Sebastian of Mars

by Al Sarrantonio

  “It doesn’t look like much,” I said, studying the skyline with the spyglass that Radion had presented me with.

  Miklos humphed. “It isn’t. It is little more than a pigsty, packed with pigs. The river men come here to gamble and comport with women, and the women come here to get rich by taking their money from the gambling tables or in bed. There is little in the way of law here, and now that is in F’rar hands.” He made a sour face. “I was here years ago, and didn’t like it. Thin pickings.”

  “I take it your own pickpocketing and fortune telling didn’t do well, then?” I teased.

  He looked at me, and snorted again.

  We rode another hour, and the town’s silhouette grew: a few tall buildings, dark colored and mean looking, and clusters of squatter structures.

  When we reached a copse of junto trees, within hailing distance of the front gate, Miklos said, “This is far enough for me, my King.”

  He removed a bundle from his pack and tossed it to me. Inside was a red tunic, along with a belt, scabbard and sword.

  “From the unlucky fellow who told his F’rar commander that we were near the river. If you need the sword, I have taught you enough to get by. You are not as bad as you think. There is also food enough for two days in there.”

  I studied the now-clean sword, and the large hole in the chest of the tunic which had been sewed.

  “It will get you inside the gates. Pretend the little fish is your prisoner, or your little brother. Whatever you wish.” For the first time since we had discovered his brother Jamos, he showed a smile. “I would prefer prisoner.”

  Darwin narrowed his eyes at the giant.

  “And now,” Miklos said, reigning his horse around, “I will take my leave. But not before wishing you the luck of the gypsies. It is powerful luck, my King.” Again he smiled. “It may even rub off on the little fish!”

  He kicked his horse, and was gone, the way we had come.

  Through the trees ahead of us I eyed the gate of the city of Robinson, just visible. There was a guardhouse and a barrier.

  I climbed down from my horse and donned the crimson F’rar tunic, which fit well enough. When the scabbard and blade were in place, I remounted my horse.

  “Are you ready?” I asked Darwin, who nodded.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Then let’s go.”

  To my surprise, the guard barely looked at us as I rode by his mean hut, and the barrier, which was a vertical post worked by way of a rope pull, was raised without a word.

  And then we were in Robinson, which was dirtier and viler looking than it had looked from the horizon. The main street, for there was only one with a network of alleys, was a muddy mess, red and viscous looking. Abandoned wagons were stuck in it up to their wheel hubs. Our boots were immediately covered in the muck, and we quickly learned that there were safe places to walk, as well as the other kind. Boards were laid over this quagmire in front of establishments, and for the most part the interesting citizenry of Robinson kept to these walkways.

  The tallest building, which I had seen from a distance as a mud-colored spire, proved to be a saloon and boarding house. It had been appropriated by the F’rar, so we avoided it. I instead entered a building across the street, which itself looked to be hiding in the shadows. There was sawdust on the floor, and a bar the length of the small room. Behind it was a bored looking fellow wearing a filthy apron that might once have been white. He was smoking a long-stemmed briar pipe and nodding over a newspaper which lay open on the bar before him. A lone customer at the far end looked asleep, head resting on his folding arms, eyes closed.

  “A room?” I asked, trying to sound gruff.

  The barkeep didn’t even look up from his paper.

  “Hour, day or week?” he asked, puffing his pipe.

  “Day.”

  “That’d be two, both in advance,” he said, still not meeting my eye. But I felt eyes on me, and looked down the bar to see the asleep customer eyeing me, though his head still rested on the bar.

  I put down the money and waited for a key, but the barkeep, still without looking up from his paper, jerked the thumb of his paw upward.

  “Twelve,” he said, smoke rising in a perfect circle from his pipe bowl.

  I looked down the bar and saw that the resting customer looked to be asleep again.

  In room number twelve upstairs, which proved to have only an inside lock, which I enabled, I quickly stripped off the F’rar tunic. Darwin was trying to look out of the room’s window, which was coated in dust on the inside and grime on the outside, and proved to be immovable. Finally he found a merely occluded patch, and stood eyeing this way and that.

  “Nothing unusual on the street,” he reported. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a visit from that paying customer downstairs.”

  “You noticed him looking at us?”

  “It’s a common saloon trick,” Darwin said breezily. “The reason the barkeep can act so nonchalant is that the customer, who also works in the bar, is his eyes and ears. Anything bad starts to happen and the customer gives the word. Then the barkeep, still acting nonchalant, reached casually under the bar and takes out his length of pipe or firearm. It happened in River Town all the time.”

  I must have been regarding him with interest, because he beamed. “I told you I would come in handy.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  He continued to squint through the cloudy opening in the window. “This place is nothing but a larger version of River Town. And I noticed some good hiding places on the way in, if we need them.”

  “Good.”

  He turned from the window. “What will we do now?”

  “We’ll try to hire ourselves on to the rear of the F’rar army, which is spread between here and halfway to Olympus Mons. That group we hid from the other night was only part of the F’rar rear guard. I’m sure they’re always in need of a good cook or two.”

  “Ah, hence the lessons.” He went back to the window.

  “See anything now?” I asked.

  “That fellow who was asleep at the bar is now talking to two F’rar officers outside in the street.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Leaving the tunic and sword behind, and bringing only our backpacks, we unlocked the door, slipped out of the room, and made our way down the hall in the opposite direction from the stairway we had used to get up here.

  The hallway turned, and then ended in another short passage and a door, which opened into an empty room identical to the one we had just left.

  “No back staircase,” I said in alarm.

  “Then we’ll make our own,” Darwin replied calmly.

  Quick as a rabbit, Darwin tried the smudged window in the room. It opened a crack, and then stuck. I helped, with my own meager strength, and we were able to nudge it open halfway before it stuck for good.

  “We’ll just have to get through,” Darwin said, peering out into a side alley. He moved to the single bed in the room, and tore off the sheets, knotting two of them together while I moved the bed itself next to the window. Darwin tied one end of the makeshift rope to the bedstead and dangled the other out the window.

  We heard steps coming down the hall toward us.

  “You first,” Darwin said, and, gripping the sheets, I squeezed myself with some effort through the narrow opening and then found myself dangling in midair.

  Darwin’s face appeared above me. “Climb down!”

  I edged my way down, as the little fellow clambered out of the window like a monkey above me. Suddenly I felt the sheet begin to rip in my hands, and my downward progress was accelerated.

  I hit the ground with a thump, a torn sheet in my hands.

  Above me Darwin was dangling, a good fifteen feet up.

  I braced myself, and he jumped, landing in my arms and then knocking me down.

  Someone shouted, “Hey! You!” above us as we struggled to our feet and ran off.

  At the mouth of the alley I started to halt,
but Darwin said, “This way!” and I followed him to the right, away from the rooming house. The few citizens on the street stopped to stare at us, until Darwin growled at them. Three buildings down we slowed our pace, and I looked back to see the barkeep just emerging from the rooming house.

  “In here,” I said, pulling Darwin into a dry goods store which we were passing.

  We pretended to shop for thirty minutes, looking over skeins of yarn, garden rakes, mulling over tins of flour and salt, taking turns to wander unobtrusively to the front of the shop and study the street outside. Finally, when the proprietor, a short fellow with huge white whiskers and a lisp, began to pester me about buying something, I knew it was time to leave.

  As we strolled toward the open door someone entered who froze me in place.

  “Charlotte!”

  There was no place to hide, and I stared at the face I had grown up with, now not on the body of a kit anymore but a mature feline form. It was as if another life had suddenly crashed into me from above. The many weeks that had passed since I was spirited away to Olympus Mons were just a blink of time, and once again I was back in the palace, a skinny, weak, misfit youngster watching someone from afar, someone who I had always loved and who had finally, after the years of pestering and kit-like pranks, told me she loved me too.

  “Charlotte,” I said again, in a whisper, and she was as dumbstruck and frozen as I.

  Twenty Two

  “We can’t stay here,” she whispered frantically, turning to look behind her. “My father is right behind me, talking to two soldiers in the street.”

  The short proprietor was waddling over to us, his whiskers twitching with a life of their own. When he saw Charlotte he brightened with recognition.

  “Why, it’s so nice to see you–!”

  Charlotte manufactured a smile for him and said brightly, “Please tell my father I’ve gone to Smalley’s with friends!”

  He continued to beam, and bowed. “Very well, Lady Misst –”

  “Thank you, Willis!” she said.

  She brushed past him before he could react, pulling me after and eyeing Darwin, who followed. Quickly, she dashed through the aisles, into the back room and out a side door, which left us in yet another alley.

  “Move quickly,” she ordered, and we followed to the back street. We moved over and around and through piles of rubbish. I hesitated as we crossed the rear of the rooming house, but Charlotte turned and admonished, “Hurry!”

  Finally, Charlotte disappeared into the mouth of a yawning opening of what looked like a dilapidated barn. I followed, but Darwin held back.

  “What is it?”

  He disappeared, and I called after him but then Charlotte was back, pulling me into the gloom.

  It had been a barn, but now was some sort of storage area. Rusting machinery, old tractors and moldering bales of hay lay about in haphazard fashion. The front of the barn, I saw, was closed and barred from the inside.

  Charlotte had stopped behind a hollowed out area walled in on all sides. She turned to face me.

  “We’re safe here,” she said. “This is where my friends and I come to smoke cigarettes and be alone.” She stared at me until I became uncomfortable.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She continued to stare at me, and then she almost fell into my arms. I felt hot tears on my shoulder, and she was trembling.

  “This must be a dream,” she said. “And I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!”

  “So have you. And it isn’t a dream.”

  “They told us you were dead.”

  “Who?”

  She slowly broke the embrace. “Don’t you know what’s been happening? That my fool clan is in control of almost all of Mars?”

  “What are you doing here, Charlotte?”

  “My father is governor of this province. Frane herself gave him the appointment. And when . . .”

  I waited for her to continue.

  She looked at me, and burst into tears again.

  “No, no, this can’t be happening. When they find you they’ll execute you, and then I’ll be alone again, really alone . . .”

  I reached for her but she shook her head, sobbing. Suddenly she looked into my eyes. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to stop Frane.”

  “Are you mad? She’ll be at Olympus Mons in a week, at the head of the biggest army ever seen on Mars. Everything left of the Second Republic is in Olympus Mons, and when it’s gone . . .”

  Still sobbing, she let me embrace her, and I tried to soothe her. “It’s simple, Charlotte,” I said. “I’m not going to let it happen.”

  In a moment she broke free of me, as if she had had a sudden thought.

  “I must go,” she said, composing herself. “My father will check on me at Smalley’s. Stay here until tonight. I’ll bring food.”

  I nodded. “All right.”

  She rushed to me, and pressed her lips to mine.

  “I’ll never let you go again,” she said fiercely.

  And then she was gone.

  I heard a noise in the rafters above me.

  “Yech,” Darwin said, shimmying down a rope from a rafter nearly directly above.

  “You saw that?”

  “All too much of it,” he said, making a disgusted face. Then he became serious. “That kissing business isn’t for me. Can we trust her?”

  “Of course.”

  “We can always go on our own. There’s a contingent of F’rar replacements leaving tomorrow, and they’re looking for cooks. We could sign on.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “While you were smooching, I was walking the street. It’s easy to hide in this town, if you know how, and it’s easy to find out what’s what. I watched a couple of soldiers playing dice, and found out in five minutes everything I needed to know.”

  “You’re a good fellow.”

  He nodded. “And I can tell you that your Charlotte at least didn’t lie about this barn. It’s locked in the front and almost never used. A good hiding place.”

  “We’ll wait for her tonight, then.”

  “Fine. But I’ll be ready to run if I see any more mushy stuff.”

  He made mock kissing noises, and moved away deftly, laughing, when I tried to swat him.

  I arose from a deep and pleasant dream, in which Charlotte and I were reunited, and finally married, and she was my Queen and we lived in the palace in Wells with a kit of our own. I didn’t want to leave it. But someone was whispering in my ear, and shaking me, and the dream dissolved around my head and I smelled old hay and rust.

  I opened my eyes.

  “I thought you’d never wake up!” Darwin admonished. “It’s nearly midnight, and your girlfriend hasn’t showed up. They’re still enlisting cooks in the Army. I think we should go.”

  Still bleary from sleep, I uncurled and sat up. “She hasn’t come?”

  “No.”

  The dream was gone, a thousand shards dissipating to nothing.

  “If we’re going to enlist, we have to do it now! They leave at dawn!”

  I stared at the opening at the back of the barn, filled only with night.

  “I suppose you’re right, Darwin.”

  “Good. Then let’s be off. I’ll go ahead and sign us up.”

  “Fine.”

  He left, and as I gathered up my things and prepared to leave, Charlotte was there, filling the doorway not with darkness but with the light of my dream.

  She hurried in, her arms laden with a basket overflowing with food.

  “I couldn’t get away until father went to sleep,” she explained. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m thankful you came.”

  “Do you know what you’re going to do?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ll be gone tomorrow morning.”

  She nodded sadly. “If you stay in Robinson you’ll be caught. I know it. This is a dangerous place, too small to hide in.” She looked into my eye
s. “Let me go with you.”

  “You know that’s impossible. Your father would send people after you, and then both of us would be taken.”

  She was looking past me, as if trying to see part of my recent dream. I took her in my arms and kissed her.

  “You must go soon.”

  When the kiss ended she looked into my eyes as if she were looking into my soul. “I love you, Sebastian.”

  “I’ve always loved you.”

  “We are betrothed, and someday we will be married,” she whispered in my ear, after a long time. “I know it.”

  “Yes.”

  And then I said nothing, but kissed her again, before she had to leave.

  In the morning she was gone, but Darwin was there, with the rising sun.

  “Get moving,” he said. “We have to join the camp in twenty minutes, or they’ll leave without us.”

  “You signed us up?”

  “They were desperate for anyone who can cook anything at all. All of the real cooks have long since fled the area, or are dead. Believe me, we qualify. I told them you’re my big brother.”

  I smiled. “Good enough.”

  “And where is the Missy?” he asked, with mock innocence.

  “You weren’t –”

  “I stayed away until I saw her leave.”

  “I didn’t tell you yesterday, but we are betrothed.”

  His eyes widened in astonishment. “You know who her father is?”

  “I know her father. He is a traitor, but she is not. And she is smart enough to stay behind.” Feeling suddenly weary, and tired of explaining myself, I snapped, “Let’s go,” and pushed past the little fellow, out into the daylight, which, without Charlotte, looked sallow and empty.

  He hurried after, and showed me the way.

  Twenty Three

  Ours was a ragtag army, to be sure.

  Though fourteen hundred strong, this was worse than a rear guard. Composed of conscripted old men and mere boys, as well as a sprinkling of F’rar reservists and one cruel but stupid lieutenant who, it was rumored, had been a major but been caught with the wrong general’s wife, it was a desultory lot at best. There were not enough uniforms – and second-hand ones, at that – to go around, and many of our group marched in their work or farm clothes. Moral, as well as discipline, was poor, though the occasional flogging administered by Lieutenant Cleft, two the first day, kept things in some sort of order.