suspended in the kind of delectable daydream an over-hormoned teenage boy would concoct—standing on a beach as a beautiful nude girl waded through the shallows toward him.

As the girl stepped gracefully through the breakers toward Philboyd, she pushed a diving mask up onto her forehead. She wore a delicate silver chain around her neck, and a tiny jeweled pendant in the shape of a jagat, the Hindu symbol of love, nestled between her small, taut breasts. Other than the nine-inch knife scabbarded to the calf of her right leg, Domi wore only the pendant.

As she walked onto the beach, she stared at Philboyd with challenging ruby eyes. “What are you lookin’ at?”

Philboyd shook himself and hastily stepped away from the shoreline before the waves soaked his shoes. “Sorry, I was just lost in thought.”

Striding past him, Domi stripped off the diving mask and walked toward her clothes, draped over a large round boulder. “’Long as that’s all you get lost in, Brewster.”

Philboyd felt his face heat up, but he wasn’t sure if it was due to embarrassment or the unremitting California sun, blazing down on the stretch of beach that bordered the barony once called Snakefish.

Gulls wheeled on the thermal currents created by the juncture of the beach and the thundering sea. They soared gracefully through the smoky spume raised by the nearby breakers. There was very little to see except sand, rocks and the long line of combers smashing against seaweed-draped boulders.

The slow tide made gurgling sounds around the base of the rocks. Despite Domi’s harsh words, the young albino woman wasn’t really hostile, but Philboyd never enjoyed being alone in her company. She had the forthright manner characteristic of other outlanders he had met, but he knew from experience she could be deadly dangerous.

Although she was beautiful despite all the scars marring the pearly perfection of her skin, Domi exuded an aggressive, almost angry energy, so Philboyd pretended not to watch as she got dressed. Her compact body was a smooth symmetrical flow of curving lines with small porcelain breasts rising to sharp points and a hard-muscled stomach. With the droplets of water glittering on her arms and legs, her pale skin looked almost luminous.

As she tugged a black T-shirt over her short-cropped white hair, Domi said in her clipped voice, “Time to get back the ville. Nothin’ out there I saw that could cause earth tremors or the sea quakes they told us about.”

Philboyd nodded distractedly, glancing out at the whitecaps. “Gedrick claimed most of the tidal disturbances were along this stretch.”