Sebastian of Mars

by Al Sarrantonio

  Soon most of us had crossed, leaving a contingent on the other side with the wagons to wait for the promised pontoon craft. The tunnel was barely high enough to crawl through, but it was wide and well constructed. Radion’s only worry was that the crossing would not be made by nightfall.

  “Then we will make the crossing at night!” Miklos, who was in a very good mood, boomed.

  Darwin showed us the hidden pontoon, camouflaged in a stand of brush not forty feet from the water, and soon the rigging for the pull-boat had been strung across the water and the first crossing was made. The boat was not large, and one wagon at a time could cross, so it was indeed nearly dark by the time the last horse had been ferried over the deep water.

  “I don’t want to stay here tonight,” Radion announced. He had been increasingly unhappy as the day went on.

  Miklos laughed. “What are you worried about? Our King here has been getting progressively better with the sword. He will protect us all by himself!”

  “Tamlos did not return from the west when he should have.”

  “You know these scouts! They find something interesting, and they follow it!”

  “I don’t like it,” Radion said, and his brother lost his smile. “You are never wrong with these feelings.”

  “No.”

  “Then we will travel by night.”

  Radion nodded.

  At that moment one of the other scouts, who had been one of the first to make his way through the tunnel, returned and spoke in a low, urgent voice to Radion, who nodded.

  “It is already too late. Tamlos was captured by a F’rar patrol. He is dead. I’m sure he told them nothing. But the F’rar are coming this way, in force.”

  “We can’t outrun them. Not with wagons,” Miklos observed.

  “Even if we destroy the wagons, there are not enough horses.”

  “No.”

  Radion looked at me. “The King is our first priority. He will ride with the boy and you, Miklos.”

  I started to open my mouth but Radion said, “You have no say in this. You are the most important thing.” The resolution in his voice quieted me.

  Darwin looked at me strangely, but then he looked at Miklos and said, “I can hide all of us.”

  Miklos looked down at him. “This is no time for jest, boy. You have helped us once but I doubt you can help us again.”

  “We can hide, I tell you.”

  “Where?” Miklos held his arms out, sweeping over the darkening plain we were on. Outside of a few stands of brush and high grass, there was nothing but prairie for miles.

  Darwin turned to me. “Remember I told you I had hundreds of hiding places?”

  “Yes.”

  “Many of them are here. Some are big enough to hide a wagon, or a horse. If we scatter everything, then everything can be hidden.”

  Another scout arrived, whispered frantically in Radion’s ear.

  “We have two hours at most,” he announced.

  “Then we should start now,” Darwin said evenly.

  The boy was right. One of the largest hiding holes was not five yards from where we had stood discussing our fate. Some had trap doors covered with dry grass and dust; others were like the pontoon hiding place (which itself held one wagon and one horse, side by side) which were so well camouflaged that a man could walk within their confines and still not be discovered. Radion was at first skeptical, but when he saw the well-measured placement and sophistication of these hiding places he quickly assented, and we were hidden. At his insistence, the horses were muzzled, and placed with trusted companions who could handle them. All traces of our travel from the other side of the river were obliterated. It was as if we had never been there.

  I found myself paired with Darwin in a shallow depression overlaid with a sturdy but light covering of stiff reeds, vines and branches. We lowered it upon ourselves and, if we lay on our bellies, we could out through a narrow slit.

  Time passed slowly as we waited. For a while neither of us spoke, but rather studied the landscape before us, which provided a partial view to the west blocked by tufts of vegetation and one large junto tree.

  Finally, when it became apparent that our pursuers had not yet arrived, and the night sounds of crickets and cawing birds became tiresome, I asked, “Darwin, who made all these hiding places? Surely you didn’t construct them all.”

  “No. Many of them were here already, to guard against pirate raids and the like.”

  “Why didn’t your family use them when the F’rar attacked?”

  Still studying the available horizon, he answered, “There was no time. The F’rar came during the night, like lightning. They used airships. I was lucky to get away.”

  “And your family?”

  Now he looked at me, his near albino features barely visible in the deep darkness, and said, matter-of-factly, “Dead. There is a pile of bodies in a pit behind Seven Town, which the F’rar dug and then covered. Everyone is in there. My mother and sister, too.”

  He looked out through the slit again.

  “I lost a sister, too,” I said quietly.

  Again the ghostly features turned toward me.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sebastian.”

  “I knew that. But who are you? I heard the fat one, Radion, call you King.”

  “For now you can just call me Sebastian.”

  The ghostly features turned back to the slit, and I saw him stiffen.

  “I don’t hear –” I began, but he hushed me curtly.

  “They’re coming.”

  And then I did hear, a distant wash as of many boots tramping through dust, and the snort of horses which grew and grew in volume. And then they were among us, scouts first, passing like wraiths, some with lamps to study their way, which threw fitful shadows here and there.

  And then came the army, for it must be that, a terrible roar of rhythmic marching–

  “Get all the way down,” Darwin hissed, and I did so, in time to feel the tramp of feet on our stiffened covering which continued, by my count, for twenty minutes. There was only one pause, when I heard a distant shout of “Halt!” followed by muffled discourse between two voices, one of them shouting, the other clearly subservient.

  “But you said–!” one voice insisted, and in answer the other said, “I thought . . .” and then the rest was lost to me. Then came a scream, single and piercing, and then silence. The feet above us moved slightly, side to side, as if impatient or uneasy.

  Then the roar of a single voice: “MARCH!”

  The feet moved on, and then, eventually, were gone.

  At Darwin’s urging we stayed in the hole for another half hour, though before them I heard some of the gypsies emerging. “Fools,” Darwin hissed, and made me stay where I was.

  “Lucky fools,” he spat as we finally emerged, to see the gypsy caravan fully engaged and ready to travel.

  Radion approached. “There you are! I was beginning to worry!”

  Miklos appeared beside him, laughing, and picked little Darwin up. “The little fish is a hero!”

  “You should have stayed in your holes longer. They may have had trailing scouts.”

  Miklos stopped laughing and held Darwin at arm’s length, studying him.

  “The little fish is right,” he said, setting him down.

  “There were no trailing scouts,” Radion said. “Our own scouts reported that.” He looked down at Darwin and then smiled. “But you are right,” he said.

  “Will we travel tonight?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Radion answered. “I want as much room as possible between ourselves and that army. We will travel tonight, and all day tomorrow.” He brightened. “But hopefully we will meet our brothers, then.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Miklos laughed and began to speak, but Radion held his paw out for silence.

  “We have brothers everywhere,” he said cryptically, and then motioned for the caravan to move.

  I sat with Radion a
gain, with little Darwin between us, and as we set off we approached a lone figure who looked to be sleeping, curled up on the ground in the dark. But as we passed it I saw that it was a F’rar soldier, dressed in red tunic and black slick boots, his own scabbard empty, his own sword thrust into his middle and out the back, his paws locked around the hilt as if, even in death, trying to draw it out.

  Twenty

  When we finally stopped the next day, in late afternoon, it was from wariness, not weariness. Radion, after becoming increasingly dour throughout the day, threw up his hand as we reached the throat of a deep valley between two steep bluffs.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We should have met up with them by now. At least their scouts.”

  His own scouts had been bringing negative reports for hours, and he now studied the two high bluffs ahead of us, and the land between them. The mountains in the distance were noticeably closer, looming in the distance like cool, mighty, tall and silent gods. I could almost feel the chill of their icy summits now. And just behind them, peeking like a sullen giant, the frosted caldera of Mount Olympus.

  Darwin asked, “Where did these people live?”

  Radion looked at him in surprise. “They are nomads, like us. They are led by our little brother, Jamos. He is not a fool. If anything, he is smarter than Miklos and I combined. He will be a better teacher than Miklos in swordplay.”

  Darwin himself was studying our surroundings, and nodded sagely as he listened.

  “Was he subject to betrayal?”

  “Never!”

  Darwin said nothing, but climbed down from the wagon, as others were now doing.

  “What will we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Radion said. “Jamos was to take us through the mountains. But now . . .”

  Miklos joined them, and they began a spirited discussion.

  I climbed down and stretched. It felt good to have my boots on the ground once more. Already cook fires were springing up along the line of the caravan, as we hadn’t eaten more than jerky in nearly a day.

  I looked for Darwin, but he was nowhere to be found. But then the scent of roasting fowl caught my attention, and I wandered down the line in that direction, toward Tyron , drawn by hunger and a need to learn more about his use of spices.

  The meal was a good one, and I could even claim to have contributed to it, and near its end, when I began to belch with gratitude, as was the gypsy custom, I thought again of Darwin.

  He was not at any of the cook fires, as I expected. I thought perhaps he had gone off to a quiet spot to curl up and sleep. I searched under the wagon and in them, but he was nowhere nearby.

  And then I saw a distant small white figure being led back to camp by one of Radion’s scouts.

  I met up with them as they reached the gypsy leader, just finishing his own meal. He stood, wiping his mouth with a paw, and let out a long, low belch of his own.

  “What’s wrong?” he said to the scout, who held the protesting Darwin by the arm, giving him a good shake now and then.

  “I caught him behind the right bluff, trying to dig a hole! He had a long stick and was turning over the soil! I tell you, he was trying to hide!”

  “Is that so?” Radion asked the little fellow. “Were you trying to hide from us?”

  “No. I found them,” he said simply.

  “Let him go, Nikko,” Radion said to the scout, who instantly obliged.

  Darwin rubbed his arm. “You hurt me,” he said to Nikko. There was a savage look in his eyes.

  Nikko laughed, and wiggled his fingers in front of the boy. “Perhaps I will eat you!” he laughed. “Since you think that’s what we do!”

  “Stop this foolishness,” Radion ordered. To Darwin he said, “Tell me what you were doing.”

  “I told you: I found them.”

  “Who?”

  “Your brother and his people. They’re buried behind the right bluff. Just like my mother and sister.”

  Radion stared at him, and then said quietly, to Nikko, “Get Miklos. We will see if this is true.”

  In short order our party, which had grown to most of the camp, made its way to the spot Darwin indicated. They had proper tools with them, and soon the pit had been uncovered, revealing the bodies of nearly a hundred gypsies.

  Radion fell to his knees in front of the hole and wept. “Jamos! My little brother! How could this happen!”

  He banged his paws on the ground, while Miklos, his face suffused with cold fire, stood beside him.

  “When do you think this happened?” he asked.

  Nikkos climbed up out of the grave, giving Darwin an odd look as he did so.

  “Days.”

  Miklos nodded. “And no doubt who did it?”

  Nikkos shook his head. “We found F’rar trinkets and weapons in the hole.

  “Give them a proper burial,” Miklos ordered, and Radion, recovered, stood beside him.

  “Our brother is dead!” he said.

  “Yes,” Miklos answered, his visage still locked as stone. “And he will be avenged.”

  The ceremony was a simple one, with individual graves replacing the mass one they had suffered. This was not the elaborate Moon Ceremony of One and his people. They were nomads, with no homeland, and would be buried with honor where they had fallen. Even their brother Jamos was accorded no more honor than the others. They did not own the land, but used it while alive, Radion explained, but now the land owned them and used them. It was a fair bargain, and every gypsy expected it in the end.

  “And now we must talk, my King,” Radion said to me, after the ceremony. He drew me aside, away from the others, and sat across from me. He showed none of the superiority of our earlier meetings – in fact, I was uncomfortable with his inferior attitude.

  “You must understand something,” he began. “There is only one thing more important to a gypsy than allegiance, and that is blood. It is the only thing, by gypsy law, that can allow a man to break his solemn oath. And this is what I must do.

  “My brother must be avenged. My brother and I, and my people, must find the F’rar who did this thing, and pay them in kind. There can be no discussion.”

  He looked embarrassed, and looked at the ground for a moment. His deep voice had taken on a measure of sadness that made it sound funereal. “It is for this reason that I cannot take you through the mountains, as I promised One.”

  “I will go with you,” I said.

  He shook his head. “This is not possible. I vowed to put you in a position to infiltrate the F’rar, and I will do that. This vow I cannot break. It would have been easier for you if I brought you across the mountains so that you could mingle with their rear elements. What I must now do is bring you to the outskirts of Robinson City and leave you there. My scouts tell me that it is well stocked with F’rar stragglers at the moment.”

  “Then this is what we will do,” I said, trying to make it easy for him.

  His eyes found mine. “I don’t think you quite understand, my King. Your task will be harder.”

  “Then I will do what needs to be done.”

  “I will not forget this.”

  I gave him an ironic smile. “And you see? Your fortune telling cards were wrong. We will part ways, and you will still be alive.”

  He didn’t smile. “When my task is done, I will find you again. And then we will see.”

  “I have much to thank you for, Radion.”

  He suddenly fell to the ground, and took my paw in both of his own. “My King! I have lost a little brother, but I feel as if I have been given one in return!”

  I was touched, and didn’t know what to say. He looked up into my eyes and vowed: “When Jamos is avenged, I will return to you.”

  “I will go with you,” Darwin said.

  “You must stay with Radion and Miklos. You will be safer with them.”

  “I don’t want to be safe. I want to help my King.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “You heard my conversatio
n with Radion?”

  The slightest of smiles came to his lips. “I was not four feet away, hiding. It is the kind of talent you can use. And besides,” he boasted, “I can help you with your cooking, whatever that’s for. I’ve been hiding close by during your lessons with Tyron.” He shrugged. “I will follow you anyway. No one here can stop me.”

  I considered this. “You must realize, Darwin, that we will be going to a dangerous place, and that we must pretend to be F’rar.”

  He nodded.

  “And you must also realize that if we are caught they will torture us, or worse.”

  Again he nodded.

  “And still you want to come with me?”

  “If I stay with Radion,” he explained, “I will get to see the F’rar who murdered his brother, and my family, brought to ground. I could tell by the signs I found that they are the same. But if I stay with you I may get to see the whole F’rar army destroyed. This is what I want. And besides,” he added, “you’ve already used the word ‘we.’ Which means you’ve made up your mind that I can come.”

  I was not surprised to learn that only Miklos would accompany Darwin and me to the outskirts of Robinson. Radion and the rest would begin the track the F’rar who had murdered Jamos. This meant an imminent parting. I went up and down the caravan, saying good-bye to my gypsy friends, and was surprised at the outpouring of emotion. Many cried, and clutched my paws and kissed them, or gave me huge bear hugs before kissing me on either cheek.

  “Miss you!” the thin cook Tyron, always at a loss for words, cried, dropping his wooden spoon to embrace me. “Good student!” He fumbled something into my tunic, explaining, “Spices.”

  And then it was time to say good-bye to Radion. I put out my paw but he took me in the roughest of hugs and said into my ear with emotion, “We gypsies have a saying: ‘there are no good-byes.’ So I will not give you one now.” He gave me an impassioned kiss on my cheek, presented me with his spyglass as a present, and let me go.

  “Ride,” he said to Miklos, and we mounted our horses and turned to the north.

  Twenty One

  After a two day ride, during which Miklos said barely a word, we saw Robinson City rise on the horizon.