Space: 1889 & Beyond—A Prince of Mars

By Frank Chadwick

Copyright 2012 by Frank Chadwick

Space: 1889™ & © Frank Chadwick 1988, 2012

Cover & Logo Design © Steve Upham and

Untreed Reads Publishing, 2011, 2012

Cover Art © David Burson and Untreed Reads Publishing, 2012

Space: 1889 & Beyond developed by Andy-Frankham-Allen

The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Other Titles in the Space: 1889 & Beyond Series

Journey to the Heart of Luna

Vandals on Venus

The Ghosts of Mercury

Abattoir in the Aether

Dark Side of Luna

http://www.untreedreads.com

“A PRINCE OF MARS”

By Frank Chadwick

For Diana,

once she’s old enough to read it.

Prologue

1.

“My prince,” Shistomo said as he entered the small sitting room, and he bowed to the room’s sole occupant. His companion smiled in appreciation, leaf-like ears twitching with pleasure, but he waved away the title with a hand heavy with gold and silver rings.

“Not a prince yet, my friend, but soon, ah? Soon the usurpers will be overthrown and the Old Order restored.” He held up a paper bearing the remains of a red clay seal disk, the mark of official correspondence. “I have just received the final assent. All four of the Charoni princes have agreed to support our plan—unofficially, of course.”

“Of course,” Shistomo said. “Although you have the letters, My Prince, which might embarrass them should the plan…enjoy less success than we hope.”

“Oh, they were careful enough about that. All are from minor functionaries in their administrations and all are in code, with separate ciphers. I suppose if they want to distance themselves, they can claim I invented the ciphers to make innocent communications appear sinister. It does not matter. What matters is their assent. They will place no obstacle in our path.”

“Nor will they assist us in any meaningful way,” Shistomo said.

“It is as it should be,” his companion answered with a graceful gesture. “Our destiny is now in our own hands.”

In my hands, you mean, Shistomo thought to himself, but he smiled and nodded. Shistomo would gladly make a hundred new princes, let them all rule by murderous whim and live in shocking opulence, and never himself take so much as a copper ring in repayment, all provided it would speed the day when Stafraana—Syrtis Major, as the British devils called it—was reduced to a smoking ruin, stained red with Earthman blood.

2.

EXCERPT 44.

“Beyond the Inner Worlds: The Journal of Professor Nathanial Stone” (Published July 2011, by Chadwick Press).

Monday, September 16th, 1889.

It has been six days since the destruction of Peregrine Station, six days filled with anxiety and boredom in equal measure, a combination I never before contemplated, let alone experienced.

My anxiety is both particular and general. That swine Le Boeuf made a proper job of poor Annabelle’s leg and she suffers most grievously. The aether cutter, which I appropriated for our escape, was stocked with some basic medical supplies—alcohol, carbolic acid, fresh dressings, that sort of thing, along with a very useful copy of Blackwood’s Pocket Physician. I was able to clean her wound and bandage it, so I hope to avoid infection. Since removing the bullet, I also extracted bone fragments from the wound. Le Boeuf’s revolver bullet clearly broke one of the two bones of her lower leg, the tibia I believe if I have read Blackwood correctly, and so I made an effort to set and splint it as well. She does not have a fever—and thank God for that!—but her behaviour has become erratic, her mind confused, and her sleep troubled by violent dreams. I have read this result often accompanies the escape of bone marrow into the bloodstream following a severe fracture. Laudanum eases her physical pain and dulls her mind—both outcomes welcome under the circumstances.

Cleaning and dressing her wound was one of the most distressing things I have ever done—as well as quite embarrassing to see her unclothed limbs, at least at first. If she had been wearing a dress it would have been easier, as it was the coverall she appropriated from Peregrine makes things somewhat more difficult. It mattered very little after a moment, however, in the face of her injuries. I don’t find that I am particularly squeamish about my own hurts, nor have I ever found the sight of my blood upsetting in the least. Seeing the damage wrought to dear Annabelle’s leg by that single revolver bullet, however, made me light in the head and weak in the stomach, and it was only with considerable difficulty that I did that which needed doing.

Were it within in my power, I think I should require all would-be generals and admirals to work in a field hospital for a month or so. Let them peer into pulped flesh and shattered bones, let them hold down a man (or woman) screaming in pain, and see how many are still anxious to send soldiers into that butcher’s arena afterwards.

Of course, the ones still willing to do it would be the first ones I’d strike off the list. But as the others would have surrendered their candidacy, there would then be no generals or admirals at all, and I suppose we need some.

My thoughts wander. That is the boredom at work. As perilous as is our situation, and as worrisome as is Annabelle’s condition, there are only so many things which can be done to deal with them, and those I have done, and done again, and done once more for good measure. Dealing with Annabelle’s injury has allowed me the distraction to take my mind off those lost on Peregrine. So many people…friends among them. No, I must not think of them, for there is naught I can do at this time.

I have also been reading up on Mars, from Conklin’s Atlas of the Worlds. I have, of course, read the entire section several times now, first from a sensible desire to prepare myself, and then from simple boredom. Now I wait.

My general anxiety is for the condition of the flyer. Our craft was struck by debris from the destruction of Peregrine. The hull leaks were comparatively easy to repair and I did so before we lost much of our oxygen. The aether propeller was damaged as well, but fortunately its external components were unharmed; the concussion of the explosion misaligned the internal armatures, but this I was able to correct, so we now are able to make a very good turn of speed. I expect to make Mars-fall within two days. I have no means to inspect the exterior of the craft, however, and so cannot observe whether the airscrew and lifting vanes are intact.

I suppose I shall determine that empirically in forty-eight hours.

Chapter One

“The Deadly Sand”

1.

The Two sat in the shade of the skrill’s enormous outstretched wing, watching the shadows creep across the bare rock and red sand, waiting for the mid-afternoon heat to pass. For a long time neither of them spoke.

The two were as different from each other as memory from anticipation. The younger of the two, the woman, was shorter, broad in the shoulders, and her skin, unlike her companion’s, was the swarthy ochre of the Martian hill people. She wore the leather harness and spurs of a skrill rider, the harness strapped over dirty blue robe and leggings, and her face bore the distinctive swirling red and black tattoos of a high hunter of the Numaka clan of the iTaka-Queln. Her thick red hair hung in a wild tangle almost to her waist, but twin braids to either side framed her face. Entwined in the braids were the yellow teeth of the Barrovaangian warrior she had slain as a young girl, nine seasons past. That act, one of simple self-preservation, had changed her life path and led her clan to make her the only female high hunter of the iTaka-Queln. She was a handsome woman, in her narrow-eyed and tight-lipped way.

No one would ever describe the older man’s ruined face as handsome in any way. Tall and slender, pale skin an odd contrast to his greying but still dark hair, he sat cross-legged on a flat rock. He carefully carved a long straight skrill horn, wearing away the bone with the point and dull trailing edge of his knife blade. A wonderfully intricate, twisting pattern already covered most of the length of the horn. The design reflected the shape of the woman’s tattoos, or perhaps of clouds torn to ragged streamers by a dust devil. He paused and flexed his cramping hand, then scanned the horizon and twitched his large, pointed ears, alert to any hint of wind. Nothing.

The woman stirred. “Reconsider,” she said.

“No.”

“Please.”

“No,” he answered, and smiled. “You see? I can be as taciturn as you, my ferocious huntress.”

“Voicing the claim puts lie to it,” she answered.

The man shrugged. He set aside his horn and went back to studying the desert. “Look at the horizon,” he said, and pointed. “Straight and sharp as a blade’s edge. No wind out there to raise the dust, and cool enough that there’s no shimmer. Your ride home will be smooth.”

“Why do you do this?” she asked.

“This is where the Queln come to face the long sleep…or to find it. You know that.”

“But you are not Queln.”

“Cruel Gillsa, would you deny me even that?” He touched his abdomen. “In here I am Queln. That has been enough for me.”

She turned and looked at him, studied him before speaking, and her hard eyes softened. “Kak’hamish Bent-Face, Far-Wandering Speaker of Tongues, Bright-Voiced Night Singer, ride with me back to the high aerie.”

“No,” he said. He touched her hand but his eyes remained on the horizon. “I have sung all my songs, Gillsa Brave-Flyer. Fair Gillsa. I have done everything in this world my hand is fit for, everything except finish this one last carving. There will be time enough for that before I sleep.”

They sat together in silence for a while longer, then the woman named Gillsa rose, touched the hair of the man named Kak’hamish, and turned away. She mounted the skrill, secured her riding harness, and leaned forward to whisper the words of command. The beast stretched its long, sinewy form, spread its lifting membranes, and rose silently from the desert floor. It circled twice and then, its wings rippling like waves on the deep canals, the skrill carried its rider south. Within moments they shrank to a speck in the sky, and then they were gone.

For a long time Kak’hamish watched the place in the sky where they had disappeared.

2.

THEY LIVED. So as crashes went, this one could have been worse.

Nathanial rubbed his bruised left shoulder as he surveyed the damage. Too many lift vanes carried away by Peregrine Station’s explosion, and an auxiliary boiler which gave up the ghost seventy miles above the surface of Mars, had combined to nearly put paid to them. A miracle he’d even been able to sit the cutter down in one piece—one big piece, in any case. Small bits of hull and external fittings decorated the quarter-mile-long trench his landing had ploughed in the reddish rock and sand. Most of the remaining lift vanes, for what good they’d done them so far, were gone, stripped away in the crash and now floating somewhere in the lower Martian atmosphere, carried heaven knew where by the wind.

He scanned the horizon in each direction. Nothing. Flat sand, rock, and a few rust-coloured thorn bushes stretched as far as his eyes could see, and his eyes were very good. Only the wreck of the aether cutter, and its quarter-mile debris field, defaced this enormous blank canvas.

Inside the cabin Annabelle moaned. Nathanial scrambled through the open hatch into the gloom of the interior. She stirred on the leather couch. He sat beside her and took her hand, and her eyes fluttered open.

“How are you feeling?”

She looked around the cabin, confused. “I had a dream. There was a little girl…she had dark hair.”

“Most little girls do, in my experience, except for the blonde ones. And there’s the occasional red-head, of course. Let’s have a look at that leg of yours.”

Nathanial first felt her forehead—warm. A bad sign. He gently peeled back the linen bandage on her lower leg, sodden with blood. The wound had opened again and the flesh around it seemed to glow with inflammation, as if in indignation over this gross violation.

“No, her hair was not just dark, it was black,” Annabelle said, her voice fainter, less certain. “So black it seemed to…to glow. Black as raven feathers. So black it shone blue in the light…so black…”

Her voice trailed off. He thought she had dozed, but she turned to face him and her eyes cleared.

“We crashed, didn’t we?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so. We both seem to have come through reasonably intact, but the cutter will never fly again, that’s certain.”

“Where are we?”

“I rather had my hands full coming down, I’m afraid, but I made a few observations before we hit. Given our angle of approach, I imagine we are somewhere northeast of the crown colony at Syrtis Major. I saw a city to our west, but quite far away. We seem to be well off of any regular trade route, so I don’t imagine we are likely to see any travellers.”

“And no one knows we were headed for Mars. We weren’t due, so we cannot be overdue, can we?” Annabelle laughed, and the momentary wildness in her eyes frightened Nathanial.

“Ah…precisely. I don’t see much alternative to a very long walk.”

She passed her hands over her face and gathered herself. “Yes. Well, you walk to that city and bring back help.”

She said it seriously, bravely, but Nathanial could see in her eyes that she knew it meant a death sentence for her. He would not come back in time. He probably wouldn’t live to come back at all.

Or was there a chance? It was certainly his best hope of survival: travel light and fast due west until he found either the city or a canal. All Martian cities were on canals, or the ruins of old canals.

Yes, strike the canal and then what? Should he head north of south? Of course, he didn’t know a single word of any Martian languages. How long would it take to make himself understood? How long to persuade someone to mount a rescue expedition?

How would he even find the cutter again in this featureless waste? Leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind him? And all that time, Annabelle would suffer alone, dying by inches, not knowing what had happened to him even if he reached civilisation, which as he thought about it, he realised was itself a rather dodgy proposition. The desert was probably overrun with all sorts of predators which would find him delicious.

No. He had promised her uncle he would see to Annabelle’s safety. He would not, could not, leave her here to perish alone. On the other hand, simply sitting down to die with her seemed a rather…Lilliputian final act for his life.

The truth was, aside from a few aches and bruises, he felt quite good physically. He expected that was due to the lower gravity—about eight or nine tenths of Earth’s as he recalled. He couldn’t just carry Annabelle, or not very far, but there was an abundance of now-useless steam and water piping lying about, and electrical wires to lash it together.

“You lived in the west,” he said. “What is that Red Indian contraption I’ve seen in photographs? The one they drag behind ponies?”

“A travois?” she answered.

“Yes, that’s it. I’ll wager I can do better than that.”

3.

NATHANIAL WALKED for two hours that first afternoon before learning the wisdom of resting during the heat of the day and walking at night. He and Annabelle sheltered under a simple lean-to tent formed from a canvas ceiling cover salvaged from the cutter. They talked a little, but Annabelle’s mind, clouded alternately by pain and laudanum, wandered too much for serious conversation. The air became very hot and close at sundown, but then cooled almost immediately.

He walked again after nightfall, his satchel slung over his shoulder, dragging his improvised travois upon which Annabelle rested with their provisions. They had plenty of provisions on the cutter, including water. The issue was weight, and he had largely solved that with several lifting vanes recovered from the wreck of the cutter. That was tricky work, and making a stable floating travois even more so, but the actual construction was the difficult bit. The engineering was trivial.

He had mounted the salvaged vanes under the four corners of the travois platform for stability, then settled Annabelle in the centre, as he knew she would shift position from time to time, and would cause the least disruption to trim of his “aero-travois,” as he thought of it. He’d mounted one adjustable lifter in the centre of the raft, which he could manually turn through ninety degrees and so adjust its lift from maximum to nil, letting him drop the sled when he was not hauling it. As it was, the raft did not completely negate the weight of its cargo, and for further stability rested on two long runners.

He had thought of all that, but had not thought to bring a warmer coat for himself and a rug for Annabelle. The desert was damnably cold once the sun disappeared.

Harnessed to the travois, he walked on in the soft blue glow of starlight, the land empty to the horizon and silent except for his own heavy breathing and the hiss of the sledge runners in the sand. The small twin moons of Mars, when they appeared, added little to the illumination, but the sky was so marvellously free of clouds that the stars themselves shed enough light he could almost imagine casting a shadow. He had never seen stars this luminous, nor had they ever seemed so close overhead, nor the sky itself so enormous. The featureless expanse of the desert, the silence, the stars, all combined to make him feel tiny, and to give this alien world an even more surreal aspect than would simple unfamiliar rock formations and coloration. Nathanial felt as if time stood still. He walked, but nothing around him changed. Perhaps they had died in the crash and this was purgatory.

What did change was his endurance. As the hours passed he became increasingly aware of the thinner Martian atmosphere. His lungs burned, as if he were walking on a sharp winter morning, and each lungful of air, necessary as it was, hurt more than the last. His legs began to fail as well. This was not a simple matter of fatigue, at least in the sense he knew it—a physical discomfort to be endured and overcome by force of will. It was genuine and mounting physical incapacity.

After two hours his legs became sufficiently weak that the small irregularities in the ground, dips and rises which before had passed without notice, now became obstacles which arrested his progress, and which required redoubled effort to surmount. He no longer had the goal of walking until morning, or walking for another hour. Now he simply thought in terms of one more step with this right leg, one more with his left, one more with his right… He had no idea how long he continued in this manner before he tripped over a rock and fell to the desert floor.

His heart raced, he felt the pressure of his blood pounding in his head, felt his vision dim, and for a terrible moment he feared his heart would burst. He lay there for a moment and then lifted his head, only to receive a sharp crack on the back of his skull which left him dazed and his vision filled with starbursts. He felt several more bumps against his head, less severe, and then a tug at his harness rig which drew him forward a foot or two through the sand, then stopped.

Mass, he reminded himself, was not the same as weight. The liftwood vanes cancelled most of the weight of the travois and its cargo, but none of its mass, and so it had the same momentum as it would have under normal circumstances, but hardly any friction to slow its progress. Well, he had served admirably as an anchor.

“Are you all right?” Annabelle asked as he crawled out from under the platform

Her voice sounded strange to him after so many hours of silence. He took a moment to catch his breath, and then he began laughing softly.

“What is it?” she asked. She raised herself on her good elbow, turning to get a better view of him. Her face, already lined with pain, darkened further with concern. “Why are you laughing?”

“I was just recalling, not that long ago—well, about five months, I suppose—I expressed a preference for exploring Luna over Mars. Do you know why? Because Luna is deserted, but Mars you see, well,” and he swept the horizon with his arm, “Mars is simply teeming with people. How can you explore some place where you can’t take five steps without stumbling over a temperance meeting, or at least a family picnic?”

She smiled weakly and lowered herself to the travois. She shifted her position, trying not to move her wounded leg or irritate her left arm, still secured in the sling Doctor Holmes had provided for her.

“Not much padding on those pipes, I’m afraid. It cannot be comfortable,” Nathanial said.

“I am fine,” she answered. “You must be very tired dragging me along. Perhaps later I’ll walk a bit.” She sighed and her eyes fluttered closed.

Nathanial pulled his goggles—necessary to protect his eyes from blowing sand—down around his neck and took another look at her leg, as much to put off walking again as anything. Her leg seemed swollen now, the skin tight around the wound.

He poured water in a tin cup and drank it slowly, one sip at a time, letting the water sit in his mouth before swallowing. He refilled the cup and added a scoop of sugar, let it dissolve, and then roused Annabelle and helped her drink it. She had no hunger but she needed nutrition and the sugar was all he could think of.

The feeling had come back to his legs, along with at least some strength. Time to walk.

4.

Kak’hamish sat waiting for his final, or perhaps next-to-final, sunrise. Although his stomach no longer protested its emptiness, he had grown weak from lack of water and food. He did not mind the weakness, welcomed it in fact, the way a tired man, once his daily work is done, welcomes drowsiness, the prelude to his rest. His night vision had failed him, however, and he regretted that. All night long he had been unable to see the carved horn he had finished two days earlier, the carving he had named in his soul “Gillsa’s Shadow-Scent”, because it lingered after her departure as her scent had after she left their bed in the morning. When the sun rose, he would see it again. It would be a good day. A perfect day.

The horizon, indistinct from soon-to-burn-off night mist, first grew grey and then pink. The line separating land from sky became more distinct, perfectly level, perfectly straight, unbroken—except for a tiny bump directly between Kak’hamish and where the sun would soon show itself. Kak’hamish stared at the dot and it seemed to move, even grow after a few minutes, the way a speck on the wall will seem to creep across it and sprout tiny legs if stared at long enough.

But this was not his imagination’s work. This was a person. The person trudged toward him, growing larger and more distinct with every step. This person, this interloper, annoyed Kak’hamish. This interloper marred Kak’hamish’s view of his last, perfect sunrise, and if the interloper reached him, the interloper would want to talk, would want to fill the perfect stillness of the morning with the noisy chatter of its voice.

Kak’hamish closed his eyes, breathed slowly and regularly, shed his irritation by force of will. He did not come to this place to have his final thoughts poisoned by ill feelings toward another. He had enjoyed many splendid sunrises. One more or less meant little, and his hope for a perfect final day was really no more than vanity, wasn’t it? What had he done to earn a perfect day?

So Kak’hamish sat with his eyes closed, silent and unmoving, feeling the warmth grow on his face and chest, and he imagined the sunrise which caused it. He imagined it without the interloper—the interloper who did not annoy him. Soon he heard the sound of the person’s footsteps and the irregular hiss of something dragging in the sand. The sound grew louder and closer, and when it seemed to thunder in his ears, when it seemed an avalanche which would sweep him away, it stopped.

Silence. No, not silence. Heavy breathing.

“What is it? Why have we stopped?” a soft, weak voice said.

“Some sort of Martian johnny just sitting here in the sand,” a second, stronger voice answered. “He’s not dead; I can see him breathing.”

Kak’hamish thought about all the things he might do to reduce this distraction to a minimum. Perhaps if he did not move, did not open his eyes, they would continue on their pointless death march and he would again be at peace. But lives cross, lives touch, and pretending otherwise never brings peace.

“He looks pretty far gone, and I can’t imagine he speaks a word of English,” the stronger voice said.

Kak’hamish opened his eyes. “I do, actually,” he said.

The Earthman was tall for his species, no more than a hand’s width shorter than Kak’hamish himself. The female’s face was pinched and lined with pain, illness, and anxiety. Both of them had characteristically Earth-human faces—squat and unattractive—but Kak’hamish was in no position to judge other people by their physical beauty. The man appeared tired, but for all the weight he drew in his improvised sledge, he also looked healthy and his clothes, a single dull-blue covering, were in good repair. They had not walked far, and yet, here they were. Very curious.

“You have crashed in the desert,” Kak’hamish observed. It was obvious after a moment’s consideration. How else could they have arrived here in this state?

The Earthman’s eyes grew wide and for a moment he gaped. “Hallo! How did you know that?”

Apparently he was not very bright, this Earthman. Kak’hamish smiled in reply. “I would stand to greet you, but I am too weak. I have been here without food or water for three days.”

“Nathanial, give him some water. Did you crash as well?” the Earth woman asked, concern in her voice.

“You will need your water,” Kak’hamish said, and the Earthman hesitated.

“In the desert, share,” she said. The phrase sounded awkward on her lips, as if she was accustomed to speaking it in a different language. Regardless of the language, her words were flat, absolute, not subject to negotiation. For a moment the Earth woman reminded him of Gillsa, and in that moment Kak’hamish knew he was lost. He sighed and took the canteen the Earthman offered.

5.

Annabelle trusted this odd fellow they’d stumbled across, but for the life of him Nathanial could not see why, unless her injury had put her completely off her head. There were too many unanswered questions about him, and his willingness to actually answer them did nothing to ease Nathanial’s suspicion. How had he come here? Brought by a giant flying lizard. Why? To sit and watch the sun and stars pass overhead until his eyes closed and never opened again. How did he know English? Travelled widely in his youth. These answers told them nothing. What sort of chap just sat down in the sand to die? That’s what Nathanial wanted to know. More to the point, was that the fellow from whom you wanted to take survival advice?

Several modest meals, a good deal of water, and a long day in the shade of their awning had partially restored the Martian’s physical strength, although he still looked as if a good wind would blow him over. His appearance did nothing to improve Nathanial’s confidence. A few rags barely covered his nakedness, and his only possessions were an old knife, a delicately carved ivory horn, and a small leather bag worn on a thong around his neck—some sort of medicine bag or fetish, Nathanial supposed.

But the fellow’s face was most arresting. He had clearly been horribly beaten at some point in his life, beaten with heavy solid objects, because human hands simply could not do that sort of damage without destroying themselves. His nose angled to the left and then back to the right. His left cheek bone was lower than the right. His lower jaw sat at perhaps a ten degree angle to the upper jaw, as near as Nathanial could tell, although it was difficult to be certain with most of the man’s teeth gone on the left side, along with some on the right. The fellow had the disconcerting habit of moving his jaw from side to side as he thought about something, scraping his few remaining teeth together, clack-clack. It reminded Nathanial of the sound a horse made worrying at its bit.

Beyond that, he made Nathanial feel…well, stupid. Kak’hamish—if that really was his name—had mentioned local herbal remedies which might help Annabelle’s wound. Nathanial had no faith in that sort of mumbo-jumbo, but to be polite had asked if they could find any nearby. To be polite. Instead of answering, Kak’hamish had looked to the right, then the left, his gaze taking in the featureless dead sand which stretched to the horizon in every direction, and then he had just looked at Nathanial with what might have been a smile on his grotesque face. He had said nothing, of course, but that was an insult in its way as well, as if the answer was so obvious it was not even worth voicing.

Nathanial had shown Kak’hamish his derringer, to let him know he could protect them from predators. Kak’hamish smiled again.

“We have nothing to fear from animals in the deadlands. Anything large enough to eat us would have starved long ago.”

That made perfect sense, which was all the more infuriating.

Now the bugger had drawn some sort of map in the sand.

“You see, we are here, in the Elzaam Deadlands, southeast of the city of Abak’hn, which the British call Aubuchon.”

“How far from the city are we, Kak’hamish?” Already Annabelle spoke to him as if he were a trusted friend, although Nathanial could not think of a reason why, save the unhinging of judgment consequent to an injury.

Kak’hamish studied the clouds for a moment and clacked his teeth in thought. “Perhaps one hundred English miles.”

Annabelle seemed to wilt, lying back onto the canvas sheet Nathanial had stretched for her.

“Perhaps you say?” Nathanial asked.

Kak’hamish clacked his teeth again and shrugged.

One hundred miles! How far had they already come? How far could he drag their aero-travois? How long would their water last? Surely not that long.

Kak’hamish added five lines to the map radiating from the city.

“Dry canal, northwest to Alclyon and the Aetherian Steppe beyond. Dry canal northeast to Hyblaeus. Dry canal, southwest to Siruahn. Dry canal due south to Olayaa. Dry canal, southeast to Sharranus―I think the British call it Cerebus.” The last line he drew seemed tantalizingly close to the X he had drawn marking their position.

“What is a dry canal?” Annabelle asked.

“One whose foundations broke generations ago,” Nathanial answered quickly. “They no longer hold navigable water but still serve as aquifers, as I recall.”

Annabelle looked at Kak’hamish who nodded in confirmation.

“What you call an aquifer is perhaps what we call a gardenway,” Kak’hamish said. “You must walk south, not west, and find the dry canal. There are occasional pools of water, but also many succulent plants. Herbs for your leg as well. Caravans follow the gardenways. You will find one, but if not, walking to Aubuchon is easier from there. It is a longer walk, but there is food and water along the way.”

“Shall you accompany us?” Annabelle asked.

Kak’hamish looked away, and for a change did not clack his teeth together. Suddenly the extent to which he and Annabelle were in an alien land struck Nathanial, washed over him like an icy wave. He knew about dry canals from reading a paragraph in Conklin’s, and that was nearly the sum of his knowledge of the Martian deserts. He did not know which plants had medicinal properties, or even which ones were edible. He could not speak a single word of any Martian language, so how could they even negotiate with a caravan, or tell them where they wanted to go?

“We…ah, would be most grateful for your assistance,” Nathanial heard himself say.

Kak’hamish looked at him, then at Annabelle, and he sighed.

6.

they trudged south for two nights, resting in the day. Nathanial sensed they should have found the dry canal bed by now, but they had not, and their water grew short. Nathanial drew the travois while the Martian ranged a bit ahead, making sure no irregularities of ground hazarded Nathanial’s progress. Kak’hamish hardly spoke, which was rather unnerving. To be precise, he had said nothing aside from, “there is a hole here,” and, twice, “careful for this rock.” Nathanial had begun to suspect that he might have betrayed them, deliberately led them in the wrong direction. Perhaps by now they would be at the city he saw from the air, had they but continued west.

With every step his suspicion grew

“You’re one of those Worm chaps, aren’t you? Worshipping death and all that? Not that I’m in a position to criticise anyone else’s religious practice. I only ask because I’ve heard your lot doesn’t care much for people from Earth.” Nathanial wasn’t sure why he’d said all that. The question should have been enough.

“I do not follow the Worm,” Kak’hamish answered. “If I did, you would not still live.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Nathanial answered. “You were in a rather bad way when we found you, and I am armed, you know.”

The Martian did not reply, which Nathanial at first interpreted as acceptance of his argument, but as the silence drew out he became less certain.

“So if you don’t mind me asking, do they worship some mythical giant worm?”

“The worm they worship is neither mythical nor giant,” Kak’hamish answered. “It is the worm which consumes us all when we embark upon the eternal sleep. They embrace the sleep.”

“As do you,” Nathanial said, “or at least so it seems to me.”

Kak’hamish did not answer for some time.

“That is true,” he said finally, “and I see where you might draw the conclusion you have. Time is a turning millstone. As surely as it grinds down the mountains, it wears all of us as well. You from Earth are a young people, full of energy and intoxicated by the promise of the future. We are a much older race. We have already fulfilled our promise, and then lost it, as will you in time. We have used our world up, and used ourselves up, so as a people we are preoccupied with endings. You will find a thousand theologies and philosophies here, all of them different, and yet all of them about the End of Things.

“But while my choice was personal and particular, for the followers of the Worm it is universal. While I have come to accept the end, they make a fetish of it, and then dole it out as if it were medicine for the world’s soul.”

That was the longest speech Nathanial could remember hearing from the chap. The words by themselves did not reassure him—anyone can speak words. His tone of contempt when describing the Worm cult, on the other hand, made Nathanial reasonably certain he was not a practitioner of that religion. But if, as he had said, there were thousands to choose from, and they all led to the grave, what consolation was that? The Wormy chaps might have killed them out of hand; perhaps this fellow’s beliefs involved dispensing false hope first.

“Wait,” Kak’hamish said.

Nathanial heard scrambling noises from up ahead.

“There is a low hill,” the fellow called, his voice more distant that Nathanial was used to. “Leave the sled and come forward alone.”

Nathanial’s mouth went dry and he heard his blood pound in his ears. Carefully he lowered the travois, so as not to disturb Annabelle’s slumber, and then he drew the derringer from his coverall pocket. He held it for a moment in both hands, drawing reassurance from its mass and simple functionality. Here was a device good for only one thing, really: killing people.

Nathanial took a deep breath, held the pistol in his left hand behind his back, and started forward, trying to make as little noise as he could. After a half dozen paces he came to a rise and within three more steps it became steep enough he had to use his free hand as well as his feet to keep his balance and climb forward.

“Here,” the Martian called to him from ahead and to his right. Nathanial crawled carefully toward the sound. His vision narrowed and he felt detached, distant from what was about to happen.

The ground under him levelled.

“Careful,” Kak’hamish said, “the drop from here is steep.”

Nathanial looked. Below them stretched the bed of the dry canal. Nathanial had expected something large, but this was enormous—more like a canyon than the barge canals which crossed southern England. It was twenty or thirty yards deep and easily a half mile wide, perhaps more. No wonder the canals were visible from Earth through a good telescope, although only the wet ones still sported enough of a green belt to be reliably mapped at that distance.

“We are here, Nathanial” Kak’hamish said. “You may put your pistol away.”

Chapter Two

“Sickness in Paradise”

1.

“You must do it,” Annabelle said. The fainting spells came more frequently now, but her head was clear for the moment. She knew she had to speak and act now, while it remained so. “If it is abscessed, and it clearly is, then it must be drained.”

“I am concerned about the pain,” Nathanial said. He wiped her forehead with a cool, wet rag. Water, at least, was no longer a problem since they had reached the dry canal basin the previous evening. “Laudanum can do only so much―ˮ

“No more laudanum,” she said, and shuddered. “I’d just vomit it back up in any case.”

“We have some chloroform in the medical supplies from the cutter. I can…”

“No. I have a high tolerance for pain. I…I remember that. Something… I can’t recall what it was, but it was very painful, and I managed. I shall manage again. I require a strap to bite on. Your belt will do nicely, Nathanial.”

He stared at her but did not move.

“We haven’t got all day,” she said. “If we are going to do it, let us do it and be done with it. Let me have that belt, if you please.”

Kak’hamish broke the thick, shiny leaves of several plants and squeezed their juices onto the taut, yellowish flesh of her lower leg. Her mouth went dry at the sight of it and she looked away. The juice was cool as spring water on her burning flesh.

“These will help the pain a little,” he said.

“Yes, it feels better already,” she answered. Nathanial, eyes wide with fear, handed her his belt. “I am ready if both of you are,” she said, and hoped she sounded braver than she felt.

“Perhaps you should lie back,” Nathanial said, but for some reason Annabelle felt better resting on her elbows, partially sitting up, even though her left elbow still hurt a little from the damage sustained on Peregrine. This was how she had endured the other pain, she remembered. With trembling hand she put the belt between her teeth, planted her elbows and forearms securely on the sandy ground, and nodded for them to proceed.

Pain!

Lancing white-hot streaks of pain, pain which dimmed her vision, then made her see coloured flashes of light. She wanted to spit out the belt and scream at the top of her lungs, but the walk-a-heaps were near and she could not.

The agony abated for a moment. She drew short panting breaths from around her teeth clenched on the leather strap. Then it came again, a towering yellow avalanche of pain. She leaned forward into it, tightening the muscles in her abdomen, pushing the pain down and away.

Voices came to her as if from a very great distance.

“Is it necessary to squeeze it so? Won’t the wound drain on its own?”

“It is necessary.”

2.

nathanial thirsted, but he did not trust his trembling hands to pick up the water cup without splashing half its contents on the sand. They were not short of water, of course. He simply was loathe to show weakness in front of Kak’hamish.

“You have pen and paper,” Kak’hamish said. “I will write out an explanation of your situation in Koline. All caravan masters speak Koline—it is a trade language, a pidgin of several tongues. If you are fortunate, the first caravan we see will be heading northwest, to Abak’hn. That is where you need to start. Then you must take a caravan or cloudship southwest to Siruahn, then another southwest to Thoth. Thoth is on the Grand Canal. From there you can obtain passage on a boat south to Shastapsh, where I hear there is a British garrison.”

“You will not accompany us any farther?”

“I have…other plans.”

Rubbish! The fellow had no plans other than to wander back into the desert to die. If Nathanial had been by himself it might have been different. He could take care of himself, steal food if he had to, barter for passage using the instruments and valuables he had brought off the cutter. But with Annabelle in the state she was in, he wasn’t sure how he would manage. Much as he hated to admit it, this scoundrel could help.

“You might at least tell me something of these cities we’re to pass through. Are they dangerous?”

Kak’hamish moved his jaw from side to side in thought. Clack-clack. “Dangerous? All cities are dangerous to one degree or another, aren’t they? People live in cities so…well, there you are.

“Abak’hn I suppose is particularly dangerous in that manner, although I have not been there for many years and it may have improved. Or deteriorated. It is cursed with a weak prince, Akhanoon III. He is absorbed by his own pleasures and content to let the city govern itself.”

“Some would say the hand of government lying lightly is a blessing,” Nathanial said.

“Yes, I have heard this as well but never from one who has actually experienced it first-hand, unless they were very rich. Without a patron or protector, you will be in considerable peril in Abak’hn. The strong take what they want and the town watch looks the other way, unless disorder threatens commerce or offends the sensibilities of the gentry—so there is sometimes danger in resisting the predators as well.”

“Sounds like a rum place,” Nathanial observed, and he admitted to a pang of anxiety. He was armed, it was true, but he had no confidence in his own abilities in a violent confrontation. True, he’d shot Le Boeuf, a cold and considered act for what Le Boeuf had done to Annabelle. But still, thinking back, it almost seemed as if another man had pulled the trigger, not him at all. He had hardly had cause to even raise his voice to someone before embarking on this disastrous tour of the worlds. Since then, often as not it had been Annabelle who had taken the lead, charted a plan of action. Poor Annabelle! Still half out of her head with fever. He wished she would recover quickly. He desperately needed her clear head, courage, and decisive nature.

The truth was he simply didn’t feel up to facing this by himself. If it came to that, could he kill a man? Well, yes. He had done it once and felt no regrets on that score. He could do it again, if necessary. But that was a devil he knew. What of the devils he knew not? Too many ill-understood dangers, and too many ambiguous situations requiring decisions on little or no reliable information, blocked the way forward. One had to trust one’s instincts, he supposed, and just forge ahead. But what if one had little faith in those instincts?

Kak’hamish was talking again and Nathanial shook those maudlin thoughts from his head.

“Siruahn is very different, of course. It once had a young prince like Akhanoon—stupid, vain, and convinced of his own indispensability. This was a conviction the people of Siruahn did not share. Twenty-some years ago they drove him out and turned the government over to a council elected from the different castes—merchants, tradesmen, farmers—even labourers, as I recall, although the wealthy are better represented than their numbers might warrant.”

“Really? It sounds a bit like a parliament,” Nathanial said. “How are they chosen, by election?”

Clack-clack. “I do not know exactly. Someone once told me, but it was very complicated and I have forgotten most of it. I understand they argue about the selection a great deal and make frequent changes, so it would be different now in any case. They argue about everything, I have heard. The poor argue with the rich, and are not even beaten for their insolence! It has become a very argumentative city.” Kak’hamish shook his head as if in disapproval, but Nathanial noticed he smiled as he did so. It was hard to tell a smile from a grimace on Kak’hamish unless you looked at his eyes. “This was a distressful business with Miss Annabelle’s wound,” Kak’hamish said. “It grows late and distress can bring fatigue. We should sleep, but also take turns watching. You still have your pistol?”

“Yes, it’s in my kit over there. Do you think we need it? I thought there were no large predators out here.”

“Not in the deadlands, but we no longer sleep in their sandy embrace. There is much to sustain a predator in the gardenways—now including us. Some of the larger animals have developed a taste for stragglers from caravans. They may like the taste of Earth people less than my own folk, but by the time they discover that it will do you no good.”

Nathanial tried not to look as if he was hurrying as he walked to the travois to get his derringer. That box of extra cartridges wouldn’t hurt either, come to think of it. Sometimes animals ran in packs, after all.

3.

Four days they waited in the sparse green grasslands of the gardenway. One day Kak’hamish pointed out a pair of skrill riders high overhead, to the southwest. Nathanial had read of them in his now-well-thumbed copy of Conklin’s, but actually seeing them was a different matter. It drove home to him how alien this world really was—as if Kak’hamish’s own presence and bizarre personality were not enough.

The Martian told him anecdotes about life in a caravan, filled in more details about the cities ahead, and tended Annabelle’s wounded leg almost constantly—when he wasn’t gathering plants or cooking their meals. Damned fine cook, too.

Although Nathanial sensed a current of melancholy beneath the surface, Kak’hamish was invariably cheerful. He still had every intention of simply walking off into the desert—cheerfully—and dying of thirst and starvation as soon as a caravan materialised to take Nathanial and Annabelle to safety. The fellow was clearly off his nut, but Nathanial had to admit to a grudging…well, not affection really, but he was growing used to having the chap around.

Annabelle was better the day after they drained the abscessed wound. She actually took some stew made from tinned bully beef and starchy roots Kak’hamish had dug up—which tasted rather like turnips. Her colour improved and Nathanial for the first time began thinking of her recovery, rather than simply staving off a crisis.

Unfortunately her improved condition did not endure. She again grew feverish on the third day, her leg swollen and inflamed, and by the morning of the fourth day Nathanial saw dark discoloured areas appear around the wound, unlike the yellow pockets of infection he had seen before.

Kak’hamish grew more sombre as well and took to climbing onto a tall rubble pile made from pieces of the broken canal basin, thrust up by centuries of earthquakes, Nathanial supposed. From atop his perch he could see another mile or so up and down the canal. As the sun dipped low toward the horizon on the fourth day, Kak’hamish called to him and pointed to the southwest. Nathanial scrambled up the rubble pile to join him.

He looked in the direction Kak’hamish pointed, screening his eyes from the glare of the sun. A string of small figures moved there, growing closer.

“Are those animals?”

“Ruumet breehr,” Kak’hamish answered. “As large as your elephants. They draw the wagons of the caravan. I see outriders as well—apparently a wealthy merchant.”

“How do you know about elephants?” Nathanial asked.

“How do you know about dry canals?”

“I read it in a book.”

“Ah. Tell me of these strange things called—books.”

Nathanial opened his mouth to do so before he saw the wry expression in Kak’hamish’s eyes. “Oh, I see. Yes. Very amusing,” he said, although he was not amused at all. “Do you think there is a doctor with the caravan? I am very concerned about Annabelle.”

Kak’hamish nodded but did not look at him. “I had nearly despaired of her life, Nathanial. She is very close to death, although her strength of will makes that less apparent than it would be in a person of lesser character.”

Nathanial felt dizzy for a moment. Yes, Annabelle was certainly ill, but…close to death?

“But she’ll be all right now? The caravan, I mean. A doctor?” Nathanial had no idea how skilful the local physicians might be—witch doctors for all he knew, but he hungered for any assistance.

“Probably not a doctor, although they will have what we need to save her life, the one thing we lack.”

“Some special medicine?” Nathanial asked.

Kak’hamish turned and looked at him, his eyes boring into Nathanial’s soul. “A bone saw.”

Nathanial slid down the rubble pile, unmindful of how the ragged stone scraped and cut his palms. Once he stood at the base of the pile he looked stupidly at his bleeding hands and then wiped them on his trousers. He looked around, unsure what he was supposed to do next. He walked briskly away from the rubble pile for a few steps and then began to run. He ran down the gentle slope to the tiny stream, splashed across it, but tripped in the tangled water reeds and fell.

He lay in the grass for some time.

4.

Annabelle marvelled at the sights and smells and bustle of the caravan’s arrival. After a brief conversation between Kak’hamish and a fat Martian who seemed in charge of the affair, men hurried to set up a tent nearby. Under Kak’hamish’s supervision four of them gently lifted the canvas sheet on which Annabelle lay and carried it into the tent. With the sun setting, there seemed little enough reason to move her inside, but she did not protest. She felt heavy and bloated, but also very weak. She asked them for a cup of water but they seemed not to understand her. Instead they put her down wordlessly and left.

A strange sour smell grew in the tent after a few minutes. She had not noticed it outside, but there had been a soft breeze. Was this the smell of the tent? Or was it her? She had not bathed in some time.

The tent flap parted and Nathanial entered looking very grave and carrying a large book in his hand. Annabelle recognised it as the copy of Blackwood’s Pocket Physician that Nathanial had found in the cutter, although as she looked at it, she thought it too large to fit in any pocket she had ever seen. She felt light-headed and the thought of Nathanial trying to cram the book in his pocket made her feel like giggling

Nathanial’s expression sobered her.

“Oh, Nathanial, is the news so very bad as that?”

“It is…serious, I am afraid. The infection has become aggravated and will soon spread throughout your body, unless we perform an…an operation.”

Annabelle felt the blood drain from her face. “You need to drain it again? I understand. It was more painful than I anticipated, but I―ˮ

Nathanial shook his head. “No, it is not a simple abscess as before.” He patted the book he held. “It is what physicians call necrosis of the tissue.”

Annabelle raised herself on one elbow and with her other hand threw back the canvas sheet which covered her leg. The sour odour grew immediately stronger and she saw the mottled black flesh of her swollen leg. Her vision grew indistinct and she felt Nathanial catch her as she fell back. For a moment her mind floated on the breeze above the broken canal, the place Kak’hamish called the gardenway. It was a lovely mix of dark greens and bright colours where the Martian wildflowers bloomed along the ruined waterways. She imagined strolling among the flowers, and then she was no longer in the gardenway. She was in a ballroom, dancing in the arms of George Bedford—Lieutenant George Bedford, he would no doubt insist. They danced a waltz, spun around the floor in a graceful swirl of ruffles and lace, two young, strong bodies working in perfect harmony.

She opened her eyes, saw the stained canvas of the tent above her, smelled the stench of her rotting leg. Kak’hamish pushed through the tent flap with a cloth bundle. He knelt by her feet, unwrapped the bundle on the ground, and she heard the clatter of heavy metallic instruments. The sound frightened her as no other sound in her life ever had, left her dizzy and short of breath, and she felt tears run down her temples. She swallowed and forced herself to speak.

“Will I have a knee?”

Outside she heard the sounds of the caravan settling in for the night—men chattering in a strange tongue, mallets driving tent pegs into the ground, the deep but gentle braying of the enormous leathery-skinned beasts of burden, all of them going about their business as if nothing in the world were wrong.

“I shall build you one,” Nathanial answered. “I swear it.”

5.

“he agreed,” Kak’hamish told Nathanial. “The caravan master has agreed to take us to Thoth, on the Grand Canal. I had to give him the liftwood vanes you salvaged from your flyer, as well as your excellent pistol and ammunition, as payment. They would have done us scant good on our own.”

The young Englishman nodded listlessly in reply.

“You did well earlier,” Kak’hamish said. “I would have told Miss Annabelle, you know. It was not necessary for you to do so, or to stay during the operation.”

Nathanial looked up at him, his expression bleak. “It was absolutely necessary. She is my responsibility. Mine, and there’s a cruel joke for you. God, I’ve made a hash of things!”

Kak’hamish sat down across from Nathanial, but not within arm’s reach. The man did not need a human touch right now, but he needed ears to listen. “She lives,” Kak’hamish said.

“Yes,” Nathanial answered and laughed bitterly, “with one leg. What sort of life is that for a young woman? Answer me that. Here’s a bitter joke for you: tomorrow is her birthday. She turns twenty. What a gift we’ve given her!”

Kak’hamish thought for a moment, thought as much about the truth of her situation as about the answer Nathanial needed to hear. “Her gift is her life, and it is better than many lives I have seen. She has both hands, both eyes, both ears, one good leg, and a courageous heart. These are things many, many people would pray for, if they thought prayers were answered. And you are going to fashion an artificial leg, are you not?”

“Yes. Blackwood has quite a section on lower extremity amputations, and what is necessary for recovery. That was damned fine work you did in there, by the way. I read up on it, made sure you did what was needed to make an artificial limb viable—filing the bone edges, stretching the muscle across the bone and joining it, a proper flap of flesh with the subcutaneous foundation intact, and provision for drainage. Those were very professional-looking ligatures on the artery and vein, as well, just as in the illustrations. Ghastly illustrations.” Nathanial shuddered and shook his head, then looked up at Kak’hamish. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“For over a year I assisted a very great healer, perhaps the best the iTaka-Queln ever knew. It was not in my nature to face so much pain day after day, however. I am not that strong a man.”

Nathanial looked at him oddly but said nothing.

“Tell me of the artificial leg you will build for Miss Annabelle.”

“I’ll have to make her several, of course, over time. Blackwood says the sooner she’s up and trying to walk on the limb the better. There’s no time or material handy to make a proper leg out here, so we’ll start with a simple socket and peg. The socket will have to be leather, because that’s all we have, but I’ll replace that with rubber on the final version.”

“I will carve the peg, if you will give me the length needed,” Kak’hamish said. “You said you would build her a knee. Tell me of this.”

Although Nathanial frowned in concentration, his gestures became more decisive, his words more forceful. “Yes, that will be the tricky part. Blackwood had an illustration of an artificial leg with a knee joint—mostly carved wood with an iron frame to either side, and a hinge where the knee was. It looked awkward and clumsy to me, but it is a starting point. You see, I think the knee joint has to flex a bit to right and left as well. Otherwise the socket is likely to chafe the―” he paused a moment and swallowed, “the stump. At least if it is to be mobile while walking. The leg they make now is only meant to bend while seated, so it does not stick out in front; it is stiff while walking. I think there is a way to get movement in the knee joint while walking, which will give her a much more natural gait.”

Kak’hamish had worked with replacement legs. He did not see how a bending joint was possible during movement, particularly one which would also support a person’s weight, but Nathanial was now clearly engaged in the project. That was the most important thing. “How can you get movement in the knee while walking if she has no muscles to control it?”

“Well that’s the problem, of course. And it has to be purposeful movement, not simply flopping about. I’m still working out the details, but she will have muscles in her stump which are still viable. I believe we can train those muscles to flex and activate the knee joint.”

“Activate, yes. But power it?”

“No, you are perfectly right there—not sufficient to power it. I think a clockwork mechanism will have to provide the substitute for muscle power, but I’m still working that out. Here, let me show you some sketches I’ve made.”

Nathanial moved over next to Kak’hamish and drew a sheaf of diagrams from his jacket pocket. Kak’hamish listened to the explanation with half of his mind, but with the other half he wondered at the strange path which had brought him here to this brave Earth woman and this earnest young man.

What had he told Gillsa? That he had gone to the desert because he had “done everything in this world my hand is fit for.” Then in the desert, the world had brought his hand one more task—to bring these two people out of the wilderness and safely home. It had even brought them from another world, so as not to make him a liar to Gillsa. What fun the world must have had doing that!

One more task. He could wait long enough to do one more task.

Chapter Three

“A Hidden Friend?”

1.

the caravan began stirring before dawn, like an enormous beast coming slowly to life. Nathanial had remained awake all night watching Annabelle, and so he saw the young boys take leather water sacks to the stream before dawn, saw the cooks start their fire and then pile the flaming brands around a large glazed clay kettle. That was one of the odd things about this world: the scarcity of metal. Earth was rich in metal, so much so that Nathanial took it for granted. Here one had only to look at the daily existence of ordinary people to see how metal-poor their world was. Glazed clay cookware and plates, bone utensils, leather buckets, tools made from wood, stone, and ivory—the average Martian might go the entire day without his hand ever touching metal.

The eastern horizon glowed a faint pink, although the pre-dawn twilight was shorter than on Earth, probably due to the thinner atmosphere and smaller diameter. The twelve enormous ruumet breehr had become black silhouettes against the charcoal grey of the sky, and Nathanial heard the odd clucking sounds of the smaller mounts as they anticipated their morning feeding. The smaller animals—gashants—seemed a curious cross between birds and lizards. They stood and ran upright, reminding Nathanial of ostriches in their gait, but they were of course featherless and were powered by massive hind legs and balanced by a long spiked tail.

“Good morning, Nathanial,” Kak’hamish said softly as he emerged from the darkness behind the tent. “I wish you had let me relieve you for at least part of the night.”

“I have to move the stump frequently to encourage good circulation and healing,” Nathanial answered. “I assisted Annabelle in doing so, even though it troubled me to disturb her repose and…her privacy. I am unused to seeing her so helpless, emotionally as well as physically. I could not sleep in any case. That was a very fine gift you gave her, and it seemed to help lift her spirits. All night she slept with it clutched in her hand. Thank you.”

When Annabelle had regained her senses, Kak’hamish had given her the long carved ivory horn which seemed to be his only possession, aside from his ragged clothing, knife, and the small leather fetish bag he wore around his neck. Now Kak’hamish looked away and said nothing.

Most of the people of the caravan slept rolled in blankets on the open ground, there being very little weather to threaten their repose, and now the indistinct shapes began to move. Men and women rose in ones and twos and made their way toward the small stream to wash, or away from it for their other business.

“You must have her move the stump herself, starting tomorrow,” Kak’hamish said after a moment.

“So soon?”

“She must do for herself, and she must begin doing so as soon as possible. There is still a danger from infection, but the greater danger is despair. Many times I have seen the loss of a limb break the will to live. She has a strong spirit, but you must help it. She is not your woman, is she?”

“My woman? No, certainly not. She is…well, my ward you might say, although not officially so. More like a female relation actually, not a sister of course, perhaps a cousin or―ˮ

“That is unfortunate. She will fear she is undesirable. It would be good for her to feel desired.”

Desired? Nathanial swallowed. He felt a good many things for Annabelle, including a growing affection of the most tender nature, but desire was not among them. Why not? Most men of his age found her pretty enough to act foolish in her presence. She had an attractively active mind—perhaps even too active for a young lady. Just look at the trouble in which her curiosity had repeatedly landed them—not that this horrible injury was in any way her responsibility. He should have been more firm. He was not sure where or when he could have put his foot down and avoided the catastrophic chain of events which had brought them here, but that was a measure of his own inability, was it not? Annabelle would make a fine match for someone someday, hopefully a man keen for adventure—because keen for it or not, adventure would certainly ensue.

Provided she recovered.

“Here is Onxym Haat, the caravan owner,” Kak’hamish said.

A fat Martian approached, walking with a rolling gait like a sailor’s. He wore practical clothing but clearly of expensive manufacture—bright colours, finely woven cloth with a sheen reminiscent of silk—and he wore several silver rings. He stopped and smiled at Nathanial, said something in a jabbering tongue to Kak’hamish, and held out his hand, which Nathanial promptly shook.

“Onxym Haat is pleased to meet you and offers congratulations on saving Miss Annabelle’s life,” Kak’hamish translated.

Jabber jabber.

“He is pleased to welcome you to his party and invites you to dine with him this evening, where you can meet the other notables of the caravan.”

“Tell him I shall be pleased to dine with him, although I must apologise for my lack of formal attire. I am afraid after climbing out of an atmosphere suit, all I had about me were these coveralls.”

Jabber jabber jabber.

“Dinner on caravan is informal, he says, although he will be pleased to send you a robe should you so desire. Accept.”

Nathanial glanced at Kak’hamish and then smiled and nodded. “I would be most gratified.”

With another handshake, Onxym Haat left them to make his way toward the cooking pot.

“He seems like a pleasant enough fellow,” Nathanial observed.

“He would have left you here to die had you been without the means to secure a passage, but your pistol excited his greed.”

That seemed a harsh assessment, but Kak’hamish had the benefit of a lifetime’s experience with his own people. Judging from the condition of his face, benefit might be the wrong word. Could that horrible beating and disfigurement have left him unjustly suspicious of others and inclined to think the worst of them? It would have done so in most people, but that seemed quite unlike the man who had accompanied them from the deadlands, saved Annabelle’s life with his surgical skill, and now watched over them like a sheepdog guarding its flock. No, it was not his own harsh past which made Kak’hamish cautious, Nathanial decided; it was the burden of responsibility for the safety of him and Annabelle.

“Well, he’s welcome to the damned gun. After seeing how one simple pistol bullet ravaged Annabelle’s body and nearly stole her life, whatever stomach I ever had for firearms is quite gone. Honestly, I have little taste for any of this,” he said, and swept the horizon with his arm. “All this dashing about, people hatching dastardly schemes, trying to kill one another, overthrow governments, start wars—it just won’t do.

“I am a man of science, not a man of action. I flatter myself that I am quite accomplished in the field of electro-magnetism. With Annabelle’s uncle I designed an aether propeller governor which is an enormous improvement on anything in use before, so much so that it enabled the largest aether battleship ever built to manoeuvre in close proximity to the lunar surface, even descend into a narrow canyon. Do you know what an accomplishment that is?”

“No, but it sounds quite impressive,” Kak’hamish said.

“I should say so. That is what I am good at—conceiving and designing, not actually…going and doing. A chap who builds ships does it for the building, doesn’t he? He doesn’t then just jump in and sail away to the four corners of the world when he’s done.”

“The Earthman who invented the aether flyer, though…” Kak’hamish said with a thoughtful frown.

“Edison?”

“Yes, Mister TA Edison. When he built his first aether flyer, did he not sail to Mars?”

“Well, that’s different,” Nathanial said.

“Oh. How is it different?”

“It just is,” Nathanial snapped. “And besides, Edison was an American.”

“Ah yes, an American,” Kak’hamish said. “Like Miss Annabelle.”

Indispensable as Kak’hamish had undoubtedly become, on occasion Nathanial still found him quite annoying.

2.

Kak’hamish watched the others arrive and take their places around the low dining table in the caravan master’s pavilion. Onxym Haat’s guests, aside from Nathanial and Kak’hamish, included two other merchants, a diplomat from Sharranus, and the commander of the caravan’s mercenary guards—who styled himself the Master of Sword, a rather exalted title for the leader of a dozen ill-disciplined riders and as many musket-armed footlings, Kak’hamish thought.

Each of the guests was accompanied by a servant or assistant seated behind them. Kak’hamish had been seated behind Nathanial, which suited him. Here he had no obligation to converse, beyond providing translations, and was free to observe the diners at length.

The Master of Sword had the look of a grizzled street tough—knife scar on his chin, obviously broken nose, and suspicious eyes always moving around the room. Perhaps that was the sort of man it took to keep hired thugs in check; most of them were caravan guards when there were employers willing to pay, but the rest of the time followed occupations best left overlooked.

The younger of the two merchants seemed a thoughtful, taciturn man. The other guests conversed as they arrived and settled in, while he limited himself to polite greetings. The older merchant, grey-haired and thin as a pole, was already half drunk when he arrived and began work on the other half immediately.

The ambassador interested Kak’hamish. He clearly exercised, and ate to moderation, for he had the look of an active, physical man, despite his fine robes and numerous expensive jewellery. His friendly expression frequently turned to engrossment or amazement at the comment of one of the others. Kak’hamish doubted that any man could be so intrigued by the before-dinner conversation of these men, but supposed the art of pretending so would be useful to a diplomat. Still, a man that accomplished at pretence bore watching.

“The holy men still dine alone?” the diplomat asked their host.

“Something to do with purification for the pilgrimage, my lord,” Onxym Haat answered, “the same reason they travel at the rear of the caravan, lest contact with the laity contaminate them.”

“A pity. I am sure they would have much of interest to tell us. But as to that, I imagine our new dining companion can offer as rich a feast.”

They spoke in the trade tongue Koline, as was the custom on caravan, and Kak’hamish leaned forward to translate for Nathanial.

“Friends well-met,” Onxym Haat said to the table at large as the last of them settled in, “welcome our new companion, Mister Nathanial Stone, a subject of the British Crown. He travels with his ward, Annabelle Somerset. She dines alone, recovering from a harrowing injury sustained in their travels. Mister Stone, I present his lordship Kaleen Jed-An, ambassador-designate from the Principate of Shareen to the court of Akhanoon III.”

“I am honoured to meet his lordship,” Nathanial said after he heard the translation, and then turned to Kak’hamish. “What about the others?”

“It is custom to introduce only the most exalted person to the visitor. The others you will meet during the meal,” Kak’hamish said softly. He noticed Ambassador Jed-An lean back and gesture to his servant, who leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

“I am most interested in your opinion of the meal, Mister Stone,” Onxym Haat said as servants carried in the first of the covered dishes. “It is simple fare, of course, as we are on caravan. But the soup and game course are seasoned with ereban, and I hope to introduce its use to the British colony, and perhaps even to people on Earth.”

“That is the principle purpose of this caravan,” Ambassador Jed-An said. “Our host and his two partners hope to make their fortune in the spice trade with your people. As trade invariably leads to friendship, I drink to its success.”

Glasses rose all around the table, and around the circle of servants behind the diners as well. The food for the servants would be less elaborate and the drink was a raw young purple wine, fruity and too sweet for Kak’hamish’s taste, and too cheap for the master’s table. Once Kak’hamish might have enjoyed it, but his tastes had been altered by five years with the iTaka-Queln, where the only alcoholic drink was fermented skrill milk—called paang. It had also taught him the wisdom of drinking in moderation; too much paang caused not only drunkenness but also unpleasant hallucinations. Very unpleasant.

Servants poured soup, Nathanial tasted it, and he almost put his spoon down before he remembered Kak’hamish’s pre-diner instructions. He recovered well, Kak’hamish thought. The others around the table looked at him as he took another spoonful and thought about it.

“It is an acquired taste, I believe, not immediately pleasant to the pallet, but with a deeply layered variety of flavours. A taste worth acquiring, I should think. I know very little about trade, of course, but I believe this will find a market.”

When Kak’hamish finished the translation, Onxym Haat beamed and the other diners applauded politely.

“We have closer contact with the Russian enclave to the north, by wet canal, but they seem strangely uninterested in trade, or perhaps they are poorly organised for its execution,” Jed-An said. “Our host has decided to strike west. His principal competition comes from bhutan spice, over which the North Stafros Mercantile Combine holds a monopoly. Their direct access to the Grand Canal puts them in a favourable position, wouldn’t you say?

Kak’hamish remembered to translate the trading combine’s title as Boreosyrtis League, as he remembered it was called in Nathanial’s interesting, and often unintentionally amusing, tongue.

“I am afraid I know very little of the geography of your world,” Nathanial replied, “although I hope to learn as much as I can. My only experience with Russians was on Luna, our moon, and it did nothing to raise them in my esteem, I assure you. I will say that I have had bhutan curry on Earth several times. My superior at the Chatham Dockyard, Director William White, was quite taken with it and served it several times at dinner. I did not much care for it, to be honest, but it is quite popular, and very dear. I have heard it sells in London for as much as nine shillings an ounce. This spice of Mister Haat’s—ereban is it?—seems much more appealing to my poor palate.”

This additional embellishment by Nathanial so pleased Haat and the other diners that they did not notice he took no more of the soup. Kak’hamish did not blame him. When his own soup came he found it over-seasoned and over-cooked, with the tubers soft and mealy and the meat grey and tasteless—except for the overpowering flavour of ereban. He had cooked with ereban on many occasions. It had an earthy flavour, excellent for toning down the saltiness of preserved meat, but best used in moderation.

“Did I understand you to say you worked at a dockyard, Mister Stone? Was that interesting work?” Jed-An asked.

“I found it so. My field is electro-magnetism, primarily as it is used to manipulate the luminiferous aether, and so I do a great deal of work with aether propellers. Chatham yard once concentrated on steam conversions in naval vessels, and still does some of that, but now does much of the Royal Navy work on interplanetary craft and atmospheric flyers. I was quite fortunate to have Director White as my patron. He is now Director of Naval Construction as well as Assistant Controller of the Royal Navy. I am on…ah…a temporary leave of absence, but expect to return to work there as soon as we can make our way to the crown colony at Syrtis Major where I hope to petition the governor there, Sir Henry Routledge, to expedite my return home.”

Nathanial was clearly proud of his position, but Kak’hamish wondered if this might not be more information than was wise. Most of those around the table listened with polite interest, but Jed-An stroked the outer veins of his left ear as he considered Nathanial’s words, his brow momentarily lined with thought.

“These other gentlemen travel for profit, but you do so on matters of state, your lordship,” Nathanial said to Jed-An. “If I may be so bold as to ask, is there a special issue which takes you to Aubuchon?”

“Skrill riders,” Jed-An answered, and then paused for another spoon of soup.

Kak’hamish did not like the sound of that, but he saw Jed-An’s servant’s eyes on him, watching him carefully. Earlier Jed-An had gestured to the servant and the servant had spoken to him—after Kak’hamish had translated Nathanial’s words. Was the servant a translator as well? Did he speak English? That would be unusual this far east of the British holdings, but not impossible. He would have to take care.

He translated Jed-An’s words without comment.

“Really?” Nathanial said. “I believe my companion Kak’hamish may be able to help with that. He lived with the skrill riders for a number of years. They are called the Queln, are they not?”

Jed-An’s servant leaned forward and whispered in the ambassador’s ear, and the diplomat’s face darkened for a moment before resuming its normal expression of vague friendliness. So the servant did speak English.

Clack-clack.

“Nathanial Stone wishes me to say that I lived with the Numaka clan of the iTaka-Queln for over five years. He does not understand that this may excite your suspicion and hostility, because he knows little of our ways and he speaks always directly from his belly. He thought my experience may be of use to you.”

All eyes in the pavilion, save Nathanial’s, turned on Kak’hamish, and all of the polite smiles of a moment earlier vanished. After a moment Nathanial noticed and turned to Kak’hamish as well, his smile replaced by confusion and concern.

“And will you be of use to us?” Jed-An asked.

“That depends on your purpose, wise lord.”

“My purpose is to make it rain skrill blood,” the Master of Sword announced before the ambassador could answer. “How many caravans do they have to plunder before someone does something about it? Well, let them raid us and see what happens!”

The words provoked nods and murmurs of agreement around the table. Jed-An held up his hand for silence.

“All here have accepted Onxym Haat’s hospitality. All are welcome today, regardless of where they supped yesterday, is it not so? I travel to Prince Akhanoon’s court to propose joint action by the cloud fleets of Sharranus and Abak’hn against the high aeries of the Queln. I tell you this because it is no secret. I would travel by cloudship myself, but all our armed vessels are engaged in patrols, and the merchant vessels avoid the southern trade routes. The Queln have become more aggressive this last half year.”

“Not the Numaka clan,” Kak’hamish answered.

Jed-An gestured as if brushing aside a fly. “Perhaps not. But one minor clan more or less means nothing. Will the Numaka pledge never to raid the gardenways again, and surrender hostages to insure compliance? No, of course not. It is the way of the Queln to prey on the weak, and they will continue doing so until there is a stiff price to be paid. Fate willing, that day will come soon. Only then will the gardenways be safe.”

Another murmur of approval rippled through the pavilion and Nathanial looked around in confusion and alarm. Kak’hamish put his hand on the young man’s shoulder to reassure him.

“I will explain in detail later,” he said in English, “but sentiments run high against the Queln here. You had no way of knowing and there is no real harm done. Any hostility will be directed at me, and my belly is strong. You would say my skin is thick.”

Little conversation accompanied the remainder of the uncomfortable meal.

3.

annabelle considered the scrap of paper for perhaps the hundredth time. What did it mean? The words were simple enough, written in a spidery hand.

Take Hart. A frend is near.

For three days the caravan had made its deliberate way northeast, setting out in late morning, pausing for two hours in early afternoon, and then continuing nearly until dusk. Annabelle rode in a provision wagon towed behind one of the stately ruumet breehr. Pain was her nearly constant companion. She had a small bottle of laudanum but tried not to use it—she had seen several women ruined by its habitual use. Even in the short run it upset her digestion, and she could not believe that would assist her prompt recovery.

So the pain persisted, shot through her leg and hip with a sudden intensity that made her gasp, and then subsided to the throbbing rhythm of her heart. But the most disturbing pain was in her missing leg. When she awoke the second morning, for a moment she was sure she had dreamed the amputation, because she could feel her right leg. Her ankle felt inflamed, her knee throbbed, and hot, sudden flashes of pain lanced through her big toe. The sensations were so real, so convincing, that when she tossed back the sheet, she cried out anew in horror at the sight of her bandaged stump.

Her mind was not addled. The pain was real, even if her leg was missing. The nerves which had run to the knee, ankle, and toe were shorter but still there, still connected to her brain, still sending these ghostly messages of pain. Loyal, dutiful, stupid little nerves, telling her something is wrong, wrong, so dreadfully wrong! the only way they knew how. Pointless messages reminding her only that she was…what?

Incomplete.

She had been a complete woman, but she was no longer that. Her first order of business when she got home, she had decided with dark humour, would be to throw away half her shoes. What would her second order of business be? Although she was now an incomplete woman, she had to be a complete something, did she not? But what?

She remembered very little of her childhood, or of her parents, but she remembered them skiing. Her father had come to America from Australia, met and married Joan Grant, and in the winter taught her to ski in the White Mountains when few others had even heard of the sport. Where they had obtained skies Annabelle had no idea, but she remembered herself as a very little girl, bundled in coats and quilts, sitting at the bottom of the hill on a layer of heated bricks and watching her mother and father ski down the slope toward her. Their paths had crossed and re-crossed, coming together and drawing apart, twisting around each other in what she now recognised as a sensual celebration of physical love. On hissing skies they raced toward her and at the last moment slid sideways to stop in a small blizzard of snow. She could never recall the details of their faces in repose, but she remembered vividly how they had looked after that run down the mountain, red-cheeked and laughing, eyes aglow. Someday, she had promised herself, she would ski like that. Someday she would ski with her lover.

At first she had made a nest among the grain sacks in the depth of the wagon, but by the second day she grew restless. Sitting alone with pain led inevitably to self-pity, and one day of solitary tears was all Annabelle allowed herself, or would wish upon anyone. The next day she moved back to the rear of the wagon where she had a better view. The air at least circulated well through the open sides and provided a refreshing breeze. Every two or three hours the ruumet breehr hauling the wagon defecated—and managed to do so without breaking stride, she noticed. On those occasions she was obliged to hold her nose for a minute or two until they had passed beyond the heaping piles interwoven with half-digested grass, looking for all the world like very large horse apples. Other than those times, however, she happily drew in air rich with the scents of exotic wildflowers and grass freshly crushed beneath wheels and massive hooves.

Nathanial or Kak’hamish would walk beside her wagon for part of the day and converse with her in ways calculated, she clearly saw, to keep her cheerful. They meant well, of course, but her moods were, she had come to realise, the exclusive products of her own soul. Were her spirit so insubstantial as to benefit materially from the transparent manipulation of well-intended friends, what support could she expect from it in difficult times? No. She would mend her spirit. It simply would not mend in a day, or a week, or even a year perhaps. But it would mend.

Several of the tall Martian musketeers walked near the wagon. Annabelle watched them and judged them a strikingly graceful people, their long legs giving them a gliding, unhurried stride. None of them spoke English, of course, but by the end of the second day Annabelle had learned their names, and on the third day they began to teach her words and phrases in Koline. I am hungry. I am English. (She wasn’t, of course, but to these men all Earth humans were either “English” or “Ru-Shaan.”) What colour is the sky? The sky is blue.

That was odd. She had vaguely expected the Martian sky to be red, but it was blue—a darker, greyer blue than at home, and with very few clouds, but blue nevertheless.

At the luncheon break Nathanial and Kak’hamish joined her and helped her with her exercises. Her leg was still too swollen, and the stitches too fresh, to risk putting any pressure on the bottom of her stump, but she raised and lowered it, moved it from side to side, and practiced walking with a crutch. In the evening she repeated the exercises, then had dinner with Nathanial and Kak’hamish―when they were not summoned away to dine with the dignitaries.

So the days had gone, one the same as any other, until this fourth morning when she awoke to find the scrap of paper rolled up, tied with a red ribbon, and placed conspicuously in her one remaining boot.

What does it mean?

As soon as she dressed, which had become a demanding and nearly exhausting exercise, she summoned Nathanial and Kak’hamish.

“Now this is exciting,” Nathanial said after passing the note to Kak’hamish. “A mysterious benefactor, a hidden ally—intriguing, of course, mysterious, but exciting as well.” He beamed at the note in Kak’hamish’s hand, his spirits clearly elevated.

Kak’hamish, on the other hand, frowned and shook his head in concern. Clack-clack. “Someone entered and left your tent without detection.”

That unsettling thought had occurred to Annabelle as well.

“From now on Nathanial and I will sleep closer to its entrance. Beyond that, this tells us someone else in camp can write English. We already knew Jed-An’s servant speaks English, but writing it is a different matter. These words—hart, frend—are those the common spellings?”

“No,” Annabelle answered. “I noticed that as well. I assumed the note was written in haste. Perhaps that is the explanation.”

“Perhaps,” Kak’hamish said doubtfully, “but as you two are the only Earth humans in the caravan, it is certain whoever wrote this note did not count English as their native language. If the author is a friend, why remain anonymous?”

“If?” Nathanial asked. “Why would an enemy write such a note?”

Clack-clack. “To put us off our guard. To distract us—involve our minds in this riddle while a more important one lies beneath our gaze. To prepare us to be deceived and betrayed later. There are more reasons for an enemy to write this than a friend.”

Nathanial shook his head is irritation, unwilling to accept Kak’hamish’s gloomy interpretation, but some of the sparkle had clearly gone out of his mood. Annabelle thought it interesting that, were she to characterise their reactions to the note, the adjectives she would employ would be almost opposite of those she would use to describe these two men’s personalities. Nathanial, cautious and given to worry, had met the message with cheerful optimism. For Kak’hamish, by nature the very embodiment of cheerful optimism, the note had produced caution and suspicion.

For her, it had been a welcome distraction.

“I believe we have gone as far as sensible consideration can take us,” Annabelle said. “Until we know more, all that is left us is pointless speculation. As for me, I have exercises to do. Nathanial, would you be so kind as to help me to foot?”

She no longer asked for help to her feet, and today she hardly felt the twinge of loss, the tightness of throat, which had at first accompanied her use of this other expression. That was progress.

Chapter Four

“A Perilous Road”

1.

“the lady rests comfortably?” Onxym Haat asked Nathanial. Kak’hamish translated and smiled to himself, imagining Nathanial’s thoughts at the moment, as he clutched the edge of the swaying howdah atop the ruumet breehr.

A damned sight more comfortably than I do, I’ll wager, would be his answer were he less diplomatic. To Kak’hamish’s surprise, the young scientist forced a smile at the caravan master—more of a pained grimace, but the intent was good.

“Tell Master Onxym Haat my telepathic powers have failed me for the moment, but when last I saw her she was as comfortable as could be expected.”

Kak’hamish couched the translation in more diplomatic terms, then went back to studying the sky. He had seen a solitary skrill earlier in the morning. He was certain no one else in the caravan had noticed, which was all the more reason to keep a careful watch. A raid by the Queln at this point would cause—well, more complications than Kak’hamish cared to think about, including a fair amount of injuries and perhaps deaths.

Queln raids were seldom deadly unless the caravan resisted, but could cause frightful damage if they did. Everyone knew that. This caravan, to judge from the words of its Master of Sword, intended to resist, even looked forward to it. Kak’hamish had looked the guards over and found nothing special about them. The musketeers struck him as hard men, but hardened by the soldier’s road, not the cutthroat’s. They would stand their ground and fight hard, given good leadership.

The mounted guards were a different matter. They neglected their mounts, straggled and wandered too far during the march, and spent their off-time gambling and drinking—although Kak’hamish wondered how simple guards made enough to afford to drink every night. Field wine was cheap, if you didn’t mind the headache the next morning, but even field wine was not free. Even now he saw a mounted guard lift his wine skin and drink as his gashant wandered listlessly away from the caravan. Where was the Master of Sword? Why wasn’t he checking his outriders?

Kak’hamish looked back to the sky and he noticed Nathanial now doing the same. He could not have seen the Queln so must have noticed Kak’hamish’s attention. Nathanial caught his eye and raised an eyebrow expressively. Kak’hamish shook his head slightly and flicked his eyes toward the backs of the caravan master and his ruumet breehr driver. Only they were within hearing distance, and so far as Kak’hamish knew neither of them spoke English. But the inescapable truth was that at least someone in the caravan spoke what Nathanial called “the Queen’s” but would not admit it. It could be anyone, and so best to guard his words.

That was a result of the note which Kak’hamish had not originally considered. Inevitably the note made them more careful in their conversations. Would an enemy who secretly spoke English deliberately give away such an advantage, and thus deny himself a potential source of intelligence? It seemed unlikely.

He looked up again, slowly swept the southern sky, and there they were!

“Push your mother down a well!” Kak’hamish exclaimed. The others in the howdah followed his gaze and saw the three or four specks in the southern sky. Not a full raid, although Kak’hamish would see if the caravan guards were bright enough to realise that.

“Queln! Queln!” Onxym Haat shouted, and pointed to the south. The closest mounted guards reined their mounts in to the sound of shrill clucking. “Riders, pass the word—defensive formation!”

Within moments the caravan erupted into frantic activity. Shouting drivers turned the twelve large beasts of burden to the right and closed into a tight line, shoulder to shoulder. This left the wagons with scarcely six feet between their axles. Only five of the great beasts carried howdahs, the others being driven by a rider astride the neck. Onxym Haat tipped the rolled rope ladder over the side and Kak’hamish saw men in the other four howdahs do the same. Soon two panting musketeers, their weapon slung over their backs, scrambled up and over the side into the interior. They unslung their muskets, removed the canvas wrapping which protected the fire locks, cocked the hammer and opened the pan, and primed their weapons with a dash of powder from a horn slung from their shoulder.

Below them the mounted guards retreated to the spaces between the wagons, as did the walking servants and labourers. Of the Master of Sword, Kak’hamish saw nothing for the moment.

He looked up again and saw the skrill riders grow closer, details resolving as they made their rapid gliding descent. Their blue-grey hide rendered them nearly invisible at higher altitudes. Their upper limbs extended perhaps three meters to each side and ended in long articulated talons which he saw flexing in anticipation. Their large black eyes sparkled in the afternoon sun, and two long horns extended forward from their brow ridges above the eye sockets.

A bellowed command from below arrested his attention. In the open ground behind the clustered wagons, the Master of Sword and several dismounted guards hastily planted long poles in the ground, thrusting the narrow pointed ends into the soft soil and angling them toward the approaching Queln warriors and their mounts.

No, those were not simple poles. The ends aimed at the sky were much thicker, long cylinders on the end of a longer wooden rod. One of the soldiers ran from the wagon carrying a firebrand. Kak’hamish remembered what the Master of Sword had said that first evening at dinner. “My purpose is to make it rain skrill blood.”

“Good Lord, those are rockets!” Nathanial exclaimed, and Kak’hamish moved to his side to better see. Behind them Onxym Haat laughed and nodded vigorously.

“Yes, rockets from our friends the Ru-Shaans. They care little for trade, but Lord Jed-An persuaded them to supply us with these. The heads are filled with small rocks and when they burst in the sky, they will sweep it clear of your friends the Queln!”

Kak’hamish knew there was only one course. He inflated his lungs as full as he could, blew out the air, inflated them again, and again, trying to completely saturate his lungs with oxygen. Gathering one last chestful of air, he raised his hands to his mouth, placed the thumbs together to make a sort of trumpet, and blew the Depart! call.

For those close by, particularly as they had never heard it, the call was deafening, painful, and probably terrifying. Onxym Haat and the musketeers covered their ears in pain. Nathanial stood stock still, open-mouthed, perhaps dumbfounded that such a sound could issue from a man-sized being. There was confusion on the ground as guards and labourers turned fearful eyes to see if a skrill had come suddenly upon them from behind, but there was no skrill. There was only Kak’hamish, now dizzy from his exertion and steadying himself on the side of the howdah.

A cry from the men below made Onxym Haat and the others turn and shout in anger. Kak’hamish looked up and smiled. The formation of skrill dispersed and wheeled away. The mounts gathered altitude and headed south, away from the caravan. The crisis had been averted.

One crisis had been averted. Another appeared imminent as Onxym Haat turned on him, rage in his face.

“Treacherous son of a whore! Dung-eating Queln-loving bastard! You warned them away. We had them and you warned them away. That’s the last Queln raiding party you will save. Guards, cover him!”

The two musketeers levelled their weapons at him.

“Now see here!” Nathanial said and shouldered his way between Kak’hamish and the others. “I don’t know what just happened, but I won’t have someone shot over it. Do you understand me?”

Of course they did not understand his words, but his indignation was clear enough and Onxym Haat’s anger now turned on Nathanial as well.

“Ah, another one, aye? Well we can deal with you as well. Over the side and down to the ground. We’ll finish this there.”

All of this was in Koline, of course, of which the scientist remained completely innocent.

“We are to climb down, Nathanial. They are quite angry with us, I am afraid, so we should do this without protest. Give tempers some time to cool or there may be grave results.”

Whatever momentary surge of emotion had prompted Nathanial to intervene waned, and as it did so he noticed the round black bores of the two muskets now pointed at him and his eyes grew larger. “Yes…well, ah, we can sort this out down there as easily as here, I suppose.”

Kak’hamish followed Nathanial down the swaying ladder to a swarm of angry guards and labourers. As he reached the ground, the Master of Sword strode over, a rocket on its long stock held in his right hand. He shook the rocket at Kak’hamish, brandished it in his face.

“What sort of man betrays his own blood to those carrion eaters? As sure as the northern snows melt in the spring, you’ll pay for this.”

The warrior struck Kak’hamish in the mouth with his fist, drove him back against the flank of the ruumet breehr. For a moment Kak’hamish saw only flashing light, thought he might fall, but his hand found the great beast’s harness and he steadied himself. His mouth filled with the taste of salt and iron. He spat out blood, but his vision cleared and his dizziness abated.

The angry muttering around them grew and one of the louder of the labourers took his lead from the Sword Master and pushed Nathanial sharply from behind. The Englishman stumbled forward and nearly lost his balance, but Kak’hamish caught him, held him up, and whispered one word in his ear.

“Courage.”

The embers of violence glowed bright and needed only a breeze to ignite them. If either he or Nathanial lost their nerve, if either of them reacted with fear or anger, they would die right here where they stood. In any case it would probably end that way for him, Kak’hamish knew, but it mustn’t for Annabelle and Nathanial. Their welfare mattered; his did not. He found it strange, though, that he still felt something akin to fear. He had not felt it in the desert. Of course, the desert had not threatened to beat him to death.

Nathanial drew himself up, turned, and looked at the leering man who had pushed him, simply looked at him, and then he looked at the semicircle of angry men surrounding them, hemming them against the leg and harness of the ruumet breehr. The mob grew calmer. Genuine dignity was not a quality Kak’hamish would have ascribed to the awkward young English inventor, this man who knew volumes about the silent spaces between the worlds and nothing of himself, but wherever it came from, for that moment he found the dignity to stare the beast in the eye, and the beast blinked.

“What is this?” The ambassador Jed-An’s voice cracked like a rifle shot and the remaining courage of the mob was extinguished as a candle’s flame is by a sharp puff of air. The ambassador shouldered his way past guards and labourers, his own hunched and shuffling servant in tow. The crowd edged back, giving him room in the small amphitheatre in which the drama played out.

“They…a moment, your lordship,” Onxym Haat puffed as he finished climbing down from the howdah. He paused to catch his breath, but extended his finger toward Kak’hamish in accusation. “He warned the Queln.”

Jed-An looked at Kak’hamish with a mixture of suspicion and satisfaction.

“And the Earthman helped him,” Haat said after two more pants of air. Kak’hamish saw a flicker of disappointment in the ambassador’s eyes, gone as quickly as it had come. He looked at Nathanial then back at Kak’hamish.

“Is this true?”

“I ordered them to depart and they did so. Lives were spared—lives in the caravan as well as aloft.”

“This was a warning of danger?” he asked, but Kak’hamish saw the flicker of a smile that came from already knowing the answer.

Kak’hamish chose his answer carefully. He did not wish to die with a lie on his lips. “It communicates only to depart. It can mean danger, but it can also mean the caravan travels under the protection of the iTaka-Queln.”

Jed-An nodded and turned to Onxym Haat. “Look south and tell me what you see, caravan master.”

The sweating merchant shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun and studied the sky. “I see five departing Queln raiders. No, wait! There are more of them, joining from the west. Why, there’s over a dozen more!”

So someone in the caravan had noticed the small size of the raid, and deduced what it meant. That it was an ambassador who had done so rather than a warrior was interesting. The others turned and looked as well and the Master of Sword let the rocket pole in his right hand rest on the ground as he scratched his scalp with his other hand.

“What does it mean?” the Master of Sword asked.

“It means that while you set up your rockets to fire at the diversion,” Jed-An said, “the full raid approached unseen from the west, out of the afternoon sun, probably in single file. They would have been on us before we knew there was another, greater threat. If the Ru-Shaan rockets had done their murderous job on their decoys, the warriors would have fallen on us with rage in their bellies, hungry to extract the blood price twice over. That is the way of the Queln, is it not?”

This last question he directed to Kak’hamish.

“That is our way, Lord.”

“Your way?” he spat back. “Do not play with lives, Ugly One! They are not your coins to gamble away.”

Kak’hamish said nothing but he bowed to Jed-An, because the ambassador was right. It was a foolish answer, prompted by pride, and it endangered Nathanial and Annabelle, if only slightly. He had no right to add even one pebble to the weight of their hazards, and no right to pride.

“This…creature Kak’hamish,” Jed-An said to Onxym Haat, but in a volume which made clear he meant his words for all, “whatever we may think of him, has saved us from grievous loss, and perhaps defeat. I will not thank him for it, because I know not what was in his belly, but neither will I condemn him. The English acted honourably; he owes the renegade a blood debt and stood by him in danger. No honest man here can fault that. No harm will come to them. They now travel under my protection.”

He turned and strode away to his covered carriage, followed by his servant whose shorter, faster steps emphasised the dignity of his master. The crowd drifted away, puzzled and vaguely disappointed that no blood had been spilled.

“What just happened?” Nathanial asked Kak’hamish.

Clack-clack. “I am not certain,” he answered. “All I can tell you is what words were spoken. Even that will take some time. Come, Miss Annabelle will be worried.”

“Beside herself with curiosity is more likely,” Nathanial said.

2.

Annabelle watched the lone skrill rider, high in the sky to the south, paralleling the caravan. She tried to imagine what it felt like to ride the skrill high in the sky, to climb in lazy spirals and then go into long, shallow dives which piled on speed, racing down toward the ground faster and faster, wings flaring at the last moment to soar up again. It must, she thought, feel a great deal like skiing. The thought gave her a tingling sensation down where she would have sat astride the skrill, pressed against its shoulders and neck, and the feeling made her blush.

The lone rider had appeared the day after the Queln raid and had shadowed the caravan ever since. Sometimes it disappeared, perhaps to rest or hunt, but always to return within an hour or two. Annabelle noticed Kak’hamish watching it as well, his eyes wistful as if he might know this rider.

In the three days since the attack Annabelle often thought of riding the skrill, at least when alone, but that had been less frequent of late. She was finally judged healthy enough to venture out in society, assisted by a crutch and her stalwart myrmidons—Nathanial and Kak’hamish—to either side. They were unlikely champions, and so much dearer to her for that. She had finally, the evening before, met their new benefactor, Kaleen Jed-An, the dignified ambassador from Sharranus. She saw his luxurious carriage drawn by eight of the two-legged gashants instead of a ruumet breehr, even dined with him. Kak’hamish said the food was much better at Jed-An’s table than at the caravan master’s, to which Nathanial agreed enthusiastically.

Annabelle had found Jed-An interesting. She imagined that Martian women found him very attractive, although she had little knowledge of what “look” was fashionable at the time, or even what masculine features Martians found handsome in general. Annabelle knew genuine, unaffected confidence when she saw it, however, and while good looks might prompt admiring glances, confidence aroused something deeper in women, or at least in those Annabelle had known—and in herself, she admitted.

She found his conversation, even through the filter of Kak’hamish’s translation, lively, witty, and indicative of a broad-ranging mind. He asked intelligent questions about their travels, about the worlds they had visited, and was particularly interested in the society of the Selenites, among whom she had spent so much time. His interests paralleled hers to a remarkable degree, and the more she talked, the more his interest grew, until it seemed as if they were the only two in the room.

That was illuminating: he was, in his way, seducing her. She enjoyed the sensation, but she wondered what motivated him. Did he intend to win her over for some purpose she did not understand? Or was seduction simply his habit? Possibly. She had on occasion met men who could not help but seduce, men who were not even aware they were doing so. After an hour of conversation over dinner, she felt as if she had known Jed-An all her life, but she also knew that if their acquaintance lasted another five years, she would never know him any better than she did at that moment. Perhaps diplomats made the best seducers. Or was it vice versa?

So now she rode in the back of her wagon. The morning sun, rising high in the eastern sky, had warmed her face, but it had passed over the top of the wagon and she rode in the shade. She dangled her leg over the back of the wagon, and her four musketeers kept up with their long, easy strides, joking with each other and flirting with her until a party of gashant riders, led by the ambassador Jed-An himself, trotted toward her. The musketeers parted and dropped back to a discreet distance and Jed-An reined in. His stooped translator rode beside him and two of his grim-faced guards followed close behind

“Ambassador, what a pleasure,” Annabelle said. “I was just thinking of you and our delightful dinner and conversation last evening.”

The servant translated, or so Annabelle assumed, as he spoke in an unfamiliar language, not Koline. Jed-An ignored him, never made eye contact with him, and listened with his eyes on Annabelle’s as if the words came directly from her. His smile broadened and he bowed in the saddle and replied.

“The ambassador is pleased he finds his way into your thoughts,” the servant translated, and his expression said he was pleased as well. Whatever pleased the master pleased the servant. Jed-An spoke again. “My master offers the service of two of his guards to accompany you.”

“Tell the ambassador I appreciate his most generous offer, but I feel completely secure in the company of my four Immortals.” Annabelle gestured to the four musketeers who walked behind the riders, fanned out to either side.

The servant’s face fell and he translated this with his eyes closed and head turned slightly away from Jed-An, as if he expected a blow for communicating unwelcome news. Apparently any negative response, no matter how politely worded, was unwelcome, although nothing in Jed-An’s demeanour suggested so.

Jed-An bowed from the saddle again and spoke, and the servant translated with relief. “They must be fine warriors indeed to have won your confidence. The Ambassador must meet with the caravan master, but hopes to see you again later.”

“And I him,” Annabelle replied. The four riders trotted forward past her wagon and as they left she thought about the stooped, cowed servant. Nothing in Jed-An’s behaviour seemed to warrant his frightened demeanour, and yet Jed-An seemed not to consider it extraordinary in any way. Annabelle was left with the conclusion that either Jed-An was a more tyrannical master in private than in front of guests, or that he was simply the sort of man who expected his servants to bow and scrape. Neither alternative reflected well on him, to Annabelle’s thinking. Some were called to serve, and some were given to be served, but it seemed to her that in both cases it could be accomplished with dignity. She had certainly seen such among both the British and the Apache. That it was not so in Jed-An’s household must be by his choice.

The musketeers closed up on her wagon. “Annabellanna, I picked berries,” the one called Harran said, or at least that’s what she believed he said. Her Koline was still limited to one or two hundred words, so sentences sometimes contained blanks which her mind filled in with guesses. He held out his hat half-full of orange berries, covered with bumps like raspberries but as big as ripe olives, so she assumed the last word referred to them.

“What are the berries called?” she asked, using the unfamiliar word to learn it. “Or is that their name?” She tried one. It was very tart, so much so it made her pucker and close her eyes. The musketeers laughed, but Harran popped one into his own mouth to show it was not a practical joke. He puckered and squinted himself, but also smiled in pleasure.

“They are called cutberries, I think because plant has big thorns. Not quite ripe. In one week less sour, but good for thirst now.”

She admitted they were, in the same way lemon juice or tonic water quenched thirst more effectively than did sweet drinks. She took another one. “The liking grows,” she said.

Nathanial and Kak’hamish appeared from around the rear of the wagon, both bearing small packages wrapped in rags. She waved and smiled and had another cutberry.

“I see you are in good spirits this morning,” Nathanial said. “Those berries look delicious.”

“May Nathanial have one?” she asked Harran, and he quickly offered the hat to him, a smile on his face. Nathanial took one and nearly spat it out, but he had become far too considerate to do so and instead he gave the musketeers a pained grin. They laughed, but not unkindly.

“You might have warned me,” he said in English, but he chuckled as he did so, enjoying the joke despite his discomfort.

“Why? Are they too tart for you?” she asked innocently. “What do you have all bundled up?”

“What?” Nathanial said and looked at the package in his left arm as if noticing it for the first time. “Oh this. Well, something for you to try out once we stop for our afternoon break, which should be any time. Ah, there’s the horn now.”

The ruumet breehr, never very fast to begin with, slowed even more and the driver turned it left, toward the small stream in the middle of the dry canal. The animals would water while the humans rested and took their meal.

“Goodby, Annabellanna,” her musketeers called and she waved to them as they left to join their messmates for their meal.

“Something for me to try?” she asked, intrigued.

“For your exercises,” Nathanial explained, and she felt her heart drop a little.

She was finally getting used to her exercises, was able to do them without assistance. Now were they to become more difficult? But she forced a smile. “Very well, let me see these new devices with which I shall be tortured.”

Nathanial unwrapped his bundle. He held a stiff leather sack, about six inches across and a bit more than that deep, open at the top and slightly rounded at the bottom. It had a long strap run through loops around the top, and a small metal buckle. It took her a moment to recognise it for what it was: a leather cover for her stump. For a moment she felt a wave of nausea. She found it far easier to contemplate what was missing from her leg than what was left. She felt a far more intimate connection to her vanished foot and shin and knee than she did to the scarred and puckered stump which remained.

Despite her best efforts at self-control, some of her feelings must have shown in her face.

“It is only temporary,” Nathanial hastened to explain. “It will take a while for you to get used to the cup, and the size of your…”

“My stump. You can say it, Nathanial. The word will not injure me further.”

“Of course. The size and shape of your stump will change as the swelling goes down and the muscles become better developed. This is a crude cup, I know, but once we have returned to civilisation, I shall make one from rubber, with such a good fit you will not need this strap and buckle. This is just—ˮ

“To toughen my stump and get me used to it. Yes, I see. I notice there is a socket to accept a peg. Do we have one?”

Kak’hamish stepped forward and offered his own long, thin bundle to her. She took it and unwrapped it, quickly at first, but then she slowed when she caught sight of what was within.

The peg was not round in cross section, but square, or at least angular, and it was carved from what the musketeers called blackwood, the stubby trees with drooping branches which grew at intervals along the waterways. The wood was well-named. The peg had been lightly oiled to make it gleam, but the natural colour was a deep, warm grey, like lightly rusted iron. How odd, she thought, that the wood bore the same name as the book which had taken her leg, but undoubtedly saved her life.

Kak’hamish had carved it so that it appeared to be a complex mechanical construct, with seams, raised plates, the suggestion of gears and pistons, and even rivets at regular intervals. The rivets were a different texture and she realised each one had been carved separately as a peg and sunk into the wooden leg, fixed with glue. On one of the panels, high up near where it would enter the socket in the cup, were two words, carved in an angular, blocky alphabet Annabelle did not recognise. She ran her fingers across them. They felt as if they had been stamped in steel instead of carved into wood.

“Kak’hamish, it is…beautiful. What do the words mean?”

“They mean Annabelle’s Spirit in my native tongue.”

She looked up at him. “You think my spirit is iron?”

Clack-clack. “As strong as iron, but the leg is from a living thing, not metal.”

She embraced him, held him very close for several long seconds until she trusted herself not to weep. “No person could ask for finer friends than I have in you two,” she said when the lump in her throat had gone down. “I shall work very hard with the leather cup you have made, Nathanial, and I shall always treasure this leg.”

“I am working on a more involved one, you know,” Nathanial said. “I promised you a knee and you shall have one, although it will take some time and a proper workshop. I have some drawings if you would like to see.”

“Yes, very much,” Annabelle said, while she hugged the carved leg to her bosom. Nathanial drew out a paper and unfolded it.

“It is quite advanced in design, I believe, although I do not understand why this has not been done before. It draws on the same principle as the artificial hand made by the German mercenary Götz von Berlichingen, in the sixteenth century.”

“Götz von Berlichingen?” she said.

“Yes. Chap had his right forearm taken off—by a cannonball, as I recall—and yet he carried on as a warrior knight for another thirty or forty years. He made a spring-operated mechanical iron hand which could open and close, hold anything from a sword to a quill pen. It turns out those iron fists the Germans like to plaster all over the place started with him.”

“He fought as a knight with an artificial hand?”

“Yes, one he and his blacksmith cobbled together over three hundred years ago. I cannot imagine why artificial limbs have not become more advanced in the interim, but it is high time they did. You see, I’ve been doing a deal of walking this last week, and I’ve paid attention to what happens as I do—the physics of it, if you will. Fascinating, actually, the way the different parts of the leg act in concert.”

She looked at the diagram he held. For all of its mechanical internal complexity, externally it looked very like a real leg. That pleased her.

“This leg design uses a series of opposed springs which store and discharge energy at different points in the leg’s motion,” he went on. “You see, as you lean forward in your stride, your ankle bends, but provides resistance, then unbends to propel you forward. Opposed springs in the artificial ankle will produce a similar effect. And see here, this pressure rod attached to the heel? As you put your weight on your leg this rod compresses the spring in the knee, which provides the energy to unbend the leg in the back stride.”

“I want a secret compartment,” Annabelle said.

Nathanial paused in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“Here,” she said, pointing to the thick part of the calf. “Your pressure rods run through the front of the leg, where the bones would be, yes? This back part seems largely decorative. You could make a secret compartment for me there, something long and thin.”

“I…well, yes, I suppose so. Long and thin you say?”

“Ah, for a stiletto,” Kak’hamish said.

She beamed. “Yes! A lady never knows when a stiletto might be an essential accessory. Do you really think the leg will work this well, Nathanial? Are you that much more clever than this Götz von Berlichingen?”

“Well of course I am!” he said with mock wounded pride. “Really, Annabelle, how could you think otherwise? The fellow was German.”

3.

nathanial felt splendid riding on the gashant. It was only his second time, and the animal’s gait was difficult to get used to, but he felt splendid nevertheless. Kak’hamish told him the two gashants they rode were old and tired, and so fit only for children and old women, but Nathanial did not care. He felt as free and alive as he could ever remember.

The day was clear, as every day on Mars had been so far, and as cool as he could remember at midday. To either side of them the dark brown and black escarpments of the dead canal bank marched in perfect parallel formation to the horizon. Sand had drifted over the scarp and lined the base of the cliff. Beyond that the ground gave way to a bed of rocks polished round and flat by long-vanished water, then a broad stretch of scrub, and finally lush grass and wildflowers in the centre of the old basin. Nathanial saw no free-standing water on this stretch of the gardenway, but he knew it was there under the surface, the plants sending down deep, thin roots to find its sweetness.

God in heaven, what a glorious day!

“Kak’hamish, I believe I shall grow a moustache.”

“All English men do,” the Martian answered from his own saddle mount.

“That’s not true! Actors and barristers cannot, by law. But I mean a real moustache, a wild jungle of a moustache, not some tame little ornamental shrub, some…potted daisy of a moustache. I believe I shall grow it thick and long, and curl the ends up. I may grow a goatee as well.”

Kak’hamish chuckled. “If it brings you pleasure, my friend, you must do it.”

“You think I’ve a cracked plate, don’t you? That I’ve gone off my nut out here. Well I don’t care; I’m doing it regardless of what anyone thinks.”

“I do not think you have lost your senses, Friend Nathanial. People find themselves in the desert, they do not lose themselves. Sometimes that discovery brings despair. Other times it brings freedom.”

Freedom. Yes, that was exactly how he felt—free. He wondered now if he had ever truly felt free before.

“The desert seems to have brought freedom to the mounted guards as well,” Kak’hamish said, the banter gone from his voice. “The two outriders to the north wander further and further from the caravan. If the Sword Master paid more attention to his men and less to his toy rockets, the world would be a happier place.”

They did seem to have strayed even farther than usual, Nathanial noticed. “We are due in Abak’hn the day after tomorrow. Perhaps there is less need for vigilance here,” he suggested. The look Kak’hamish gave him said otherwise. “Yes, very well. Someone had better give old Onxym Haat a nudge, I suppose. He won’t pay any attention to you, so it’s up to me. You stay back here while I ride ahead. Ha git-git-git!” he called as he put his heels to the flanks of the gashant, coaxing it into a half-hearted trot.

After twenty or thirty paces it slowed to a walk again. “Ha git-git-git!” he repeated, the command taught them by one of Jed-An’s personal mounted guards. Now those four were real cavalry troopers! You could see it just looking at the well-maintained carbines resting in their saddle holsters, how they sat their mounts, how their eyes were always moving, always alert for danger. Not like these other sad bastards playing at caravan guard. “HAAA git-git-git!” he tried again, and this time his mount resumed its trot. He passed four lumbering ruumet breehr before he came to Onxym Haat’s beast second from the front.

“Ho, there! Hello the howdah! Haat, you old desert thief, it is I, Moustache Nate the desperado! HALLOO!” The words meant nothing to Haat, of course, but the shouts attracted his attention.

The porcine caravan master peered angrily over the side of the howdah and down at Nathanial, who in turn pointed north toward the two outriders, now riding slowly through the belt of scrub. Haat looked that way, shading his eyes from the sun, his face betraying boredom and irritation. Then he stood up straight and screamed the alarm. Nathanial turned to his right where perhaps a quarter mile away more than a score of gashant-mounted men seemingly boiled up from the ground like an eruption of lava and thundered toward the caravan.

Again the caravan seemed to explode into motion, but less organised this time, more desperate Nathanial thought. The ruumet breehr turned toward the raiders in a straggling, uneven line, but there was no time for them to close up. Nathanial pulled his mount’s reins hard to the left and kicked his heels into the beast’s flanks.

“HAAA git-git-git!”

This time the animal took the command to heart and stretched out into a long-striding run, head down and tail extended directly out to the rear for balance. Nathanial clung desperately to the saddle to stay on his bouncing, swaying mount. He flashed between the flanks of two ruumet breehr and through a scattering crowd of men on foot, then into the grass belt beyond. Ahead of him he saw two more outriders in animated conversation, but who did not ride toward the caravan.

Nathanial’s mount came to the shallow dry ravine through the centre of the grass belt and leaped into the air to hurdle it. Nathanial became completely airborne, connected only by his death grip on the saddle. When the animal hit ground, Nathanial came down off-centre, lost his hold, and fell into the tall grass, tumbling over and over.

The fall dazed him and for a moment he lay in the grass recovering his wits. The sound of a musket shot, and then another, brought him back to the present. He sat up and looked north over the brush. Just sitting up made him dizzy. The caravan had stopped and was now a swirl of confused activity. There had been no time for the musketeers to climb into the howdahs. Knots of men on foot clustered by wagons—a musketeer here and there but mostly labourers. Most cowered in panic or scrambled under the wagon beds while a few stalwarts pulled long pikes from the wagons.

Nathanial located Annabelle’s wagon, the fifth one to the right from Onxym Haat’s. He saw no sign of Kak’hamish. Nathanial crawled on hands and knees through the tall grass toward the wagon but came to the gully immediately, slid down into it, crossed to the far bank, and paused as his head spun.

The gully was little more than three feet deep, but the grass to either side was nearly as tall. From here he could see nothing, which meant no one could see him. The riders were interested in plundering the caravan, not murdering some lone straggler, and so were unlikely to venture this way. He was unarmed, while Annabelle had her four musketeers and Kak’hamish to defend her. Could he contribute anything important to that defence? Surely not. Better to wait here until things sorted themselves out.

Nathanial stood still in the gulley and heard the war cries of mounted raiders, the shouts of fear and pain of men from the caravan, scattered musket shots, the collective sounds of a desperate battle where people he knew struggled for their lives, and some of them perhaps lost that struggle. As he listened, his head cleared. A ruumet breehr bellowed in pain, another answered in fear, wood splintered, men cried out in terror or rage.

No. This would not do. He could not simply stand here and listen. He was not sure what to do, but inaction was not an option. He might need a weapon, he supposed. He knelt and pried a grapefruit-sized round rock from the muddy bed of the stream. He made his way down the gulley until he judged himself opposite Annabelle’s wagon, where he scrambled up on the bank of the gully for a better view.

The look of the battle had changed in just the few moments he had been in the gully. Several riderless gashants ran free in the area but Nathanial could not tell if they were the mounts of raiders or caravan guards, or perhaps a mix of the two. One ruumet breehr was down on its side, coughing blood but still kicking, trying vainly to regain its feet. The beasts to either side shied away, overturning a wagon and spreading more confusion. Another animal further down the line had bolted—if the lumbering waddle of the animal could be thus described—to the north, dragging behind it a wagon which had already lost a wheel and which leaked an irregular stream of bales and boxes of goods in its wake.

A large knot of defenders, pikes bristling, clustered around the base of Onxym Haat’s animal and wagon, and similar groups formed two or three other defensive hedgehogs further back. The pikes held the riders at bay while a few musketeers stood between them, fired at a rider, and then fell back behind the pikes to reload. Solitary raiders wheeled and charged the pikes, threw javelins when close, then galloped back away from the deadly points.

No similar cluster of pikes stood near Annabelle’s wagon, only four musketeers in a tight semicircle around the back and one tall pikeman dressed in rags—Kak’hamish. The riders probably sought a weak point, and they would find it soon enough, right there.

Nathanial pushed forward on hands and knees into the tall grass. A rider looking directly at him might see but he imagined they had more pressing demands on their attention. He dropped to his belly as he approached the area already trampled down by the earlier path of the caravan, pushing himself forward with his knees and elbows. Three mounted raiders now trotted at a cautious distance from the four musketeers. A fourth rider, closer to Nathanial, had halted his mount and was occupied in wrapping a bloody rag about his left forearm. Someone had at least drawn blood. Nathanial saw movement among the musketeers but no fire issued from them.

“Shoot the rascals,” Nathanial heard himself say softly. “Go on, what are you waiting for? Just shoot the lot of them!”

Unaware he had stood up, he found himself on his feet and the heavy rock in his hand. He ran toward the wounded raider, whose attention remained on his own arm and the cluster of men around the wagon. The rider never heard him coming and after a dozen strides Nathanial leaped into the air and seized the rider around the waist, pulling him awkwardly from the saddle as his mount squawked in alarm and bolted.

The two fell to the ground and the stone slipped from Nathanial’s hand before he had a chance to brain his opponent. The Martian was stronger than Nathanial but had little use of his left arm. That might have made the contest even, if Nathanial had any idea what he was doing, but he did not. Once on the ground he found himself flailing at the raider, landing ineffective blows on his shoulders and head. They rolled onto the clutch of javelins which had fallen from the rider’s hip quiver when they had tumbled. Nathanial felt several shafts snap under their weight and the broken wood tear into his shoulder.

The Martian pushed back away from Nathanial, sat up, and shook his head to clear it. Nathanial rolled away from him and searched frantically in the grass for his lost rock. The Martian drew the knife from his belt and with a cry leaped forward and Nathanial grabbed the first thing which came to hand, a stick, and held it up to stave off the attack.

He had not seized a stick, but rather one of the scattered javelins. Unfortunately, the end the Martian ran onto was the blunt one. The warrior fell back with a grunt of pain, rubbing his ribcage with his free hand. Nathanial, now frantic with fear and anger, rose to his knees and began beating his opponent with the javelin, using it as a rod. One of the blows landed full on the side of the man’s head and stunned him and another knocked the knife from his hand. Nathanial struck him again and the javelin splintered and broke in half.

Nathanial looked at the shattered stump of javelin in his hand for a moment, at first unsure what he held. Then he reversed it, so the fire-blackened point faced the raider, and with a shout thrust at him. Nathanial stopped short of stabbing the raider, however, and the Martian scrambled back on hands and knees. Nathanial shouted and poked at him again and the wounded man jumped to his feet and ran away as fast as he could.

Nathanial knelt for a moment in the grass holding the broken javelin, panting with the exertion and feeling a mounting sense of primal power. The warrior had run away from him. From him! He picked up the warrior’s abandoned knife in his left hand, looked at it, and he wanted to roar in triumph, like a lion over a kill.

“Nathanial! Look out!” he heard Kak’hamish call.

Nathanial turned toward the wagon to see a mounted warrior, no more than fifteen yards away, galloping at full speed toward him, javelin raised overhead and poised to throw. Nathanial froze and time seemed to as well. In that instant he saw the warrior’s pock-marked face twisted in a war cry he did not hear, saw the cuirass made of horizontal bleached wooden rods strapped across his chest, the single blue pebble tied to his ear by a thin leather thong.

A musket thundered somewhere. The centre of the warrior’s cuirass exploded outward in blood and bone. Astonishment replaced the killing rage in his eyes, and then his face went blank and he tumbled backward over the saddle and into the grass, where he lay motionless. The gashant continued its run past Nathanial and brushed his shoulder, but he could not move, not even to duck aside.

4.

kak’hamish watched Nathanial walk to the wagon, clothes torn and muddy, hair awry, a knife thrust in his belt and the broken javelin still in his right hand. Across the stream the raiders galloped away in retreat.

“You did well, my friend,” Kak’hamish said.

“Dash fire, I did!” Nathanial answered angrily. “Who shot the warrior?”

“I do not know. It was not one of the musketeers here.”

Anger darkened the young scientist’s face. “No? Why the devil not? Were they waiting for a bloody invitation?” He glared at the four guards who now idled by the wagon, and they returned his look without interest or concern.

Kak’hamish put his hand on his friend’s shoulder to calm and steady him. “Because they are professionals, Nathanial, and because they were guarding Annabelle’s safety, not yours. Two had discharged their muskets and were reloading. The other two will not fire until the first two are done, so the squad is never without two loaded muskets, lest the enemy charge them. It is their way, and it is how they kept the raiders at bay.”

Nathanial unsteadily ran his left hand over his face and then nodded. “Yes, of course. Quite right. Sorry I went on so. I just…the experience was unnerving. It is just that what with my actions on Peregrine Station and now here, I…” Nathanial shook his head. “I am sorry, frightfully sorry, to have used such vile language. I beg you accept my apology.”

“Although I do not believe an apology is necessary, I accept it in any case,” Kak’hamish answered.

“These are the times that try us so,” Nathanial said softly, then seemed to pull himself together and continued. “So who do you suppose shot that villain at the last second? Our mysterious friend?”

Clack-clack.

That was an interesting thought. Kak’hamish turned and looked both ways, up and down the caravan. With the ruumet breehrs shifting nervously, the jumble of wagons and tumbled cargo spread across the ground, it appeared as if the shot could have come from almost anywhere. But most of the musketeers had been on the ground defending the pike hedgehogs, and there was not an abundance of firearms in the caravan. More than that, it would have been a very long, and very precise, shot for a smoothbore musket, which was not very accurate beyond fifty or so paces, even in the hands of an expert. No, this would have been a rifle shot, possibly from an Earth-manufactured weapon, or perhaps from one of the long banded rifles used by the hill folk.

But the answer to that question would have to wait.

“We need to look in on Miss Annabelle,” Kak’hamish said. “She has taken the attack hard, which puzzles me.”

In an instant concern blotted out every other emotion on Nathanial’s face. He dropped the broken javelin and scrambled up and into the wagon and Kak’hamish followed him. They found Annabelle deep in the wagon, having pulled grain sacks over herself.

“Annabelle, it is all right,” Nathanial said as he tried to pull off a grain sack to which she clung desperately. “It is Kak’hamish and I. The attack is over.”

She relaxed her hold on the sack and as Nathanial removed it, Kak’hamish saw her face stained with tears and distorted in terror, so much so he hardly recognised her as the courageous woman he had come to know.

“Are the Apaches gone?” she asked with quivering voice.

5.

Kak’hamish looked up and down the length of the caravan and noted the gradual return to a semblance of calm. Annabelle, having regained her composure, now sat on the back of her wagon—for that is how everyone now thought of it—and smiled gratefully at the offer of an earthen mug of herbal tea brought by one of her musketeers.

“Oh, thank you, Koomaret,” she said in passable Koline. “Much, much needed.”

The Master of Sword appeared behind a nearby wagon, saw the cluster of men, and called angrily to them to come assemble.

“We must go, Annabellanna,” the musketeer named Harran said. “The big private calls us.”

As the musketeers walked toward the assembly, making a show of not hurrying, Kak’hamish thought, big private. That was all the musketeers thought of the Master of Sword. It would offend the officer to know that, but there were worse things they could have called him. They at least accepted him as one of their own, although one who had grown too big for his own harness. Kak’hamish had met soldiers who did not credit their officers even with the sense of a common private, so this was something.

Kak’hamish turned his attention to Annabelle. “Who are these Apaches you mistook the raiders for, Miss Annabelle?”

“Really, Kak’hamish, that is nearly an impertinent question,” Nathanial admonished. “I am certain that if Annabelle wished us to know―ˮ

“No, Nathanial. Thank you for your concern, but it is perhaps for the best I speak of this. I am surprised by the intensity of this recollection and, I admit, shaken by it as well.

“I cannot tell you everything, because I do not recall everything—disturbingly little, as a matter of fact. Nathanial knows I am an orphan and that my uncle, Cyrus Grant, is my guardian. What I doubt that you know, at least in detail, is how that came to pass. My parents lived in the Arizona Territory, where they owned a ranch. When I was young, a party of Chiricahua Apache killed my parents and took me prisoner. I lived as a captive among the Chiricahua for some time, but was…well, rescued by an expedition of the United States Army several years ago—not cavalry but foot soldiers, what the Apache call ‘walk-a-heaps.’ I have some recollections of life among the Apache but they are disjointed and incomplete. I have few memories of my childhood, and until today I did not remember the particular events surrounding the day when I was taken and…and my parents killed.”

She stopped and turned away, pressed her eyes closed, but despite her efforts tears again ran down her cheeks. She shook her head. “I am sorry, but what they did…and I witnessed it all.”

“They must be a particularly savage and bestial tribe,” Nathanial said with a mixture of sympathy and anger, and he put his hand on her shoulder for comfort.

Annabelle’s head came up sharply. “I never saw a Chiricahua strike a child or mistreat an animal. They are the kindest, most generous people I ever met—among themselves. But they draw the circle of humanity very tightly about their lodges, and have no sympathy for creatures outside that circle. I wish they would draw their circle wider, but I also wish the society I count myself part of treated those within its circle more as do the Apache.”

“In the desert, share,” Kak’hamish said.

Annabelle turned to him. “What?”

“That is what you said to Nathanial, when we first met. He sensibly hesitated to give me water, but you said, in the desert, share. You learned that from the Apache, I think.”

She nodded.

“There are similarities between your Apaches and these raiders,” Kak’hamish went on, and he silently admitted there were many with his Queln as well. “The steppe tribes are nomadic, but have regular ranges. Their entire villages are mobile, using gashants and cargo sleds similar to the one Nathanial drew through the desert, but without benefit of liftwood. These warriors who attacked us are of the Amentote. I am not familiar enough with that nation to know their particular tribe, as this is considerably east of their normal range.”

“They don’t look like you,” Nathanial observed. “I saw two of them very close, and they look physically different.”

“They are hill people, as are the Queln. The differences are more obvious than significant. Their skins are darker than those of us who hail from the canals and lowlands and they are slightly shorter in general. Their shoulders appear heavier, which gives them a more powerful appearance, but it does not come from greater strength. The fatty deposit between and over their shoulder blades enables them to go longer without water, or rather to store it for later use—a useful feature in arid country.”

“Their animals are different, as well,” Nathanial said. “I note the species of gashants ridden by the guards have atrophied front legs, so they are simply stumps, but the mounts of the hill people seem a more vigorous and primitive version, with front…feet I suppose you’d call them, equipped with impressive talons. I should not like to face one, were it enraged.”

“The species is the same,” Kak’hamish said. “The canal people cut off the forearms of their gashants when young to make them easier to handle and train, and make them dependent on their masters.”

For a moment the two Earth folk were silent. Annabelle’s gaze fell to her own amputated leg and she shuddered. “Horrible,” she whispered.

“Well, that’s something Conklin’s has wrong,” Nathanial added thoughtfully.

One of many things, my young friend, Kak’hamish considered.

The sound of trotting gashants made all of them start, but the approaching party consisted of Jed-An accompanied by his servant and two of his mounted guards. They reined in by the rear of the wagon.

“Ah, my friends from Earth! You are safe? Miss Somerset seems so, but Mister Stone seems to have been ill used.”

“We are well, Ambassador,” Annabelle said in Koline before Kak’hamish could translate. Once he did so, Nathanial walked to Jed-An’s mount and offered his hand.

“Ambassador, it is very good to see you alive and well! An experience such as this reminds one that life can at any moment be cut short, and a thanks delayed may be one forever unspoken. Let me express my gratitude once more for everything you have done for us.”

Kak’hamish translated the scientist’s words and Jed An shook the offered hand, smiling in slight bemusement at this uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“I have been glad to help you, Mister Stone. Soon our paths may diverge, which pains me, as my duties will keep me in Abak’hn while yours will draw you away. But my position at least carries some influence, and I believe I can guarantee no obstacle will be placed in your way by the municipal authorities. Now I must meet with Onxym Haat and determine the extent of the damage and delay.”

As Kak’hamish translated, Nathanial released the ambassador’s hand and even gave him a small bow. The ambassador and his party cantered away toward the head of the caravan and Nathanial’s unctuous smile faded. He raised his hand to his nose and sniffed, then held it out to Kak’hamish.

He smelled it. “It is not Jed-An, then,” Kak’hamish said.

“No,” Nathanial said. “No scent of gunpowder on him.”

Chapter Five

“Martian Crossroads”

1.

Annabelle wanted to like this city, this first city on Mars she would experience, but it was difficult. It stood astride the junction of five grand canals, broad and deep, and she imagined the waters crowded with multi-coloured sails, and the docks and jetties swarming with longshoremen unloading embroidered fabrics, beautiful porcelain, and exotic fruits from far-away kingdoms.

But the water had fled the canal centuries earlier, the docks had long since been torn down, and the once-grand city had crept down the banks of the canal and into the dry basin, becoming more ramshackle and tawdry with each step. The tall, simple buildings atop the canal embankment, though now mostly deserted and fallen to ruin, stared down through empty-window eye sockets at their architectural offspring with dismay. The newer buildings were both more complex and less substantial in construction, pieced together as they were from the mismatched stone, brick, and tile bones of their ancestors. The once-austere white or pale tan stone, having made the journey down the embankment, had also acquired new raiment—garish colours washed unevenly over all, here peeling, there fading, unmistakable evidence that whatever dignity and elegance the city once possessed had departed with the receding waters.

“Well, it certainly is colourful,” Nathanial said with a measure of approval which surprised Annabelle. Had his taste deserted him altogether, or was her own judgment poisoned by her physical discomfort?

At the mid-day break she had walked the entire time, using a crutch as well as her peg; she was far from being able to walk unassisted. The flesh on the bottom of her stump had grown chafed and irritated, not yet having developed the desired degree of callous. Her back protested the unfamiliar and awkward strains put on it. Her right hand and shoulder ached as well, as the crutch cut off the circulation to her arm and she had periodically to rest and shake her hand to restore sensation. Nathanial had offered to make a different crutch, one easier on her arm, but she refused. That pain, at least, had some therapeutic value; it encouraged her to put as much weight as she could on the stump, and the more she did so, the sooner she could dispense with the crutch altogether.

Nathanial and Kak’hamish fussed a great deal over her, particularly during her exercises, and although she appreciated their affection and genuine concern, she had grown tired of the solicitude. What she wanted most was to regain her physical self-sufficiency, no longer dependent on her well-meaning care givers. If pain was the shortest path to that independence, so be it.

She looked back down the canal basin to see if this moment of philosophical self-examination had opened her eyes to the barbaric splendour of the city of Abak’hn.

No.

Normally she would not have seen the city until they arrived, as the large ruumet breehr obstructed her view forward from her wagon, but today she rode in Ambassador Jed-An’s carriage, which had taken the lead. She sat on the elevated seat beside his driver and could see clearly past the team of eight gashants. Nathanial and Kak’hamish rode mounts beside her, and the ambassador rode well ahead, accompanied by his servant, his four mounted guards, and Onxym Haat.

“You have been quiet all day, Kak’hamish,” she said. She knew the reason for his silence and hesitated to raise the subject, but they had to talk about it.

“I discover that I am sad at the prospect of our parting,” he answered.

“Parting?” Nathanial repeated, surprised, and then his face cleared. “Oh, yes. You only promised to escort us as far as Abak’hn. We’re here, aren’t we?” he said with a tinge of sadness.

“So it seems,” Kak’hamish answered. “You will have quarters in the caravanserai this evening and will perhaps depart on the next step of your voyage tomorrow. You have Onxym Haat’s promise of passage to Thoth, and Jed-An’s protection, at least so long as you are here. That addresses my main concern about your time here in Abak’hn. Jed-An gave you some money as well, did he not?”

“Yes, but dash it all, Kak’hamish, how are we to negotiate for passage once we reach Thoth?”

“Annabelle’s Koline is becoming quite good. The trade tongue is simple, but still, she must have an ear for languages.”

“Thank you, Kak’hamish,” she said. “Everything you say is true, and we should not keep you from your own path, much as we would dearly love to see you choose a different one. We owe you too great a debt to ask any more of you. But please stay with us this first night, if for no other reason than to share our company and a meal.”

Clack-clack.

He looked south at the distant, solitary skrill rider, still shadowing the caravan. She saw emotions struggle in their friend, but in the end he nodded. “I would not begrudge my friends one night.”

She looked again toward the city, and felt more comfortable knowing Kak’hamish would be with them at least this first night. The bonds of friendship had grown strong between them these last two weeks, but more than simple fellowship prompted her reaction. Something about this place unsettled her, made her feel as if they entered uncharted and hazardous waters. If anyone could steer the twisted channels between the reefs ahead of them, and bring them to safe waters beyond, Kak’hamish could.

2.

EXCERPT 46.

“Beyond the Inner Worlds: The Journal of Professor Nathanial Stone” (Published July 2011, by Chadwick Press).

Thursday, October 10th 1889.

For three days now we have been all but prisoners here in the caravanserai at Abak’hn, which appears on English maps as Aubuchon. The immediate cause of our confinement is unrest in the town directed against us as Earth humans, or perhaps more specifically at me for being a British subject. It is shocking to witness the animosity directed against the Crown by the local population, especially by the lower elements, particularly as they have never, so far as I can determine, actually encountered a British soldier or subject, nor seen a British warship.

We are very well guarded here by the local watch, supplemented by Onxym Haat’s musketeers, who remain ferociously devoted to Annabelle. Of the mounted guards, none remain. Several deserted to the raiders—were probably in league with them from the beginning—and the others either ran off or were discharged upon arrival here. The result of our confinement has been an overwhelming sense of boredom and frustration, rather than one of danger. Annabelle exercises more every day and makes remarkable progress, and I have had more time for this journal than I have lately enjoyed, but beyond that we have very little productive work to occupy us.

As the religious pilgrims accompanying the caravan are sequestered with us I had hoped to speak with them and learn more of their theology, but I have been frustrated on that score as well. I have discovered they escort relics of great significance to their religion—the mummified remains of several church notables—which are to be located in a shrine in Thoth. Until that task is completed, they cannot risk “contamination” by even casual conversation with those not intimate with their faith. Perhaps after the relics are delivered to Thoth, and if Annabelle and I have the time before continuing our journey, we will have the opportunity to converse.

Onxym Haat must hire more guards and replace several ruumet breehr before his caravan can begin its return journey to Sharranus, which it will do under the direction of his business partners. He will accompany us with his spice cargo by cloudship—assuming the day of our departure ever comes. Haat tells us nothing, and is distracted and distant. I sense his mind is on more than simply his caravan and spice, but I cannot divine what. I grow increasingly suspicious of his motives, as has Kak’hamish, who has stayed with us out of concern for our safety.

That is the one bright spot in all of this—our apparent peril has kept our friend at our side, and will do so until we are delivered safely to Thoth and (I suspect) actually bundled on board a canal barge for Shastapsh. He was relieved to discover that the cloudship, when it finally leaves, will sail directly from here to Thoth, without calling at Siruahn. All that I recall of that place is that it seems to have some sort of parliamentary government—in contrast to the potentates who rule most of these city-states—and that Kak’hamish described its politics as extremely argumentative. He seems a singularly un-argumentative fellow, comfortable with his own counsels, and perhaps that is the basis of his antipathy for the place.

In the meantime, Kak’hamish each day purchases a flying creature from the tradesmen, of a type called a coronape and normally sold as an ornamental pet. It is quite extraordinary, long and sinewy with a thin membrane running along the side of its body connected to its fore and hind limbs, in the same manner as the giant skrill and the flying Martians. Its face is so ferocious in aspect that one is compelled to smile, given its diminutive size—no more than a dozen inches in length—much as one does at the loud display of barking managed by the smaller breeds of dogs kept as ladies’ companions. He buys one flyer each morning, along with a long red streamer, and at noon releases the animal, the streamer affixed to a hind leg. I cannot but think this is a signal, sent to the mysterious lone skrill rider which shadowed us these last days, confirming Kak’hamish remains here in the city, safe.

Our idleness has given me leisure to observe the local inhabitants of the city, when they are not inclined to hurl epithets and paving stones at the caravanserai. Local butchers and green grocers bring their produce here, as we are unable to visit the markets for ourselves. The people are not as homogeneous as I had imagined, or for that matter had been led to believe. There are three races of Martians, which Conklin’s labels as Canal, Hill, and High. All of the Martians I had met and conversed with to date were of the Canal variety. The desert raiders who attacked us were Hill folk, physically differing from the Canal Martians as I have recorded in an earlier entry. The so-called High Martians live in the mountains, are squat and bestial in appearance, and have the ability to fly, which is something to wonder at. Apparently they do so using the same biological mechanism as the skirl. The thin membrane between arm and lower body is much apparent, and upon closer examination shares the veiny translucence of a bat’s wing.

That much was widely reported, but I had assumed there was very little cohabitation of the groups. This city gives the lie to that notion. Although the population is primarily of the Canal, I noticed substantial numbers of Hill folk living as city dwellers and—most remarkably—a number of flying Martians as well, perched on rooftops like gargoyles and observing the progress of our caravan through the outlying districts, and occasionally flying over the caravanserai for a look at us. Today when the tradesmen delivered our food, I noticed a Canal woman with her small child in tow, a toddler whose father must clearly be a flying Martian. The generally accepted rule, so far as I know, is that if two creatures can produce fertile offspring, they are members of the same species. I cannot speak to the fertility of this young Martian, but I think it a likely demonstration these three are all the same species, and their physical differences are simply the result of environmental pressures, as is the case with the Galapagos finches.

I find this place most unsettling. On the one hand, everything I have seen of the country convinces me most of our confident assumptions about its people are wildly inaccurate. At the same time, the level of simmering resentment toward Earth in general, and Great Britain in particular, portends calamity, although I have not the wisdom to foresee what form that calamity may take.

3.

Shistomo watched the ribboned coronape soar into the sky with unease. A similar flyer had been released each day since the caravan’s arrival at Abak’hn. This was clearly a signal, but for whom? Not for him, that much was certain. That someone in the caravan signalled someone other than him suggested an unwanted complication, and reinforced his dissatisfaction with this early part of their plan.

Having the would-be prince travel by caravan instead of flyer had certainly not been his decision, although he understood the logic of the move. If the Queln raids had not so disrupted merchant commerce, there would have been ships aplenty in Sharranus, and hiring one would not have attracted undue attention, but with all the flyers trending north to avoid the Queln, the situation had become difficult.

Difficult, but not impossible, Shistomo thought. Better to risk suspicion in Sharranus by chartering a ship, regardless of cost, than court disaster in the gardenway. And disaster had very nearly come—twice.

A light breeze lifted the hull of the cloudship beneath him and he steadied himself against the railing of the observation platform. The armed wind-wing, a handy little Bloodrunner mounting two guns, floated just above the desert’s surface two hundred paces back from the canal embankment, half a mile southwest of Abak’hn. Only the mast-mounted observation platform where Shistomo stood would have been visible from the city, and was small enough that none would see it unless already aware of the ship’s presence and looking specifically for the small wooden structure.

That lone skrill rider, the one who shadowed the caravan since the aerial attack, would of course have seen the ship, but the rider’s interest was clearly invested in the caravan, not in a small, solitary armed vessel. Why did the rider follow? Perhaps a kinsman had perished in the attack, and the rider sought a blood price. That was the Queln way, but Shistomo had seen no rockets fired nor heard any musket shots, and the raid had not been pressed home, so he did not see how casualties could have been suffered. Perhaps he had missed part of the fight. He observed it from five thousand feet of altitude, where the grey sails and grey-painted hull bottom were effectively invisible to ground observers, but from which height he could see little detail.

Shistomo relied instead on his own messages from the caravan, left in its wake and collected by him in the early morning, before he had his ship climb to altitude. Two English people now accompanied the caravan: a crippled woman of no importance, and a man of considerable potential worth to them. An accomplished scientist holding a responsible position with the British government would make a useful hostage, or perhaps his “rescue” and release would give the British reason to favour the new prince. This new piece could be made to fit the puzzle of his plan quite well, if the hot-heads in the caravan could hold off from killing him.

Passion was his enemy, Shistomo knew. Too many young acolytes felt fire in their bellies. The only true Way of the Worm was the cold, remorseless inevitability of the grave.

4.

THE cloudship was not what Nathanial had expected. It’s broad, beamy, nearly flat-bottomed, hull floated ten or twelve feet above the loading ramps, tethered securely fore and aft. That much was as the drawings in Lloyd’s News back on Earth had suggested. But where were the masts on the upper deck, the spars and furled sails? The drawings he had seen made the cloudships look like old square-rigged windjammers floating in the sky. He had always wondered, in a vague sort of way, how they kept from nosing over if all the sails were all on top. For that matter, he wondered how they steered, or did anything but drift down-wind, but he supposed there was some explanation.

This ship had no familiar upper masts. Instead it sported an array of spars and outriggers extending out to its sides fully as far as its overall length, which Nathanial estimated as over a hundred feet. The spars bore furled sails and were wrapped in heavy canvas bound around by rope lines, so they took on the appearance of bulging sausages. If there were masts on the upper deck, they must be folded up for now—”shipped,” he believed was the nautical term—and would be erected once they took to the air.

A dozen crewmen groaned and sweated on the dock, lifting a cargo net full of bags of ereban spice—he deduced from the odour of one bag which had split open and spilled its contents across the ground—by means of a capstan-powered winch attached to a cargo boom. Four more crewmen waited above in the gaping cargo hatch, one armed with a boathook to snag and pull in the cargo net. Carefully-sized piles of ereban spice sacks stretched along the dock, each on a rolling cart, waiting their turn for loading. Nathanial saw other cargos as well—crates of various sizes, padded earthen jugs, large timber kegs and water butts, and exotic alien livestock confined in a pen. Some of the latter might be provisions for the journey, for all he knew. He had never seen any of these animals, which was hardly surprising as he thought about it. Most books and illustrated magazines dealing with Mars concentrated on romantic adventures, either factual or invented, and so described animals people rode and animals which occasionally ate people. The balance of the Martian animal kingdom provided little grist for the authors’ mills.

It occurred to him one might say they wrote about actual Martians using a similar perspective.

A rope ladder with wooden rungs dangled down from the broad boarding platform near the cargo bay and Annabelle stared at it in dismay.

“Do not be distressed, Annabelle,” Kak’hamish said. “They will lower a boarding sling, which most ladies use in any case.”

Kak’hamish had roused them well before dawn with news they would board and leave this morning. They had made their way silently through the dark streets, before even the farmer’s market opened, and reached the landing ground as the eastern horizon turned pink with the promise of a new day. The others would come later; unaccompanied by “the English” they would have no difficulty from the locals.

Two crewmen took a break from the capstan and hauled on a block and tackle rig which lifted Annabelle in the boarding sling quickly up to the boarding platform. Nathanial took the opportunity to study the lines of the ship in more detail.

The Martians called all of their aerial vessels cloudships, and those powered solely by wind “kites”, or at least that was how Earthmen had always translated the word which Kak’hamish said meant wind-wing. Whichever term you chose, this was a big one. The hull consisted of a large and deep cargo hold forward and a longer but somewhat shallower berthing hull aft, separate but linked by a common upper deck. Each hull section was thirty to forty-five feet long, and the linking deck between them at least another twenty feet. He had seen much larger ships, of course, but none of them floating a half-dozen feet over his head.

The bottoms of the forward and aft hulls were covered with liftwood louvers, the lifting panels which held the ship aloft. A crewman stood near the front of the vessel by a lead line hanging down from the keel and touching the ground, marked off in clear regular increments. As a new net of cargo left the dock, the cloudship settled lower and the crewman called out an order, shouting toward the back of the ship. Nathanial watched two or three louvers change angle slightly and the ship rise. When it reached its original height, the crewman called out again, another slight adjustment, and the ship was stable.

Liftwood—the Martian scientific oddity and treasure which had been its blessing in centuries of decline, which had kept planet-wide commerce flowing in the face of the collapse of its industrial-based technology, but which might now prove to be its final curse. European powers scrambled to control and harvest its extraordinary potential, and backed their claims with steam engines, magazine rifles, and field guns manufactured by Krupp, Armstrong, and Putilov. Nathanial felt again the sense of foreboding which had first troubled him in the caravanserai.

Mars had come to terms with the inevitability of its long, steady decline. How had Kak’hamish put it? A thousand philosophies and theologies, but all of them about the End of Things. Now all of a sudden these Earthmen came, full of optimism and vigour, ready to build, improve, progress—and take whatever they needed to accomplish those ends, by force if necessary. This would not end well.

“Nathanial,” Kak’hamish said softly, interrupting his reverie, and gestured to the dangling rope ladder.

Nathanial climbed up, although doing so was more difficult than it appeared, as the ladder began swinging as soon as he started his ascent. The pendulous arc became greater with each step until he was forced to pause and let it settle, lest he become dizzy. Kak’hamish seized the ladder from below and held it steady.

“Now proceed,” he ordered, and Nathanial finished the climb to the boarding platform easily. Annabelle waited there, having already sorted herself out, leaning on the crutch as well as steadying herself with her left hand on the platform railing.

Nathanial turned to see how Kak’hamish negotiated the ladder without anyone below to steady it. The Martian first slung his bundle, a large covered box of some sort, but of very light weight, over his back. He faced the end of the ladder rather than its rungs, and quickly climbed hand-over-hand up the rope at that end, using the rungs only to steady himself as he scampered up. When he pulled himself lightly over the rail, he looked at Nathanial and his eyes gleamed with a mixture of triumph and humour.

“Well, if one insists on doing it the easy way,” Nathanial said in mock derision, “one can hardly take much pride in the accomplishment, can one?”

They made their way up the nearly-vertical wooden companionway to the main deck and Nathanial was pleased to see the comparative ease with which Annabelle managed. Once topside, they made their way aft to the raised superstructure holding the accommodations, and then again up stairs to the broad quarterdeck. Although he looked carefully on the main deck and quarterdeck, no masts folded or otherwise were in evidence, aside from a slender scaffold supporting what was clearly an observation platform and the fan-like expanding rudder, rising from the back of the quarterdeck. The spars sprouting from the vessel’s side appeared to mount the only actual working rigging on the vessel. That at least answered the question of how the cloudship avoided tipping over in a wind, and Nathanial felt gratified by his earlier suspicions. He still saw no way in which the vessel could steer, or even move any faster than the light breeze, but he was willing to be educated.

The quarterdeck was broad and long, almost as long as the rest of the main deck. The forward part contained a raised gun platform mounting what looked to be an antique muzzle-loading cannon on a turntable mount. A capstan below it no doubt served to turn it in action, although neither capstan nor gun looked as if they had been used in recent memory. Nathanial was unsure whether that was a good or bad sign.

Aft of the gun platform was an open hatchway surrounded by a railing, and behind that was what Nathanial took to be the ship’s tiller, a long pole extending to a vertical shaft near the rear of the quarterdeck. Onxym Haat waited for them near the tiller, alongside his clerk and a well-muscled Martian sailor, the helmsman perhaps. Another Martian, tall and weathered, stood by the port rail, his attention entirely on the men loading the cargo and the adjustments to the lift of the vessel. Haat now carried Nathanial’s former pistol thrust into his sash, an obvious mark of wealth and status here. He looked more resigned to their presence than pleased by it, and his words were short, abrupt.

“Onxym Haat says the man by the rail is Andan Moorie, the captain of the ship, which is called the Lady Zumaat,” Kak’hamish translated. “He says you have quarters here in the berthing deck. I am to sleep forward, with the crew.”

“No, that won’t stand,” Nathanial started, but Kak’hamish shook his head.

“It is better this way. Onxym Haat has never forgiven me for the Queln attack. If I sleep forward, out of his sight, he may be more cordial to you. It is a small thing.”

It did not sit well with Nathanial, but he saw the sense in it.

More passengers arrived and the three of them walked to the quarterdeck rail to watch, giving the ship’s captain a wide berth. First came a familiar pale red wagon drawn by a ruumet breehr—the religious pilgrims. Five men in pale grey robes dismounted and conversed with their driver, who in turn supervised the offloading of six darkly ornate sarcophagi, and then their lifting up and into the cargo bay. Apparently the driver was a member of the faith but not a consecrated priest, so it was permissible to speak to him and have him interact with other, without contamination. It made a certain sense to Nathanial, or at least as much as any sort of elaborate religious ritual ever did.

“I don’t suppose our mysterious friend will be with us for this part of the voyage,” Nathanial said. “Not unless he is one of the clerics.” Almost everyone else from the caravan was either remaining in Abak’hn or returning with the caravan to Sharranus.

“Oh, that’s true!” Annabelle said with disappointment. “Unless our friend is Onxym Haat himself.” They all laughed at that suggestion, but then she continued in a more thoughtful tone. “Or his clerk, I suppose. You know, that is possible. Sometimes we look at the most obvious people, when those with a secret to guard are the ones least likely to draw attention to themselves.”

Clack-clack.

Yes, that was true, Nathanial thought. But his clerk? It seemed unlikely. Why would his clerk secretly befriend them? It made no sense.

Next came three enclosed light carriages, each drawn by a single gashant.

“The Martian equivalent of a hansom, I take it,” Nathanial commented. “Anyone we know?”

The doors opened and two men descended from each carriage. All six men were dressed in black from head to toe—black tunics and leg wrappings, and black cloaks overall―and wore silver masks.

“Ah, the six judges of Aetheria!” Kak’hamish said. “I heard they were coming.”

Five of the six stood tall and erect, while the sixth was stooped, perhaps by age. They gathered and conversed briefly, then walked to the boarding ladder. Their strides were unhurried and measured, except for the stooped man who walked with a slightly shuffling gait.

“They certainly have a way about them, don’t they?” Annabelle said.

“I have never heard of these worthies,” Nathanial said. “What do you know of them?”

“They are the magistrates for the six nomadic tribes of the Aetherian Steppe,” Kak’hamish answered, “each chosen for a span of six years. The blank silver masks are their badges of office as well as the symbol of impartial justice.”

“Rather far from home, aren’t they?” Nathanial asked. As he recalled from Conklin’s the Aetherian Steppe was five hundred or more miles to the northwest. Kak’hamish did not reply. Who knew what business drew Martians here or there, after all? There did seem something odd about them, however, but he could not put his finger on it.

Clack-clack.

Once the passengers and cargo were loaded, the ship’s captain took a last long look up and down the dock, and as the sun rose in the east, Lady Zumaat cast off her bow and stern lines and rose gently into the sky.

Chapter Six

“On Silken Wing”

1.

THE sun painted Lady Zumaat orange and yellow as the wind-wing rose up to meet it. Kak’hamish smiled, as he almost always smiled, to feel its warmth on his face. To feel the morning sun on one’s face after the chill of night was one of life’s special pleasures. It promised a day of happiness, achievement, and plenty. The promise was seldom fulfilled, and less so with each passing year, but the promise itself was a beautiful thing.

“Trimsman, full lift!” the captain barked an order down the open hatchway above the trim station. Kak’hamish imagined the lifting vanes under the fore and aft hull rotating, presenting their broad, flat surfaces to the ground below, and the wind-wing seemed to leap upward. Annabelle gasped in surprise and Nathanial steadied her with one hand while tightening his grasp on the rail with the other. Annabelle’s face immediately broke into a broad smile, however.

“This is fun!” she exclaimed, and Kak’hamish nodded his agreement, although Nathanial did not seem to share the sentiment.

Kak’hamish turned back to the southern sky. After a few minutes he saw the rising figure of the skrill and rider. The animal turned toward the city and the climbing wind-wing and Kak’hamish lifted his bundle onto the rail. The cover came away to expose the cage beneath, and the two coronapes blinked in the sudden light and protested their interrupted sleep with shrill clucks.

He opened the cage door, carefully pulled out one of the coronapes, checked to make sure it had not pulled the red streamer free, and released it to dive away and then soar into the sky above them. He waited a minute, made sure the rider was flying in their direction, and released the second flyer. A mile distant the skrill turned west, paralleling their course, made a shallow dive and then soared up again, now climbing with them.

“Two flyers today?” Annabelle asked.

“To make sure she saw. She is used to a flyer at noon.”

Annabelle and Nathanial both looked at him, clearly intrigued by his use of the female pronoun, but both too polite to inquire further. That was something he liked about Earth people: they might not always mind their own business, but at least they had a sense they ought to.

“Sidemen to the rigging!” the captain bellowed, and crewmen boiled from the forward hatch and scrambled out onto the canvas-wrapped outriggers. “Make Wing!”

The sidemen removed the lines wrapped around the canvas covers, then gathered in the canvas weather covers and passed them inboard to the main deck. Younger, less-experienced crew rolled and secured them on the deck and carried them below into the cargo hold. On the outriggers the sidemen shook loose the fine linen wing panels. The men on the forward outrigger made their way back to the main deck, then aft, and finally out onto the aft outrigger, which held no furled fabric. All hands drew on the lines attached to the inboard and outboard ends of each wing panel and stretched them back to the next outrigger, where the sidemen secured them at half a dozen points. Within minutes a broad horizontal surface of wind-rippled linen stretched to each side, reaching fifty feet out in the centre but narrowing sharply toward the front and less dramatically to the rear, like an arrowhead.

Nathanial and Annabelle both watched in fascination, but Nathanial looked puzzled as the sidemen climbed back aboard to the main deck. “It’s quite impressive,” he said, “but I still don’t really see how the thing works. It seems to me that so far we are simply drifting with the wind, and as that is out of the west, it seems to be carrying us in the wrong direction. Doesn’t a sail have to be perpendicular to the wind to harness it?”

“It is not a sail,” Kak’hamish said.

The captain looked with satisfaction on the stretched wings, took another look over the side to make sure of their altitude, and walked to the open hatch above the trim station.

“Hold on,” Kak’hamish ordered.

“Trimsman, five points down nose and give this pig some weight!” the captain shouted.

The deck tilted forward and suddenly the ship seemed to drop from under them, although not so completely that they left their feet. The linen wings stretched taught with air and the massive merchant ship suddenly dove forward, gaining speed as it lost altitude, racing down toward the Martian desert below. Annabelle lost her balance and fell onto her seat, then slid down to the forward railing of the quarterdeck. Nathanial and Kak’hamish both dashed forward to her side, Nathanial ending on his hands and knees, but when they got to her, her face was red with excitement and pleasure.

She cried out, exhilarated, her hair having come loose in the wind and blowing back behind her like the streamers on the coronapes. “This must be what it feels like to ski!”

Then the nose rose and the ship soared like a bird, rising and losing some speed, but still racing forward.

“Helm, come right to due west,” the captain ordered, and the ship responded with a gentle bank to the right, then levelled again, continuing its gradual descent.

Nathanial knelt at the quarterdeck rail, eyes glued to the taught linen wings. “A glider!’ he said. “Why didn’t I think of this before? Why, it’s so obvious! Gliders are nothing much more than toys back on Earth, of course, because dynamic lift can only sustain a very light craft for a limited time. But with a large enough wing and liftwood for buoyancy—why, it’s genius! And when the ship loses enough altitude for concern, the captain simply adds lift, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, of course,” Kak’hamish said. “The ship will lose a little speed in the climb, but only through drag, and then gain it back as soon as it again begins its dive.”

He found it odd that Nathanial, who worked with the design of aerial vessels on Earth, was so unfamiliar with the principles of a wind-wing. Were Earth humans so addicted to their iron and steel technologies, to steam and propellers, that they had ignored what Mars had discovered so long ago? Even when wind-wings regularly visited British colonies and trading stations? If so, that indicated a dangerous arrogance indeed.

2.

“this ship is fascinating, I must say!” Nathanial declared. “I spent all afternoon with the trimsman. Why, I feel as if I could almost fly this vessel myself, or at least maintain its trim and altitude. But according to my calculations, the voyage from Abak’hn to Thoth should take no more than thirty hours. Why is our transit time listed as three days?”

Annabelle thought that an excellent question, but had no answer of her own. “Are you sure your numbers are correct?” she asked. “Thirty hours seems very swift for a passage of eight hundred miles.”

“More like eight hundred and fifty, but this wind-wing is clearly capable of thirty knots, which is near enough to thirty-three miles per hour. That puts us at only twenty-six hours of flight time, so thirty hours allows for considerable margin of error.”

Why would Haat lie about such a thing, Annabelle wondered. What profit was there in it?

“Come in,” she said in response to a soft knock, and Kak’hamish slipped through the doorway into her already cramped stateroom. She sat on her bed while Nathanial occupied the only chair. He rose to offer it to Kak’hamish, but the Martian waved him back down.

“What have you learned?”

“Nathanial, your concerns about travel time do not seem well-founded. The ship seldom reaches its best speed, in part due to a desire to avoid wear on the rigging. Beyond that, it coasts at night due to the possibility of unseen hazards to navigation. It stays at high altitude and barely makes way against the wind. If we had the wind at our backs, we would make better time, but as you noticed this morning, it is in our face. We are scheduled to arrive the morning of the third day, so it is still a flight time not much more than fifty hours total.”

Nathanial frowned in doubt.

“However, all is not as it seems,” Kak’hamish continued. “I spoke with the ship’s cook. The clergymen took their evening meal in the cargo hold, with their relics, which I would expect. But they asked for the normal ship’s fare. Tonight, like most nights, it was a stew made of dried vegetables and preserved meat, along with shipsbread, and they ate everything.”

“Why does that excite your suspicion?” Annabelle asked.

“These men wear the robes of the Fishers of Thoth, a small sect generally not seen east of the Grand Canal, and so its practices are not well-known.”

“But you know of them, of course,” Nathanial said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“I travelled to Thoth a number of years ago, and did so with my eyes open; it is not a great accomplishment by itself. The significant point is that, while cleansed, the clergy of the Fishers never eat flesh. These men are not who they claim to be.”

Annabelle thought that over for a moment. Men with secrets were generally up to no good, but whoever their secret friend was, or had been, had had a secret as well. Much like Dolan on Peregrine. She shuddered at the memory; it seemed so long ago now, but her arm still ached in part from his treatment of her, and her leg… Well, it was a direct consequence of the secrets men kept.

“There is a second thing,” Kak’hamish said. “I stopped at Nathanial’s stateroom first to see if he was there. He was not, obviously, as he was here instead, but this was left on his bed.”

Kak’hamish opened his hand to show a small, seamed piece of browned paper. Annabelle took it and Nathanial crowded by her shoulder to look at it.

“BEWAYR”

“Well, his spelling hasn’t got much better, but the intent is clear enough,” Nathanial said, and Annabelle agreed. The spidery hand writing was clearly the same as that of the author of the original note.

“So, our mysterious friend—if he truly is a friend—remains with us,” Annabelle said. “This narrows the possibilities for his identity considerably.”

“Yes, but before we explore that, there is a third thing, the most damning of all. Once night fell, the ship changed course to the south. I know this from years of navigating by the stars. We are headed not for Thoth, but for Siruahn.”

That final damning evidence made up Annabelle’s mind. “We can delay no longer with idle speculation. We must take what information we have to whatever authority is at hand, which I believe to be the six judges of Aetheria. While they may have no authority here, they will know what action to take. In any case, their journey is interrupted as well, and they at least deserve to know the facts facing us.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Nathanial said. Kak’hamish seemed less certain, but after a moment nodded his assent as well. “Will you come, Annabelle?” Nathanial asked.

“No, I have already taken off my artificial leg and I think we have little time to lose. You two must go to them, and quickly.”

3.

nathanial led the way aft down the narrow wooden passageway along the port side of the quarters’ deck. The senior crew and owner, or charter-holder, slept in the quarters on the starboard side while the more common paying passenger slept to port. Nathanial and Annabelle’s cabins were forward so the judges had to be aft. The first cabin was silent and when Nathanial knocked softly, no one answered. Kak’hamish gestured down the passageway and Nathanial heard voices ahead, indistinct but clearly raised in some sort of heated discussion.

The deck felt odd beneath his feet, rising and falling slightly with the breeze. It felt somehow insubstantial, despite the solid sturdiness of the planed wood plank floor and the heavy timber bracings spaced along the passageway wall like flying buttresses. Perhaps it was that feeling of insubstantiality, of insecurity, which made Nathanial proceed aft more slowly, and with care not to make loud clumping noises on the deck as he did so. Or perhaps it was all the things they had learned so recently, even though none of them by themselves proved anything, and all of them might have perfectly reasonable and harmless explanations. Might have.

He walked slowly down the hall, his blood pounding in his ears, the sound of arguing voices growing louder. Onxym Haat shouted at someone—no, not shouted exactly. Protested to, reasoned with, pleaded with, but not shouted at. Although the words made no sense to Nathanial, the tone was clear; this was a subordinate who disputed the decision of his superior, but stopped short of questioning his authority.

To whom did Onxym Haat consider himself a subordinate? He had chartered the ship, which, as Nathanial understood the arrangement, made him de facto master of the vessel, with even the captain bound by his orders, within reason. Within reason. What did that mean in this mad place?

Nathanial jumped at the touch on his shoulder, but turned to see Kak’hamish tap his lips with the flat of his palm two or three times—obviously meaning for him to keep silent. Nathanial nodded and the Martian gestured for him to follow him back down the passage.

When they had gone almost its entire length back to Annabelle’s door, however, the hatch to the main deck opened and a grey-robed figure entered, started at the appearance of Kak’hamish and Nathanial virtually in front of him, and then with a snarl drew his knife and leaped on Kak’hamish.

Kak’hamish fell back against Nathanial, who in turn fell against a timber support, but kept his footing. The two Martians struggled, their hands locked and Kak’hamish holding the knife away from his throat. The passage was so narrow, however, Nathanial could not get past Kak’hamish to help. He searched for some weapon which he could use to reach past his friend and strike the false priest down, or at least distract him. Instead he saw the door to his own room. He dashed to it, threw it open, and went in.

“Kak’hamish, give ground!” Nathanial shouted, slammed the door closed, and hoped the false priest did not understand English. Nathanial opened the chest on the floor which contained his meagre possessions, took out the knife he had taken from the steppe raider, returned to the door, and listened. His heart raced and blood pounded in his ears, almost deafening him.

The scuffle in the hall grew louder, then passed by. Nathanial threw open the door, rushed out, and before he had time to think, or contemplate the enormity of his action, he plunged the knife into the grey-robed assassin’s back.

The man let out a piercing scream and fell against Kak’hamish. His friend’s face, still twisted in the grimace of the life-and-death struggle, looked past Nathanial and called out a warning. Nathanial spun to see two more robed false priests stride through the open hatch, draw their knives, and advance on him.

“Dash this! We need help.”

Nathanial pushed past Kak’hamish and ran for the door at the end of the passage. Before he reached it, however, the door sprang open and a Martian in black emerged, tall and powerfully built. He no longer wore the silver mask of a judge, and his face seemed vaguely familiar.

“I know you can’t understand me, but we’re being attacked and you have to help. You understand? Help!”

The man’s expression didn’t change as with both hands he seized Nathanial by the front of his shirt and slammed him back against the wooded wall. His head hit the wall with a solid crack and the world turned white. As he slid down the wall to the deck, his consciousness twinkling out, his vision cleared for a moment and he saw, as if from a very great distance, another face appear at the doorway, another man in black—the ambassador, Kaleen Jed-An.

Ah, yes! That is what was odd about the six judges. They were magistrates for Hill Martian tribes, and yet they all seemed so tall.

4.

Kak’hamish clung to consciousness despite the repeated blows from his captors as they dragged him across the main deck. The two crewmen on duty stared at the procession of four robed priests, six black-clad judges, and two prisoners, but Jed-An’s voice rang with authority.

“Mind your duties and leave justice to your betters!”

The crewmen turned away and became suddenly busy coiling lines on the deck.

The veneer of unanimity disappeared as soon as the party made its way below deck into the cargo hold forward.

“This is madness!” Jed-An barked to the priest who seemed in charge of the cultists. “Take the ugly one if you wish, but we can use the English. He has value.”

“More value to the Worm than to your schemes, Jed-An. The ugly one will serve, but not suffice. The Old Ones have never tasted the eyes of an off-worlder.”

“The woman, then,” Jed-An said. “Let the Old Ones have her.”

“Fool!” the priest leader spat, turning on the would-be prince. “If I make a useless, crippled body their temple, they will eat my soul!”

Kak’hamish felt his stomach turn cold at these words. For as long as people remembered, naughty children had been threatened with visitations by the Old Ones, the ghosts of the mighty and terrible architects of the canals who screamed from beyond the grave for vengeance against those who had allowed their work to crumble. But these were grown men speaking as if the Old Ones were real, had substance in this world, and could walk among men. And what did the priest mean by tasted the eyes?

They came to the lowest level of the cargo hold, unevenly lit by swaying lanterns which cast monstrous, creeping shadows across the uneven walls. The wind blew from the open hatchway which led to the loading platform, beyond which loomed the yawning blackness of the night sky. In the open space at the centre of the hold the servant of the priests laboured, pulling the sarcophagi from their wicker protective cases. Something in the way the servant touched the sarcophagi, reluctant with both revulsion and fear, made Kak’hamish shudder.

“Those two,” the head priest commanded, pointing at two of the sarcophagi, “stand them upright. Let the unbelievers confront the Worm face to face, eye to eye.”

“Shistomo will join us soon enough,” Jed-An protested. “Will you at least wait for your superior’s orders?”

“No! If he orders the sacrifice, the Old Ones will love him, not me. If he forbids it, the Old Ones, in their slumbers, will wonder why I did not act when I could, will ask me this when we meet, and what will I say to them? That I waited? That I took careful counsel of a worldly prince? Stay and watch this miracle or, if you have no stomach for it, go now.”

Jed-An turned wordlessly and left, followed by four of the judges who Kak’hamish recognised as the four bodyguards from the caravan. The sixth black-clad figure, the stooped and shuffling translator, lingered, and his eyes glowed with anticipation.

“I…I would like to see the miracle, Revered One,” he said.

“Watch the prisoners while we prepare the Old Ones,” the head priest snapped and then summoned the other priests with a gesture.

The servant backed hastily away from the sarcophagi as the four priests moved to them, two priests for each sarcophagus. They carefully broke the clay seals to either side and then ran their knives down the seams between the lid and body of the containers. About half-way down, Kak’hamish heard a sigh of air, realised they were cutting a wax seal on the containers, and within moments he caught a scent of rotting corruption and immediately vomited, as did the translator behind him. Nathanial, still lying senseless on the deck where the priests had dropped him, now stirred, rolled over on his side, and vomited as well.

Kak’hamish had crawled through sewers, through the rotting garbage and excrement of ten thousand people, had almost passed out and died from the stench and lack of oxygen. He had seen and smelled a hundred bodies thrown over a city wall and left to rot in the sunlight, had hidden under them for days while they swelled taut like inflated bladders, then split and spilled their vile fluids over him. He had experienced all that and even worse, but none of it approached this smell.

Kak’hamish took a step back away from the sarcophagus, but stopped when he felt the point of a knife in the small of his back.

“You’d leave your British friend to his fate? Shame on you!” the translator hissed in his ear, and pricked him again with the point of his blade. The head priest turned, saw the situation, and nodded.

“You watch the English,” the priest said to his own servant, who crossed the hold to stand over Nathanial’s prone figure, staying as far away from the sarcophagi as he could.

The priests carefully lifted the lids of the sarcophagi and moved them to the side, and Kak’hamish found himself staring straight at the empty eye sockets of a blackened and rotting corpse, the flesh dripping and in places sliding off the bones. The odour became almost overpowering, but it was more than just rotting flesh, and as he stared he realised the eye sockets were not completely empty, that something moved inside.

“The vessel is consumed,” the head priest said.

“The vessel is consumed,” the others chanted in unison.

“The Old One hungers,” he said.

“The Old One hungers.”

“Come forth and live,” the priest said, and held his hands up, as if in supplication, in front of the corpse’s face.

“Come forth and live.”

“Come forth and feed!”

“Come forth and feed!”

Kak’hamish again saw a flicker of movement in the eye socket as the priests continued their chant, and then the entire corpse seemed to tremble. A shape took form, emerging from the eye socket, a twisting, writhing shape with a dozen or more tiny pointed teeth surrounding a circular maw, which opened and closed as if in hunger. The body behind it was tubular, but segmented rather than smooth, with countless quivering appendages, dripping with the black decay fluids of the corpse.

As it emerged from the eye socket, first six inches long, then a foot, the corpse seemed to shrug, to pull in upon itself, as if turning itself inside out through the eye. Then the animal seemed to reach a limit, could emerge no further, and it suddenly coiled back upon itself, twisted and bit its own body where it met the eye socket, tore at itself until the forward eighteen inches fell into the hands of the head priest, severed from the part still in the corpse. The corpse itself sagged in the sarcophagus and nearly came apart, as if some supporting member had been removed, then slid down into the bottom of the container until it was nothing but a tangled mess of bones and sinews and greasy black sludge.

The creature, whatever it was, twisted and writhed in the priest’s arms, but he held it firmly, one hand immediately behind the first large segment which contained the mouth, the other hand well back on the body. He turned and looked at Kak’hamish.

“This one is yours,” the priest said, and advanced on Kak’hamish, holding the creature out ahead of him, its hungry mouth extended, open, searching for the soft tissue of Kak’hamish’s eye. Behind him, the blade moved down his back, hesitated, and then in one quick slice severed the leather strap binding his hands.

5.

nathanial trembled in uncontrolled terror and revulsion as the priest thrust the writhing creature toward Kak’hamish’s face. Suddenly Kak’hamish leaped forward, his hands unexplainably free, and grappled with the priest.

“Oh! Oh! The prisoner is free!” the stooped translator shouted, and he scurried toward the other priests in alarm, colliding with them in his clumsiness and driving two of them back toward the sarcophagi. One fell against the second casket, the one still containing an intact corpse, and it began to tip backwards.

For a moment, the scene seemed to freeze in Nathanial’s view. Kak’hamish stood locked in struggle with the head priest, his hands upon the priest’s wrists, forcing back the terrible creature. The other priests stood frozen in indecision, torn between helping the head priest or preventing the tumble of the precious sarcophagus. The translator crouched, well-balanced and alert, taking in the entire scene. The priest’s servant stepped back in horror. He turned and dashed for the ladder to the main deck as the tableau again came to violent life, but hit his head on an overhead support beam, knocking himself senseless.

Kak’hamish pushed the priest’s arms back on themselves and the priest screamed as the creature lunged and tore into his own eye socket.

Two priests threw themselves at the tumbling casket, but too late to arrest its fall, and they sprawled among it broken shards and disintegrating corpse.

The remaining priest leaped to the assistance of his chief, but after only a single step he faltered and then collapsed, the black-clad translator pulling his knife from the priest’s ribcage and stepping easily back to avoid his fall.

The head priest, still screaming in pain, broke away from Kak’hamish and clawed at the creature now burrowing into his skull, but he took only a step or two before collapsing to the deck. He began shaking violently, uncontrollably, the spasms wracking his body. Kak’hamish watched for a moment, then stooped to pick up the knife of the priest killed by the translator.

The two remaining priests by the broken sarcophagus found their feet, drew their knives, and carefully circled the translator and Kak’hamish, ignoring Nathanial. If he rose up they would surely turn on him, and in any case his hands were still bound. Still, it didn’t feel right simply waiting to see who won, as if watching a steeplechase.

The nearest priest was no more than six feet away and nearly had his back to him. Nathanial made up his mind, took a deep breath, and began rolling across the floor toward him, intending to knock him from his feet. The priest was too quick for that, but as he turned to Nathanial and raised his knife, another knife seemed to sprout from his neck. The priest staggered in surprise, and then blood coursed from the wound, spraying a yard distant, spattering Nathanial. He kept rolling, tangled the fellow’s feet, and the two of them ended up in a heap. The priest stabbed at Nathanial, but it was a weak effort and Nathanial managed to duck to the side. The blade caught in the sleeve of his coat, sliced through and cut the flesh of his bicep, but not deeply. When the priest pulled back for another blow, his eyes turned glassy and rolled back up into his head, the dagger fell from his limp fingers, and he collapsed.

For a moment Nathanial lay panting, all but spent by his ordeal. Then he felt a knife cut his bonds. He sat up and faced Kak’hamish, who knelt by him.

“You are all over blood, Nathanial. Are you injured?”

“No, thanks to you. That was well-thrown. You saved my life,” he said, and offered his hand.

“Or you mine,” Kak’hamish said, moving his knife to his left hand to shake Nathanial’s. “Who knows how an even fight might have turned out?”

Nathanial heard a shuffle and turned to see the translator heaving the corpse of the head priest over the rail of the boarding platform. He turned and walked toward them, smiling. “We had better either tie up the servant or pitch him over the rail. He’ll come to soon enough,” he said in English.

“You are our secret ally?” Nathanial asked, scarcely believing it. “Who the devil are you?”

The translator came to rigid attention, the first time Nathanial had seen him stand straight, and he snapped a salute so perfect, so crisp, his rigid hand vibrated at the end. “Mahaan Tolni. Corporal, Queen’s Own Parhoon Rifles, seconded to the Intelligence Branch on special duty.”

“What are you doing here?’ Nathanial asked, but Kak’hamish interrupted before the translator could answer.

“Time enough for that later. What is your plan, Corporal Tolni?”

Tolni’s eyebrows went up slightly and he shook his head. “Plan? I have no plan; everything happened too quickly. I couldn’t let them kill you, but beyond that…”

“Oh, I see. Very well. Who stands against us?” Kak’hamish asked.

“Jed-An and his four bodyguards. Onxym Haat, the caravan master, knew of the plan in outline, but had not known the Worm was part of the conspiracy, and now he grows reluctant, but he is still with Jed-An. The ship’s captain follows Haat’s orders, and the crew follow his.”

“Yes,” Kak’hamish said, “but I wonder how they feel about carrying a hold full of monsters.”

Clack-clack.

“What are you thinking, my friend?” Nathanial asked.

“First, Jed-An thinks us dead, so we have surprise. Second, we must use this to recover Annabelle, if they have her, so they cannot use her as hostage against our actions. Third, we must take this ship.”

Just the three of us? Again? Nathanial thought, remembering events on Venus that seemed so distant now.

“We must do so quickly,” Corporal Tolni added. “Within an hour we are to meet a warship carrying Shistomo, the Black Circle High Priest of the Worm, along with the rest of the conspirators, or at least those outside Siruahn. Most of the insurgents are in the city, but the leaders are here and on the other ship.”

“Insurgents?” Kak’hamish asked. “Insurgents against what?”

“Against Siruahn. Jed-An and his worm priest allies, and the disgruntled royalist faction within the city, intend to overthrow the citizen council and establish Jed-An as Prince of Siruahn. The princes of the four cities of Charon have promised to recognise his rule, and send military support to back that recognition, once he is established on the throne. He gains the mantle of nobility, the Charoni princes gain an end to this revolutionary example of self-rule, the Worm gains a friendly haven from which to support their underground covens in British territory, and for his trouble Onxym Haat gains a monopoly on the through-transport of ereban spice.”

Kak’hamish let escape a groan of dismay which surprised Nathanial. He had the impression his Martian friend cared little for Siruahn and less for its squabbling citizen council. Apparently that belief was mistaken.

“Surely the Army did not send only one enlisted soldier to thwart a plot of this magnitude,” Nathanial asked Tolni

“Bloody hell no, sir!” he answered.

Well, at least he swears like a soldier, Nathanial thought.

“Truth is,” Tolni continued, “no one in the Crown territory had a whiff of this. They sent me to find out what was what with the Russkie arms trade—breach-loading rifles for the Charoni princes, that sort of thing. Jed-An seemed the likely villain to attach myself to for that business, and all this other argy-bargy just came up out of nowhere. I’m afraid we’re on our own, sir.”

Kak’hamish shook his head, but Nathanial put his hand on his shoulder. “Come, my friend. What these scoundrels plan and what comes to pass are not necessarily the same, and the odds against us on this ship are no worse than they were two minutes ago. But if what this man says is true, there is no time to lose, so help me to my feet.”

Kak’hamish nodded and rose with stony determination in his eyes. They climbed to the main deck and found half a dozen crewmen there, milling about and muttering nervously. More appeared at the hatchway to the crew’s quarters, obviously roused by the bloodthirsty screams of the dying head worm priest.

Corporal Tolni barked a sharp order in Koline, the exact meaning of which Nathanial did not understand, but the crew hastened to make way for them all the same. The black garments of a steppe judge, and the cracking voice-of-command of a British-trained non-commissioned officer, proved a potent combination.

Tolni led the way into the berthing deck. If any of his erstwhile comrades waited, his appearance would not arouse their suspicions. He waved them in behind him and they made their way down the empty passage to Annabelle’s quarters. Nathanial knocked softly on the door and whispered her name, but only silence answered him. He pushed open the door slowly and looked in—empty.

“She’s been taken,” he said, but Kak’hamish shook his head after a quick inspection.

“Not unless they also took her artificial leg and her crutch.”

A shot rang out from the stern of the ship.

6.

the door to the stern cabin burst open but Annabelle looked away from her prisoners only long enough to see that Kak’hamish and Nathanial had come, with Jed-An’s servant an apparent prisoner. Nathanial was covered with blood, but his actions were lively and his eyes bright. The flood of relief which accompanied their appearance brought tears to her eyes, but she swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and coughed.

“Nathanial, are you hurt?”

“Oh, no!” he said, and rubbed the blood on his face around as if to wipe it away. “This is someone else’s entirely.”

“I am pleased to hear that, although you certainly took your time getting here,” she said with more courage than she felt.

Nathanial and Kak’hamish surveyed the room and Kak’hamish shook his head in apparent wonder. Onxym Haat, pale and sweating, sat in a chair holding his wounded right arm, from which the carved skrill horn Kak’hamish had given her still protruded, The point of the horn was driven completely through his bicep and the sleeve of his robe glistened, saturated with blood. Jed-An and three of his bodyguards stood with their hands up and the other guard lay prone on the deck in a spreading pool of blood, gasping in pain and gripping his stomach. Annabelle stood for support and balance with her back in a corner of the room, legs spread, holding Nathanial’s old derringer in both hands. The pistol, smoking from its recent discharge, trembled noticeably, but her prisoners seemed to view that with alarm rather than encouragement, which suited her perfectly.

“Look at me!” she said. “I am shaking so hard it is a wonder I have not shot all of them. Have you dealt with those other villains?”

“We have, my dear,” Nathanial said. “I am quite pleased to see you have things under control here. I imagine there is quite a story as to how this rather unusual scene came to be arranged.”

“No, it was quite ordinary,” she answered, although it had been anything but that. She noticed Jed-An’s servant staring at her, and also noticed he did not seem to be a prisoner. “Has this one come over to us? Unless he is in truth the servant of Jed-An, which I now doubt, I don’t believe we have been introduced.”

“Oh, right! Terribly sorry,” Nathanial said. “Miss Annabelle Somerset of Arizona Territory, USA, may I introduce Corporal Tolni of the Parhoon Rifles? He, it turns out, is our secret friend.”

“Oh, how nice! Very pleasant to meet you at last. We appreciated your letters ever so much, although you might want to work on your spelling.”

Tolni smiled and nodded, although he seemed a bit confused by the exchange.

Kak’hamish gently took the pistol from her trembling hands and covered the prisoners. “You did very well, Annabelle,” he said softly, and put his arm around her shoulder.

She covered her face with her hands to hide her emotions, which were so confused she could not have put a name to them in any case. After a moment she regained her composure. “Thank you, Kak’hamish. If we have them all, is the adventure over?”

Clack-clack.

“I am afraid not.”

Chapter Seven

“Death Above the Clouds”

1.

kak’hamish strained at the capstan bar along with the others.

“Backs into it,” he hissed, but softly. Voices carried far across the sky at night, and the grey-painted warship drew near on its interception course. The capstan turned, click by click, and slowly pivoted the raised gun mount to make the Lady Zumaat’s only cannon bear to port.

Above them the gun crew slowly, carefully, silently loaded the gun. First came the canvas powder charge, then a solid shot, then on top a metal cylinder filled with cut-shot, a lethal mixture of thumb-sized stones and long, thin metal rods, designed to shred rigging and wings—and any crewman unlucky enough to find himself in their way. The metal cylinder would hold the shot together long enough—in theory—for it to clear their own broad wing.

One shot, he had told them. We will have only one shot. Make it count.

Kak’hamish stepped away from the capstan and looked up. The gunner’s mate, positioned at the back of the carriage by the elevating screw, turned to him and raised his hand. Ready.

He joined Nathanial, Annabelle, Corporal Tolni, and Andan Moorie, captain of Lady Zumaat. Moorie had been reluctant at first, unsure of the legality of a move which seemed like a cross between mutiny and piracy, but a look at the sarcophagi, and the one twitching creature there which had crawled from the second shattered corpse, had convinced him. Captain Moorie now studied the faint outline of the approaching vessel, especially its sail-wing, which reflected more starlight than did the hull and so glowed softly.

“A Bloodrunner,” he said. “Faster than we are with that broad wing rig and narrow hull, and mounting two guns, fore and aft, on pivots. Her hold probably stinks of armed fanatics. If she drops a hook-an-line on us, we’re finished.”

Tolni translated for the others, which felt odd to Kak’hamish after having done so himself for so long. They looked to him.

“The cannon is loaded. We will see what one good shot can do. It may cripple her, but we cannot count on that alone. Once the gun fires, we must change course and run north, as fast as we can.”

“North?” Nathanial said. “Why not south, to Siruahn? We must be close by now. Surely the authorities there will deal with these bounders, once they have heard our story.”

“We would arrive in the early morning hours, shortly before dawn, when the rising is planned to take place. The key elements are the armed men with Shistomo and the men waiting on the ground to strike. Our arrival would trigger the revolt, and in the confusion which would follow, the city could easily fall. No, we must at all costs unhinge the plot to enslave those people. They suffered long enough under the stupid and vain.”

“But we have Jed-An,” Nathanial insisted. “We’ve severed the head of the revolt, surely.”

“The head of the revolt is over there,” Kak’hamish said, and pointed to the approaching wind-wing. “Jed-An is only a useful symbol.”

“If that is so,” Annabelle said, “then why will Shistomo follow us? Why will he not simply proceed to Siruahn, launch the revolt, and find another figurehead to sit atop the throne?”

“Because we have six of his sacred Old Ones. Well, four of them, although he doesn’t know that two have already been dispatched. If they are as important to his cult as the priests indicated, I do not think he can bring himself to let us carry them off and perhaps defile them.”

“That is so,” Corporal Tolni put in. “These Old Ones—horrible creatures, but very sacred to the Worm. They told me that the Old Ones make the dead rise and walk, but I think that is just to frighten people. The corpses in the cargo hold did not walk. But yes, very sacred.”

“They grow close,” Captain Moorie said.

“They will want to hail their party,” Kak’hamish said. “Bring Jed-An up.”

Corporal Tolni ran across the deck and slid down the companionway to the main deck. A moment later he reappeared nearly dragging a bound Jed-An, who struggled to keep both his balance and his dignity, up the steps and across the quarterdeck.

“Hail Lady Zumaat!” The voice from the Bloodrunner carried across the narrowing distance between the ships.

Captain Moorie lifted his own leather speaking trumpet. “What ship?” he called back.

The enemy wind-wing drifted closer, already in range of the cannon’s round shot, but still a bit far for the cutting shot. Kak’hamish looked to the gun platform. The gunner’s mate’s eyes flickered from the Bloodrunner to him, his left hand holding the firing lanyard taught. Across from them, the hostile ship eased its helm and came onto a parallel course, and lifted its nose to slow to their speed.

“Eclipse!” the voice came back, louder now. “Where is the priest called Antaan?”

“He is below. The prince is here,” Moorie answered, and handed the speaking trumpet to Kak’hamish. “I can see their aft gun reflect the stars,” Moorie added softly. “It is run in and centred. They suspect nothing.”

“Remember what I told you to say,” Kak’hamish cautioned Jed-An.

“I remember, Ugly One,” he answered. Kak’hamish held the leather speaking trumpet up to Jed-An’s mouth. “Ambush!” he screamed.

Kak’hamish struck Jed-An in the side of the head with the heel of his hand and the ambassador crumpled to the deck unconscious. Someone barked urgent orders from the deck of Eclipse.

“Fire now!” Kak’hamish shouted.

The gunner’s mate pulled his lanyard, but already Eclipse had begun to drop like a stone. Lady Zumaat’s gun roared and for a moment they were blinded by black powder smoke. When it cleared, Eclipse was nowhere in sight.

“Hard starboard,” Moorie called to the helmsman. “Trim ten points down nose and give us eighth-weight!”

Kak’hamish held onto the quarterdeck rail as the wind-wing dove, banked to the right, and accelerated.

“Trim, two point on the nose. Lighten ship to sixteenth-weight. Helm, come steady on dead north. Where is the bastard?”

“Did we get him?” Nathanial asked in English. All the chatter on deck had been in Koline and so meant nothing to him.

“There!” Corporal Tolni called from the stern rail. “He banked port and lost a thousand yards on us. He’s just coming around to our course.”

Kak’hamish looked back and saw the soft glow of Eclipse’s sail wings, coming out of its bank and falling further behind. It stayed on that course for a few seconds, as if debating its next move, and then dipped its nose and accelerated. The chase was on.

“No, Nathanial, we did not. We are in for a chase and a fight. Annabelle, you may want to go below.”

“Reload!” the gunner’s mate shouted from above them. “Solid shot only. Turning party, crank us to stern.”

Annabelle looked around at the crew scurrying to man the capstan, others bringing more powder and shot up from below, and then looked back at Eclipse, now well below them and still gaining speed. “He will come on us from behind, I believe what they call a stern chase. Yes?”

“Yes, Annabelle.”

“And he will try to approach from below, both because it gives him the advantage of speed to dive beneath us, and because our gun cannot be depressed to fire at him through our own ship. Is that also true?”

“Yes.”

“Then it appears I will be safer here than below deck,” she concluded

“As you wish, but lash yourself to the railing above the trim station. The manoeuvres are likely to become violent.”

Kak’hamish looked down as Jed-An stirred at his feet. He reached down, pulled the ambassador to his feet by the front of his tunic, and pushed him toward the quarterdeck rail. Jed-An shook his head groggily but when he felt the rail against the small of his back his eyes cleared.

“You still need me,” Jed-An said quickly. “If you survive the fight with Shistomo, but I perish, my government will never believe your story. They will hound you as assassins and pirates, unless you return me unharmed. If you fall to Shistomo, I can keep his hand from your friends. I understand their value, and Shistomo is no fool like those other priests were. Face it, my ugly friend, I am an inconvenient necessity.”

Clack-clack.

“I disagree,” Kak’hamish said, and pushed him over the rail.

Jed-An screamed almost all the way to the ground.

Kak’hamish turned to see Annabelle staring at him, clearly shocked by his act of deliberate murder. “Should we have kept him as a pet?” he asked her.

“Mercy is sometimes―ˮ

“Mercy? Yes, he argued with the Worm priests over mercy, tried to get them to spare Nathanial. You know how? By convincing them to take you instead! He had a much easier death than he earned. Now lash yourself to that rail!”

Visibly shaken by the revelation, she did as she was ordered.

Captain Moorie came to his side. “Can your Queln friend help us in this?” he asked softly.

“She could not keep up with your ship, so fell behind during the day. She would ride hard through the night to make up the lost ground, while we coasted at altitude. But since she would not know of our change in course to the south, she must be somewhere north of us. Perhaps she heard the gun fire, and there will be more firing soon enough. She may yet find us.”

But did he want her to? This was not her fight but she would surely make it so.

2.

all night they ran north. Annabelle had lashed herself to the trim station rail, as Kak’hamish said, and she sat on the deck to rest her throbbing stump. This was as much purposeful walking, as opposed to routine exercise, she had done, and she felt it not only in the sore end of her stump itself, but also in the small of her back.

Nathanial stood beside her and watched in turn the trimsman below, the gun crew, the helmsman, and the pursuing Eclipse. Most of the orders and exchanges on the quarterdeck meant nothing to him, so Annabelle provided as good a translation as she could, although her Koline was not up to all the technical terms covering aerial vessels and ship’s artillery.

Eclipse was the faster ship and Annabelle gathered it could have brought Lady Zumaat down in short order had that been its goal. An hour served to close the distance enough for Eclipse to have the higher position astern, from which it could have made one long, fast dive to below Lady Zumaat, and then discharged a gun into the stern lifting panels. One or two good hits, according to Captain Moorie, would destroy enough of the louvers to render maintenance of proper trim impossible, and leave the merchant vessel to tumble from the sky and crash. But wrecking the kite, and destroying its sacred cargo, apparently would not do.

Instead, Eclipse worked on Lady Zumaat’s rigging. The dive, when it came, left Eclipse below and to port, with its bow gun loaded with cutting shot and cranked aloft. Captain Moorie banked away, Eclipse fired, and the cutting shot made popping sounds as it tore through the port canvas wing. The gun’s recoil bled off Eclipse’s speed and Lady Zumaat drew ahead. Eclipse gained altitude, again falling further behind, then slowly overtook them until again positioned for a dive. And so the chase went for hour after hour.

All the while Nathanial studied the workings of the ship with single-minded focus, almost a desperate determination. At one point, when Lady Zumaat nosed up sharply in a bank, the linen wings fluttered oddly, the ship seemed to hesitate, and the deck seemed to fall away under them for a moment. Then the nose came down, the bank levelled, and the ship regained its stability.

“Hmmm!” Nathanial said, his brow furrowed in intense thought, as if grappling with a problem of enormous complexity.

Lady Zumaat’s own gunners seldom had a clear shot. The capstan turned the platform so slowly, and the aiming screw changed elevation no faster, that it was impossible to track the moving, banking, diving target. Instead, the gunner tried to guess which angle the enemy would choose next, aim the gun there, and sometimes call for a bank to port or starboard to help bring the gun on track. Most of their shots went wide, and each discharge enveloped the quarterdeck with choking, sulphurous smoke. Once they put a solid shot through the port wing on Eclipse, which raised a cheer from Lady Zumaat’s crew, but the enemy kite seemed to lose none of her speed for the small hole the shot made.

The one positive effect of Lady Zumaat’s fire was the recoil, which gave them a little more speed each discharge. Annabelle wondered if this might be used to pull further ahead, but Corporal Tolni explained the merchant vessel did not carry enough powder and shot to keep discharging its gun endlessly—probably no more than a score of rounds were all they carried in the shot locker, he said. That did not seem like a great many to Annabelle, and by the time the western horizon began turning orange with the approach of dawn, they had fired ten or twelve times.

As the sky lightened, she saw the crew around her, faces blackened with powder smoke from the discharges of the gun, and lined with fatigue and anxiety. She was surprised to see her own hand on the rail, grimy with spent powder, and Nathanial’s face was as well. Two ship’s boys carried leather water buckets, one up to the crew of the gun, who drank thirstily, the other among the quarterdeck crew. He came to Nathanial and her and offered the wooden ladle, and she was surprised how parched she suddenly felt, and unlike the others, she had done nothing but sit and watch. The water tasted cool and delightfully sweet.

“She’s ready for another dive,” Nathanial said, pointing up and squinting, as the sun was now full-up to the east. “How many more passes can we take, I wonder?”

“Hands inboard!” Captain Moorie shouted, “Lively, now!” The sidemen were busy patching holes in the port sail-wing, and re-splicing severed lines, hurried back along the spars for the safety of the deck. That wing still looked tattered and frail. Moorie had reduced their speed after the last attack for fear the wing would fail altogether in a steeper dive. That was Eclipse’s strategy, wasn’t it?

Annabelle shaded her eyes and looked up at their relentless pursuer, the ship she now hated as if it were a living thing. With the sun above the eastern horizon, the port side of Eclipse was black with shadow, as if in confirmation of its name. But further to her left Annabelle saw another flicker of movement, a lone skrill in a rapid, shallow dive at right angles to Eclipse. The skrill had the sun behind it, would be invisible to the hostile ship.

“Ha!” Kak’hamish called in triumph, seeing the skrill as well.

Eclipse began to nose over, but before it began its dive the skrill streaked past it, its flight path jogged, slowed by collision with something. Then a long panel of the starboard wing flapped free above the kite and it heeled over sharply to that side, began to side-slip, and then fell away out of her sight. Nathanial ran to the aft rail to see.

“Blast!” he shouted. “The bounders have regained their trim. They’ve lost three or four hundred feet of altitude, though. That will show them!” he shouted, and he shook his fist at them in triumph.

Annabelle now clearly saw the skrill and its rider in a long, gentle banking turn. The rider’s long red hair rippled in the wind and she—for somehow Annabelle sensed this was a woman, although she knew not how—looked back over her shoulder at Eclipse below. The skrill levelled, its course now back toward Eclipse, and then dove again.

“No!” Kak’hamish called, and then shouted in a language entirely foreign to Annabelle. Whatever he said, the skrill and rider paid no mind and continued their dive out of her sight.

Annabelle heard the crackle of musket fire, and then Nathanial turned quickly away from the rail, his face twisted with disappointment. Kak’hamish remained at the rail, watching for almost a minute as Nathanial made his way back and sat heavily by her side.

“Shot,” he said. “I saw the beast crumble myself, although it fell through the rigging and seemed to knock something loose.”

Annabelle cared little about that for the moment. Her eyes remained on Kak’hamish’s back and when he turned his face was composed, if sad. He met her eyes.

“The skrill recovered before it reached ground. She may still live,” he said, but with little real hope. Then he turned to Moorie. “Now’s our chance, Captain, while Eclipse has lost way and her rigging’s (something),” he said with animation. She hadn’t understood the last word, but suspected it meant confused, or asunder.

“Helm, hard a starboard!” Moorie ordered. “Trim, five points down-nose, not a knife’s blade more, and give us sixteenth-weight. Gunner, we’ll cut under the bastard and you blow his bottom out.”

“Double shot!” the gunner’s mate ordered as the wind-wing banked and then dove toward Eclipse. The dive was shallow and Moorie ran to the port rail to watch the wing there, anxiety in every line in his face. Would the wing hold? The gunner’s mate sweated as he cranked the elevating screw as fast as he could and the muzzle of the cannon climbed even as the loader rammed home a second round shot and wadding. The gun crew cast anxious glances over their shoulders as they worked.

Would the wing hold?

It held. For a moment the shadow of Eclipse passed over the quarterdeck deck of Lady Zumaat, then the sun appeared again and the gunner pulled the lanyard. Annabelle closed her eyes.

Instead of the thunderous report she had grown used to, this was shorter, a higher-pitched crack, accompanied by the sound of breaking metal and the screams of men close-by. Smoke still enveloped her but she opened her eyes to see anyway. As the passing air tore the smoke away, she heard a deep groaning and splintering of wood. She looked forward—the gun had burst! The gun crew lay dead or maimed on the deck around the ruin of the platform and, as she watched, the damaged timber supports on the port side collapsed, the split and broken bronze cannon barrel thundered to the deck, and it began to roll. She realised the ship had drifted into a shallow bank to port and now the gun barrel rolled that way, the broken stubs of its trunnions thudding and gouging the deck as it did. Captain Moorie stood with his back to the rail, transfixed by fear, until the cannon barrel rolled over him and took him and a twelve-foot section of the quarterdeck railing over the side, tearing loose more of the port side wing rigging as it fell.

She looked aft across the quarterdeck and saw its surface gouged by debris from the exploded gun, saw the helmsman trying to hold the tiller steady as blood streamed down his face, and then her heart seemed to skip a beat.

Kak’hamish was down!

“Oh, no! Ohno-ohno-ohno,” she cried as she pulled at the line tying her to the railing. Nathanial dashed over to the Martian’s still form and gently rolled him over. Corporal Tolni joined him by the time Annabelle had scrambled to them.

Kak’hamish’s eyes fluttered open. He looked down at the red stain spreading across his abdomen and he sighed. “Not what I wanted,” he said, his voice weak. His eyes turned to Tolni. He pulled Nathanial’s pistol from his waist sash and thrust the grip toward the corporal. “Your duty now,” he said.

“While I live, no harm shall come to them,” Tolni said. He took the pistol. “While I live,” he said again.

Kak’hamish shuddered and his eyes closed.

“Is he gone?” Nathanial asked.

Annabelle felt his throat, felt a pulse, although weak. “No, merely unconscious, but we must stop the bleeding.”

Nathanial pulled off his shirt and ripped it in two. Annabelle hesitated only for a moment, then pushed the wadded cloth over and into the hole in Kak’hamish’s abdomen. They rolled him and did the same with the smaller hole in his back, although the blood stain on the deck was now quite large.

A shadow fell across the quarterdeck. They all looked up and saw Eclipse, two hundred feet above them, drifting with the wind but with men swarming on the spars and outriggers, mending the damage. Their own helmsman had fallen unconscious by the tiller and Lady Zumaat coasted in a broad, shallow banking dive.

“The ship,” Annabelle ordered. “You must look to the ship. There is no one else. Leave Kak’hamish to me.”

Nathanial looked around for a moment, his eyes wild, and then he seemed to grow calm. “Corporal Tolni, I have a plan. Do you trust my judgment?”

“Well…no, sir,” the corporal said apologetically.

“Trust him,” Kak’hamish whispered.

3.

fluid dynamics, Nathanial thought to himself. That’s all this gliding business was, just fluid dynamics. Compression and flow, velocity and direction.

Damned complicated fluid dynamics, that was certain, but physics all the same. And when they stopped gliding—well, that’s when old Newton kicked in with a vengeance, didn’t he? Yes, damned if he didn’t.

“Corporal, tell them to make sure the leading edge of the wing is as strong as they can make it.”

“Yes, sir,” Tolni replied and shouted an order to the sidemen. Most of them were on the port outriggers already, trying to lash together enough of a wing to take a strong dive, just one strong dive. Once the helmsman was revived and bandaged, he’d been able to keep them on a steady course to the east, and Nathanial had the trimsman keep the kite in a shallow enough dive they maintained their speed but put as little strain on the port wing as possible. The helmsman and trimsman were the closest men left to officers on the ship, and they were frightened enough to take orders from anyone with a plan. Yes, a plan…

Eclipse would dive under them and then make a slight bank to the left to put their gun under their port wing. Lady Zumaat would bank to the right, as Moorie always had, to pull the port wing out of their gun sight. Eclipse would follow the bank right, to keep the wing in its sights…

“He’s gaining on us quickly,” Tolni said, looking back over the stern rail.

Nathanial looked back. Eclipse had rested dead in the air for fifteen or twenty minutes, repairing her rigging, but now that she was under way, she came on like a meteor.

“They’ll slow, once they are in position,” Nathanial said. “If they come in too fast, the shot will be difficult. With our gun gone, they have nothing to fear.”

He looked to Annabelle and Kak’hamish, both now lashed to the railing by the trim station. The broad stain of blood Kak’hamish had left when they dragged him over now made Nathanial’s chest turn cold. Too much blood, he thought.

“Better bring in those sidemen. I don’t want to lose any of them over the side.”

Tolni shouted the order and some of the crew came back, but others looked over their shoulder at Eclipse, shouted an answer, and kept working.

“Why aren’t they coming inboard?” Nathanial asked.

“They say there is still time to give you a strong forward wing. You need the wing, don’t you?”

Nathanial nodded, for the moment too moved to speak. Men imperilled their lives out there, dangling three thousand feet above the surface of the world with nothing but a slack line under their feet and a spar against their belly. Just thinking about it made him dizzy. They gambled their lives on no better prospect than the hope a plan, his plan, might work. They did not even know its details.

“Let’s make sure the helmsman knows the signals,” Nathanial said to give him an excuse to look away from the dangling sidemen. “There will be no time for a translation once it starts.”

Tolni needed to know as well, as he would bark the orders down to the trimsman as soon as Nathanial signalled them. The trimsman could not look away from his plumb bobs and spirit levels before the manoeuvre started, and once it did he could not afford to turn his head, lest he lose his sense of balance and orientation.

“He slows, Mister Stone,” Tolni said after a minute or two of additional practice. “He will be in position any second.”

“Get the sidemen in, and no arguments.”

Now they scrambled inboard and slipped into the rope loops Nathanial had ordered secured to the rail at the ship’s waist. Tolni took his place at the front of the trim station rail and tied his own rope, and Nathanial did the same at the aft port corner rail, where he had a clear view down and to the left.

Above and behind them, Eclipse began its dive. This dive was shallow, the warship overtook them slowly, almost leisurely.

“Tolni, start our own dive,” Nathanial called, and Lady Zumaat nosed over and picked up speed. Nathanial looked over his shoulder; the port wing held.

Eclipse dropped its nose into a steeper dive and began overtaking them. As it grew closer Nathanial could make out movement on the kite’s deck, then individual figures, and finally faces as Eclipse came even with their altitude no more than sixty feet astern. The gun crew stood well behind their piece, save the gunner who crouched beside it, his hand on the lanyard. The gun’s barrel was elevated perhaps thirty degrees.

On the other side of the gun stood a tall figure in dark grey robes, layers and layers of robes, all of them rotting and tattered, the long sleeves and skirts trailing in the wind. The man’s head was shaven, the first Martian Nathanial had seen to do so, his eyes deep-set, his arms folded across his chest. The man’s eyes locked on Nathanial’s and as Eclipse sank below the level of the stern, the man raised one hand in salute.

Nathanial raised both of his arms and held them straight out to the side. The robed man frowned, unfamiliar with this greeting. Eclipse slid slightly to the left, Nathanial’s right, and the gunner made his lanyard taught.

Nathanial tilted his arms to his left, and Lady Zumaat banked in that direction. Below them Eclipse started to bank in response. Nathanial brought his arms sharply back the other way. The robed man saw the gesture, turned and shouted, but it was too late. Lady Zumaat banked back and just as Eclipse levelled to fire, Nathanial pulled his arms sharply into his body.

Lady Zumaat’s nose shot up until the kite stood at nearly a forty-five degree angle. Its wings groaned and protested but held. Nathanial now looked almost directly down on Eclipse, saw its broad, round foredeck and quarterdeck with a narrower catwalk between, saw the fore gun on its pivot mount as it fired, and the cutshot rattled off the stern of Lady Zumaat and brushed past Nathanial’s arms. The merchant ship’s wings shuddered, the linen rippled as he saw it do before, and the air spilled out the front, driving the ship back and down just as the lifters lost half their efficiency at this steep angle and the merchant ship went from an apparent weight of thirty tons to two hundred and fifty.

Nathanial watched the upturned faces grow in size as their looks turned to horror, and then the stern crushed the foredeck of Eclipse with a splintering crash, carried it down with the massive falling kite, and in a second had turned the smaller vessel directly nose down.

Nathanial gave no more orders; the trimsman knew what to do, if he was able. He shifted lift to the back, left the bow fall, and then when the deck came level, went to full lift. The Eclipse’s quarterdeck, now perpendicular to the ground, shot past Nathanial, not ten feet away, and its stern rail snagged and shattered Lady Zumaat’s rudder, showering Nathanial with splinters, but then it was gone. Lady Zumaat righted itself and continued to rise on full lift.

“Level the ship,” someone said.

He said it, but the sound seemed to come from far away. He looked over the rail and over a thousand feet below he saw Eclipse hurtling straight down toward the surface of Mars, its angle so acute the lifters had no effect, no ability to recover. It continued accelerating until finally it hit the ground, disappearing into an enormous cloud of dust.

He turned away, pulled the rope loose, and made his way forward to where Annabelle cradled Kak’hamish’s head on her lap. Tears stained her cheek, tracing long black tracks through the caked grime of the powder smoke. Nathanial knelt by them.

“You are injured, Nathanial,” Kak’hamish said weakly, and Nathanial saw his friend’s mouth had filled with blood and run down his jaw. Nathanial looked at his left arm and saw a long splinter, perhaps eight inches long, that had pierced the middle of his forearm.

“It is nothing,” he said. “How do you fare?”

“I am dying, but I fare well. If Gillsa lives, give my body to her. She will take it to the desert.”

“Don’t speak,” Nathanial said.

Kak’hamish smiled. “If not now, when? You must go to Siruahn. Tell them what you know of the plot. Tolni?”

“I am here, sir,’ the corporal answered, and knelt beside them as well.

“Tell the council. When you do, give them this. They will know what to do with it.” He touched the small leather medicine bag around his throat and tried to pull the thong free but lacked the strength.

“I will do as you ask, sir,” Tolni said.

“Good. Annabelle and Nathanial, the council will argue about what to do with you, but in the end they will treat you fairly. They are fools, but then all men are. I think you will find a few good fools there, which is all a wise person can hope for. Now, fare you well. We will not speak again.”

Nathanial looked at him but said nothing, did not know what to say.

“A question troubles you,” Kak’hamish said.

“Why, Kak’hamish? Why did you go into the desert to die? I would like to know.”

“Nathanial, my very good friend—the world is not an open book.”

And he was gone.

Chapter Eight

“A Dolorous Duty”

1.

annabelle sewed the canvas bag herself, using a torn sail cover and the thick twine and needle the sailmakers used. The last step was to sew the flap shut over his face. She leaned and kissed his forehead before she did so, but she did not weep again. He certainly would not have wept for himself. He had lived to see them clear of all hazards, at least so far as they knew, and by his lights he had died a good death. No, he would not have wept; he would have smiled.

While she sewed, the surviving crew treated the wounded and made repairs, as well as they could. The rudder was the most difficult job, but after an hour the helmsman pronounced Lady Zumaat fit to make at least an easy glide. By then they had drifted at least ten more miles east in the light wind. Now they made their way due west in a shallow glide, searching the ground for sign of the skrill rider who had helped them and fallen in the effort. After twenty minutes they found her, and managed to bring the kite in for a gentle landing near where she tended her mount.

A dozen crewmen hung from ropes as the kite drifted toward the ground, and when they touched down they pulled the kite to a halt and placed the long-tined anchor fork among a pile of rocks. Nathanial and Tolni climbed down the boarding ladder while Annabelle rode the cargo sling down with Kak’hamish’s body. She did not bring her crutch, but Nathanial and Tolni to either side helped her.

The Martian woman stood and turned to them, and Annabelle recognised the swirling tattoos on her face immediately.

“I…do you speak Koline?” Annabelle asked.

“Yes,” the woman answered.

“Are you Gillsa?”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry. Kak’hamish is dead. He asked us to entrust his body to you.”

“So he found his sleep among his own. They drove him out, but he never forgot them,” Gillsa said. Annabelle waited for an elaboration but the Martian woman simply stood, unblinking.

“Will you be able to travel?” Annabelle asked. “Your skrill is injured.”

“He mends.”

Annabelle looked around at the desolate countryside. “We thank you for helping us. I don’t…we will leave you food and water. Is there anything else we can do to help you?”

“No.”

They stood for a few long awkward seconds, but Annabelle could think of nothing else to say. She began to turn away but then stopped and reached into the pocket of her jacket. “I think this may have been done for you,” she said and took out the beautifully carved skrill horn, with the designs which mirrored the woman’s face.

Gillsa took it and looked at it closely for a moment. “So, he finished it,” she said. “It is good. There is blood in the design. His?”

“No, not his. He gave it to me and I used it against an enemy…I’m very sorry. I should have cleaned it but there has been no time.”

Gillsa looked up. “You used it on an enemy? Did you kill him?”

“Yes, I did—use it I mean, and no, I did not kill him.”

Gillsa shook her head but smiled and handed it back to Annabelle. “Next time, kill.”

Annabelle hesitated, and then took it from her and smiled in return. “Thank you. I shall.”

2.

EXCERPT 48.

“Beyond the Inner Worlds: The Journal of Professor Nathanial Stone” (Published July 2011, by Chadwick Press).

Tuesday, October 15th 1889.

Has it been only four days since the battle with Eclipse? It seems half a lifetime. And yet we are now airborne and, according to the ship’s captain, no more than six hours from Shastapsh. As a courier vessel preceded us with a dispatch from me and another from Corporal Tolni—which benefited greatly from Annabelle’s assistance with spelling—I expect the officials will be present to greet us. This should save a deal of trouble, as I didn’t fancy wandering through a strange town looking for the British legation and then trying to explain how we just dropped into the desert and made our way through hordes of desert nomads, flying raiders, murderous usurpers, and Worm priests, and could we please come in for a cup of tea and perhaps a bite? Especially as the coveralls we were left with after Peregrine’s destruction have fallen completely to rags and we now, of necessity, wear Martian raiment of an exotic and decidedly uncivilised appearance. Why, they would be as like to bundle us off to a lunatic asylum as give us the time of day.

Kak’hamish was right about the Siruahn Council, as he was right about so many things. There was indeed a great deal of argument and debate over what to do about us, about Lady Zumaat, her, crew, Onxym Haat, Jed-An’s three surviving guards, the Charoni Princes, the Royalist underground, and some more people I hadn’t heard of. It was all quite confusing, but in the end was sorted out more-or-less to everyone’s satisfaction.

They declared Lady Zumaat a hostile vessel and so seized her as a prize, but when it was pointed out she had already been seized from the plotters, and had actually put paid to a ship packed full of blood-thirsty revolutionaries, they decided instead to sell the ship at auction and divide the proceeds—as prize money—among the surviving crew, which I thought quite generous, especially as I came in for an officer’s share. After fees, special charges, taxes, and commissions were subtracted, there wasn’t as much money as I had expected, but the ship was rather badly beat up, and having a little silver in the pocket is better than none.

As to Annabelle, Tolni, and I, they presented us with very nice medals of appreciation, sent a courier boat ahead with our dispatches—as I mentioned before—and then packed us up in this compact little wind-wing. It’s slightly smaller than Eclipse, but every bit as fast. The quarters are cramped, compared to those on the dear old Lady Zumaat, but we shan’t need them for long.

The most puzzling aspect of the entire affair was the business with Kak’hamish’s medicine bag—or at least that is how I always thought of it, incorrectly as it turns out. As requested, we presented the bag to the Council after explaining the great service our late friend had done them, literally giving his life to thwart the attempt to overthrow them and establish an absolutist prince over them. They expressed gratitude for his sacrifice, rather as one normally expects elected officials to do when confronted with the sacrifice of unknown foreigners—let us say “with polite interest”. Then they opened the bag and damn me if they were not struck dumb. Inside was nothing but a heavy golden ring, but it turns out it was the seal of the city of Siruahn, missing for over twenty years, ever since they violently overthrew and chased out their last prince, a fellow named Hamishaan III. That would be the stupid young tyrant Kak’hamish spoke so ill of, and apparently with excellent reason.

The mystery, of course, is how the seal ring came into the possession of our friend. I asked Annabelle for her opinion, but she only stared at me long enough to be rude and then said I may be the thickest man she ever knew. I requested an explanation of her remark but she refused to elaborate, still does, and I find the situation most vexing.

That said, I find it encouraging her spirits remain so high. I can hardly wait to get to a decent workshop and begin work on her replacement leg. I feel as if I am bubbling over with ideas for its refinement, and each day I add another note to my diagrams.

It will be so very good to get back home.

3.

sunlight sparkled off the serene blue water of the broad canal as the Siruahn patrol kite glided toward the green grass of the Shastapsh landing ground. The placid waters of the canal contrasted strongly with the city itself, from which a dozen or more columns of smoke rose, although Nathanial saw no evidence of open fires. Whatever violence had visited here seemed to have run its course. Whether that was good news or bad remained to be seen. The three travellers clustered at the rail, studying the ground below anxiously, but whatever misgivings they had, all remained silent.

As the kite settled to the green sward, Nathanial was relieved to see a dozen red-coated soldiers waiting in formation, their two officers—one in red, one in dark blue—Earth humans although the others were clearly locally-raised. There was nothing unusual about that; most of the Crown troops on Mars were natives with British officers.

Corporal Tolni disembarked first and presented himself to the officer while Nathanial helped Annabelle down.

“Rather nice of them to send an honour guard, don’t you think?” he asked her.

“I suppose,” she answered doubtfully, “although they do not look particularly friendly.”

Nathanial turned to see the officers approach, the one in the lead, a well-tanned and handsome man in his early thirties, wearing the red tunic of the Army. The blue-coated naval officer walked a few steps behind. The Army officer turned to Annabelle first and touched the rim of his cork pith helmet.

“Miss Annabelle Somerset?” he inquired.

“And by whom do I have the pleasure of being addressed?” she answered.

“Very sorry, Ma’am, manners grow rusty from lack of use out here. Witheringham, Major, Fourth Syrtis Major Foot, at your service.”

“I am pleased to meet you, Major Witheringham, and I am indeed whom you seek. This is my—ˮ

“Hello, Annabelle,” the second officer said, stepping into view, and Nathanial immediately recognised the voice as that of Lieutenant George Bedford of HMAS Sovereign.

“I…oh, George. Hello,” Annabelle said, and Nathanial could see the colour rise in her cheeks.

“Why, Lieutenant Bedford!” Nathanial exclaimed, hoping to draw his attention away from Annabelle’s obvious embarrassment at her current condition. “So good to see you again. How fares HMAS Sovereign?”

Nathanial expected a polite greeting in return. Instead Bedford turned cold eyes on him and nodded to Major Witheringham.

“That’s your man, Major. That’s Stone.”

Witheringham gestured to his soldiers and two trotted forward, their rifles carried at port arms and, Nathanial noticed for the first time, mounting shining bayonets. Corporal Tolni stood at rigid attention by the formation, his face twisted in distress at the scene unfolding before him.

“Nathanial Stone, I hereby place you under arrest for the deliberate sabotage and destruction of the heliograph station Peregrine, and for the attendant loss of property and life. Guards, take him away.”

The End.

Next:

Dark Side of Luna by J.T. Wilson

Acknowledgements

Had it not been for a considerable number of people other than myself, this book would never have been. First and foremost, kudos to Andy Frankham-Allen, the series editor. The entire series of Space: 1889 & Beyond books would never have happened without his vision and tireless effort. Andy came up with the idea, pitched it to Untreed Reads, and sold them on the concept before they approached me. Then, when one of our authors had a scheduling conflict and had to withdraw from the project, Andy asked me to fill in with a story set on Mars, and this book is the result.

Beyond that, my thanks to Jay Hartman, founder of and senior editor at Untreed Reads, for his enthusiastic support of the project as well as for simply making Untreed Reads a reality. Thanks also to K.D. Sullivan, CEO at Untreed Reads, my patient fellow explorer in the surprisingly uncharted realm of licensing contract verbiage—at least for this particular sort of license.

My heartfelt thanks go out to my select band of readers—unstinting in their encouragement and unflinching in their criticism, the two qualities essential in a reader: Bart Palamero, Arturo Lorioli, Jake Strangeway, and Beth Strangeway, secret love of my life. (Don’t show Jake that part.)

A special thanks to Craig Cutbirth and Bev Herzog who were my hosts during the marathon writing sessions it took to bring this story in on time. Great food, great conversation, great friends.

Last, but by no means least, thanks to all the loyal fans of Space: 1889, both those who have been with the world from the beginning and those who have discovered it along the way and taken it as their own. This one’s for you, folks.

*

Frank Chadwick is no stranger to the Victorian science fiction field. He is the creator of the Space: 1889 universe, with the first in a series of role-playing adventures, board games, and miniatures rules appearing over twenty years ago. He is known throughout the gaming industry as one of its most prolific designers, with over a hundred published games. He is also well-known in the history and military affairs field, with over two hundred books, articles, and columns. His 1991 Desert Shield Fact Book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, but he still lists steampunk as one of his first and greatest loves. He also, currently, has two novels on the cards with Baen Books, one of which is a Space: 1889 novel.