Guns of Mars 85
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 26.2
The following morning, Kal returned from capturing that day’s breakfast to find the bounty man searching from room to room and in the heaps of detritus that lay everywhere. The man had a loop of various materials over his arm and more bundled in his arms. The thark said nothing, content to squat at the water’s edge and munch beetles.
In a shaft of sunlight, the bounty man worked at his finds. Lengths of moldering cloth, sections of rusted chain, strips of blackened hide along with coils of iron wire. He cut the cloth and hides into roughly even strips with his knife and began braiding them together with lengths of the wire twisted within. When he’d braided a satisfactory length, he looped it up over an iron hook set in a wall for some past purposes. He drew the braided rope taut and hung his full weight upon it.
It held. It gave a bit, as he expected, but it did not break.
He went back to work until he’d braided a line of combined chain spliced to braided cloth, cable and hide. It was many times his own height and he tested each section by looping over the hook and gripping it to hang suspended.
“I’ve found our solution.”
“Hunh,” the thark grunted where he lay dozing on the bank allowing the water to lap over his feet.
“Tomorrow then,” the man said and glanced up at the last of the day’s sun slanting through the slits above to throw diamonds of light high up the far wall of the chamber.
From a perch atop the back of a thoat, the bounty man began his climb up the wall to where the arched lintel rested atop the tunnel entrance. By the strength of his fingers and toes he clung hard to the wall before starting upward. There were gaps in the blocks that offered little purchase. The holds were precarious, and he made slow progress as the thark stood watching below.
Bathed in sweat, muscles of his shoulders and arms burning, he reached a hand to grip the stone of the archway. He pulled himself up and found that the crest of the arch offered a ledge with just enough width to place his feet. Poised awkwardly at the place where the arcs of the arch joined, he pulled a rod of metal from where it was secured in his harness. He’d fashioned it into a chisel, the end hammered to a broad wedge.
He worked his dagger’s point into the mortar between the keystone and the block joining it. Condensation and time had turned the outer layer of mortar to a powdery clay. He was able to work the dagger into it to the hilt. This allowed some purchase for his chisel. He worked as quietly as he was able, making sure his tools did not ring against the stone. Neither he nor the thark had any idea how keen the senses of the fascii might be. Enough noise might rouse whatever minute bit of curiosity resided in their primitive brains.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
