Guns of Mars 19
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 6.4
Under an iron sky, they rode dead south to leave the killing cold behind them. The land beyond the ice cap was a broken country of deep ravines created by the march of glaciers in ages long past. It was a lifeless region of rocky scree, the remnants of mountains ground to gravel under the relentless expansion and contraction of the arctic cap over epochs of time.
The bounty man had the thark ride well ahead of him as before. This was both to keep an eye on his captive’s back as well as to take advantage of the thark’s greater height. Kal could see farther as he sat much higher in the saddle. He served as a better guide to follow the ridgelines south in as direct a course as they could.
In wild, lawless lands like this a traveler had to weigh one risk against another. Riding as they were against the open horizon made them visible to both marauding humans as well as thark bands. Also the threat of ferocious prides of banths and the fearsome orluks, carnivores who would attack and eat anything that moved across their hunting grounds.
But the bounty man saw a greater danger in riding along the floor of the narrow arroyos the glaciers had clawed from the land. It would be too easy to become lost in those winding channels that so often came to dead ends. Traveling that way would also offer his captive to ride out of sight of him around a bend in the draw in order to lay ambush. His captive was beaten not broken, and he wasn’t taking any chances.
Taking all into account, the bounty man preferred being able to see all about him rather than blindly ride an uncertain path with a possible threat around every corner.
In addition to a wary eye on his captive, he used the telescopticon he’d helped himself to from the thark’s belongings. It was a device that would allow him to see great distances. An adjustment of its dials could bring a smudge on the horizon into crystal clear focus. He did regular scans with this as well as trusting his natural hunter’s eye to spot any kind of movement against the sky.
It was on their third day after leaving Samarium that the bounty man spied just such a movement.
He was turning his head to return his gaze on the thark riding ahead, cresting an incline in the rim of sand-colored rock they were following. From the corner of his vision, he spotted a change in the landscape, a subtle shift of a distant form. He reined in his thoat to raise the telescopticon to his eyes and find the source of the motion. His fingers deftly twiddled the dials until he saw a line of shapes leap into view as though he might reach out his fingers and touch them.
Tharks.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
