“Merciful Great One in heaven...”
“At what strength would you estimate the F’rar army?”
He considered this, tallying. “By sight, I would say one thousand. Perhaps as many as twelve hundred.”
“Very well. Return to the fortress and strip it of everything usable for a forced march. We have wagons enough for provisions. Pack them to the brim. Send out scouts, but tell them by all means to remain unseen. We will leave at dusk and catch the F’rar before they can reinforce.
“I will lead the army.”
Nineteen
I could say one thing for General Xarr: once given orders, he acted on them. If there was grumbling I never heard it.
The setting of the sun found us heading east, pursuing the F’rar army. Scouts had found them easily, as they made no attempt to hide themselves. Having vanquished two enemy forces with one deceptive blow they were feeling fat and happy, and had stopped to pillage what small towns lay on the way. We passed through two of these unfortunate outposts, and were treated to nothing but tales of woe.
We almost overran them at a third, larger town named Odin. It was late into the night, almost dawn, and yet their revels continued. From the hill where we came to rest I could hear their drunken shouts, and the sound of music. Torchlights burned. At least one home had been set afire.
“They will never be more vulnerable,” I observed, watching the raucous proceedings below.
“Do you propose to attack them now?” Xarr asked. I had learned by now that he was much better at taking orders than formulating them.
“No. But find me one feline good with explosives and another with weapons, and have them meet me here in ten minutes.”
“You don’t mean to go down there by yourself!” Xarr protested in horror.
“No,” I said, smiling grimly. “I’ll have those two experts with me.”
The explosives expert, to my surprise, was Masie, my maidservant. “Let’s just say I have many talents,” was her explanation. When I explained to her what I wanted she had no trouble with it, nor with her change of clothing to nomad dress.
The weapons fellow was fresh out of hospital, wounded in the left side but right handed and more than ready for battle. He had more trouble with the robes but was more than willing to fight. His name was Brace.
“I hope it doesn’t come to it,” I instructed him, “but have your blade ready.”
“Yes, my Queen,” he said.
With no more discussion we made our way down the hill toward the darker end of the town.
It was almost too dark: my companions and I stepped into a trench which proved to be a latrine. To their credit, they made no protest, but I could not hide my own disgust. On climbing out the other side, I observed, “Just think of it as more camouflage.”
We soon were able to test our camouflage, as a F’rar foot soldier appeared and ordered us to halt. He was very drunk, but still bore a dangerous sword and a nasty expression.
“Who are you!” he said when we halted.
Then, the wind being to our backs and toward his nostrils, he said, “Ugh! Latrine workers?”
I nodded.
“Get on with it!” he shouted, urging us past and covering his nose. “Damn it!” We heard him retch as we hurriedly passed.
“I didn’t think we smelled that bad,” I commented when we were safely within the town limits.
Masie, obviously disagreeing, rolled her eyes.
The lights of the officer’s quarters were like beacons. They had appropriated the town hall, such as it was, and as we approached it from the rear, the smell of spilled ale almost overwhelmed our own odor. I sneaked a look through one of the windows and saw what I expected to: three or four diehards still wielding flagons, the rest sleeping where they had fallen, on the floor or on tables. In one corner I recognized one figure not inebriated: Talon, the fat traitor with the piggish eyes, looking just as he had in the photograph in Newton’s wife’s room, who sat seriously discussing something with a man who bore general’s rank but who was much more interested in the ale in front of him than in his companion’s words. Surrounding them were three well-armed bodyguards, very much sober.
I cursed, silently. If only there had been more of us, we could have given Talon the death he so richly deserved.
We moved around the rear of the building to the side, where three horse drawn wagons and two huge long motor vehicles were parked. I examined each in turn, and found what I hoped to find in the motor vehicles: two huge machines, long white tubes mounted with switches and dials at one end. They looked familiar...
“Mount your charges at each end, and in the middle,” I ordered Masie.
After examining the machines, she nodded. “There’ll be nothing left but scrap,” she promised.
Hearing a rise in the noise level of the building next door, I added, “And hurry!”
Fifteen minutes later she reported, “All ready. They’ll go off in twenty minutes.”
We drew away from the building just as a guard, looking suspiciously sober, appeared in a side door.
“Wait,” I whispered, and watched while he poked around the spot we had just vacated, lifting the tarpaulin–
I nodded to Brace, who was already drawing his blade, moving stealthily toward the guard, who had put his head inside the tarp.
In a minute Brace was back, and I noticed the guard stumbling, unhurt, back to the building.
“All he did was pee,” he said simply, putting his blade into its sheath. “He found nothing.”
We made it up the hill and back to camp before the charges went off. After discarding our rancid clothing we immediately set off for the plain east of town, which our scouts had promised was good for battle. A small band on horse was left behind. They would drive through the town at dawn and push the F’rar army toward us, like shepherds driving a herd.
“We will see how well they fight without their machines,” I said.
“And full of bad ale,” Masie added.
As we reached the field of battle the charges went off, sending two dull booming plumes of yellow fire into the dawning sky. I saw Masie frown, until, a few seconds later, two more charges went off. We watched a blasted section of white tube fly into the air and break into three pieces.
“As I said, scrap,” Massie stated, grinning in satisfaction.
“And now,” I said, marking the peeking of the sun’s edge above the violet lip of the horizon–
As if on cue, there was a whoop and wild cry from our riders. Shots were fired amidst shouts from the town. I watched through my glass as our little band of wild rousers tore down the streets and then out of the town and toward us.
“General Xarr, deploy your troops, please,” I ordered.
“Yes, my Queen,” he answered, and just as the full sun topped the far hills we were ready.
The F’rar came on, streaming out of the town wild and in disarray, just as I thought they would. They were angry and confused, half dressed and still muzzy with drink, but they formed a battle line before they met us. I’m sure their cocky commanders thought the little force that faced them head-on was a suicide stand, the remnants of Kerl’s army, and would be easily overridden. They charged straight at us.
“General, flanking positions, please,” I ordered.
Xarr gave the orders, and the rest of our force appeared to the right and left of the F’rar force and clamped them in a vice.
The air was filled with cries and shouts and the flashing of blades. The F’rar force never made it as far as our weak front line, so I gave the order to take the battle to them. My own blade flashed in the new sun, and soon the F’rar were calling for retreat, which was impossible since our flankers had closed off escape behind them.
A rout ensued. In an hour the battle was over, the battlefield littered with F’rar dead, their deserters making for the hills. I ordered bands to pursue. I was particularly interested in what had happened to Talon. I had a feeling he had stayed behind.
“Talon was not found, my Queen,” he said.
“Have scouting parties head west and north. We may get lucky.”
“And what do we do now, my lady?”
“We pursue Kerl’s original plan, and keep moving east. Have you heard from any of the rebels in the west?”
“Our radio machines are limited, and no couriers have returned as yet. But the F’rar had some superior machines, and we may be able to utilize them.”
“Do so. I need to know that the rebellion is rolling toward us as Kerl expected, not collapsing behind us.”
“I have no doubt word of your victory today will help greatly,” Xarr said. There was, I noted, a new respect in his voice. “A thousand against four hundred...”
“We have made a good start,” I said. “But we need to build this army if we are to move toward Wells.”
“My lady?” Xarr said in surprise.
“Did you think we would gain one victory, and retire for the winter?” I asked.
“No, but–”
“The goal, Xarr, must still be Wells. Without that we are nothing but a rebel army that will eventually be crushed by F’rar. She will turn new weapons against us or starve us out or move to annihilate us with superior force. We need help.”
As I said, Xarr was good at taking orders but less useful at concocting them. I sat in thought while his confusion only grew.
“We need help...” I repeated to myself.
Twenty
The voice in my ear was familiar and as far away as Deimos. There was an intermittent crackling and fading in the headset. But it was good to talk to Newton again.
“Things have been...interesting in Sagan,” he commented. Even with the bad reception, I could hear the irony in his gravelly voice. “It was particularly interesting to watch Carson and his ogres run with their tails between their legs. I hear he is hiding in the mountains with one airship. All in all, Sagan is a free city again.”
I asked him how far the F’rar had been pushed back.
“I can’t say for sure. Our own twin cities are free of them for the moment, but the smaller towns between you and I are saturated with deserters. There is a reliable rumor that a great army is forming under our old friend Ceres. I wouldn’t doubt it. He was always Carson’s better, and now he will try to prove it. Due to sheer numbers, there were fewer rebels in waiting in the small towns than in the cities to handle such an influx of fleeing F’rar. It was, in retrospect, the one flaw in Kerl’s plan.”
“His plan worked all too well.”
“Yes.”
I then told him of our encounter with Talon, and approached the real reason for my communication.
After a silence which at first worried me, he answered: “There are certain things I can do to help you. There is a stockpile of Science Guild equipment north of you, in Burroughs. I have already sent Jeffrey to meet you there. There is much in it you will find useful. As for Talon, I would fear that he has kept his worst in reserve. It is his nature. He is heartless and soulless. I will do what I can for you here.”
The signal became intermittent, before fading altogether with his final enigmatic words: “You will meet someone along the way...”
I spoke into a void of static: “Take care, Newton...”
Xarr did not understand my strategy, but did obey my orders. He was a native of Burroughs and knew the way. We set out at once for the northern city, a two day march. It was a hard journey, over much jumbled terrain. There was a rain storm which turned the dust instantly to mud, which added nearly a day to the trip. Wildly flowing water cascaded in what had been dry creek beds the day before. And then, as if to mock us, after a brief period of clearing late in the day the skies darkened once more and it began to snow. The temperature dropped twenty degrees, then ten more. Before us was the summit of an extinct volcano, Arsia Patera, which had to be traversed.
Through the howling wind of the sudden weather change, I shouted to Xarr, “Do you think it would it be best to camp here, or make the summit?”
“If we stop, we will die,” he answered immediately. “Locally, we call this weather a himrit, which means ‘teeth of the creator’ in an old local language. It can last for an hour, or it can go on for days or even weeks. There is no way to tell. At the summit it will be better. If we must stop, make it there. In another two hours we will be buried in snow here.”
I shouted, “Let’s do as you say!”
We pushed on.
Night had fallen by the time we reached the caldera. As Xarr had predicted, the storm was less severe at the summit. We could hear it howling in the crevices and hollows below us; here, there was but a swirling of snow and a strange foggy luminescence that had settled on the top of the mountain like a blanket. We made what camp we could. There were almost enough tents, and those that could not fit took first watch. I insisted on being one of them. After much wrangling about my station, I succeeded in my wish. It was not so much out of altruism as uneasiness that I sought to participate in first watch. I knew I would be unable to sleep with this fog around us.
Xarr kept me company for a time. We were huddled beneath a rock outcropping near the path that had led us up the mountain. H surprised me by producing a flask from deep within his tunic. It contained a spicy rum that was new to me. “For you, my lady. As I said, I have not touched a drop since the day I let you down. I keep it to tempt and remind me of my sins. It is the finest on all of Mars.”
He handed it to me. He was right – it was excellent.
Xarr seemed more at ease than ever since I had met him. “There are many tales in this part of the world,” he said, staring out with me at the fog which lay nearly at our feet. Our ears were more valuable than our eyes at this point. I took a long pull from his flask and wiped my mouth with the back of my paw. “Many tales.”
His hooded eyes regarded me. “Ghosts and such, my lady. My own grandfather, who helped turned Burroughs from a mining town into a city, was seen as a spirit after he passed on. I know this for a fact because I was the one who saw him.”
My incredulous smile must have gotten to the old general, for he nearly bristled with indignation. “It’s true! It was a night not much different than this. I was out with my father hunting rabbit, and became separated from him. The sounds of his voice seemed nearby, but he was actually a half kilo away.
“And then I heard another sound.”
Almost on cue, we heard something in the distance through the fog, a step or shuffle of feet.
Xarr’s eyes widened. “Just like that! Only much closer. Like a man dragging a chain over the ground.”
We heard the sound again, closer, and a childish tendril of fear rose up my back.
Xarr, lost in his story now, went on: “I stood rooted to my spot as if I had grown roots. The shuffling came closer, and closer. And then I remembered that my grandfather had died in the mines, when an iron chain clamped around his middle which had been hauling him up a hole broke, sending him to the bottom of the shaft. And here was that same chain, drawing closer to me like a huge heavy snake slithering slowly along the ground!”
He paused and now I took a long drink from the flask. Xarr looked at me in surprise, and then froze at the sound we both heard out in the fog.
“Like that!” he whispered fiercely, pointing with a shaking claw out into the wet white gloom. The shuffling noise I had heard was closer, somewhere down the path leading up to us.
I stealthily drew my blade.
“Go on,” I said to the old general, but he was shaking his head slowly. He carefully took the flask from me and put it away. He stood next to me with his own dagger drawn.
His eyes widened with fear as something rose out of the fog in front of us, a black hooded shape dragging something behind–
“Grandfather!” Xarr shouted, jumping out to confront the specter and at the same time shield me.
There was a comm
otion. The black hood thrown back. Something behind the figure dropped. Xarr wrestled the ghost to the ground, shouting to me, “Save yourself, my Queen!”
Then there was a shout of anger, followed by laughter and the two figures rolling to a stop while the hooded mass stood up, looking down at the general on the ground and continuing to laugh.
“Xarr, you old fool! Are you drinking again?”
“Kerl!” I shouted.
“Yes,” he said, suddenly grim, lifting the poles of the litter he had dropped and bearing it to me. Behind it were three other figures, two of them stumbling blindly and holding the third for guidance.
I bent down to examine the figure on the litter, pulling back a blanket which covered the face.
I gasped.
“Yes,” Kerl said, kneeling down beside me. He gently covered the ruined face, not much more than a skeleton, of his wife.
“How–” though I already knew.
The three other figures, two of which I now saw were similarly deformed, shuffled past us into camp.
“Xarr, attend to them please!” I ordered.
He instantly complied, leaving Kerl and I alone with the silent figure under the blanket.
Kerl stood looking down at the covered figure. His own face was streaked with lines of blood and healing scars. “We were lucky to get out at all. The dust cut like daggers. I covered my face immediately, but those who didn’t were not well off. Eventually the dust cut away my coverings. By then we could neither see nor hear. This fog was like clear glass compared to it. I drove them through, but only a score made it with me...”
His eyes were glued to the unmoving figure.
Quietly, he continued. “I kept pushing them on. From the far hills we watched the dust for two days. I saw it reach the foot of the fortress, and then overtake it. And when it was over I watched the F’rar charge your position. At that point I had nine useful men, and the F’rar were after us also. We managed to hide in the hills, and scatter. I reassembled whoever hadn’t been hunted like dogs. What you see is what was left.”
Haydn of Mars Page 17