Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio Page A

later a
gypsy army of nearly two hundred joined with us, led by a fellow
named Costain, claiming to be a cousin of the great gypsy leader
Miklos, who my father had known. A day later, we met the forward
edge of Frane’s army. At dusk the perimeter alarms went off, and
three harlows were spotted by far scouts. There was plenty of time
to prepare, and an aerial bomb dispatched one of the beasts, along
with its attendant contingent of wailing, herding Baldies, before
it reached the fringes of our camp. The other two were dispatched
closer in, by the weapon which Newton had given us, consisting of a
ground analyzer, which picked up the beast’s tread, and a heavy box
on a tripod with a muzzle, which was aimed at the animal, and
issued a blast of blinding light which felled the monster. The
other got closer, but was brought down before it had reached the
perimeter.
    There were two other attacks that night, and
as dawn broke we prepared for our last march. General Reis pointed
to the northwest, our direction of travel.
    “Just over that ridge is a low plain, and
then Valles Marineris will come into sight.”
    An unnatural thrill went through me.
    “There are Baldies in the plain,” the general
continued, filling me in with scouting reports, “with the vast
majority waiting at the rim of the canyon.”
    “Let’s meet them, then.”
    He nodded, and we spurred our horses
forward.
    T he Baldies attacked
first with harlows, and then in packs consisting only of their own
number. But we had anticipated this, and spread our army to either
side so that we could not be outflanked. The canyon, a tremendous
cut in the ground that grew ever wider as we approached, seemed to
swallow all sounds and echo it back in a ghostly fashion. The hair
on the nape of my neck stood up as we grew near, and the battle
intensified. It was as if we were marching toward a giant hole in
Mars.
    The harlows were dispensed with in short
order. Now the Baldy horde grew in front of us into a keening mass
of mad beasts armed with tooth and claw. Some held weapons, swords
and even an occasional shield. And yet we ploughed through them
methodically, hacking at their wild, hissing faces, their pink and
impossibly light blue eyes, their thin strange whipping tales, long
claws, nearly hairless bodies with patches of dirty white fur
covering their genitals and beneath their armpits with the
occasional tuft on their near-naked heads. And still they came at
us, and more of them, and we cut them down like shafts of wheat. We
had armored our legs against their claws and teeth, and the foot
soldiers wore light body armor which made the beasts’ advances
nearly ineffectual. It was only a stupid or inattentive feline who
fell to these brutes.
    “This too easy,” I shouted to General Reis,
above the din of wailing Baldies and the clash of battle.
    He looked at me steadily, and nodded, pausing
to hack down at a screeching beast that sought to gnaw at his boot
and scratched madly as he was felled with a sword blow. The beast
fell to the ground, its last breaths tramped from its body by the
general’s horse.
    “There must be more than this!” he shouted,
and then turned to meet two beasts who sought to strike at him from
behind. They were dispatched.
    I moved off, wading through the bodies of
dead or dying Baldies, bringing my own sword into play when one of
the brutes tried to tear my mare’s leg armor off with its teeth.
There was a curious odor which pervaded the battlefield, mingling
with the copper smell of blood. I thought I had smelled it
before...
    I looked in the distance, where Baldies
filled the world from horizon to horizon, pressed against the rim
of the Valles Marineris chasm. We were already nearing the
cliffs.
    I sought the blood red armor and banner of
Frane herself, and soon spied it to the left, amid a sea of her mad
protectors.
    I began to move that way, hacking through the
mass of Baldies around me which parted like a dying wave. I almost
felt sorry