Guns of Mars 87
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 26.4
The thark was right. Involved in their labors, they had lost track of time. The very last of the light was coming through the apertures above. It would soon be dusk and the nightly migration of the fascii would begin. Unless the din they were making with their efforts brought them sooner.
“Then to hell with it!” the man said and loosed his grip on the line to bring the second thoat forward.
Quickly, they backed up the team and re-tied the end of the cable about both saddled horns. The man gripped their bridles to bring them forward while the thark booted both in the rear.
The result was a resonant rumble as the keystone shifted side to side as though anxious to be free. A whip crack, followed by another. Strands of the braided line snapped and spun like pinwheels as the cable sang under the greater tension.
Kal pounded furiously on the tharks while the man set his feet in the sand, body arched, to encourage the thoats forward. Bit by bit, the angled stone was drawn from its ancient home. The blocks either side ground against one another as they shifted in place. The man spared a glance to the far wall of the cavern. The last of the light was winking out. The prismatic reflections cast on the water grew dimmer.
With a sound like rolling thunder, the keystone came free to crash to the sand before the tunnel entrance. Without its support, the arms of the arch fell to be crushed in an avalanche of blocks as the wall above the span collapsed in a tumbling heap sending a choking cloud of dust out over the Eye of Water.
The tunnel was entirely blocked now by a massive slope of whole and broken masonry. The partners were white with dust that clung to their streaming sweat. They stood gasping as a result of their efforts, grinning at one another.
Their congratulations were short lived.
A strange piping sound reached them, echoing off the walls and ceiling of the great chamber. An unsettling and rising trilling that rebounded along the terrace level coming from the crater without.
The war cry of the plants that walked like men.
The bounty man and thark turned to the fallen tunnel mouth. The heap of tumbled stones moved under some unseen force. Bits of broken masonry clattered down its slope to bounce onto the sand. The piping sound rose in intensity, a muffled chorus within the tunnel joining the cacophony reverberating off the cathedral walls above. Blocks fell away and gaps appeared in the face of the rubble. A rhythmic pounding grew in intensity as the fascii crowded into the occluded passage.
The barricade would not hold.
The thirst of the fascii would not be denied.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
