A swirl of dust licked at the grass sandals of the men standing on the hill. There were eight men, and they stood looking west over the burned, gutted land that lay barren before them—barren except for a series of huge mounds that lay in a depression far out from the hills on the rocky plains. "Do you still think we can make it?" asked a stocky man with a livid scar that ran from his upper lip to his forehead. "I for one would rather live alone and meagerly than not live at all." The speaker rec