Guns of Mars 30
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 8.4
The smell reached his senses long before he spied the dead tharks.
The carcasses of the Romagas clan and their beasts lay upon the dusty slope as the evening shadows gathered. Already, small predators had been at the dead flesh. Eyeless beetles the size of a fist swarmed in a black wave over the dead. Lizards fought over the greasy pile of entrails that had spilled from a gutted thoat. Winged insects rose swirling above in a humming eddy.
The lizards scuttled away at the approach of the hooded man. He dismounted, his thoat unwilling to advance any closer to the stench of carnage. The beetles and gnats remained at the feast. He waved and kicked them away as he crouched to make closer inspection.
The tharks and one thoat had met death by blade. Another thoat lay further up the slope, gored by the lance that still impaled it. The largest, a thark who bore the marks of a great warrior, was beheaded. Another died from a mortal blow to his chest. The third lay trapped under the gutted thoat, a single deep wound evident over his hearts.
He was only confirming what he had witnessed himself from a distance. He’d hung back, staying out of sight of the bounty man and his captive and going to hiding in a gully. From that vantage point he spied the thark hunting party that now lay dead before him. From the cover of a shallow gully, he watched the drama play out through a glass. He saw the bounty man take his captive into one of the great openings at the foot of the sluice. He watched the bounty man climb to a place where he observed the approaching war party then descend by impressive leaps to enter the tunnel once more.
The turn of events that came after that was unforeseen by the bounty man. The captive thark emerged from the tunnel to gallop down to the newcomers where he was freed. And after some sort of exchange that went awry over something to do with a sword, the captive thark killed his rescuers. After looting the mounts and bodies, the thark returned to the tunnel mouth to vanish into the dark and be seen no more.
The hooded man made a cold camp that night at the top of the slope. As the sun pinked the sky above him, he focused on the tunnel mouth. He watched through the morning hours but no one emerged.
As the sun reached its zenith, he made a cautious approach, both of his pistols drawn, down to the tunnel entrance only to find both man and thark gone along with their mounts. He removed his louvered visor to scan the interior of the tunnel. There were tracks in the fine dust that covered the tunnel floor. Three sets of thoat tracks led away down the great pipe. To one side there were signs of someone walking. The bare feet of a man.
After returning his visor to its place, the hooded man walked back into the sunlight and up the slope to collect his mount. He then led it down toward the foot of the sluice. He stopped by the collection of carcasses to pull a rifle from a scabbard strapped to the saddle of the lanced animal. It was a heavy weapon and took all of his main strength to secure it fast to his own thoat’s rig. He also retrieved a leather satchel filled with rounds for the weapon. There were fat slugs encased in brass each as round about as his wrists and as long as his longest finger.
He remounted and, choosing a tunnel different than those he pursued, he spurred his mount down into shade of the subterranean passage.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
