Read Borderlands: Unconquered for Free Online

mouth, a twisting that was probably intended as a smile, baring filed yellow teeth. “Hey, sweet thing,” the big woman said.
    “Uh . . . hi,” Roland said.
    “That’s Broomy,” Mordecai muttered.
    Roland gulped. He’d heard of Broomy. “Why they call her Broomy, anyway?” he asked in a whisper.
    “You don’t wanna know. Her pal there, her name’s Cess.”
    Broomy turned around and ordered a drink from someone Roland couldn’t see. “Gimme a KK!” she snarled, her voice grating. When she turned her back, he saw she wore a crude, badly stitched cape, with a skullish G and crossed guns on it.
    “Yuh, yuh, a Kerosene Kooler, here ya go!” piped up the Claptrap robot bartender, reaching up from the other side of the bar to pass over a seething mug of greenfluid. Broomy grabbed the drink, splashing half of it on the bar, and drank thirstily.
    “Come on back and have another bottle on us, Mordecai!” called Cess, laughing, waving a bottle of yellow liquor. “This time I’ll let you drink from it instead o’ bathin’ in it!”
    Mordecai rubbed his head ruefully. “Goodthing I had my helmet on. Just stunned me. Then Broomy tossed me over here.”
    “What’d youdo to piss her off?”
    “It’s what I wouldn’t do.” He looked at Roland’s pistol. “Nice Invader autopistol. Modified with the scope and everything, huh? I had one, but a skag ate it. Almost took my arm with it.”
    “I don’t see a weapon on you. You don’t look natural without a gun.”
    “Got a static Cobra burstfire leaning over against that table right there. And a couple grenades. Anyway, Bloodwing’shere. He’s got my back— usually .”
    Mordecai looked up at the metal rafters and whistled. Something creaked and fluttered up there, then came flapping down to land on his shoulder. “Some use to me you were, pal,” he told the creature, “letting them blindside me like that.”
    Bloodwing made a raspy sound and ducked its head, seeming to laugh. It was a vulturine, leather-winged animal, its head deathlywhite, its eyes lurid red-orange, its beak the color of steel and almost as tough; it had enormous talons, which Roland had seen put to good use tearing the face off a bandit.
    “Yeah, very funny, Bloodwing,” Mordecai said. Bloodwing took to preening itself on its master’s shoulder. Mordecai took a medical vial from a pocket, drank the solution off in one gulp to erasethe pain from the blows he’dtaken on the head, and turned to Roland again. “What’re you up to here?”
    “Looking for Brick. Seen him?”
    “Saw some broken walls and broken bodies that have his stamp on ’em, you might say. There’s a mine out east of the settlement; that’s where he hangs out, I’d guess. If he’s still guarding the mine from bandits.”
    “East, huh? Due east?”
    “Yeah, pretty much. But anything Brick can do I can dobetter—and I need a job.”
    “ Anything he can do, Mordecai? Really? How about picking up an outrunner and throwing it at somebody?”
    “Okay, not anything, but a lot. Did he really do that?”
    “According to rumor. I guess you’d be a help on this mission. Come along, then. I’ll give you the lowdown later. A good long-range shot might be more useful than—”
    “Are you nutless wonders going to come overhere and give us some action or not ?” Broomy demanded, her voice so raucous it made Bloodwing’s sound melodious.
    “Or not , I’d say,” Roland muttered, looking at Broomy and Cess.
    “You guys are in my damn way,” said a woman’s voice behind him.
    He turned to see a small but heavily armedwoman. She was black-eyed, pale, and unpretentiously pretty, with short, glossy jet-black hair. There was a combatrifle slung across one shoulder, two knives in a V of sheaths worked into her tight-fitting skag-leather jumpsuit, and on each hip was a pistol. Her bare arms were spiraled with tattoos of words in a language he didn’t recognize. With her was a scar-faced, spiky-haired redhead in