Guns of Mars 11
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 4.1
The bronze man rode while Kal walked, always well ahead of the rider but always in sight. Surely in range of the peculiar rifle the man kept within easy reach.
Progress was slow and painful, the hobble still in place to restrict Kal’s movements. His cloak bound tight about him for warmth as well as restraint. In this way they crossed the trackless barrens of the ice cap toward the setting sun.
The journey was not without efforts made by Kal to either escape or overpower his captor. At night, he was made to rest a distance from the man’s fire. At their very first camp, when blackness had closed in all about them, Kal rose from his resting place to creep toward the glow of the fire. He had slipped from his sandals and moved silently over the ice on thickly callused feet. He moved cautiously toward the hummock where the man slept against the shelter of his slumbering thoat. His mind was alive with a vision of him ripping the little man’s guts open with a single slash. Or perhaps smashing the man’s head to jelly with a stomp of one of his feet.
He halted as he set his foot down to brace himself to rush at the sleeping figure. When his foot came down, he heard a crunch beneath his sole. Kal looked down to see a ring of dark shapes sprinkled across the ice in a circle about the man’s camp.
“Sorapus shells,” the bronze man said, sitting up now with a pistol trained unmoving on Kal’s hearts.
The man had shared some of the tree nuts with Kal at their evening meal. He had wondered why the man carefully gathered the brittle shells and placed them in a sack. He’d supposed it was to hide evidence of their camp; a wise practice when alone in the wilds.
The man gestured with the pistols for the thark to return to his sleeping place.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
