Guns of Mars 83
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 25.3
Their most immediate concern was the thoat. It could not remain outside where its bleats might draw predators.
The next day, Kal rode the thoat north into the mountain pass with a cargo of water-filled amphorae to bury along the route back to Yttrium. He would return in two days time.
While he was away, the bounty man searched the rooms for materials to cobble together a stable door. He found sheets of malachite and schist as well for the panels. Out on the sands he uncovered some timbers of a sturdy black wood logged centuries before trees became extinct. They were perfectly preserved in the dry sands where they had once served as beams to an unknown structure. Working with the heated point of his knife he routed out grooves in which to set the door panels. He further strengthened it with bands of copper strips bound in a lattice. It was a heavy barricade and he would need the help of the thark to bring it to the terrace and secure it in place.
The door was done by the time Kal Keddaq returned. Not only had the thark extended the range of their travels a few days farther into the wastes, but he rode back leading a second thoat on a line run through the animal’s snout.
They camped in the open that night, well away from the entrance to the mountain lair. When they awakened with the first light, and after the last of the fascii had migrated to the sunlight, they set about the task of getting the thoats up into their stable.
It was a real labor, as it turned out. Both beasts resisted climbing the narrow well of steps to the terrace level. They kicked and bucked, grunting through the muffling cloth secured about their eyes and snouts. At the head of the steps, the man pulled with all his weight on the lead line while the thark shoved from behind.
In the final hour before sundown, the thoats were safe in their chamber and the door secured across the broad opening with wedges hammered in at the base. They had a stone trough of water and a pile of feed made of dried lichen and crushed beetles. The animals were as exhausted as their masters and would sleep quietly through the night.
“I bring us more thoats. We can build a caravan,” Kal said after they had bolted themselves into their own chamber.
“Maybe one we can butcher,” the bounty man said, spitting out a bit of carapace from mouthful of bug.
“Housing them is a problem, keeping them concealed. To bring more of them here only increases our challenges as well as our hazards.”
The man grunted his assent.
“What we have now, this will not do. Every day and every night we risk discovery for ourselves or the thoats,” Kal held his open hand out over the flames of their cookfire as though to illustrate their tenuous position.
“We need to deal with the fascii before they deal with us, you mean,” the bounty man nodded.
The thark made a fist of his hand.
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