Under the Moons of Mars (22 page)

“And Thuvia?”

“Thuvia will be safe until after the Game,” Tara said.

Djor raised his eyebrows. “But this Game is played to the death. How can you know she’ll be safe?”

“The Princess does not fight,” said Tara darkly. “She is preserved, as a prize for the Kaldane that wins.”

He frowned. Then, after a moment, he said, “I’m sorry for what you’ve seen.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “What I’ve seen might save Carthoris’s life.”

Still, it was good to hear; it gave her an idea why he had been so uneasy around her this last year, and why he had insisted on sharing this danger now.

After that there was a companionable silence—the most comfortable she’d felt with him since the morning she’d realized he loved someone else. It felt familiar, and it steadied her for the fight ahead.

Her course was bold, and her piloting sure, and she made it nearly to the Bantoom desert in one piece.

Then the clouds thickened, and she overcorrected, and the edge of one wing caught the wall of the ravine.

It was barely a scrape—on a calm morning she would have righted and not given it a thought until she landed back home.

But in winds as tangled as these, deep in shadows not even the moons could reach, it was a death sentence.

The flier ricocheted off the ravine and broadsided the opposing wall of stone. Tara and Djor were thrown against the ceiling amid a cracking and crunching Tara prayed was not bone.

Then there was a sharp fall, and darkness claimed her.

When Tara woke, it was to pain and a sandy, claustrophobic darkness that nearly drove her to panic.

But she steadied herself, and after a few breaths she realized the crash had driven her underneath one of the consoles of her flier. She remembered her brother’s danger, and Djor, and their ruined flight.

But if they had crashed, how was she not already in the towers of Manator? Had they been hidden from view? Were they miraculously safe?

No knowing in hiding. Tara steeled her nerves, untangled herself from the mess of wires, and crawled out into the cabin of the flier.

The first thing she saw was the dawn light glinting through the windshield; at least this was not a tomb.

The second thing was that Djor was gone.

It wasn’t a mystery that took long to solve. The entry hatch of the ship was standing open, and the floor bore the marks of someone being dragged out fighting.

Djor had been taken by the Kaldanes, and they hadn’t looked for others because her flier sat only one.

Poor Djor Kantos, she thought. To have come so far and be taken this way.

But not for nothing; if she could fight for two, she could fight for three.

She wrenched her hair into a knot, tightened her scabbard, and climbed out of her ship.

Too late for that, she thought with a shudder, and started walking.

By the time she reached the gate of Manator it was morning, and she was almost out of time.

A guard, bemused, asked her name and business.

“Thora,” she lied. “I’m a panthan. I am here to play Jetan.”

The guard said, “You seem a bit young to be throwing your life away, but who can understand the decisions of the lesser-minded,” and inside the glass his brain swiveled to indicate where she should go for her work.

She found she could walk alone through the streets, and though there was no time to waste, there was still enough time for her to note the streets and alleyways, and to see that the flier platforms were guarded by only a few Kaldanes, who seemed more interested in watching the streets below than in guarding their charges.

She prayed the novelty of the crowd would not have worn off by the time she came back this way.

(
If
she came back this way. She had seen Jetan before; it was not a game with many survivors.)

It was enough of a novelty for a young woman to play the Game that the two competing Kaldanes (whose names slimed past her in a single guttural laugh) offered her a choice of teams.

“Come,” said one, and the arm of the headless body was held out to her in a mockery of a gentleman. “They are taking the field.”

Tara held her breath until she saw a tall, confident figure she recognized instantly, even from so far away.

“The black army,” she said.

The two Kaldanes immediately launched into a fight with each other over her choice. A guard ran to stand between them and force them to their separate sides.

Tara paused a moment in the gateway, glanced at the wall beside her, and let something fall.

Then she was running across the arena as fast as her feet could carry her.

She didn’t call her brother’s name (he was too clever to use his own), but still he turned and saw her before she would have thought possible, and for a moment his entire face was suffused with joy.

It wouldn’t last—there was too much danger for joy to last—but she understood; she smiled even as she ran.

When she skidded to a stop she didn’t dare reach for him, and he crossed his arms as if trying to keep himself from embracing her.

“I should have known,” he said finally. “You always did love games you knew you could win.”

“Let’s hope that holds, for your sake.” Then her smile faded. “Make me a Warrior—they have the most flexibility, and at the end of the Game you and Thuvia—”

But here Carthoris’s face fell.

The black Princess emerged from the shadows of the holding cell, trying bravely not to cry.

She was a stranger.

“Carthoris,” Tara breathed, “where’s Thuvia?”

He didn’t answer.

In horror, Tara turned to look where the last of the orange pieces were emerging.

Beside her, the Chief of the orange pieces was already in place, staring at them, horrified.

It was Djor Kantos.

Tara held her breath; her fingertips went numb.

Then a voice cried, “Let the Game begin!”

The Game was well-matched—too well-matched—and each side lost panthans at a staggering rate until only the trickier pieces remained.

Tara did not notice this (though she should have); she was thinking only of the gate.

The gate had but one guard, and he had not yet noticed that she had dropped one of her thick golden bangles to keep the ground-bolt from sliding home.

That was their escape. Her brother already knew her plan (whispered in the moments before the pieces were ordered to take their places), and as soon as Thuvia and Djor came within hearing, she’d make good on their escape. With all four of them armed, it would be easy enough to overpower the guards and steal a flier home.

(All the while, her stomach was churning as she snuck glances at Thuvia and Djor across the board, waiting for their turn to be played.)

However, when Tara saw that all the spaces to her right had emptied, she realized how clever the Kaldane controlling the black team must be. He had sacrificed so many panthans to give his stronger pieces room to cross the board. The thoat before her marched to battle, and she watched the last orange panthan die under its feet.

Then her square was being called.

With a glance at her brother, his hands fisted at his sides and his eyes fixed on her, she advanced.

“Be brave,” he said, as if to himself.

“Die with honor,” she said.

A few moves later, he did, and Tara stood in the square, beside his body, breathing heavily and looking at the board ahead.

The Kaldane playing orange must have been angry with her for throwing his expectations; the next thing he moved was a thoat, pawing at the ground and straining against the reins of its rider. It had been inching toward one of their fliers, but apparently the Kaldane had lost his patience, and its course was now fixed on her.

A screech of laughter floated through the crowd as the black-side Kaldane ordered her to take the square.

Tara trembled, and stepped forward.

She remembered sparring with Carthoris and Djor, when they could still barely lift their swords.

“Watch here,” said her brother to Djor, brushing his hand along the back of Tara’s arm. “It cannot be defended, and incapacitates. Every creature has these. Find them, and use them.”

(The soft spot of a thoat is just behind the front legs, in the space usually protected by the elbow.)

When the thoat crashed to the sand, it trapped the rider waist-high beneath it. He struggled to reach his weapon, but it was pinned beneath the beast.

He looked up at Tara in terror.

Tara lifted her sword, hesitated.

(“There is a line between bravery and cruelty,” her brother told her. “Find that, too.”)

She stepped back, lowered her sword, and called, “I will not kill him.”

“I am a volunteer,” she told them. “You have no power here. I cry mercy for this man—the Gamemaster decides.”

Softly, from behind her, she heard her brother whisper, “Careful.”

But she offered them neither abuse nor apologies, and after a moment they got some signal and moved to remove the thoat and walk the warrior off the board. (He cast a grateful glance over his shoulder, and she nodded back.)

She was still focused on the victory, and it took her a moment to realize how much closer she had moved to the ranks of the orange.

Thuvia was looking across the board at her husband, shaking her head in terror. Djor Cantos was looking straight at Tara with an expression that could cut marble.

Then she realized what the orange Kaldane had had in mind when he’d arranged the move.

It was a trap.

If she took two more squares, she was going to challenge the Chief.

The game moved on, but Tara was frozen, staring into the face of an old friend with whom she had just become comfortable again, after a painful absence.

Djor had looked away and now stood watching the board, frozen with dread. Beside him, Thuvia reached out a sympathetic hand.

“The Black Chief is challenged!” Tara heard.

She turned. Though the first challenge to a Chief was usually to test his skill rather than to take the board, she knew this Game had gotten ugly when she saw that the orange had sent a dwar, a captain, for the fight.

This was for the kill.

When the Captain fell to the ground, Tara let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and it was so loud that Carthoris looked up from the body and smiled at her, so quickly no one else could see.

Then the Gamemaster called, “Warrior challenges Chief!”

Tara spun to look at Djor Kantos, who was moving forward as if his feet were in lead sandals.

“No!” cried Carthoris from behind her.

She stepped forward too, her sword at the ready.

Djor’s face was stony, and she wondered if he had planned some hero’s suicide for himself while he’d been waiting.

Not now,
she thought;
don’t you dare give up now that we’re friends again at last.

He stepped close, and raised his sword.

Then he murmured, “I hope you have an escape planned, or your brother is going to be very upset with me.”

Relief flooded her, so sharp it was like pain.

“He’ll be the least of your problems once I’m done with you,” she said, and took a fighting stance.

Then they began.

It looked to the Kaldanes like a battle between two equals of skill; only Carthoris would know that it was their old dexterity figures, which looked dangerous but never struck.

(It felt, for a moment, like home.)

When they were pressed shoulder to shoulder, swords locked, Tara whispered quickly about the gate, and the fliers’ tower.

“When?” he asked, over the clang of metal.

Even as he asked it, she realized.

“All right,” Djor said.

And the next moment, he had spun away from her, and the sword was flying out of his hand.

It struck one of the slavemasters and pinned him to the sand like an insect. Beside him, his fellow staggered backward with a squeal.

Even before the outcry rose from the Kaldanes in the arena, Tara was running for her brother.

“Here,” she said, shoving her sword into the hands of the black Princess. “If you’re fighting, fight.”

The Princess blinked, but took a grip on the sword that looked passable.

Carthoris was shaking his head, but already his sword was in Tara’s hands, and they were halfway to the gate.

“Those who would be free must fight!” Carthoris called.

Nearly all the remaining pieces shouldered their weapons and bolted.

Ahead of her, Thuvia and Djor were already at the gate, dragging it aside. The guard vanished under Djor’s sword, and Thuvia braced herself at the other side against any oncomers.

Beside Tara, Carthoris was keeping pace, and they were nearly at the gate and free.

Then she crashed to the ground.

There was a searing pain in her right leg, and she knew at once that she had been struck—a knife, or a simple blade-disc.

Carthoris was already turning back.

“No!” she shouted.

But because he was her brother, he didn’t listen; because he was her brother, he would risk death for her, too.

She heard the whistling of other blades as they seemed to bloom from the sand, and she knew that before he could get hold of her, he’d be struck.