Guns of Mars 3
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 1.3
He first rode to Thark, the city deserted by men that his kind had taken over an eon ago and from which the race took their name. He thought to hide himself among others in that miserable place. That only lasted a few days as the tale of his abandonment of Tagas reached the ears of the council and he was ousted from the city and forced into the wastes.
It was two days later when he first saw the dust of the mounted man dogging his trail. The man followed him throughout an entire day, staying on Kal’s rear no matter how many times the thark varied his course. Kal led the man onto the broken ground of a labyrinth of ravines and drongos where rivers once flowed in epochs past. He was able to lose his pursuer in that maze of channels and cuts. Once. he was even afforded a glimpse of the bounty man when he had successfully doubled back and concealed himself to watch the man pass.
The bounty man was tall and rode a sturdy thoat of a golden hide marked with black stripes that ran down its flanks. In addition to a long rifle in a scabbard, the man wore a brace of pistols on either hip and a bandolier of ammunition atop his harness. Kal was struck by the unusual hue of the man’s skin. He was not the pronounced red of other men. His tanned flesh had more a tone of bronze to it. But most unusual of all the man’s features was a crown of close-cropped hair that was not raven as other men. Rather, it was a light color akin to pale rust.
It was two days since Kal left the man to wander in the dry gullies. And now he was back, following Kal as surely as day follows night, with nothing but wide-open land all the way to the ice cap.
Kal glanced behind him, nothing visible in the deepening gloom. With a growled curse he drove his heels into his mount’s side and broke into a gallop toward the land of eternal cold that lay somewhere to the north.
