Under the Moons of Mars (36 page)
Read Under the Moons of Mars Online
Authors: John Joseph Adams
We were a nuisance who took this fortress by luck and audacity, but as Guntha said, we would be swatted before the sun was above the horizon. We would not see the Warlord’s fleet of airships fill the skies from horizon to horizon. We would not be there when the last—truly the last—great battle of our age was fought. We would already be dead. Forgotten, buried in the rubble of a fort that still stood only
because it was inconvenient to take it from us in the dark. There would be no moment to shine, no glory, no notice. There would only be death and then a slide into nothingness as memories of us were overlaid by the songs that would be written about the real battle.
“Perhaps the Warlord will come with the dawn,” I said. “The messengers we sent were well-mounted.”
He gave another weary shake. “No. They would need to fly on wings to have reached even the most distant outposts. Had we an airship . . . but, no. John Carter will come, and he will come in all his might and wrath, but our song, my friend, will have ended long before.”
“You would never have made a songmaker,” I said. “You don’t know how to write an ending to your own tale.”
“Ha,” he laughed, “and that is what I’ve been trying to tell you all evening.”
2G
untha woke me at the blackest hour of night. Only cold starlight washed down upon him as he crouched over me. For my part I came awake from a dream of battle.
“What is it?” I cried. “Are we beset?
My sword was half-drawn from its sheath when he caught my wrist. “No, sheath your sword, my friend,” said he. “Just listen to me for a moment and then I’ll let you rest.”
“Speak, then,” I said quietly, mindful of the men who slept around us.
“What I said earlier . . . they were weak words from an old tongue, and I ask that you forgive them.”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“Forget them, then. I spoke from old age and regret, but
as I lay upon my blanket I thought better of my words, and of my life. To blazes with death songs and glory, and to Iss with the ego of someone to whom the gods have granted a thousand graces. I said that I was a dwar and by heaven I will die as one. Not as a hero in some grand song, but a simple man doing a simple job for which he is well-suited. A loyal soldier for whom his daily service to his lord is both his purpose and his reward.” He took a breath. “I have had my day, and there need be no more songs for me. None to write and none to sing. Not for me, Jeks, and not for us. The song is over. All that remains is to do one last day’s honest work and then I shall lay me down with a will, content that I have not betrayed the trust placed upon me.”
I was tempted in my weariness to make light of so bold a speech at such an unlikely hour, but the starlight glittered in his eyes like splinters of sword steel. And all the shadows resculpted his face so that as he turned this way and that he was two different men. Or perhaps two different versions of Dwar Guntha. When he turned to the right it seemed to me that I looked upon a much younger man—the young dwar I met in the dungeons so many years ago; and when he turned to the other side, the blue-white starlight painted his face into a mask like unto a funeral mask of some ancient king. Neither aspect betrayed even a whisper of the doubt or weakness that had been in his voice scant hours before.
I sat up and put my hand on his shoulder. “Dwar Guntha,” I said, “you would have made quite a singer of songs.”
He chuckled. “Don’t mock me. It’s just that I had second thoughts after I lay down.”
“Tell me.”
“If we are to die tomorrow—or, today, as I perceive that dawn is not many hours away—then at least let us satisfy ourselves to usefulness.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You ask a question to which we both know the answer. The latter, always.”
“Then when the sun ignites the morning, let us not wait for death behind these walls. Let us ride out instead.”
I smiled. “Ride out?”
“Aye! A charge. We might make the upland cleft, where the slopes narrow before they spill out onto the great plains. It’s a bottleneck and we could fill it. With our thoats, we could make a wall of spears.” Guntha slapped his thigh. “By the gods I would bear death’s ungentle touch, but I will not—
cannot
—bear it without blood upon my steel. Even if my blade breaks on iron circlet or skull beneath, then let it break thus, red to the hilt.”
“Ride out?” I asked again. “Sixteen against one hundred thousand?”
“Better than sixteen quivering behind battlements they don’t have the numbers to defend.”
“We wouldn’t last a minute.”
“And,
ah!
—what a minute it would be.”
“No songs,” I said.
“No songs,” he agreed. “The only song that need be written today is that of John Carter, Jeddak of Jeddaks, as he fills the sky with ships and rains fury down upon this pirate scum. This is it, you know. This is the last battle. Even if we survived tomorrow—and there is scant chance of that—war is over for our generation. Once this army is crushed, then there will be peace on Barsoom. Peace! And it was our swords, Jeks, that helped to bring about such a glorious and blessed and thoroughly depressing turn of events. No . . . let us ride out to our doom and the dooms of those who first oppose us. The Free Riders of Helium,
sailing to paradise on a river of pirate blood.”
I laughed. “A singer of songs, indeed!”
We smiled at each other then. Dawn was coming and we both knew that only one last sleep awaited us now.
“I’ll go wake the others,” said I. “I think they will be pleased!”
And so they were.
3D
awn did indeed come early, and with it the silver voices of a thousand trumpets. My head ached with the hot hammers of the wine-devils, but I was in my battle harness before the pale sunlight clawed its way over the horizon. Before the first echo of the trumpets had yet had time to reach the distant mountains and come back to us, we swung open the gates to the outpost and the Free Riders rode out into the dawn.
Such a sight it must have been, could I have but seen it from a lofty perch. Sixteen men in heavy armor from another age. Spears and lances, war hammers and swords, polished and glittering.
The pirates scrambled to meet us, the pike men and foot soldiers grabbing up pieces of armor even as they counted our numbers and laughed. Had I any thoughts of surviving the day, I, too, might have laughed; but I knew a great secret that they did not. We were sufficient to our purpose: plenty enough men to die.
We raced to the upland cleft, which was a natural fissure in the red rock through which only half a dozen horses could pass at once. The footing was bad and you needed a trailwise thoat to navigate it at the best of times. All other
passes were much stepped or littered with boulders, which forced the army to funnel into the pass. Hence the reason they had stopped for the night. We did not flatter ourselves that that great monster of an army had paused for us.
Dwar Guntha rode before the company, his ancient sword held high.
A dwar from the pirates cupped hands around his mouth and bade Dwar Guntha to surrender.
“Surrender, old man! Beg for your life and my Jeddak may spare it!” he taunted.
Guntha never stopped smiling, even as he hefted his spear and threw it with great power and accuracy into the throat of the pirate dwar.
“There is our surrender,” Dwar Guntha cried aloud. “We will write our names in the book of death with pirate blood. Have at you bastards, and may the desert demons feast upon your cowardly bones!”
The pirates stared at the body of their fallen captain for a long moment, and then with a great roar like a storming sea, they swept toward us.
We formed ranks and drew into the cleft and only when the first wave of them rushed up the hill at us, we charged out to meet them. Spears flashed like summer thunder and the air was filled with a treasure house of bright red rubies.
Ah, the killing.
Guntha and I fought side by side, our thoats rearing and slashing with steel-shod feet. The enemy was so determined to run us down that they sent lancers and foot soldiers in rather than archers. After all, who were we but a few old men on old horses?
It was an arrogance that cost them dearly. And yes, it would have made a glorious song. A battle song. A death song that would be remembered long after our bones were dust. Alas.
But there were one hundred thousand of them. Though they sent not a single man who could stand before the least of us, they had men to spare and no sword arm can fight without fatigue forever.
I saw Kinto Kan fall, his body feathered with arrows but his own quiver empty and the dead heaped around him—two score and six to be his slaves in death. Ben Bendark, known as Thark-killer before the Warlord forged the alliance, swung his war axe, that great cleaver of a hundred tavern songs, and the head of a pirate jed flew from his shoulders. I never saw where it landed. Bendark gave a wild cry of red triumph even as spears pierced his chest and stilled his mighty heart. He fell next to his brother, Gan, who smiled even in death, his mighty hands clenched forever around the shattered throats of the men who killed him.
Hadro Henkin, the sword dancer from Gathol, leapt and turned and cut men from the saddle and slipped between spears and left a path of ruin behind him. He made it nearly to the chariot of the Jeddak himself before a dozen spearmen converged and brought him down. His best friend, Zeth Hondat, screamed like a banth and threw himself at the spearmen, cutting them down one-two-three-four. Seven fell before the Jeddak raised a huge curved sword and cut Zeth nearly in twain.
These things I saw and more. The waves of pirates were
as limitless as the dunes of a desert. An ocean of spears and swords, but Dwar Guntha had chosen our spot well and we held the high ground while they were forced into a narrow killing chute. We slaughtered five times our number. Ten times.
More.
And still they came. As I parried and thrust, cut and slashed, I could not help but compose our song in my head. Despite the melancholy musings of last night, this was a glorious end. This was such an end that perhaps the pirates themselves would write the song. Not a hero’s lament or stirring death song, but a tale of desert demons who it took an army to overthrow. We would be the monsters to frighten children on dark nights, and that would please Dwar Guntha. It was a way to strike once more into the heart of our enemy.
In a moment’s brief reprieve I called to him. Guntha bled from a dozen cuts and leaned heavily on his saddle horn.
“What a song!” I cried.
“Sing it with your blade,” he laughed, and they were on us again.
Then I saw three things occur in close succession, and what a wonder they were to behold.
First, I saw the fresh wave of pirates swarm toward us. These were burly men, not the foot soldiers or light skirmishers; these were the cream of their cavalry on fresh thoats, led by the fierce Jeddak in his war chariot. Dwar Guntha reared up on his thoat, the reins flying free, a spear in one hand and his ancient sword in the other. With a cry so fierce and powerful that it momentarily stilled the war shouts of the pirates, Guntha thrust the spear deep into the roaring mouth of the chariot’s lead thoat, and as the beast fell the chariot tilted forward to offer the Jeddak up to Guntha’s sword. The blade caught red sunlight and then flashed down, cleaving gold circlet and black skull even as the Jeddak thrust his own great blade forward into Dwar Guntha’s chest. Guntha’s blade snapped as he predicted it would, but only on a killing stroke. His last, and a masterful one it was. The pirates could never reckon this day’s victory without counting a terrible cost.