Part 37 (2/2)

~ How far? How far can they kill?

~ I don't know. Not this far.

~ Those are your people?

~ I think so.

Orpheus asked no more, and looked away from her.

They rose in silence, save for the sound of their wings.

She hadn't been able to see them clearly as they ran. The glare from the sunrise reflecting off the stones had made them into silhouettes. Ragged shadow-shapes, clumsy flailing arms and legs, bobbing heads; she could hardly tell one from another. She thought she might have seen Atwood, standing in the window of the ruined wall. Bearded, wild, sunburned, bruised; had it been Atwood? She couldn't be sure. Perhaps one of the others was Arthur. Perhaps not.

~ They killed Hestia, Orpheus said.

~ Yes.

~ Why?

~ They were afraid of us, she said. We came on them too suddenly. They are lost in a strange place and they cannot tell us from the ones who attacked them.

~ Or they are mad already. They have crawled about on the surface too long and gone mad. We'll kill them if we must.

~ No!

~ No?

~ Let me talk to them. Isn't that why I'm here?

~ Talk if you can. They won't listen.

They went up and up until the air thinned and the sky grew black and cold. The peak of the mountain-top was still far above them. Below them, the valleys were like a rough blue sea, and the ruin was a distant s.h.i.+p lost in a storm.

When they could go no higher, they dropped Hestia. She fell fast and was lost to sight almost at once.

It was a kind of honour, as Orpheus saw it; to end in motion, swallowed up by the face of Mars.

They circled over the ruin, descending slowly. n.o.body fired on them.

The walls described a half-moon, cut off by the creva.s.se at the rear. Towers stuck up at precarious angles. A strange, steeply swelling dome was cracked through, revealing a vault of dust below. Barbicans and watchtowers sat at the edges of the outer walls. The structure was divided in the middle by a wide open courtyard, which was choked with dust, dirt, rubble, the tops of half-buried obelisks, carved with worn illegible designs.

It was by far the largest structure Josephine had seen on Mars, and by Martian standards it was squat and ugly. It had a forbidding and warlike aspect, a little like a castle, or perhaps a battles.h.i.+p. A place fit for giants, or for the imprisonment of monsters.

What was it? Perhaps Hestia could have told them. All that they knew was that it had once belonged to the Nation of the Eye, who had claimed the mountain as their territory. It might have been a fortification, or a laboratory, or a temple, or any number of things. No telling what secrets it might hold. No telling what Atwood might be looking for down there.

They entered through the crack in the great bulging dome at the northern end of the complex, and were quickly lost in a maze of shadowy dust-choked corridors.

THE.

NINTH AND FINAL.

DEGREE.

Chapter Thirty-nine.

”b.l.o.o.d.y things are moving again,” Payne said, lifting his rifle.

Vaz scrambled to his feet and joined Payne at the window.

”Where?”

They stood in what they'd dubbed the South Gallery, a long row of arched windows with a commanding view of the courtyard. Payne and Vaz had the rifles. Arthur had an ice-axe, which was good enough, in his opinion: if one of the b.l.o.o.d.y things got in through the window, he'd rather have an axe in his hand than a rifle.

He didn't see what Payne was pointing at. It was twilight, and the towers and crenellations and b.u.t.tresses and arches and whatchamacallits around the courtyard were so numerous and so oddly shaped that they were easy to mistake for enemies on the move.

”There. Follow my b.l.o.o.d.y-there!”

Payne fired, swore, worked the lever, and fired again. Nothing moved.

Vaz lowered his rifle, and Arthur relaxed his grip on his axe.

They'd been in the castle for a day. Following a brief, chaotic mid-morning skirmish, in the course of which Payne had put a bullet in a Martian's leg, the battle-lines had been clearly drawn. The Earthmen held the southern part of the complex, and the Martians the north. In between them was the gloomy, windswept courtyard.

”They're patient, by G.o.d,” said Payne. ”Cunning-not like the last lot. This lot have a notion they can wait us out. And they've learned to fear rifles. Rightly so. I always say: G.o.d may abandon you in heathen country, but Mr Winchester never will!”

The prospect of something to shoot had rather raised Payne's spirits. Since they'd been in the castle he'd been dispensing military advice, barking orders, and playing look-out, eagerly expecting further sorties from the Martian lines. None had come since evening, but sometimes one or two of the Martians circled high overhead, out of rifle range. Otherwise, they kept themselves hidden.

The southern part of the complex was a honeycomb of dust-choked corridors, sloping chimneys, vaults open to the sky. Floors had apparently been considered a luxury on Ancient Mars; for the most part, if an Earthman wanted to get anywhere he had to tightrope-walk across uneven stone beams. If they chose to, the Martians might sneak in from any direction, from above or below. That they hadn't was something of a mystery. Payne's theory was that they were too superst.i.tiously terrified of his Winchester rifle.

”Perhaps they're asleep,” Vaz said. ”G.o.d-I wish I were asleep.”

Vaz leaned his rifle against the wall and sat back down on the floor. He poked glumly at his left boot. It had been much abused on the long march, and the race for the castle had been the final straw-now the sole flapped loose. He would be marching no farther on it. For a while he had pretended manfully to find this amusing.

”For all we know, they don't sleep,” Arthur said. ”We don't know a b.l.o.o.d.y thing about them. Least of all what they want with us.”

”Makes no difference,” Payne said. ”There's them and there's us. That's all there is to know-except that we have guns and they do not.”

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