Lin Carter - The Man Who Loved Mars Page 10

  No cunning or cleverness on my part did the deed. The Prince more or less talked himself into it.

  And little Dhu helped, of course, by opposing the whole thing. It is wonderful how the arguments of a hated rival can drive you to follow a course you do not actually want to take!

  9. The Road to llionis

  Two days after the great feast in the Hall of the Moons, we were ready to depart on the final leg of our journey.

  Our guide to the site of the Lost City would be none other than Prince Kraa. The old man stoutly refused to permit one of his chieftains to dare the curse of the Timeless Ones. If it should indeed prove an act of sacrilege to guide Outworlders across the borders of the Sacred Land, the Prince was determined that the sin and its punishment should fall upon his head alone. He would not permit another to take the risk.

  Kuruk, in turn, was every bit as adamant in refusing to permit his father to undertake the dangerous and difficult journey. He pointed out that Kraa was an old man and that the hazards and perils of the trip might well prove too much for him.

  The argument continued at some length and was not finally resolved until Prince Kraa reluctantly agreed to let Lord Kuruk accompany us. The minstrel Huw demanded to be included in the expedition, saying that the court would be intolerably dull in the absence of the Prince and the chieftain and that he had always been curious to discover what lay beyond the forbidden borders.

  The moonfaced little minstrel was, it seems, something of a pampered favorite with the old prince. And so it was decided that Huw would ride with us; Kraa observed that while the fat little minstrel would prove of no value in a battle, he could at least entertain us with his songs.

  The boy Chaka also would not be left behind. He put up such a loud outcry at the notion of being left out of the first real adventure to come along in years, that the old Prince agreed he should come, if only to restore peace and quiet.

  That, at least, was the excuse he gave in public.

  Privately the Prince admitted that it was time the youth had a taste of danger and discomfort.

  “It is never too early to begin the long task of becoming a man,” he said gruffly. “A boy cannot begin too young. Someday, perhaps, he will be Prince in my place; if so, it would be well if he saw something of the world and its perils, if only to learn the wisdom of prudence and caution and the value of courage and daring.”

  So it was decided: the boy would be my servant. At news of this Chaka was ecstatic. Perhaps he felt rather as a boy might have, back in medieval times, when chosen to serve some noble knight as his squire. Not that I was much of a knight, I fear!

  And so the expedition grew and grew; warriors would ride with us to guard our safety and lackeys to serve us, to tend our beasts, and to prepare our meals.

  A less agreeable companion in our adventure also announced his intention of traveling the long road to Ilionis with us: the priest Dhu, who stiffly claimed it as a right of his birth. As pontiff of the Timeless Ones in Chun, one of his ceremonial titles was hereditary guardian of the Gates of Yhoom, the mythical underworld of the Martian gods. In the symbolism of the ancient legends Ilionis meant “the gateway” and was popularly believed to represent a mystical bridge between the World Above, where the People dwelt, and the World Below, where the gods dwelt among the spirits of the blessed dead.

  So he demanded his right to go along and to protect the holy places from the desecrations of the F’yagha.

  “I tol’ you this was no good,” Bolgov growled to the Doctor when he heard of these events. “We’ll have the whole damn city stepping on our heels before we get there! How the hell we going to get away with the treasure, with all these bloody Cats along, ready t’cut our throats if we so much as look cross-eyed at one of their heathen idols?”

  Keresny soothed his ire with gentle remonstrances, but in private he complained to me about the growth in our ranks. But there was really little I could say or do to discourage the new members of our party from accompanying us, for that would have planted suspicions about our true purpose and motives and inflame superstitious fears of desecration already exacerbated by Dhu’s fiery rhetoric.

  So they had to come along.

  Though how we were going to deal with them, once we reached Ilionis, was beyond me.

  I no longer had much doubt that we would find the Lost City: from of old, Farad had been established here to guard the road to holy Ilionis, and the coincidence that this old legend existed in such close proximity to the actual or supposed site of the Lost City, as given in the thought record Keresny had found, was too much to be called a coincidence.

  Ilionis was there, all right. Like the leprechaun’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  But it yet remained to be seen whether there was any gold in the pot.

  Before we departed from Farad, there was an important ceremony to be enacted. This was the swearing of fealty unto the Jamad by the Moon Dragon Prince.

  The ceremony was simplicity itself. In the full presence of his assembled lords, nobles, and chieftains, the old Prince knelt, kissed again the dirt before me, and lay his naked sword at my feet.

  By this ancient rite he made himself my man and swore his Vow to serve me in all things … he and his nation.

  But the ceremonial was capable of yet another interpretation too.

  But yielding sovereignty to me, he also lay at my feet the responsibility for what we were about to do. As my liege-man, Prince Kraa no longer bore any responsibility for whatever sacrilege or blasphemy our quest might entail.

  For my will thus became his law.

  And if the gods of Mars were angered at this intrusion upon the Sacred Land, their wrath and vengeance would fall on me and not upon Kraa, my thrall, who was innocent of wrongdoing by his oath of fealty.

  It was a handsome bit of “buck-passing,” as the Americans might call it.

  The Prince’s face was bland and innocent as he rose to his feet and received his sword from my hand; but little Dhu glowered sullenly the while.

  The political shrewdness of the move had so many ramifications that it kept me amused, just untangling them, while we rode out through the gates of Farad and into the barren waste that stretched across the great Chun plateau to the forbidden borders of the Sacred Land.

  All that day we rode on across a rocky wilderness, pausing only twice to relieve nature and to let the beasts rest.

  The old Prince rode at the head of our party by my side. He spoke but little, his eyes roving keenly about; he sat ramrod stiff in the saddle. He proved tireless, veteran of a hundred wars that he was, and it was not long before he ceased viewing our quest with unease and forboding and began to enjoy the adventure. His good humor did not sour, nor did his long hours of hard-riding drain his strength or lessen his zest for the expedition.

  Behind us the little priest Dhu rode along, grumbling almost continually. No seasoned rider he! A thousand times he complained of the jouncing stride of his slidar, of the looseness of his saddle harness, of the burning thirst that tormented him, and of the discomfort of the journey.

  Every slightest mishap that occurred, he seized upon to shrilly proclaim an ill omen. Loose shale made one of the beasts lose its footing and stumble, causing an inattentive warrior to take a fall. The man arose unhurt, dusting himself off and grinning shamefacedly. But the hunchback keened like an old woman who had just heard the sobbing cry of the banshee and scents a death in the family.

  The Prince harshly bade him hold his tongue or go back to the safety of Farad. Thereafter Dhu made no further lamentations, but he continued to grumble and to chant half-audible prayers to avert the vengeance of the Timeless Ones���under his breath, of course, but just loud enough for us to be aware.

  Regardless of his loud-voiced attitude of fatalism, nothing whatever occurred to imperil us or even to slow us down until sundown and the darkening of the world.

  Weary from a long day in the saddle, we decided to make camp, eat, and take to our sleeping furs
. But a bit of excitement broke the monotony of the venture.

  A thundering hiss exploded like a jet of live steam. The slidars showed their fangs and bucked widely, eyeballs glistening with naked fear. A drift of innocent-looking yellow sand directly in our path erupted as if a dynamite charge had been set off beneath it.

  And out of its hidden lair a sandcat scrambled, roaring for meat and blood!

  Usa screamed as her slidar reared, kicking and squealing in panic terror, throwing her from the saddle. Claws rasping against harsh stone, the scarlet monster hurled itself upon her prone body.

  It had all happened so suddenly that even the experienced hunters among our guard of warriors were frozen with shock. I knew that the terrible predators prowled the highlands of the plateau regions���I had even heard they made their dens in pits and crevices, which they somehow roofed over with sand, not unlike Earth’s humbler little predators, the trapdoor spiders. But even I was not prepared for this emergency.

  The thing was nine feet of slithering scarlet ferocity, armed with monstrous claws that could gut a full-grown slidar at a single slash, and it was virtually unkillable, at least with the bronze or copper spears with which our guards went armed.

  The sandcat looks very much like a sort of crimson tiger, but it is really not a feline or even a mammal, but a reptile, cold-blooded, rapacious, and clad in tough horny scales. This mailed hide is impervious to even the deadly blowdarts, and bronze-bladed weapons lack the hardness of point to pierce the sandcat in a vital organ. An iron spearhead, or better yet, one of steel, would have made sandcat-hunting far easier than it is; but iron, of course, is the rarest of metals on this ancient world.

  In the milling chaos, fighting to gain control of our fear-maddened steeds, we could not even get at the sandcat with what weapons we did have.

  Ilsa shrieked again. Through a momentary chink in the mass of churning limbs and whirling bodies, I saw the crimson horror ripping and tearing at Ilsa’s fallen steed. Another flying glimpse, and I saw she lay pinned under the slidar.

  Beside me at that moment, Bolgov clung to his wildly bucking mount. I saw the pistol butt in its holster at his thigh. In the next split second I was off my slidar���half-falling and half-jumping clear of the saddle.

  I fell to one knee. Scrambled up, lunging through the whirling dust to where Bolgov clung with both arms to the neck of his beast. Then I snatched the weapon from his holster and staggered through a sudden opening in the crowd of surging beasts and yelling men.

  Dropping to one knee, I steadied the gun against my forearm and fired point-blank at the scarlet horror. It was a ,34V General Electric lasergun. A pencil of brilliant red light drew a line of sparkling fire between the muzzle and the cat. The gloom lit around us with a ruddy glare.

  The sandcat squalled! Bit furiously at its seared shoulder, where the lance of intolerable fire had blackened the glistening, scaly hide. I fired again���aiming at the throat���missed, and it saw me. Somehow that cold reptilian intelligence guessed that it was I who had caused it the hurt. It left the mangled hulk of the slidar and threw itself at me so swift it was only a red blur in the dimness.

  I fired the lasergun again, but this time without even taking aim, letting pure instinct serve. Again the needle of ruby fire licked out, lighting the gloom with its weird, lambent glow. Then something about the weight and speed of a turbotrain slammed into me and knocked me flying. I crashed head first into solid rock and slid away from everything for a time.

  1 awoke from darkness slowly, my skull cracking open in the throes of a headache of epic proportions. There was a strange odor heavy in my nostrils. I lay there, blinking

  The Man Who Loved Mars 101 fuzzily at blackness, wondering vaguely what it was that I was smelling.

  Then everything came back to me at once���the sandcat ���Ilsa! And I half-sprang up from the rocky ground where I had been sprawling. And settled back with a groan, gritting my teeth as bright agony ripped through my brain. Tenderly, I raised one hand to my throbbing brow: it came away wet and sticky.

  A tall shape stooped over me. I could make out a heavy, grim face and a russet furcap, gray at the temples.

  “Kuruk?”

  “Lord! Are you hurt���?”

  “The cat?”

  He laughed a bit shakily and said, “Dead, Lord. Broiled to death, like a gobbet on the griddle!”

  Then it was that I recognized the heavy odor that lay thick in the air about us. It was the unmistakable aroma of broiled meat.

  Kuruk helped me to rise and wet a cloth from his wax-hide canteen to bathe my brow. Men stood laughing and talking around the immense corpse of the sandcat. They parted to let me limp through, and there it was, stone dead, its whole head a ragged, crisped mass of steaming meat.

  By sheer luck the laserbeam had caught it in the eye, perhaps, or square in its open mouth, between fanged and gaping jaws. The fiery needle had pierced to its brain, cooked it alive, exploding the sandcat’s head like a rotten apple.

  Ilsa was white and shaken, but unharmed, save for a bruise or two and a few scratches. I grinned at her through the gloom and warmed at her tremulous, answering smile.

  Prince Kraa was jubilant and thrilled: he had never seen one of the F’yagha energy weapons in action before, it seemed. From the amazed faces of the warriors and the awe in their voices, it would seem they regarded my accidental slaying of the charging sandcat as something in the nature of a miracle. 1 grinned wryly, aware that my reputation had just gone up another notch in their estimate.

  Hands trembling a bit with the nervous reaction from the flurry of excitement, Dr. Keresny hauled out the medi-kit and treated my scalp wound with something cool and slick and sulfur smelling. He snapped a suction bandage in place and pronounced me fit for duty.

  We mounted and rode forward for a time, even though the darkness was all but impenetrable by now. Sandcats are loners and tolerate the presence of another of the species but briefly once a year, during the rutting season; but there must be more of the scarlet horrors on this part of the plateau, and the stench of cooked meat would draw them like flies before the corpse was cold. And I did not feel up to facing five more sandcats, even with a lasergun in my hands.

  Eventually we found a cozy nook, a bowl-shaped hollow ringed with ridged hills. It was too damn dark to tell whether it was another of the omnipresent craters or a natural formation, but it hardly mattered, and we were ravenous for food and aching for sleep. We ate swiftly and without words, under the winter-sharp glitter of the many-colored stars, and crept away to sleep. The Moon Dragon warriors curled up in those heavy sacks of orthava fleece they call “sleeping furs,” but we Earthside types chose thermal tents and inflatable mattresses.

  My head was troubling me again, so I took a pill and slid off over the edge of sleep. The last thing I heard before sleep claimed me was the squeak of boots crunching in sand grit as the guards of the first watch paced slowly about the perimeter of our rock bowl.

  But I awoke to startled yells!

  I had been so worn out the night before that I had not even bothered to take off my thermal suit but had slept in it. Hence, I was on my feet and fumbling to unseam the tent at the first yell and a moment later stood blinking in the sun’s glare, still not quite fully awake and a bit groggy from the sedative.

  I saw at first glance what had aroused the startled outcries. I don’t know just what I had expected���maybe another sandcat, out for an early-morning prowl���but this was quite a different breed of intruder.

  It stood about four meters high and glared down at us from sightless eyes, massive arms folded upon its breast. I stood, panting, waiting for my racing heart to slow down a little, looking back at it.

  A hand was on my arm. I turned; Ilsa, face flushed from sleep, hair a warm odor on the keen dawn air, eyes filled with marvel.

  “What on earth . ..!”

  I forced a laugh. “Mars, rather! Another no-trespassing sign, like the on
e back in Hareton Rill; but a trifle more artistic this time.”

  The Doctor was at our side now, shivering in the cold as he seamed up his thermal suit and turned up the heating clement. His wondering gaze studied the tall black thing with delight.

  “Very ancient work,” he mused half-aloud. “From the style, at least; but look at the surface condition of the stone. Smooth and slick as glass … It should be weathered, pitted, scarred … Could it be onyx? Hardly likely! Diorite?”

  Just beyond the sloping entryway that led into the rock bowl (which, I now saw, clearly was an impact crater), stood a tall, glassy pillar of jet-black stone, whose upper half was beautifully sculptured into the likeness of a frowning Martian giant: one of the ushongti, the guardian genii of legend, with the traditional three-horned brow, elongated earlobes, and hideous tusks hooked down over its pendulous lower lip. We had passed it in the darkness without seeing it last night, when we rode down into the crater to make camp. Some sleepy guard, trudging a weary circuit around the camp this morning, must have almost walked into the glaring stone monster before he noticed it. I grinned at the picture: I would have let out a yell myself, had I come upon the thing unaware!

  Keresny clambered up the steep slope of the ringwall to its crest and summoned us excitedly.

  “Look! Look!” he crowed, face agleam with the scientist’s exultation at a discovery. We followed his trembling, pointing finger and looked.

  Straight as a die, from the edge of the crater to the horizon, a fantastic double row of stone ushongti marched into the distance. There must have been ten thousand of the sculptured black diorite monoliths!

  “Look at the lane between the rows,” Ilsa cried. “It’s as smooth as a road! Not a crater or a crevice or even a fallen boulder!”

  An unholy glee blazed in Keresny’s eyes.

  “It is a road, my dear. The road to llionis!”

  I said nothing. But I had a horrible feeling he was right.