"Atrax! The engine's making noises!"

  It's smoking, too, and small pieces are flying off. Atrax looks at his gauges and shakes his head.

  "It'll hold!" he shouts back. "Almost there!"

  The camp is spread out ahead of us. Slaughterborne guns his engine, teeth gritted, but he's a length back and losing ground. I see him shout something to Hunter, who picks up his final harpoon.

  "They're trying something!" I tell Atrax.

  He glances in the dusty rear-view mirror, swears, and swerves. It's almost enough.

  Hunter throws the harpoon. I duck, instinctively, but the throw falls short of me, scraping off the engine and catching on the frame. The barbs dig in, and only then do I notice the braided cable coming off the back, dragging on the ground between us before snaking up into Slaughterborne's engine. A hidden winch starts to wind in the slack, and I feel a tug that shoves me against the rail.

  "Cut the line!" Atrax yells, fighting his steering wheel. He has to lose speed as the cable tightens, drawing us inexorably back toward the pair of grinning cannibals.

  I throw myself toward the harpoon, reaching my glass knife over the engine and past the jutting barbs. The screaming heat of the engine feels like an oven. The cable is many twisted strands of silk, tight and strong, and without good leverage it parts only reluctantly. I'm only halfway through it when Slaughterborne pulls alongside and a shadow looms over me. A moment later Hunter between trikes, steadying himself by jabbing his harpoon hand into side of the bucket. His good hand draws a hatchet from behind his back.

  I'm caught completely out of position, half-lying across the engine to try and get at the cable. Desperately I roll back into the bucket as the hatchet comes down. I lunge with the glass knife and he leans into it, taking a long cut down his arm but trapping my weapon against the frame. There's no in here for a decent fight, we're practically chest-to-chest. I punch him in the jaw with my free hand, and one of my knuckles splits against his sharpened teeth. The war-priest grins and exhales foul breath in my face as he wrenches his harpoon-hand free.

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  My sword is on the floor of the bucket with my last harpoon, out of reach and useless. I grab the shaft of Hunter's weapon by his stump, trying to keep him from skewering me. He's a cannibal war-priest of a mad god, though, and I'm an effete City-dwelling con artist; suffice to say he has the advantage in upper body strength. The point of the weapon is forced inch by inch toward my face.

  Atrax stomps on the brakes. Our trike is lashed to Slaughterborne's, but his is equally attached to ours; he has to follow suit or wreck us both. The unexpected lurch sends Hunter and me both staggering against the front of bucket, then back again as Atrax guns the throttle. It gets the war-priest off my knife arm, and quick as I can I slam the glass blade into his armpit. He shrieks and jabs for me with the harpoon, but I have room now to duck under it and scramble up onto the engine. Wind claws at me, and my boot leather sizzles on the hot metal.

  "Are you trying to kill us all?" Slaughterborne shrieks.

  Another jerk as Atrax pumps the brakes again, and the world around us starts to whirl as Slaughterborne fights to compensate and sends both trikes skidding. The rock walls of the canyon become a blur.

  "Cable!" Atrax yells again, over the cannibal warlord's roar of rage.

  I grab the shaft of the embedded harpoon and rake my knife across the half-cut line; the blade parts silk drawn taut by centrifugal force. The freed cable lashes away, writhing like a snake. Both trikes go spinning in opposite directions at fantastic speed, throwing everything on board outward like a merry-go-round gone berserk.

  I hang on to the shaft of the harpoon for dear life, my feet slipping out from under me so I flap in mid-air like a flag. Hunter hits the edge of the bucket, flips, and goes over, but at the last moment his harpoon-hand whips out and catches on the trike's frame. For a moment he hangs there, a triumphant snarl etched on his features. Then the fleshcrafting that binds metal, muscle, and bone gives way, and the butt of the harpoon tears from the stump of his arm with a horrific squelch. The war-priest tumbles backward in the dust and disappears.

  I slam back down against the engine as Atrax masterfully straightens out of the spin, screaming around within feet of the rock wall. On the opposite side of the canyon Slaughterborne fights his controls and bellows a scream of rage that cuts off abruptly in a colossal orange fireball when he hits the canyon wall.

  The engine is hot enough that my clothes start to smoke, and I scrabble off it and back into the bucket as Atrax eases off down the home stretch. Hunter's orphaned harpoon-hand rattles where it's stuck on the rail, shaft smeared with blood and bits of dangling gristle; I gingerly lift the barbs off and let it drop away behind us.

  "Theo was right!" I yell over the din.

  "What?"

  "You the best driver in the Waste!"

  He shoots a grin over his shoulder. "You're not a bad second either, brother!"