3 - Barbarians of Mars (8 page)

 
          
 
Once again I gave up trying to argue with the
barbarian, though I knew that in this case, as in all things, it is not enough'
to know that something works. One must also understand how it works before it
can be used to advantage, and used without personal danger.

THE
CRYSTAL
PIT

 
          
 
The ship reached land the next day - whether
the mainland of the Western continent or an island I did not then know.

 
          
 
We leaped from the ship into the shallows,
plunging thankfully up to the firm shore, while Rokin directed his men to beach
the hull.

 
          
 
When this was done and we sat in the shadow of
the hull, recovering from what we had endured in the past two days, Rokin
turned to me with a faint trace of his old grin.

 
          
 
"So now we are all far from home - and
far from our glory," he said.

 
          
 
"Thanks to you," said Hool Haji,
echoing my own sentiments.

 
          
 
"Well," said Rokin, fingering his
golden beard, now clogged with salt, "I suppose it is."

 
          
 
"Have you no idea where we are?" I
asked him.

 
          
 
"None."

 
          
 
"Then we had best strike off along the
coast in the hope of finding a friendly settlement," I suggested.

 
          
 
"I suppose so." He nodded. "But
someone must stay to guard the treasures still in the ship."

 
          
 
"You mean the machines?" Hool Haji
said.

 
          
 
"The machines," Rokin agreed.

 
          
 
"We could guard them," I said,
"with the aid of some of your men."

 
          
 
Rokin laughed aloud. "Barbarian I may be,
my friend, but fool
I
am not. No, you come with us.
I'll leave some of my men to guard the ship."

 
          
 
And so we set off along the shore. It was a
wide, smooth beach, with an occasional rock standing out from the sand and. far
away, its foliage waving gently in the mild, warm breeze, was semi-tropical
forest.

           
 
It seemed a peaceful enough place.

 
          
 
But I was wrong.

 
          
 
By mid-afternoon the shore had narrowed and we
were walking much closer to the forest than before. The sky was overcast and
the air had become colder. Hool Haji and
myself
had no
cloaks and we shivered slightly in the still, chill air.

 
          
 
When they came, they came suddenly.

 
          
 
They came in a howling pack, bursting from the
trees and running down the beach towards us.
Grotesque
parodies of human beings, waving clubs and crudely-hammered swords, covered in
hair and completely naked.

 
          
 
I could not at first believe my eyes as I drew
my own sword without thinking and prepared to face them.

 
          
 
Though they walked upright, they had the
half-human faces of dogs - bloodhounds were the nearest species I could think
of.

 
          
 
What was more, the noises they made were
indistinguishable from the baying of hounds.

 
          
 
So bizarre was their appearance, so sudden
their
assault, that
I was almost off my guard when the
first club-brandishing dog-man came in to the attack.

 
          
 
I blocked the blow with my blade
And
sheered off the creature's fingers, finishing him
cleanly with a thrust at his heart.

 
          
 
Another took his place, and more besides. I
saw that we were completely surrounded by the pack. Apart from Hool Haji, Rokin
and myself, there were only two other barbarians in our party and there were
probably some fifty of the dog-men.

 
          
 
I swung my sword in an arc and it bit deep
into the necks of two of the dog-men, causing them to fall.

 
          
 
The hounds' faces were slobbering and the
large eyes held a maniacal hatred which I had only previously seen in the eyes
of mad dogs. I had the impression that if they bit me I would be infected with
rabies.

 
          
 
Three more fell before my blade as all the old
teaching of M. Clarchet, my French fencing master since childhood, came back to
me.

 
          
 
Once again I became cool.

 
          
 
Once again I became nothing more than a
fighting machine, concentrating entirely on defending myself against this mad
attack.

 
          
 
We held them off far longer than I had
expected we could, until the press became so intense I could no longer move my
sword.

 
          
 
The fighting then became a thing of fists and
feet, and I went down with at least a dozen of the dog-men on top of me.

 
          
 
I felt my arms grasped, and still I tried to
fight them off. But at length they had bound me.

 
          
 
Once again I had become a prisoner.

 
          
 
Would I survive to save Cend-Amrid?

 
          
 
I had now begun to doubt it. Ill-luck was
riding me, I was sure, and I felt that I would meet my death on that mysterious
Western continent.

 
          
 
The dog-men carried us into the forest,
conversing in a sharp, barking form of the common Martian tongue. I found it
hard to understand them.

 
          
 
Once I glimpsed Hool Haji being carried along
by several of the dog-men, and I also saw a flash of Rokin's golden armour, so
I assumed he lived, too. But I never saw the remaining barbarians again, so I
concluded they had been slain.

 
          
 
Eventually the forest opened out on to a
clearing and there was a village. The houses were only roughly-made shelters,
but they had been built on, or among, the shells of far older stone buildings
that did not seem to have any associations with either the Sheev or the Yaksha.
The buildings must once have been massive and durable, but they had been
erected by a more primitive race than the ancient race which had destroyed
itself in the Mightiest War.

 
          
 
As we were carted into one of the shelters and
dumped on the evil-smelling floor - half of stone, half of hardened mud -I
wondered about the race that had abandoned the settlement before the dog-people
had discovered it.

 
          
 
Before I could say anything to Hool Haji or
Rokin about this, a dog-man, larger than the rest, entered the shelter and
looked down at us out of his large, canine eyes.

 
          
 
"Who are you?" he said in his
strange accent.

 
          
 
'Travellers," I replied. "We offer
you no harm. Why did you attack us?"

 
          
 
"For the First Masters," he replied.

 
          
 
"Who are the First Masters?" asked
Hool Haji from where he lay beside me.

 
          
 
"The First Masters are they who feed from
the Crystal Pit."

 
          
 
"We do not know them," I said.
"Why did they tell you to attack us?"

 
          
 
"They did not tell us."

 
          
 
"Do they give you your orders?"
Rokin said. "If so, tell them they have made a prisoner of Rokin the Gold
and his men will punish them if Rokin dies."

 
          
 
Something like a smile touched the heavy mouth
of the dog-man.

 
          
 
"The First Masters punish - they are not
punished."

 
          
 
"Can we speak to them?" I asked.

 
          
 
“They do not speak."

 
          
 
"Can we see them?" Hool Haji asked.

 
          
 
"You will see them - and they will see
you."

 
          
 
"Well, at least we might be able to
reason with these First Masters," I said to Hool Haji. I returned my
attention to the dog-man who seemed to be the leader of the pack.

 
          
 
"Are
these
First
Masters Like you?" I asked. "Or are they like us?"

 
          
 
The pack-leader shrugged. "Like
neither," he said.
"Like that one more."
And he pointed to Hool Haji.

 
          
 
"They are
folk
of my race?" Hool Haji said, brightening a little. "Then surely they
can see that we wish than no harm."

 
          
 
"Only like you," said the dog-man.
"Not the same as you. You will see them in the Crystal Pit."

 
          
 
"What is this Crystal Pit?" Rokin
growled. "Why can't we see them now?"

 
          
 
Again the dog-man seemed to smile. "They
do not come yet," he replied.

 
          
 
"When will they come?"

 
          
 
“Tomorrow - when the sun is
highest."

 
          
 
With that the dog-man left the shelter.

 
          
 
Somehow we managed to get some sleep, hoping
that the mysterious First Masters would be more forthcoming and more open to
reason than the dog-men, who were apparently their servants in some capacity we
could not understand.

 
          
 
Just before
noon
on the next day several dog-men entered the
shelter and picked us up, hauling us from the place and out into the daylight.

 
          
 
The pack-leader was waiting, standing on a
piece of fallen masonry, a sword in one hand and a stick in the other. At the
tip of the stick gleamed a ruby-like gem of incredible
size.
I did not understand its
significance,
save that
perhaps it was some sign of the dog-man's leadership over the rest.

 
          
 
We were borne out of the clearing and into the
forest again, but it was not long before the forest gave way to another and
much larger clearing, with the farther trees a great distance away. Here lush
grass waved, rising waist high and brushing my face as they carried me.

 
          
 
The grass soon became sparser, revealing an
area of hardened mud in the centre of which was a great expanse of some
gleaming substance which made my eyes ache.