1 - Warriors of Mars (4 page)

As I munched on a particularly
tasty piece of meat wrapped in a green, lettuce-like leaf, I suddenly heard an
odd sound. I was not sure what it was, but I listened carefully so that I
should hear it again if it came.

The courtiers had fallen silent
and were also listening.

Then the sound came again.

A muffled cry.

The courtiers looked at one
another in apparent consternation but made no move towards the source of the
cry.

It came a third time and now I was
sure I recognized the voice.

It was Shizala's!

Although there were guards at
intervals around the hall, none of them moved and no orders were given to go to
Shizala's assistance.

Desperately, I looked round at the
courtiers. "That is your Bradhinaka's voice—why don't you help her? Where
is she?"

One of the courtiers looked very
disturbed and pointed to a door leading off the hall. "She is there—we
cannot help her unless she summons us. It is a very delicate matter involving
the Bradhinak Telem Fas Ogdai..."

"You mean he is causing her
pain! I will not allow it. I thought you were people of character—but you just
stand here ..."

"I told you—the situation is
delicate. We feel very deeply ... But etiquette ..."

"To hell with
etiquette," I said in English. "This is no time for niceties—Shizala
may be in danger."

And with that I strode towards the
door he had pointed to. It was not locked and I flung it open.

Telem Fas Ogdai was holding
Shizala's wrists in a cruel grip and she was struggling. He was speaking to her
in a low, urgent tone. When she saw me she gasped:

"No, Michael Kane—
go
from here. It will mean more trouble."

"I will not leave while I
know this boor is troubling you," I said, flicking him a look of scorn.

He frowned, then he grinned evilly
and his teeth flashed.

He still held her wrists.

"Let her go!" I warned,
stepping forward.

"No, Michael Kane," she
said. "Telem Fas Ogdai means me no harm. We are having an
argument, that
is all. It will end ..."

But I had put my hand on the
prince's shoulder now and I let it lie there heavily.

"Release her," I
ordered.

He released her all right—and at
the same time swung both his fists round to catch me on the head, sending me
reeling. That was it! My temper got the better of me and I surged back in. A
punch on the chest winded him and a following punch on the jaw knocked him
back. He tried to retaliate so I punched him on the jaw again. He went down
with a clatter and stayed down.

"Oh!" cried Shizala.
"Michael Kane, what have you done?"

"I have dealt with a brute
who
was hurting a very beautiful and sweet young lady,"
I said, rubbing my fists. "I am sorry that it had to happen, but he
deserved it."

"He has a bad temper
sometimes, but he is not evil. I am sure you did what you thought was best,
Michael Kane, but now you have made things even worse for me."

"If he is here on diplomatic
business he should behave like a diplomat and with dignity," I reminded
her.

"Diplomat?
He is no emissary from Mishim Tep. He is my betrothed—did you not see the
armlet on his wrist?"

"Armlet—so that's what it is!
Your
betrothed! But—but he can't be! Why would you
consent to marry such a man?" I was horrified and bewildered. There was no
chance of making her mine! "You could not love him!"

Now she frowned and it sent a
shudder through me to see that I had angered her. She drew herself up and pulled
a bell-cord. "You do not behave as befits a stranger and a guest,"
she said coldly. "You presume too much!"

"I am sorry—deeply sorry. I
was impulsive. But..."

In the same emotionless voice, she
said: "It was my father's
wish that when he died and I
succeeded him I should marry the son of his old ally
, thus making sure
of the Karnala's security. I intend to respect my father's wish. You are
presumptuous to make any comment concerning my relationship with the Bradhinak
of Mishim Tep."

This was a side of Shizala I had
not seen before—the regal side. I must have offended her deeply for her to
adopt this manner and tone, for I knew it was not natural.

"I—I am very sorry."

"I accept your apology. You
will not interfere again. Now, please leave."

In confusion, I turned and left
the room.

Bewildered, I walked straight from
the great hall, down the steps of the palace to where a servant was just
leading away the dahara I had been riding earlier.

With a muttered word to the
servant I mounted the beast and shook its reins, making it gallop away down the
main street towards one of the gates of the city.

I had to go right away from Varnal
for the time being, had to go somewhere where I could be alone to collect my
thoughts and pull myself together.

Shizala betrothed! A girl whom, I
knew now, I had loved from the moment I saw her. It was too much to bear!

My heart beating much more rapidly
than normal and my thoughts racing, my whole being seething with anguish, I
rode blindly from the city, past the
Green
Lake
and out into the Calling
Hills.

Oh, Shizala, Shizala, I thought, I
could have made you so happy.

I believe that I was close to
crying then.
I, Michael Kane, who had always prided himself
on his self-control.

It was some time before I slowed
my pace and began to make myself think levelly.

I did not know how far I had
ridden. Many, many miles I suspected. My surroundings were unfamiliar. There
was
no landmarks I could recognize.

It was then that I saw a movement
to the north. At first I thought I was looking at a distant herd of beasts
galloping towards me but, shading my eyes from the sun, I soon realized that
these were riders mounted on some sort of beast similar to my dahara.
Many riders.

A horde!

Knowing so little of Martian
geography or, for that matter, politics, I did not know whether these riders
threatened danger or not.

I sat my beast, watching them
advance at a tremendous pace. Even so far away from them I could feel the
ground faintly trembling, reverberating to the sound of the thundering animals.

Something seemed a little strange
as they approached closer. I guessed they still could not see me—one solitary
figure—but I could see them.

The scale was wrong. That was it.

Judging the average height of man
and mount against the average height of trees and shrubs, I knew that these
riders and their steeds were gigantic! Not one of their daharas was less than
twice the height of mine; not one rider was
under
eight feet tall.

My memory worked swiftly and came
up with only one answer.

These were invaders!

More—I thought I knew them.

They could only be those fierce,
northern raiders Shizala had mentioned. The Blue Giants—the Argzoon!

Why had the city had no warning of
the horde's approach?

How had they managed to come this
far undetected?

These questions rose in my mind as
I watched, but I dismissed them as useless. The fact was that a mounted force
of warriors—thousands of them it seemed—were riding towards Varnal!

Quickly, I turned my beast, all
thoughts of my grief now forgotten. I was obsessed by the emergency. I must
warn the city. At least they would have a little time!

I checked my position from the sun
and guided the swiftly-moving dahara back the way I had come.

But I had not reckoned with the
Argzoon outriders. Though I had observed the main horde, the scouts sent ahead
had evidently observed me!

As I ducked low to avoid the low
branches of the slim trees and emerged into a wide glade, I heard a huge snort
and a strange, wild, gusty laugh.

Then I was staring at a mounted
giant towering above me on his great beast. In one hand he held an enormous
sword and in the other an ovalheaded mace of some land.

I was unarmed—save for the slender
lances that still reposed in the holster at my side.

MY MIND raced. For a moment I felt completely overwhelmed,
staring up into the face of a being that was to me as impossible as the unicorn
or the hippogriff.

His skin was a dark, mottled blue.
Like the folk of Varnal, he did not wear what we should think of as clothing.
His body was a mass of padded leather armor and on his seemingly hairless head
was a tough cap, also of padded leather, but reinforced with metal.

His face was broad yet tapering,
with slitted eyes and a great gash of a mouth that was open now in laughing
anticipation of my rapid demise.
A mouth full of black teeth,
uneven and jagged.
The ears were pointed and large, sweeping back from
the skull. The arms were bare, save for wristguards, and strongly muscled on a
fantastic scale. The fingers were covered—encrusted would be a better
description—with crudely-cut precious stones.

His dahara was not the quiet beast
that I rode. It seemed as fierce as its rider, pawing at the delicate green
moss of the glade, its head sporting a metal spike and its body partially
protected by the same dark brown, padded leather armor.

The Argzoon warrior uttered a few
guttural words which I could not understand, though they were clearly in the
same language that I now spoke so fluently.

Fatalistically feeling that if I
must die I would die fighting, I reached for one of the lances in the holster.

The warrior laughed again
jeeringly and waved his sword, clapping his massive legs to his mount's side
and goading it forward.

Now my reactions came to my
rescue.

Swiftly, I plucked one of the
lances from tie holster and almost in the same motion got its balance, then
flung it at the giant's face.

He roared as it hurtled towards
him but with incredible speed for one so huge he struck it aside with his
sword.

But by that time I had another
lance in my hand and turned my jittery mount away as the warrior advanced, his
sword swooping down towards me.

I ducked and felt it pass within
an inch of my scalp.

Then he had thundered past, carried
on by the weight of his own momentum. I wheeled my beast and flung another
lance at him as he tried to turn his mount, which was evidently less well
trained than mine.

The lance caught him in the arm.

He yelled in pain and rage and
this time his speed was even faster as he bore down on me again.

I had only two lances left.

I flung the third as he came in
with his sword held out in front of him, like a cavalryman on Earth might once
have held his sword in a charge.

The third lance missed. But at
least my second had wounded his mace-arm and I only had the sword to contend
with; I could not duck this one.

But what could I do? There were
split seconds in which to decide!

Grabbing the remaining lance, I
flung myself off the beast and fell to the ground just as the sword met air
where I would have been.

Bruised, I picked myself up. I
still gripped the last lance.

I would have to use it with
certainty if I were to win this duel.

I crouched, waiting as he turned,
poised on the balls of my feet, watching the gigantic, snorting brute as he
fought his dahara, turning it round again.

Then he paused, laughing that
gusty, animal laughter, his blue head flung back and his vast chest heaving
beneath its armor.

It was his mistake.

Thanking providence for this
opportunity, I hurled the lance with all my force and skillstraight at the
momentarily exposed neck.

It went in some inches and for a
brief instant the laughter still came from his mortally wounded throat. The
noise changed to a shocked gurgle, a high sigh, and then my opponent pitched
backward off his dahara and lay dead on the ground.

As soon as it was relieved of its
ride, the dahara galloped away into the forest.

I was left, panting and dazed but
grateful for the fortuitous opportunity I had been given. I should have been
dead. Instead, I was alive--and still whole.

I had expected to die. I had not
counted on the incredible stupidity of an adversary who had been so sure of
victory he had exposed a vital spot which could only have been reached by the
very weapon I happened to possess.

I stood over the great hulk. It
lay
spread out on the moss, the sword and mace still
attached by wrist-thongs to its arms. There was a stink about it not of death
but of general uncleanliness. The slitted eyes stared, the mouth still a grinning
gash, though now it grinned in death.

I looked at his sword.

It was, of course, a great weapon,
such as only a nine-foot giant would use. Yet, proportionately, it was almost a
short sword—just over five feet long. Fastidiously I bent down and unhooked the
thong from the creature's wrist. I picked the sword up. It was very heavy, but
finely balanced. I could not use it in one hand as the Argzoon scout had done,
but I could use it as a broadsword in two hands. The grips were just right. I
hefted it, feeling better, thanking heaven for M. Clarchet, my old fencing
master, who had taught me how to get the most out of any blade, no matter how
strange or crude it at first seemed.

Holding it by its thong, I
remounted my beast and lay the sword across my legs as I rode in that still
peculiar riding position back towards the city.

There was a long way to go and I
had to hurry—even more so now—to warn the city of the imminent attack.

But as I rode up hill and down
dale for what seemed hours, I was to be threatened once again by an Argzoon
giant who came riding at me from my right flank as I rode down one of the last
hillsides before Varnal.

He did not laugh. Indeed, he
uttered no sound at all as he came at me. Evidently so near the city he did not
wish to alert anyone who might be close by. He had no mace—just a sword. I met
his first swing with my own recently acquired weapon. He looked at it in
surprise, clearly recognizing it as one forged by his own folk.

His surprise served me well. These
Argzoon were swift movers for their size, but poor thinkers—that had already
been made quite plain.

While he was staring at my sword
and at the same time bringing his own round for another blow, I did not swing
up to protect myself but drove the sword towards where I hoped his heart would
be. I also prayed it would pierce the armor.

It did, though not as swiftly as I
had hoped and, as the blade struck through leather and then flesh, bone and
sinew, his sword came down in a convulsive movement and grazed my right arm. It
was not a bad wound but, within a moment, it was painful.

His sword dropped from inert
fingers, dangling by its thong as he sat in his saddle, rocking dazedly and
looking at me groggily.

I could see that he was badly
wounded, though not mortally, I guessed.

As he began to topple from his
saddle I reached out and tried to take his weight to stop him from falling.
With my own wounded arm it was difficult, but I managed to hold him there while
I inspected the injury I had inflicted.

Turned slightly by the padded
armor, the sword had gone in just below the heart.

I managed somehow to dismount,
still holding him, and lifted him down and laid him out on the moss.

He spoke to me then. He seemed
very puzzled. "What—?" he said in his thick, brutish accent. "I
am in a hurry. There, I have stopped the bleeding. It doesn't look fatal. Your
own folk must look after you."

"You—you do not kill
me?" "It is not my way to kill if I do not have to!" "But I
have failed—the warriors of the Argzoon will torture me to death for that. Slay
me, my vanquisher!"

"It is not my way," I
insisted. "Then ..." He struggled up, reaching towards a knife in his
belt. I forced the huge hand away and he sank back, exhausted. "I will
help you to that undergrowth." I pointed to some thick shrubbery nearby.
"You can hide there and they will not find you."

I realized I was showing him more
mercy than he expected, even from the folk of Varnal. And in helping him I was
slowing myself up. Yet a man is a man, I thought—he cannot do what is contrary
to his own feelings and principles. If he has a code of honor he must adhere to
it. The moment he forgets that code, then all is lost, for even though he
forgets on one occasion, it is the beginning of the end. Bit by bit the code
will be qualified, any break with it justified, until the man is no longer a
man, in truth, at all.

That is why I helped the odd being
I had vanquished. I could do nothing less. As I had told him—it was my way.
Such emotions may sound oldfashioned, even prudish, in this modern age where
values are changing—many think for the worse—or things are losing their values
altogether. But though I realize I may sound stiff arid peculiar to many of my
contemporaries, I am afraid that then, in that gentle valley on ancient Mars,
just as now, on Earth, I had a set of principles—call it what you will—that I
knew I must abide by.

As soon as I had hauled the
creature to cover, I sent his dahara galloping away and mounted my own.

Within a few minutes I had reached
the gates of the city and was riding desperately through them, shouting my
warning.

"Attack!
Attack! It is the hordes of Argzoon!"

The men looked startled but
evidently they, too, recognized the type of sword I was carrying. The gates
began to close behind me.

Straight to the palace steps I
rode and flung myself from the exhausted dahara, running up the steps, half
staggering with pain, exhaustion and the weight of the sword—proof of what I
had to tell!

Shizala came running into the main
hall. She looked disheveled and her face bore traces of her earlier anger.

"What is it? Michael Kane!
What means this disturbance?"

"The
Argzoon!"
I blurted out "The Blue Giants— your enemies—a great
horde of them attacks the city!"

"Impossible! Why have we not
heard? We have our mirror posts that signal messages from hill to hill. We
should have heard. Yet..."

She frowned thoughtfully.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The mirrors have had no
messages for some time. Perhaps the stations were destroyed by the wily
Argzoon."

"If they
have reached this far before, they will have known roughly what to
expect."

"But from where comes their
strength! We had thought them beaten and quiescent for at least another ten
years. They were all but wiped out by my father's army and its allies! My
father headed the army which hunted down the survivors!"

"Well, the horde he defeated
must have been only a fraction of the Argzoon strength. Perhaps this raid is
part of a consistent strategy of surprise, meant to weaken you."

"If that is their plan,"
she sighed, squaring her beautiful creamy shoulders, "then it was a good
one, for in truth we are unprepared!"

"No time for
self-recrimination now," I pointed out. "Where is your brother
Darnad? As chief Pukan-Nara of Varnal it is up to him to direct preparations
for defense. What of the other warriors of Karnala?"

"They patrol borders, keep
the peace against roaming bandit bands. Our army is scattered, but even if it
were all assembled in Varnal it might not suffice to meet an Argzoon
horde!"

"It seems impossible that you
received no warning at all—not even a runner from another city. How have the
Argzoon been able to get this far south without you knowing?"

"I cannot think. As you say,
it could be that they have been planning this for years, that they have had
spies not of their own race working for them, travelling in small groups under
cover at night and in disguise, assembling in some nearby remote quarter of our
land—and now ride on the city with none of our allies knowing our fate."

"The walls will resist heavy
siege," I pointed out. "You say you have some aircraft. You can
bombard them from the air, using your Sheev-guns. That is one advantage."

"Our three aircraft will not
achieve much against so large a force."

"Then you must send one of
them to your nearest ally. Send your—your ..." I paused as memory flooded
back. "Send the Bradhinak of Mishim Tep to summon his father's aid—and
seek help from your other, weaker, allies on the way."

She frowned thoughtfully and then
looked up at me with a strange, half-puzzled look. She pursed her lips.

"I will do as you
suggest," she said at length. "But even at their fastest our aircraft
will take several days to reach Mishim Tep—and an army will take even longer
getting here. We will have difficulty resisting so long a siege!"

"But outlast it and resist it
we must—for Varnal and for the security of your neighboring states," I
told her. "If the Argzoon conquer the Karnala, then they will sweep on
across other nations. They must be stopped at Varnal—or your entire
civilization could go under!"

"You have a clearer idea of
what is at stake than I." She smiled slightly. "And you have only
been with us a short time."

"Warfare," I said
quietly, thinking of my own experiences, "does not seem to change much
anywhere. The basic issues remain much the same—the strategy, the aims. I have
already encountered two of your Blue Giants and hate to think of this lovely
city being ruled by them!"

I did not add that it was not only
the city I feared for but Shizala, too. Try as I might, I could not make myself
forget the emotion I felt for her. I knew now she was betrothed to another and
that whatever she or I felt it was impossible that anything could come of it.
Evidently her code was quite as strong as mine and would not let her weaken,
just as I did not intend to weaken.