Champion of Mars

by Guy Haley

  The men’s faces are an unhealthy green behind narrow visors. Beads of sweat stand on their brows, their eyes unpleasantly moist. They seem a perfunctory afterthought from the suits’ designer, an unfinished component of meat lost in a mass of flawless machinery.

  Memories of his own armour are pushed into Yoechakenon’s mind by the Door-ward. Screams, the flash of a terrified woman’s face, blood underfoot, and all around, fire hot enough to melt steel.

  He fights the memories down. The young man stares warily at the champion, his eyes hard. His arrogance rankles the champion, and he stares back.

  “My companion informed me of your approach,” Yoechakenon says. He examines the veteran. He is thinking that he may have served with him. Too many faces and too much time have passed for him to be sure, and his access to his eternal memory is limited. But this man is one of his to the core.

  “How?” asks the other scarab.

  Yoechakenon stares until the younger man drops his gaze. “Whispers,” he says. The young man stares at the floor for only a moment before resuming his expression of studied hostility. This inspires something close to respect in Yoechakenon.

  “You meet my eyes in challenge,” Yoechakenon says to him, “and you are brave to come here into my cell and do so, but know you this, young soldier. I have looked into the eyes of death unflinching, I have brought cities to ruin and sorrow to the nations of spirits and of men. I have bested warriors who would crush you without a second thought. I am your better; do not forget it.” He directs his attention to the older man, ignoring the younger. “I would see the Emperor another day, if at all. He and I have little to discuss.”

  “I am afraid that is not possible, Lord,” says the older man. “He orders that you attend him. He says you and he have much to talk about, and what His Majesty decrees, all must agree with.”

  “Of course, he is the Twin Emperor. And he is, I understand, busier than normal of late; the noise of the guns tells me that,” says Yoechakenon.

  “That is true, Lord,” says the veteran.

  “They are close now, are they not?” Yoechakenon half-smiles. “Our Twin Emperor will not be wearing his crowns for much longer. The Delikon League is practically at the gates.”

  The older scarab twists his hands round the shaft of his weapon, as if coming to a difficult decision. “Yes, Lord,” he says. “They are close; no more than two days from the city. They stand at the outer barrier and have besieged the easternmost forts.”

  Yoechakenon nods; of course the Twin Emperor would come to him now. “You are familiar to me. Tell me, do I know you?”

  The veteran stands straighter, the dome of his back spreading itself into metal feathering. It rises in a fan in response to his pride. “I served with you at Olm, Lord. I was there when we breached the primary wall. It was a glorious day.”

  “Forgive me, the Door-ward allows little access to my eternal memory, and am forced to rely on my organics.”

  “I understand it is difficult. Native memory is unreliable?” he asks. Yoechakenon is in a position few civilised men of Mars would ever find themselves in.

  “It is, but a man becomes accustomed to it after a while.”

  “It is an honour to refresh your memory, then, Lord. I am Provost Andramakenon.” He salutes, a short bow, and his iridescent armour feathers spread out behind him. He puts out his left hand, indicating the other man. “This is Fourthpike Varakanen. Please ignore his lack of manners, he is new to the legion.” He says this with some affection. I examine them as closely as I am able. Family, paternal uncle, perhaps. I cannot be sure. Like Yoechakanon, I have little access to the records of the Great Library. The younger man is resentful, and does not salute.

  “Well met, Provost. It is good to see a familiar face. I would offer you the full hospitality of my apartments, but as you can see, I am lacking somewhat in comforts. Though some of us were made heroes for what we did, others of us were more poorly rewarded. Never forget that, Provost Andramakenon. A man can be cast down as quickly, if not more quickly, than he is elevated.”

  “‘Writ in dead numbers before any of us were born,’ Lord,” quoted the Provost.

  Yoechakenon shook his head. “Man can make his own fortune. We are bound to travel but one road in life, but we may be wary for the pitfalls in it. It is better to take advantage of what fate thrusts at us than to follow every kink in the path.”

  “It is sage counsel. I will attempt to follow it.”

  “Good. Bitterness is the harvest of blind trust in fate.”

  “And if so wise, these words you have followed, why then do you languish here?” The Fourthpike speaks falteringly at first, but bravado rises in him and pushes out his words with increasing force.

  The Provost rounds on his companion (nephew? I am growing sure). “This man has covered himself in more glory than you will see in three lifetimes.”

  “He dishonoured the Armour Prime of Kemiímseet.”

  “Silence!” The older man’s shout is metallic through his helm’s speaker.

  Yoechakenon watches the exchange dispassionately. “Let us be on our way,” he says. “We have an Emperor to see.” The scarabs fit pain bracelets to his ankles and wrists. This is a formality, as the assassin-spirits of the Great Library will destroy his mind at the least sign of danger to the Emperor. Yoechakenon accepts the ritual, for custom demands it. All men on Mars are bound by custom.

  I follow as they lead Yoechakenon through the corridors of the under-arena, tunnels melted through the bedrock in an era so distant that it has no name. They pause at each of the invisible fences, waiting for them to shatter into branches of green lightning. The fences close with an audible crack behind us, filling the tunnels with the stink of ozone. Each fence passed brings more lengths of corridor and more cells. A stream of sharp, breathless pleas comes from one. The Door-ward torments a gladiator. It pulls images deep from the prisoners’ psyches, where dark things hide, and parades them back and forth through their minds – the bloodied, eyeless faces of their stem-kin, raped and murdered at their own hands, the flesh of their home spires roasting in fires they set, or other, more terrible things. Every moment of every day brings their worst fears as waking nightmares. There is more than death to fear in Kemiímseet’s arena.

  The cries follow us, the circular tunnels amplifying them so that they fill the world.

  Yoechakenon fights off attempts by the Door-ward to make him experience the man’s suffering. An image of a small boy howling piteously, raw stumps where his limbs should be, batters its way into my love’s mind, along with the terror and shame of the man the vision torments. I shut it out. I have the power to do that. The guards’ companions do not, and the scarabs’ faces become grim. The Door-ward makes no allowances, no division between prisoner and guard. Suffering of all kinds is nectar to its fiendish intellect, forged as it is from equations of purest cruelty.

  We reach the outermost fence. Andramakenon’s eyes dull as he goes into private consultation. His eyes re-focus on the First World, a look of distaste on his face at his contact with the arena’s master.

  “Lord Champion, the Door-ward insists that your companion remains tethered to the Gladiatorial Quarter of the Great Library.”

  “Beyond those doors she will have full access to the Library. Are you worried that you will not be able to catch her again, should she choose to leave?”

  “Lady Kaibeli is as famed for her cunning as you are for your bravery. We cannot allow her to depart in full, but you will be permitted to retain a connection of the second degree, and I swear she will be unharmed by any agent, human or otherwise, while you are gone.” It is a brave thing to promise, one that could earn Andramakenon enemies of the most terrible sort. He produces a decoupler from his belt. It is an ugly thing, its look befitting its ugly purpose. He holds it away from himself, as if he feels threatened by it. We undergo decoupling every time Yoechakenon fights, the pain of separation and the ecstasy of rejoining a part of our punishment, for we
are never sure if we will be allowed full union again. The Door-ward is inventive.

  At least I will be able to watch Yoechakenon when he visits the Twin Emperor.

  “You have nothing to fear, Provost; Kaibeli would never abandon me. She chose to come here and serve my punishment with me. She is willing to comply, and will wait for me as she has always.”

  “As you say, Lord. You may sit while I sever the higher cords, if you desire.” The man indicates a stone chair set into the wall by the final fence.

  “I have undergone the separation before,” he says calmly. “First when judgement was passed upon me, and many times since. I will stand.” Yoechakenon closes his eyes. Ready? he thinks out to me.

  The Door-ward becomes a palpable thing, its being pressing on Yoechakenon’s face like wet sand. He struggles to breathe. But I am there. I touch his face. My love for him lessens the pressure. The Door-ward rages, for he knows he cannot harm me. Yoachakenon breathes clearly, and I speak into his soul.

  I am ready, my love.

  A tremble passes up Yoechakenon’s body as I withdraw myself from contact with his mind. We feel it as a gentle tugging in our innermost selves. It is unpleasant, but better than if the Door-ward had become involved.

  “There, it is done. She has retreated into the Great Library’s Gladiatorial Quarter, as requested.” With supreme effort, he keeps his legs from giving way. Black shapes swim in front of his eyes. He feels empty, as do I. The Door-ward gloats.

  I swear one day to destroy this thing.

  The Provost stays the Fourthpike’s hand from steadying the champion. Andramakenon looks off to one side, and is silent for a space. “My companion confirms she is no longer in full union with you. The Door-ward indicates so also. Her umbilicus is severed.”

  “Let us be on our way then.” Yoechakenon’s palms are slick; he feels like vomiting. The separation is especially hard for us, we who have become so close.

  “My Lord, my own companion will watch over her, come what may. On that you have my word.”

  “You have my gratitude. I wish there were something I could do to repay such treatment.”

  “It is no more than you deserve, Lord.”

  The younger man looks from the Provost to the gladiator, mistrust of Yoechakenon clear upon his glass-shielded face.

  “We shall proceed onwards,” says the Provost.

  They pass through the final fence, and I follow behind, spectating from the outside.

  The sounds of the under-arena cease, lost behind the outer bounds, and the pressure of the Door-ward eases on Yoechakenon’s mind. The three of them turn up the broad corridor to the Great Gladiatorial Gate. The floor is decorated with subtle designs, crystals of the rock rearranged at the molecular level to catch the light; rainbows imprisoned in the stone as men are imprisoned in the cells. A score of openings line the tunnel. Here live the chirurgeons, trainers, guards, victuallers, set architects and other indentured but ultimately free men who keep the arena functioning.

  Yoechakenon and his guards proceed toward the gate, a rectangle of light so dazzling after the under-arena that the filters of Yoechakenon’s eyes darken to black.

  They emerge into daylight and the oppressive presence of the Door-ward slips away entirely. The full force of the mirror suns hits Yoechakenon’s face for the first time in two years. He stops and lets it warm him. The Provost Andramakenon takes his elbow gently.

  “Come, Lord.”

  Yoechakenon opens his eyes. For a moment he does not know where he is, and Andramakenon’s respect is mixed with fear.

  “Of course,” the gladiator says eventually. My connection is lessened, but I feel his disorientation still. Human noise assails him from both worlds. The chatter and bustle of the Great Library proper intrudes into his mind. Yoechakenon entertains the thought of abandoning his mortal form and bolting into its depths, setting up a babble of concern from the aides and valet whispers I have sent to accompany him. He dismisses the idea. If he runs, the only sure result will be the final soul-death.

  Varakanen and Andramakenon lead Yoechakenon toward an armoured flitter. It hovers above the chipped mosaic of the plaza, the blur of its wings swirling dust. Fifteen scarabs stand to attention on the flitter’s ramp. Seven more stand on the upper deck, and they do not wait on ceremony. They scan the sky and the cliffs, particle cannons on the craft’s rails following every movement of their eyes. Yoechakenon has powerful sympathisers; imprisoning the champion of Kemiímseet was not a popular act.

  Yoechakenon goes up the ramp on unsteady feet. The hull rises five metres or more above him. Verdigris obscures the patterns on its brazen skin. It is the art of a long-dead school, and Yoechakenon wonders who engraved it, and when. There is little new on Mars.

  A platoon of soldiers run past. Kemmean citizens cheer and clap their hands. Yoechakenon watches them until the flitter’s spirit impatiently indicates he should board. The flitter’s mind directs him to a seat, surrounded by suppression emitters. He sits. Restraints grow from the wall and bind him in place. Weakness sweeps through him as snakes of enfeebling energy wrap their coils around his heart and mind.

  When the flitter is sure Yoechakenon cannot free himself, it orders the scarabs aboard. They take station along the craft’s benches, standing while their armour retracts, the wide domes over their backs clicking back and splitting, their helmets folding in, up and down until they stand bare-headed and bare-armed, their armours hiding in chestplates, broad belts and greaves. Many of them are grizzled, scarred by years of combat. A few steal looks at Yoechakenon, with a mixture of pity and awe. A few nod at him.

  A command from the flitter pulses through the scarabs’ brains. Their heads snap forward in unison, and they sit as one. Tendrils extrude from the walls to fasten themselves about the men’s chests as the flitter’s spirit inspects the cabin. Satisfied all is precisely as it should be, the craft rises smoothly into the air.

  “Clear the wall,” asks Yoechakenon. He struggles to raise his head, his voice slurs and his mouth is dry, but he holds Varakanen’s eye. “I would look upon the city.” The flitter bucks on the thermals rising from Kemiímseet’s stony plazas.

  “It is not permitted for –” begins the Fourthpike, and Provost Andramakenon silences him. At a thought from the veteran, the wall shimmers into transparency, then opens completely.

  Kemiímseet: it is an old name for an old city. The heart of the Martian civilisation, unfathomably ancient, the first city, founded where the Marrin canyon shatters into the gullies of the Nuct Lebtuuth. Brought down a hundred times only to rise again and again, home of the stacks of the Great Library, Kemiímseet the Eternal, Kemiímseet the Great.

  Kemiímseet is at its apogee, I think (it is hard to be sure; my memory is bloated and corrupt), at least in terms of its size. To look at it one would think Mars a thriving place, but its crowds are large because other cities stand empty, their streets walked only by the wind. Even here, entire districts are devoid of human and spirit life. Kemiímseet is vast, a multi-levelled city built into one of the two bowls at the head of the Marrin. Its buildings fill the bowl, continuing into and up the vertical black-and-terracotta cliffs that guard it. Bright water surrounds it. A large part of Kemiímseet occupies the high ground between a tongue of the Krysea and the Marrin Lake to the west. On a clear day the elbow of stone at the mouth of the Caan is visible, but clear days on Mars are few. Waves lap lethargically against the city’s seawall. The cliffs here are miles high, those to the south are a belt on the horizon, indistinct in the haze. A hundred miles to the east, the thousand braided torrents of the Tertis river flow out of the Nuct Lebtuuth into the Marrin Lake, and there the country homes of the rich are. The river leaves the lake again, plunging over cataracts large and small and into the city in channels that sing in the dry times and roar in the wet. Barges and boats of all shapes crowd the canals, the lake, and the sea. Only the tumbling streams of the Tertis river proper are free of them; it is too wild to ride.

&nbs
p; The flitter spirals, gaining height over the arena, the very centre of Kemiímseet. Yoechakenon looks down at the sand through the open roof that has for so many months defined his world. The canyon walls hem in the sky, allowing but a few of the mirror suns to reflect their light onto this warren of men, their beams beating paths through the city’s cloak of dust.

  The commercial district rings the arena; temples and palaces of size and beauty unsurpassed anywhere on Mars jostle shoulders with it. Scattered among the stone buildings are the twelve greater and forty-two lesser townspires of Kemiímseet, living buildings the art of whose growth is lost. The summit of the tallest is level with the canyon top. They are sculptures of half-metals that resemble monstrous shells, racks of antlers, gigantic ferns and other, stranger things. Copper-leaved jungle fills the upper canyons, reaching down to girt the lake. Here and there the jungle follows the river, making inroads into Kemiímseet proper in slashes of colour that merge with the city’s parklands. Slender trees march up the vertical planes of the place until defeated by gravity, the uppermost tops breaking like waves halfway up the spires and cliffs in an extravagant spume of flowers.

  The cliffs are the city’s glory. A myriad waterfalls descend from the high plateaus, some disappearing into lights in the roofs of the palaces leaning out from the walls. The water collects in pools cupped against the cliff-faces, resting placidly, before spilling out to the city. In the wet season, the waterfalls run red and the city rings with their thunder. Now, at the height of summer, they are clear, cutting quick and clean through the choking air. The flitter flies through one rainbow cascade, and cool vapour fills the airboat’s cabin.

  The sounds of the city come in through the flitter’s portals, the engines of the ancient aircraft no competition for the clamour of humanity. War is closing on the Imperial Palace, but the city is unperturbed. The cries of hawkers and children mingle with the sound of flitter wings. A snatch of song rises from a townspire garden. Somewhere off to the left, voices are in argument, while from below comes shrill laughter, and from the east come the carillons of the sybarite temples summoning the faithful to evening excess; and everywhere the smell of hot, summer air and the sharp tang of Martian dust.