Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy (6 page)

I left him there, drooling and gathering the
pieces of his broken instrument. I gave the order to one of my
bodyguards, who left to find a rider, while the other one stood
shaking his head.

“Like I told you, your majesty: balmy.”

“He may be balmy, as you say, but I
have the feeling we may need him before all this is over.”

T
he morning dawned
bright. I awoke refreshed, dressed quickly with Rebecca’s
assistance in my tent, and emerged to find General Reis waiting for
me. A map table had been set up in front of him.

“We have news from the west,” he said.

I noted the drone of an airship overhead, and
looked up to see one of Newton’s fleet lazily circling the army.
It, and as many others as could be spared, would accompany our
march from now on. I found its motor’s purr comforting.

“What have you heard?” I said, turning my
attention to Reis.

He spread out the map before him and pointed
to the great gaping mouth that was Valles Marineris, to our north
and west. His claw traced the extreme southeastern edge of the
canyon.

“Frane’s army is concentrating here,” Reis
stated. We have aerial reconnaissance to prove it, as well as
advance scouts who, as you can imagine, have not been able to get
very close. A few spies have been trying to infiltrate the Baldy
army, but you can imagine the difficulties. We will continue to
work on it.”

“Why this particular spot?” I inquired,
studying the map.

“It is close to their supply lines,” Reis
answered, “and the ground to the south is level. I propose we
approach from the west, skirt the tip of the canyon and attack them
where they are camped.”

“Is it high ground?”

His face showed a puzzled look. “That’s what
disturbs me. It is suitable ground, but there is better land for
entrenchment to the north or west.” He looked at me blankly. “It’s
almost as if they can’t wait to fight us.”

“Perhaps they are overconfident.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said, rolling up the
map.

“It’s time to break camp, and find
out.”

T
hat day’s march,
and the next three, were easy. The weather was mild, late summer
breezes mitigating the heat, and the nights were cool and clear.
Copernicus’s telescope arrived, and I fended him off as long as I
could before finally giving in to explore the night sky with
him.

“You know,” I cautioned, “this is something
I’ve never been much intrigued by. My father, and my grandmother
before him, were greatly interested in the planets and stars, but
for me they’re only something to fill the night sky.”

“How wrong you are, your majesty!” Copernicus
enthused. He had trained the instrument – a sleek white tube on a
sturdy mount made of junto wood– on Diemos, which just then was
passing overhead. When he moved aside, squealing with delight, I
looked into the eyepiece.

“It looks like a pockmarked potato,” I said,
with little enthusiasm, as the moon quickly moved across the field
of view.

“Yes! But isn’t it beautiful?”

I gave the eyepiece back to him, and studied
the beautiful night with my naked eyes.

A blue dot was just rising in the east, which
I knew to be Earth.

“Now that’s something I’ve always found quite
interesting,” I said in passing.

“Hmmm?” Copernicus took his eye from the
instrument and noted the direction of my pointing.

“Ahh!” he cried, immediately swiveling the
telescope that way. “It’s up!”

After he had had his look, he turned the
instrument over to me, and I saw a tiny blue and brown world
floating like a child’s play marble in the heavens.

“It’s where the Old One’s came from!”
Copernicus said brightly behind me.

I took my eye from the eyepiece. “Who told
you that?”

He became suddenly quiet in the dark.

“Speak to me, Copernicus.”

“I have... proof,” he said quietly.

“What sort of proof?”

He reached into his tunic, and withdrew a
single sheet of paper, many times folded. It looked fragile.

With a trembling hand he held it out to
me.

“Will this get me in trouble, your
majesty?”

“Why would it?”

“Heresy, perhaps?”

I laughed, taking the folded sheet from him.
“It’s not heresy to think that the Old Ones came from the stars, or
Earth, or anywhere else, Copernicus. The truth is, no one knows
where they came from. I heard all kinds of stories growing up. To
tell you the truth, I found those stories much more interesting
than the night sky. I’ve always been greatly interested in history,
and the origins of the Old Ones is the greatest mystery of all,
isn’t it?”

“Not if you believe that paper,” he whispered
reverently.

I carefully unfolded it, and, holding it
delicately by two corners, angled it toward the weak light of
Deimos. It was a ruled sheet, and very old, but well preserved.
There was handwriting on it, a bit of a scrawl, but after tilting
it this way and that I was able to read the writing. It was a
journal entry of some sort.

“The last ship leaves tomorrow, and I’ll be
on it,” I read out loud. “Despite all our time here, we have
failed. If only we had put our efforts into saving home, instead of
remaking Mars.”

I looked at Copernicus in the dark. “But
there’s no mention of Earth! It could be anywhere it’s talking
about!”

“Turn it over,” he said, in a near
whisper.

I did so, and squinted at a final sentence,
which I could barely make out in the weak light: “Tomorrow we
return to Earth.”

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“In my potato field, when I was plowing. It
was in a very old box, made of metal which didn’t rust, with a seal
on it that hissed when I broke it open. There were some trinkets,
and that paper, which was the last page of a journal.”

I carefully refolded it and handed it back to
him.

“Take good care of that paper,” I said. “When
we return from battle Newton will want to see it.”

“I’ve never told anyone before, because I
thought I would be beaten, or worse.”

I laughed. “What was the rest of the journal
about?”

“Whoever wrote it was a scientist,”
Copernicus said. “And mentioned cats once or twice.”

“And?” I urged.

“That they were thriving, and would be left
behind, along with the other... animals.”

“Animals?” I laughed again, but stopped when
I saw the seriousness of Copernicus’s demeanor.

“You just take good care of that piece of
paper, all right?”

“I will,” he said.

“Now let me have one more look at
Earth.”

L
ater in my tent, by
the dim light of a lamp, I pulled one of my own most precious
possessions from its place in my traveling trunk. It was an Old One
book, very old and brittle, with the names and pictures of Old One
composers. It had originally been my Grandmother Haydn’s book. I
had often wondered what their music had sounded like, and had even,
when alone, written a few of my own little tunes on the tambon,
trying to recreate what those sounds might have been like. The
results had not been pretty.

I turned the pages with care, noting the
missing or disintegrated entries. I came to my father’s namesake,
the beginning long disintegrated, only part of a fat old face
visible above the partial name, SEBASTIAN BACH. My Aunt Amy, who I
had never known, named for the Old One composer AMY BEACH, came
next, and then the most intact of all the pictures in the book,
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN, for which my grandmother was named. The naked,
severe visages of the Old Ones had often frightened me as a kit –
they looked forbidding and massive, without humor or mercy. Only
the picture of my own namesake, CLARA SCHUMAN, whose brother or
perhaps husband ROBERT’s portrait faced hers in the book, held a
strange beauty for me. Though she was hairless save for a bun of
black hairs on the top of her head, and her ears were strangely
shaped and low, and she was devoid of whiskers and her naked paws,
folded in her lap, had strange flat claws at the end of too-long
fingers, there was something about her I found attractive. I had
often thought I saw some of my own demeanor in her elegance,
despite her weird ugliness.

I slowly closed the book and put it away, and
lay back on my bed with my paws behind my head. I stared at the
roof of the tent, undulating gently in the cool night breeze, and
listened to the crackle and snap of distant and near camp
fires.

The Old Ones from Earth?

I smiled at the fantastic nature of it.

What would Newton say?

Or, perhaps, did he already know?

My mind, filled with fantastic thoughts,
spiraled slowly down into sleep.

“A
ttack!”

I awoke with a start, the desperate voice I
heard mingling with a dream of the Old Ones. For a moment I stared
at the ceiling of my tent, now suffused with faint light. Dawn?

“Attack! We’re being attacked!”

The dream dispersed, leaving waking
reality.

The flap of my tent was thrown open, showing
a wild-eyed Rebecca. Outside I heard shouts and alarms, the
clanging of armor and sword.

“What is it, Rebecca?” I asked.

“They–!” she said, unable to speak.

I threw myself from the bed and pushed past
her.

A scene of chaos met my eyes. General Reis
was nowhere to be seen, but his lieutenants were desperately trying
to form their troops into some sort of order. In the distance I saw
a mass of white bodies – Baldies? – at the edge of the camp and
drawing closer. Within the camp was a huge and at first
incomprehensible mass, charging like a huge bellowing machine from
right to left.

“It’s a h-harlow, your majesty!” Rebecca
stammered, clutching at me.

“Merciful Great One,” I breathed, my eyes
fixed on the largest beast on the planet, a wild raging monster,
unstoppable.

It charged ahead, throwing bodies into the
air, and then suddenly turned its bulk toward me. I saw behind it a
running horde of white.

“They’re herding it!” I shouted, more
fascinated than frightened. “The Baldies are guiding it!”

It was charging straight for us.

I pulled Rebecca away from the tent, and
broke into a run as the beast hurtled at us. Its eyes were wide and
flat and black, filled with dark, mindless wild hate, and the
unthinking brute suddenly leapt into the air–

I pushed Rebecca down as the beast roared
over us, flattening my tent before galloping on. In its wake came a
score of screaming Baldies, bearing whips with which they urged the
harlow. Two of them split off and ran straight at Rebecca and I,
snarling, their fanged mouths wide.

My sword was in my ruined tent, and I covered
Rebecca with my body and turned to take the blow as the Baldie in
front raised his whip to strike.

He was cut down as his hand came forward by a
rush of my soldiers, but the other Baldie was able to lower his
whip arm before he was taken down.

I felt the hot lash of the whip across my
face and then the Baldie fell dead at my feet, struck by a score of
blows from rushing soldiers.

“Your majesty!” Rebecca screamed, pulling
herself from beneath me and kneeling to attend to my wound.

“Is it that bad?” I said, trying to keep my
voice light and at the same time trying to ignore the hot, searing
pain.

“It may scar!” Rebecca cried, dabbing at the
streak of blood with her own tunic.

“Then it will scar,” I answered, levelly. “I
will look like general Xarr, perhaps.”

I was being helped to my feet by a score of
paws, and already my tent was being remounted. As I was helped
inside I said, “What of the rest of them? And the harlow?”

“Most of the Baldies were killed,” a young
captain who strode up reported. The harlow is gone into the
hills.”

“Send out parties after it, and when we set
up camp this evening use the perimeter defenses that Newton
supplied us with. Isn’t it odd to find a harlow this far
south?”

“More than odd,” General Reis said, striding
into my tent. “My apologies, your majesty – if we had had any
indication of a harlow in the area we would of course have used the
perimeter defenses.” He studied my face, which was still being
dabbed at by Rebecca, who had retrieved a first aid kit.

“Do I remind you of anyone?” I teased, but he
did not, or chose not, to understand.

He asked, “Shall I give orders to march?”

“Of course. What of injuries?”

“One soldier dead, trampled by the harlow.
Eight Baldies killed. The attack was deliberate.”

“We may expect more of the same?”

“Perhaps. I’ve already doubled scouting
parties.”

I nodded, and after a moment he turned on his
heel and left, marching out as he had marched in.

“Strange...” I said, to no one in
particular.

“Your majesty?” Rebecca answered, halting her
ministrations.

I waved my paw. “Nothing, Rebecca. Thank you
for your help. It feels much better.”

There were sudden tears in her eyes. “You
saved my life! And were hurt because of it!”

I took her paw in my own, and squeezed it.
“You would have done the same for me.”

She snuffled, looking away, and continued to
attend to my wound, which stung greatly but which I was already
forgetting.

Strange
, I thought.

Strange that the Baldies seemed to be in
control of that harlow, when normally they would have been wild
with lust for the beast’s tusks, which they valued above all else.
I had never heard of a harlow being controlled before, by
anyone.

Did Frane now have power over the beasts of
the world?

And how had she been able to control the
Baldies, who were notoriously wild and untamable, in the first
place?