series 01 05 A Prince of Mars Page 5

  Kak’hamish remembered to translate the trading combine’s title as Boreosyrtis League, as he remembered it was called in Nathanial’s interesting, and often unintentionally amusing, tongue.

  “I am afraid I know very little of the geography of your world,” Nathanial replied, “although I hope to learn as much as I can. My only experience with Russians was on Luna, our moon, and it did nothing to raise them in my esteem, I assure you. I will say that I have had bhutan curry on Earth several times. My superior at the Chatham Dockyard, Director William White, was quite taken with it and served it several times at dinner. I did not much care for it, to be honest, but it is quite popular, and very dear. I have heard it sells in London for as much as nine shillings an ounce. This spice of Mister Haat’s—ereban is it?—seems much more appealing to my poor palate.”

  This additional embellishment by Nathanial so pleased Haat and the other diners that they did not notice he took no more of the soup. Kak’hamish did not blame him. When his own soup came he found it over-seasoned and over-cooked, with the tubers soft and mealy and the meat grey and tasteless—except for the overpowering flavour of ereban. He had cooked with ereban on many occasions. It had an earthy flavour, excellent for toning down the saltiness of preserved meat, but best used in moderation.

  “Did I understand you to say you worked at a dockyard, Mister Stone? Was that interesting work?” Jed-An asked.

  “I found it so. My field is electro-magnetism, primarily as it is used to manipulate the luminiferous aether, and so I do a great deal of work with aether propellers. Chatham yard once concentrated on steam conversions in naval vessels, and still does some of that, but now does much of the Royal Navy work on interplanetary craft and atmospheric flyers. I was quite fortunate to have Director White as my patron. He is now Director of Naval Construction as well as Assistant Controller of the Royal Navy. I am on…ah…a temporary leave of absence, but expect to return to work there as soon as we can make our way to the crown colony at Syrtis Major where I hope to petition the governor there, Sir Henry Routledge, to expedite my return home.”

  Nathanial was clearly proud of his position, but Kak’hamish wondered if this might not be more information than was wise. Most of those around the table listened with polite interest, but Jed-An stroked the outer veins of his left ear as he considered Nathanial’s words, his brow momentarily lined with thought.

  “These other gentlemen travel for profit, but you do so on matters of state, your lordship,” Nathanial said to Jed-An. “If I may be so bold as to ask, is there a special issue which takes you to Aubuchon?”

  “Skrill riders,” Jed-An answered, and then paused for another spoon of soup.

  Kak’hamish did not like the sound of that, but he saw Jed-An’s servant’s eyes on him, watching him carefully. Earlier Jed-An had gestured to the servant and the servant had spoken to him—after Kak’hamish had translated Nathanial’s words. Was the servant a translator as well? Did he speak English? That would be unusual this far east of the British holdings, but not impossible. He would have to take care.

  He translated Jed-An’s words without comment.

  “Really?” Nathanial said. “I believe my companion Kak’hamish may be able to help with that. He lived with the skrill riders for a number of years. They are called the Queln, are they not?”

  Jed-An’s servant leaned forward and whispered in the ambassador’s ear, and the diplomat’s face darkened for a moment before resuming its normal expression of vague friendliness. So the servant did speak English.

  Clack-clack.

  “Nathanial Stone wishes me to say that I lived with the Numaka clan of the iTaka-Queln for over five years. He does not understand that this may excite your suspicion and hostility, because he knows little of our ways and he speaks always directly from his belly. He thought my experience may be of use to you.”

  All eyes in the pavilion, save Nathanial’s, turned on Kak’hamish, and all of the polite smiles of a moment earlier vanished. After a moment Nathanial noticed and turned to Kak’hamish as well, his smile replaced by confusion and concern.

  “And will you be of use to us?” Jed-An asked.

  “That depends on your purpose, wise lord.”

  “My purpose is to make it rain skrill blood,” the Master of Sword announced before the ambassador could answer. “How many caravans do they have to plunder before someone does something about it? Well, let them raid us and see what happens!”

  The words provoked nods and murmurs of agreement around the table. Jed-An held up his hand for silence.

  “All here have accepted Onxym Haat’s hospitality. All are welcome today, regardless of where they supped yesterday, is it not so? I travel to Prince Akhanoon’s court to propose joint action by the cloud fleets of Sharranus and Abak’hn against the high aeries of the Queln. I tell you this because it is no secret. I would travel by cloudship myself, but all our armed vessels are engaged in patrols, and the merchant vessels avoid the southern trade routes. The Queln have become more aggressive this last half year.”

  “Not the Numaka clan,” Kak’hamish answered.

  Jed-An gestured as if brushing aside a fly. “Perhaps not. But one minor clan more or less means nothing. Will the Numaka pledge never to raid the gardenways again, and surrender hostages to insure compliance? No, of course not. It is the way of the Queln to prey on the weak, and they will continue doing so until there is a stiff price to be paid. Fate willing, that day will come soon. Only then will the gardenways be safe.”

  Another murmur of approval rippled through the pavilion and Nathanial looked around in confusion and alarm. Kak’hamish put his hand on the young man’s shoulder to reassure him.

  “I will explain in detail later,” he said in English, “but sentiments run high against the Queln here. You had no way of knowing and there is no real harm done. Any hostility will be directed at me, and my belly is strong. You would say my skin is thick.”

  Little conversation accompanied the remainder of the uncomfortable meal.

  3.

  annabelle considered the scrap of paper for perhaps the hundredth time. What did it mean? The words were simple enough, written in a spidery hand.

  Take Hart. A frend is near.

  For three days the caravan had made its deliberate way northeast, setting out in late morning, pausing for two hours in early afternoon, and then continuing nearly until dusk. Annabelle rode in a provision wagon towed behind one of the stately ruumet breehr. Pain was her nearly constant companion. She had a small bottle of laudanum but tried not to use it—she had seen several women ruined by its habitual use. Even in the short run it upset her digestion, and she could not believe that would assist her prompt recovery.

  So the pain persisted, shot through her leg and hip with a sudden intensity that made her gasp, and then subsided to the throbbing rhythm of her heart. But the most disturbing pain was in her missing leg. When she awoke the second morning, for a moment she was sure she had dreamed the amputation, because she could feel her right leg. Her ankle felt inflamed, her knee throbbed, and hot, sudden flashes of pain lanced through her big toe. The sensations were so real, so convincing, that when she tossed back the sheet, she cried out anew in horror at the sight of her bandaged stump.

  Her mind was not addled. The pain was real, even if her leg was missing. The nerves which had run to the knee, ankle, and toe were shorter but still there, still connected to her brain, still sending these ghostly messages of pain. Loyal, dutiful, stupid little nerves, telling her something is wrong, wrong, so dreadfully wrong! the only way they knew how. Pointless messages reminding her only that she was…what?

  Incomplete.

  She had been a complete woman, but she was no longer that. Her first order of business when she got home, she had decided with dark humour, would be to throw away half her shoes. What would her second order of business be? Although she was now an incomplete woman, she had to be a complete something, did she not? But what?

  She remember
ed very little of her childhood, or of her parents, but she remembered them skiing. Her father had come to America from Australia, met and married Joan Grant, and in the winter taught her to ski in the White Mountains when few others had even heard of the sport. Where they had obtained skies Annabelle had no idea, but she remembered herself as a very little girl, bundled in coats and quilts, sitting at the bottom of the hill on a layer of heated bricks and watching her mother and father ski down the slope toward her. Their paths had crossed and re-crossed, coming together and drawing apart, twisting around each other in what she now recognised as a sensual celebration of physical love. On hissing skies they raced toward her and at the last moment slid sideways to stop in a small blizzard of snow. She could never recall the details of their faces in repose, but she remembered vividly how they had looked after that run down the mountain, red-cheeked and laughing, eyes aglow. Someday, she had promised herself, she would ski like that. Someday she would ski with her lover.

  At first she had made a nest among the grain sacks in the depth of the wagon, but by the second day she grew restless. Sitting alone with pain led inevitably to self-pity, and one day of solitary tears was all Annabelle allowed herself, or would wish upon anyone. The next day she moved back to the rear of the wagon where she had a better view. The air at least circulated well through the open sides and provided a refreshing breeze. Every two or three hours the ruumet breehr hauling the wagon defecated—and managed to do so without breaking stride, she noticed. On those occasions she was obliged to hold her nose for a minute or two until they had passed beyond the heaping piles interwoven with half-digested grass, looking for all the world like very large horse apples. Other than those times, however, she happily drew in air rich with the scents of exotic wildflowers and grass freshly crushed beneath wheels and massive hooves.

  Nathanial or Kak’hamish would walk beside her wagon for part of the day and converse with her in ways calculated, she clearly saw, to keep her cheerful. They meant well, of course, but her moods were, she had come to realise, the exclusive products of her own soul. Were her spirit so insubstantial as to benefit materially from the transparent manipulation of well-intended friends, what support could she expect from it in difficult times? No. She would mend her spirit. It simply would not mend in a day, or a week, or even a year perhaps. But it would mend.

  Several of the tall Martian musketeers walked near the wagon. Annabelle watched them and judged them a strikingly graceful people, their long legs giving them a gliding, unhurried stride. None of them spoke English, of course, but by the end of the second day Annabelle had learned their names, and on the third day they began to teach her words and phrases in Koline. I am hungry. I am English. (She wasn’t, of course, but to these men all Earth humans were either “English” or “Ru-Shaan.”) What colour is the sky? The sky is blue.

  That was odd. She had vaguely expected the Martian sky to be red, but it was blue—a darker, greyer blue than at home, and with very few clouds, but blue nevertheless.

  At the luncheon break Nathanial and Kak’hamish joined her and helped her with her exercises. Her leg was still too swollen, and the stitches too fresh, to risk putting any pressure on the bottom of her stump, but she raised and lowered it, moved it from side to side, and practiced walking with a crutch. In the evening she repeated the exercises, then had dinner with Nathanial and Kak’hamish―when they were not summoned away to dine with the dignitaries.

  So the days had gone, one the same as any other, until this fourth morning when she awoke to find the scrap of paper rolled up, tied with a red ribbon, and placed conspicuously in her one remaining boot.

  What does it mean?

  As soon as she dressed, which had become a demanding and nearly exhausting exercise, she summoned Nathanial and Kak’hamish.

  “Now this is exciting,” Nathanial said after passing the note to Kak’hamish. “A mysterious benefactor, a hidden ally—intriguing, of course, mysterious, but exciting as well.” He beamed at the note in Kak’hamish’s hand, his spirits clearly elevated.

  Kak’hamish, on the other hand, frowned and shook his head in concern. Clack-clack. “Someone entered and left your tent without detection.”

  That unsettling thought had occurred to Annabelle as well.

  “From now on Nathanial and I will sleep closer to its entrance. Beyond that, this tells us someone else in camp can write English. We already knew Jed-An’s servant speaks English, but writing it is a different matter. These words—hart, frend—are those the common spellings?”

  “No,” Annabelle answered. “I noticed that as well. I assumed the note was written in haste. Perhaps that is the explanation.”

  “Perhaps,” Kak’hamish said doubtfully, “but as you two are the only Earth humans in the caravan, it is certain whoever wrote this note did not count English as their native language. If the author is a friend, why remain anonymous?”

  “If?” Nathanial asked. “Why would an enemy write such a note?”

  Clack-clack. “To put us off our guard. To distract us—involve our minds in this riddle while a more important one lies beneath our gaze. To prepare us to be deceived and betrayed later. There are more reasons for an enemy to write this than a friend.”

  Nathanial shook his head is irritation, unwilling to accept Kak’hamish’s gloomy interpretation, but some of the sparkle had clearly gone out of his mood. Annabelle thought it interesting that, were she to characterise their reactions to the note, the adjectives she would employ would be almost opposite of those she would use to describe these two men’s personalities. Nathanial, cautious and given to worry, had met the message with cheerful optimism. For Kak’hamish, by nature the very embodiment of cheerful optimism, the note had produced caution and suspicion.

  For her, it had been a welcome distraction.

  “I believe we have gone as far as sensible consideration can take us,” Annabelle said. “Until we know more, all that is left us is pointless speculation. As for me, I have exercises to do. Nathanial, would you be so kind as to help me to foot?”

  She no longer asked for help to her feet, and today she hardly felt the twinge of loss, the tightness of throat, which had at first accompanied her use of this other expression. That was progress.

  Chapter Four

  “A Perilous Road”

  1.

  “the lady rests comfortably?” Onxym Haat asked Nathanial. Kak’hamish translated and smiled to himself, imagining Nathanial’s thoughts at the moment, as he clutched the edge of the swaying howdah atop the ruumet breehr.

  A damned sight more comfortably than I do, I’ll wager, would be his answer were he less diplomatic. To Kak’hamish’s surprise, the young scientist forced a smile at the caravan master—more of a pained grimace, but the intent was good.

  “Tell Master Onxym Haat my telepathic powers have failed me for the moment, but when last I saw her she was as comfortable as could be expected.”

  Kak’hamish couched the translation in more diplomatic terms, then went back to studying the sky. He had seen a solitary skrill earlier in the morning. He was certain no one else in the caravan had noticed, which was all the more reason to keep a careful watch. A raid by the Queln at this point would cause—well, more complications than Kak’hamish cared to think about, including a fair amount of injuries and perhaps deaths.

  Queln raids were seldom deadly unless the caravan resisted, but could cause frightful damage if they did. Everyone knew that. This caravan, to judge from the words of its Master of Sword, intended to resist, even looked forward to it. Kak’hamish had looked the guards over and found nothing special about them. The musketeers struck him as hard men, but hardened by the soldier’s road, not the cutthroat’s. They would stand their ground and fight hard, given good leadership.

  The mounted guards were a different matter. They neglected their mounts, straggled and wandered too far during the march, and spent their off-time gambling and drinking—although Kak’hamish wondered how simple guards made enough to
afford to drink every night. Field wine was cheap, if you didn’t mind the headache the next morning, but even field wine was not free. Even now he saw a mounted guard lift his wine skin and drink as his gashant wandered listlessly away from the caravan. Where was the Master of Sword? Why wasn’t he checking his outriders?

  Kak’hamish looked back to the sky and he noticed Nathanial now doing the same. He could not have seen the Queln so must have noticed Kak’hamish’s attention. Nathanial caught his eye and raised an eyebrow expressively. Kak’hamish shook his head slightly and flicked his eyes toward the backs of the caravan master and his ruumet breehr driver. Only they were within hearing distance, and so far as Kak’hamish knew neither of them spoke English. But the inescapable truth was that at least someone in the caravan spoke what Nathanial called “the Queen’s” but would not admit it. It could be anyone, and so best to guard his words.

  That was a result of the note which Kak’hamish had not originally considered. Inevitably the note made them more careful in their conversations. Would an enemy who secretly spoke English deliberately give away such an advantage, and thus deny himself a potential source of intelligence? It seemed unlikely.

  He looked up again, slowly swept the southern sky, and there they were!

  “Push your mother down a well!” Kak’hamish exclaimed. The others in the howdah followed his gaze and saw the three or four specks in the southern sky. Not a full raid, although Kak’hamish would see if the caravan guards were bright enough to realise that.

  “Queln! Queln!” Onxym Haat shouted, and pointed to the south. The closest mounted guards reined their mounts in to the sound of shrill clucking. “Riders, pass the word—defensive formation!”

  Within moments the caravan erupted into frantic activity. Shouting drivers turned the twelve large beasts of burden to the right and closed into a tight line, shoulder to shoulder. This left the wagons with scarcely six feet between their axles. Only five of the great beasts carried howdahs, the others being driven by a rider astride the neck. Onxym Haat tipped the rolled rope ladder over the side and Kak’hamish saw men in the other four howdahs do the same. Soon two panting musketeers, their weapon slung over their backs, scrambled up and over the side into the interior. They unslung their muskets, removed the canvas wrapping which protected the fire locks, cocked the hammer and opened the pan, and primed their weapons with a dash of powder from a horn slung from their shoulder.