The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (56 page)

By the time I get up to the top, Elias has been there
for a few minutes, and found himself a place to sit on a relatively
flat rock. He does have a view from here all around, including
across the valley to the north. It’s huge and beautiful—I can see
the extent of the green, spreading from the south out into the main
valley, where it thins to scrub again in the so-called Hot
Zone.

Except it isn’t a radioactive waste. There’s a lake
there. We just can’t see it. I try. I can’t. The distant Barrow and
the hills of the Peninsula are bare and uninviting (and probably
what read as the most toxic spots). Even the sky looks normal, no
telltale disturbances in the dust haze drifting east, no clouds,
nothing of that other world.

Elias looks my way just long enough to acknowledge my
arrival, then goes back to staring into the illusion. There’s a
slight smile on his lips, almost like he can see through it, see
the hand of Yod. I pick a reasonably flat rock and sit down beside
him—I have to shift my sword scabbard as I do. I settle
awkwardly.

“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” I try, sharing the
view.

“It was,” he agrees lazily. “Still is.”

“It’s still there,” I assume we’re talking about the
same thing. “Just
really
well hidden. Can’t risk us mucking
up paradise…”

He doesn’t respond, just keeps gazing across the
valley with that vague grin. So we sit together, side-by-side.

“This is the first time I’ve been outside,” he
mutters after a few minutes.

I nod. Then feel like I need to add:

“Hell of a first trip.”

He gives me a chuckle.

Carefully, I draw my sword, lay the blade across my
knees, balanced in my palms. The pattern in the metal swirls almost
imperceptibly slowly, the effect soothing, almost hypnotic. I feel
nothing in particular, no urge, no rage, only vaguely hungry.
Still.

I realize I’m not desiccating the sparse plant life
I’m in contact with. I heft the blade and listen. If anything, I
think I hear the word “ready” whispering in the back of my brain.
But then perhaps I do feel something: a sense of contented
otherness, hovering like a ghost behind that word “ready”.

“Everything seems to be under control,” I decide,
though I’m really not sure.

“They really are very pretty things,” my brother
assesses, looking at the sword.

“I think that’s the point.”

I turn, look back over my shoulder, back down the
hill the way I came, and spot the rest of our odd party. They’ve
stopped to wait for us. (Courtesy? Or still not confident that our
swords are under control?)

“We should go,” I prod, getting uncomfortable,
feeling like I’m holding them up from something important. I put my
sword away (still without complaint), get to my feet, dust off my
legs. Then I prompt my brother playfully: “You’re supposed to be
keeping me out of trouble.”

He stands up somewhat reluctantly, like he doesn’t
want to leave the view. He reaches absently into the satchel of
supplies that Jane and Cal gave us, pulls out a piece of fruit, an
apple, and hands it to me. Then he pulls out another for himself,
and takes a bite from it like it’s the most delicious, perfect
thing he’s ever tasted.

He savors it for a long moment, then he gives me a
gentle slap on the shoulder plate with his free hand, and starts
walking down hill, eating his apple with gusto.

“Let’s go see if we can find you some trouble.”

I take a bite out of my own apple as I follow
him.

“Huh…”

It’s very sweet.

Jak Straker:

Rounding the eastern tip of the Spine takes us out of
the evening winds. We’re in the shadow of the mountain, but Terina
assures us we’ll make it before dark, before we need to
shelter.

The massive box canyon that Katar sits in effectively
bifurcates the eastern tip of the Spine, turning it into a
two-pronged fork. It’s nearly five klicks deep into the range,
though the side walls are lopsided, with the south wall being a few
klicks longer than the north. Crest-to-crest, it’s about three and
a half klicks wide, but only a klick wide down in the bottom, which
slopes gently upwards until it hits the steeper slopes of its
terminus, at which point it climbs sharply up to the main crest of
the range. Most of either side wall is as high as the crest of the
range, only descending to the valley floor very close to their
end-points. So the Spine Range
could
just as well be called
The Fork, assuming we’re talking about a fork with two long and
somewhat curved prongs. A fork inside a fork.

Inside, it’s rich with greenery that climbs up nearly
half the height of the steep rocky walls, thick and tall enough in
the bowl to effectively hide a settlement in. This means there’s
also plenty of food, but I don’t see obvious signs of foraging. In
fact, except for our path in being somewhat packed down, I see no
real sign of habitation, especially not by a sizable population.
Assuming their only competitors—the Pax and Forge—know full well
where they live, I have to wonder who they’re hiding from. (Unless
they’re worried that their trails and any over-gathering would be
detectable from orbit?)

There’s a sense of elation from everyone around me,
the end of a long journey (and a costly, brutal one, if I can judge
by their current numbers as compared to what they tell me they
started with). Katar may be their salvation. But there’s also a
healthy helping of apprehension. What if Terina isn’t as
trustworthy as she appears? Or if she doesn’t have as much pull
with her people as she thinks she does? Things may have changed
since she left on her delegation to the Forge, given all the bot
attacks, and the fact that she’s returning with exactly none of
whatever party she left with, only and odd and rough-looking mix of
strangers (and armed strangers at that).

Me, I’m thinking this would be a perfect place for an
ambush. If we faced even a relatively small number of fighters with
a terrain advantage here, I’m not sure any of these people would
make it out of the canyon. (I would, I assume, given my new gifts.
But would I bother to? Would I just give in to my sword, let it
feed, perhaps slaughter an entire people to avenge my very recent
friends?) (And what would Ram do to me if I did?)

Looking around, making eye contact with my new
fellows as we walk, I realize I’m not the only one carrying such
dark expectations. The Ghaddar. Ambassador Murphy. Rashid. Even
young Ishmael (who’s clearly got a hook in him from the exotic
creature who conspicuously walks so close to him).

If Abbas is wary, he’s good at not showing it,
putting on the brave face for his people.

I find I’ve come to like them very quickly. I would
absolutely fight for them, bleed for them (though that may not mean
as much as it used to now).

But that only reminds me of the plight of my own
people: Hundreds of them, at the mercy of Upworld, completely
unaware of the new violence perpetrated against our brothers and
sisters who are still hanging on to either the “hope” of Syan Chang
or simply to home. (How many have died? Not knowing—being so far
away—weighs on me with every step.)

What is it I’m hoping for? Ram’s bigger play, uniting
the peoples of Mars against their mutual enemies, that we may face
Earth with the strength of unity… Will that help the holdouts at
Industry and Pioneer? Or will they all be dead in the ruins of our
homes by the time we manage to rise, to defeat Asmodeus and give
Upworld our terms from a position where we’re able to enforce
them?

In this big valley I feel very small, just one sword
against two worlds. (I expect I know what it feels like to be Mike
Ram.)

“Katar…” Terina breaks the silence, and breaks away
from Ishmael (though I see her hand give his a quick tug to follow
her). She runs to the front of our group, making herself hopefully
the first one seen as we step out of the taller-than-head-high
growth and into a relative clearing. The clearing stretches to the
base-slopes on either side, and is a good fifty meters across. In
front of us is a steep rise of terraces, stacking up a few dozen
meters, which I quickly realize is more than just a natural
feature. It’s a defensive wall, a lot like the one protecting the
Pax Hold Keep, except the only visible gap through it is very
narrow (less than ten meters) and not straight—it appears to wind
through the “wall” at angles. From here, it’s impossible to tell
how long the passage is—we could just as well be looking at a
plateau that stretches all the way back to the canyon terminus,
which is still at least half a klick beyond.

Terina gestures for us to stay put, and steps further
out in front of us. The thought flashes in my head that she may
just be getting herself out of the firing line. That doubt gets
reinforced and suddenly the terraces of the “wall” sprout well over
a hundred archers, warriors in plate and scale armor painted with
patterns of rust red and yellow ochre and green. Either they post
forces like this on their perimeter habitually, have started doing
so with the arrival of Asmodeus, or (very likely) saw us coming
from well before we entered their valley. (Even seeing Terina with
us, they may have assumed that she was our prisoner.)

Terina makes a series of broad hand gestures, then
stands as if waiting for a reply. The archers don’t budge. But
after the better part of a tense minute, there’s movement from the
gap of the “gate”. And it’s very weird.

It’s a man, slim like she is and wearing the painted
armor, carrying a weapon that looks like a curved sword on a pole,
but he’s riding on something tall, something with four skinny legs.
It’s also covered in painted armor, but it isn’t until it gets
closer that I realize it’s
wearing
it, not made of it. Where
there isn’t metal, I see skin covered in fine short black hair.
It’s alive. Another animal, taller than a man at the top of its
long narrow head and slightly longer than that from nose to rear.
The man is in some kind of seat strapped to the creature’s back,
and the creature appears to tolerate the situation easily. As it
stops in front of Terina, the creature makes a loud snorting sound
through broad nostrils, and shakes it’s armored head as if in some
kind of greeting. The warrior sitting on it doesn’t move, just
looks us over with deep, dark eyes. He has the same red-dyed skin
as Terina, with sharp lines and black hair and beard frosted gray
under his helmet.

“Friends, father,” she greets him. “Brave warriors
from the far west. They saved my life, saved me when the Black
Clothes killed my party and took me prisoner. They seek shelter, a
new home, because the Unmakers have come back, and have poisoned
and attacked theirs. They are also enemies of the Black Clothes,
and know how to fight their machines. They have made allies of the
Pax and the Steel, and would ally with us…”

The warrior listens but doesn’t seem to react. But
then he climbs down off his ride, steps past his daughter to face
us. Abbas steps forward to greet him, flanked by Murphy and the
Ghaddar. (I decide the better part of discretion is to hang back,
given my metallic eyes and the Unmaker uniform.)

Abbas tells him who we are, what we want, what we
offer. I see the warrior eye the swords they carry, the gifts of
the Forge. Terina draws one of her gift daggers and hands it to him
hilt-first. He looks it over, but doesn’t take it.

“I am well, father,” she seems to need to tell him.
“These people have treated me as their own family, even when I was
a poor guest.”

Still, we get little more than his glare of menace
and disdain. But he turns, climbs back on his armored animal, and
says his first words to us as a barked order:

“Come. Keep your weapons down.”

He turns his mount and proceeds slowly back to the
gap. Terina gives us a nod, and we follow him cautiously.

The gaps does wind at angles through steep stone
walls for fifty meters or so, zig-zagging, the path rising as it
goes. When we pass through the wall, it’s only five or six meters
high behind us on this side. And ahead of us, across another open
defensive space, is…

“Okay.
That
is cool.”

The God Mars continues in
Book Five: Onryo

Author’s Acknowledgement:

You may have noticed that all of the titles for
Erickson’s chapters are titles of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs
(all but one of them from his “Barsoom” series, and that one was
when Erickson was particularly out of his element). This is because
Erickson is a big fan, and so am I. I loved reading Burroughs when
I was a kid, and his books did inspire me to try my hand at “Sword
and Planet” fiction, which has become part of my own Mars series.
Now I know titles are (usually) not copyright protected, and
Burroughs’ books have been slipping into Public Domain, but I
wanted to take the words here to express my utmost respect and
appreciation for the master. Mr. Burroughs, this one’s for you.