The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (17 page)

It’s not just the inability to see what’s immediately
around us: Unless we come across a sizable clearing (and the most
sizable one we found was barely large enough to fit half of our
troupe standing), we can barely see the course of the sun to give
us a sense of direction, and we only get glimpses of the
not-so-distant Rim slopes through the tree tops. This “forest” (as
Murphy and my father tentatively name it, while Azrael uses the
word as if he’s had direct experience of such things) is almost
completely disorienting, especially after days trudging and pushing
through it. I could never imagine choosing to live in a place like
this, to hunt or to fight or to defend without being able to see
any significant distance, much less maintain geographic
orientation. We must rely entirely on Terina’s familiarity with the
place to stay our course, which I keep careful track of on my
maps.

But I look at Terina now, and she looks just as
disturbed by this storm as we are, as what it implies is sinking in
for all of us.

“Do the morning winds ever blow like that, your
highness?” my father asks her, trying to make it sound like an idle
question.

“Not like that,” she measures out her words. She,
too, is staring apprehensively south, in the direction of what she
calls the Boundary: the ten-kilometer-wide gap that partially joins
the roughly parallel North and Central Blade valleys. “The wind
currents do come from the south-southeast across the Boundary,
funneled from the Central Blade, but they’re rarely so strong, and
never with so much dust.”

That dust swept over us like a moving cliff wall,
eliminating all visibility for several minutes. Now the green
around us is all frosted with fine rust-colored grit, as are we
all. I watch as Terina gathers some of the dust from a Graingrass
leaf the size of a man’s arm, playing it between her fingertips,
then tasting it.

“Magnetite. Maghemite. Ulvite,” she gives the
assessment of a master geologist. “This came from the Grave.”

“And
we’ve
seen dust blows like this before,”
the Ghaddar says what many of us are certainly thinking.

“Stormcloud,” Murphy agrees grimly.

It’s not unexpected, given what Terina’s told us has
been happening here in her homelands. But the storm implies that
Chang may be done rebuilding and is ready to fly again. Unless…

“But it only lasted a few minutes,” I try, “and it
just rose and faded.”

“Perhaps a test, assuming this
is
a new
fortress he’s building,” the Ghaddar allows.

“Hell of a test,” Murphy appraises. “It looked like
it filled the whole Blade and the one next door.”

“Have there been other unusual dust storms like this,
your highness?” my father asks Terina.

“There was a strange storm when the Black Clothes
first came in their flying machines, but that storm was not nearly
so big or so blinding. We could see them pass, even from our
Mountain: A half-dozen large cross-shaped vessels with big fans
underneath, followed by a similar number of long tubes filled with
gas, also moved by fans. We saw them all land inside Lucifer’s
Grave. They would make clouds again, usually when the ships came
and went, but only a haze.”

“Probably just enough to defeat the Unmaker satellite
eyes,” the Ghaddar guesses.

“Did you see where the ships went?” my father
asks.

“Usually east or south, not west or north, and not
toward my city, and only at night. Each time they returned, days
later, they were carrying large loads of what looked like colony
scrap. A bigger storm came when they made their city-ship fly,
though it did not fly very far: Just up out of the Grave and down
again. It was many times bigger than their other flying ships, but
it looked skeletal, mostly framework, unfinished. But even then,
the clouds barely filled the belly of the Blade, and soon were
blown away by the Sun Winds, thin. Not like this.”

“It’s getting closer to operational,” the Ghaddar
assesses.

“Assuming it isn’t already,” my father considers the
worst.

“Could it have passed over us in the cloud?” I
wonder.

“The storm would have shifted, moved with it,” the
Ghaddar discounts. “It didn’t pass by us. It faded away.”

“Perhaps he moved east down the Fork, away from us,”
I guess again.

“Which would be good for the locals,” Murphy
considers. “Maybe he’s packed up and moved on…” He trails off when
he sees Terina turn east, in the direction we’ve been heading. Her
big eyes are wider with fear.

I open my map, look over the annotations I’ve made
based on Terina’s descriptions: the regions known as the North,
Central and South Blades; Lucifer’s Grave, in the Central Blade;
the rough borders of the Pax Lands in the North Blade; and the Home
Mountain, the east-west island range they call the Spine of the
Fork, where Katar lies, protected in a box canyon on the far east
end of that range (now only a dozen klicks or less from us—we could
be there by sunset, even in this terrain, our long journey
ended).

I trace a flight-path: If Chang did move south from
the Grave, he’ll pass within a few klicks of Katar. If his bot or
human patrols have found Terina’s home…

I feel a fresh sinking in my gut. I think I
understand why Erickson ran into the storm.

“He’s headed for the Grave,” I think aloud, then
clarify when I realize I’m being paid attention to, the others
gathering around to look at my map. “Carter. He’s gone after Chang.
Maybe Azrael did, too, if he detected anything before we woke
up.”

“If Chang is gone, our young Jinn is headed for an
empty hole,” my father assesses. “If not, he’s headed into an army
of bots, Jinn-killers.”

“So do we follow him?” Murphy repeats his earlier
question.

My father digests our options, but we all have the
same look on our faces: Urgency balanced against fear. The smart
choice, the safer choice, would be…

“No,” my father decides. “We keep moving on our
current course, keep to this side of the Spine Range, get our
people—and the princess—to Katar, to safety…”

“Assuming Chang isn’t there,” I surprise myself by
blurting out. Terina’s eyes lock on me, letting me know I’ve spoken
her dread.

“We’re still safer on
this
side of the
mountains, out of sight-line,” my father focuses on immediate
concerns.

Murphy is ignoring us. He’s checking his revolver
load.

“I’m going after him.”

“To drag him back, or to get a look at the Grave
yourself?” the Ghaddar confronts him. He gives her a little
lopsided grin that reminds me of Colonel Ram. “Either way, you’ll
need help.”

My father looks frustrated, ambivalent, torn between
protecting our people and what he really wants to do. Then I make
his choice more difficult:

“I want to go, too.”

He looks like he’s going to say no. His eyes narrow.
His face hardens and his brow wrinkles like he’s in pain. Then he
surprises me by nodding his consent.

“Go with God, my son.”

I want to burst. I want to embrace him. My vision
blurs with tears.

“I can show you the way,” Terina eagerly
volunteers.

“No, Highness,” my father stops her. “Please. If your
home is in danger, we are on the quickest route. And we need you to
vouch for our passage.”

She stands frozen, divided. I realize she’s looking
into my eyes. Wishing me luck? (Success? Or safe return?)

“Come on, lad,” Murphy prods me. “We can’t get
too
lost.”

I give my father a reassuring nod, grab spare
canisters and ammo, and jog into the green with my two braver and
far more dangerous companions.

We quickly decide to try to follow Erickson’s trail
through the maze of wild plant-life. Otherwise, we only have a
general direction to the place known as Lucifer’s Grave, roughly
south-southwest of our camp and perhaps five kilometers across the
Boundary into the Central Blade. The Ghaddar and Ambassador Murphy
are both excellent trackers, though Murphy has far more experience
hunting enemies in dense greenery from his service at Tranquility
(and even that was usually limited to the inside of the Cast Dome).
Thankfully, the dusting left by the storm leaves obvious signs of
Erickson’s hurried passing—even a child on his first scouts could
follow it like the path had been drawn for him.

Within minutes, we cross the Boundary into the
Central Blade, a border conveniently drawn by a semi-buried Feed
Line. I feel a pang of frustration as I realize we’re moving
away
from the goal we’ve been seeking for the last three
weeks.

Those weeks replay now as I weave and climb through
the daunting and disorienting green, as if I’m weighing a wasted
effort: We weathered the cutting winds of the Narrows, then the
heights and drops of the terraced and fissured Badlands (thankfully
with Terina as our guide, otherwise we could have been finding our
way for many weeks, with thin air and sparse local resources making
the trek more desperate). Then it was down into the unbelievably
thick growth of the North Blade, the Pax Lands. Unchallenged
(except by the dense green), we crossed the gap of the Boundary,
paralleling it, careful to avoid the attention of bot patrols
(which we have yet to see, despite Terina’s warnings), finally
making it yesterday evening to the western tip of the Spine Range,
the Home Mountain of the Katar.

We haven’t seen another living soul despite Terina’s
vague but adamant warnings about the Pax and their absolute control
of the North Blade, but she would stop us in our tracks every few
klicks, starting as we came up upon the ruin of the original Pax
colony, and its fantastic swarm of giant “butter-flies”. She would
warn us to keep our weapons lowered, then find a relatively clear
spot to stand, bare her long left forearm and hold it overhead,
showing the forest an ornate circular tattoo on her dyed-red skin.
After several minutes of silence she would gesture us to move on.
If anyone was close enough to have seen us through the growth, even
the Ghaddar didn’t sense them. (Though Azrael did seem to become
more alert just prior to each of Terina’s stop-and-gesture rituals,
his blue eyes scanning like he
could
actually see through
the plants.)

“Pax Hunter Party,” she explained on the third such
pause. “They know I went to seek aid, but you are not who they
expected me to return with. They will let you pass in peace if you
do not linger or stray from our course.”

It would be easy to assume she was just bluffing to
maintain her control over our direction and intention, that there
was no one watching us, but then we would find small gifts of fresh
food left inside our camp each morning despite our sentries’ best
vigilance (including mine, when it was my shift). Terina would bow
to the forest before collecting these bundles, which contained
bread, nuts and fruit in packages made of large Graingrass leaves.
I could only imagine trying to fight an enemy that stealthy, in
growth too thick to see past point-blank range and too strangling
(and noisy) to move effectively through if retreat was required. If
Terina hadn’t been with us, we could have been facing an enemy even
more dangerous than the Silvermen, and probably would have been
decimated in ambush as soon as we approached the unmarked Pax
borders. If we had not managed to rescue her, to befriend her and
make our pact, our quest would have ended in massacre.

But when we began to travel the length of the
Boundary, I started to see Terina actually look afraid for the
first time, and she didn’t show fear even facing torture, death and
perhaps worse at the hands of the “Black Clothes” at Concordia. She
regularly told us that we were lucky to avoid the bot patrols,
telling tales of the slaughter of hunting parties (and then war
parties) by monsters that by her descriptions sound like variations
of the Boxes and Bugs that Chang used against us in Melas, machines
specifically designed to fight far stronger and hardier enemies
like the Jinn or Colonel Ram and his kind. Perhaps their absence is
sign that Chang has indeed packed up and moved his base
elsewhere.

Still, we kept well to the north side of the
Boundary, only approaching to tap the line for what we needed.
Terina started breathing easier when we made camp last night at the
base of western tip of the Spine Range, on the northern side, as if
being out of sight-line of the Central Blade (her people’s
territory, at least until Chang drove them from it) was a modicum
of safety.

All that was left was to travel the length of the
Spine Range, then pass into Katar with Terina’s permission.

She hasn’t said much about her city, her
civilization, possibly still wary enough of us to not want to
reveal their numbers, defenses or assets (only to say that no force
has ever passed the “Gate Wall”). She has called her father “War
King,” but has spoken in passing of other co-rulers: A Merchant
King, an Art Craft King, a Science King, possibly making up a
council representative of different occupations, perhaps familial
castes. She’s given no indication of a single supreme leader over
the others. I can only barely imagine a place beyond anything I’ve
yet seen in my travels, including the partner-civilization of
Tranquility. A fantastic place in a fantastic land, populated by
fantastic people (and beautiful, if they are all of Terina’s
quality).

(She’s also not answered any of our questions about
the Pax. Either the two neighboring peoples keep secret from each
other, or sharing such details with strangers would be a breach of
trust.)

As if a graphic reference could make me feel more
comfortable in my disorientation, I keep checking my flashcard.

On my satellite image maps, the Trident is rather
lopsided and bent: The North Blade is broader overall than the
Central, if only because it’s partly open to the rest of Coprates
on its north side, making its boundaries less-defined. Both North
and Central are roughly twenty klicks long, and around ten wide at
their broadest points, while the South Blade is a steep-walled,
narrow gorge that cuts west-southwest into the Divide Rim. Inside
that gorge lays the site of Eureka Colony, fate unknown, but if it
faired as badly as any of the others we’ve seen, there’ll be
nothing there but stripped and buried ruins.