Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy (8 page)

I
t was only hours
later, when Copernicus stole into my tent, crawling beneath the
back wall, his eyes wide as saucers, that I came back to the
world.

“What is it, Copernicus?” I asked. “I am not
interested in the stars tonight.”

“Your majesty,” he huffed, nearly petrified
with fright.

“What is it?”

“You must come with me now. They are coming
to kill you. General Reis is dead.”

“What–!” I hissed.

I heard a growing commotion, cries of alarm,
outside. I lunged for my sword.

Copernicus swatted my hand, and I dropped the
weapon. “Too many! Come with me now!”

“Where is Rebecca?” I shouted.

“No time!”

Something in his urgency made me follow him,
grabbing only my bag with important state papers and my most
precious possession, my book of the Old Ones, crawling beneath the
back of the tent and then moving off into the night.

I looked back and saw what looked to be a
hundred figures closing in on the tent from all sides, swords and
daggers drawn. A torch was lit and thrown at the tent, which went
up in a great and instant blaze.

“What...”

“Corian’s men, they weren’t gypsies at
all! Please follow!” he hissed, pulling at my arm.

W
e went deeper into
the darkness, past the field where Copernicus had set up his
telescope on so many nights.

“I still don’t understand—” I said, stopping
again to look back at the camp – too many lights, not enough of my
own soldiers, loud noises and exclamations.

“Please!” Copernicus hissed, frantically.

I stumbled after him deeper into the
darkness, until we reached a little copse of junto trees. The night
was cool and the leaves swayed as if to music.

There were two horses there, eating grass,
loaded with provisions.

I looked at Copernicus, but he pushed me
toward the less burdened one.

I mounted, secured my bag, and, after a
second attempt, he mounted his own.

“Ride with me!” he urged, in the most
frightened voice I had ever heard, and, numb with grief and
disbelief and my own fright, I followed him into the night.

A
s dawn broke
tentatively in the east, a blot of purple against the horizon of a
black sky, Copernicus allowed that we could slow our horses down to
a canter. We had galloped nearly the whole night, keeping at first
to the northern edge of the chasm of Valles Marineres, where
various outcrops and the occasional stand of trees hid us. For a
while Copernicus considered climbing down into the chasm by one of
the wide switchbacks, and perhaps hiding for a time in one of the
numerous caves set into its side, but in the end decided that it
was essential to put as much distance between us and our assumed
pursuers as possible. So we turned sharply north sometime long
after midnight had passed. Strange echoes and soundings had come
from the great chasm, as if it was filled with ghosts, and it was a
relief to leave the monstrous cut in Mars behind us.

But soon we met with other strange wonders, a
forest the likes of which I never seen. As daylight rose, I saw
that the bark of many of these trees was a light pink in color, and
peeling as if shedding skin.

“Rinto trees,” Copernicus explained. “They
only grow in this region, and still are very rare.” He seemed
suddenly interested in a particular stand of these trees, the lower
bark of which was totally absent. He dismounted, studying these
denuded specimens closely.

“I’m not surprised,” he mumbled, half to
himself.

“Surprised at what?”

He waved at me as if in dismissal, and set to
carefully scraping one of the denuded spots, letting the shavings
fall into a pouch. “Later, your majesty,” he explained, in effect
telling me nothing. I must have shown disapproval because he
quickly added, “It is a theory, and I will want to be sure.”

Seeing as he had not been wrong to this
point, I let him have his way and changed the subject.

He remounted his horse, which, I now saw in
the daylight, had been packed with many things – bundles and
pouches and tools and, of course, his beloved telescope, mounted
along the horse’s flank, its tube peeking from one end of a
sheltering blanket.

“Stay here and rest, your majesty,” he all
but ordered me. “I want to backtrack a bit to that last ridge we
climbed and make sure we are alone.”

“We must be at this point.”

He nodded briefly, but turned his horse
sharply and rode off.

I dismounted, stretching my bones and letting
my horse crop at a sparse clump of grass. I heard the tinkle of
running water nearby and led my mount to it – a thick gurgling
stream, silver blue in the morning light. The trees overhead made a
filtering canopy, letting the early sun frolic. I was suddenly
chilled, and pulled a wrap from the bundles on my horse. I did not
want to think, but only to live. As the horse drank I sat down and
tried to empty my mind.

A useless endeavor, but before long my
weariness overcame me and I curled into an unrestful sleep on the
banks of the stream, with the fresh smell of morning in my
nostrils. I dreamed of horrible things, a battle all in blood red,
a graceful black ship floating in the sky, letting loose a device
which floated down like a spent leaf, falling, falling, falling
into the center of my city, and I watched from afar as Wells burst
into hot flame and was consumed alive, and no more...

I awoke from this horror with a start, and
heard mumbling beside me. For a moment I was disoriented, and
reached into my tunic for my hidden blade, but then the sound
resolved into Copernicus’s voice and I relaxed my grip on the
handle of my weapons. The horrid images leaked out of my thoughts
and once again it was a beautiful late summer day, growing
warm.

I threw off my coverlet, which Copernicus
must have arranged around me, and sat up, yawning.

“Are you hungry, your majesty?”

“Yes,” I said, without thinking, because,
though last night I had thought I would never be hungry or care
about anything again, the growling in my stomach was something real
and had to be attended to.

He was hunched over a makeshift workbench,
constructed of a few fallen timbers laid across two piles of rocks.
Something the deep color of blood was bubbling in a beaker, and
another held a clear liquid which gave off a sinister sharp
odor.

He turned and grinned at me quickly. A
makeshift pair of goggles occluded his eyes. He pointed to his
mount. “Lunch is there, not here,” he said brightly. “You would not
want to drink either of these, oh no...”

“What are they?”

“It’s what they will be that’s important,” he
answered.

“I’m in no mood for riddles,” I snapped
peevishly, and went to the open pack on his horse. It contained
something that looked like roots and tasted like...roots.

“What is this?” I said, making a face.

“Hard tack,” he answered. “Much of your army
carried it, your majesty – though I doubt you ever had to endure
it.”

“It’s horrible.”

“It would keep you alive for weeks on end –
and probably will.”

I sighed heavily and went to sit beside him
while he worked. There was a rock that proved to be a suitable
stool, and I made use of it.

“It’s time for you to explain everything to
me, Copernicus.”

He cocked an eyebrow, but kept working,
mumbling over his two beakers, going from one to the other and
counting off numbers.

“For instance,” I said, “where are we
going?”

“We’ll continue north,” he said. “It’s the
one place they won’t dare to follow. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll be
caught.”

“Are we still being followed?”

“Yes and no.”

“No riddles, Copernicus.”

“No riddle involved. There is a band of five
heading northeast, and another heading due west. About twenty miles
distant, but because of their line of march, that distance will
only increase away from us.”

“How do you know?”

“I watched them.”

My silence must have been like a scoff, for
he turned to regard me.

“The telescope,” he explained. “It’s a useful
in the day as at night, is it not?”

My face must have shown my admiration.

“And our ultimate destination?”

“My home. It is to the north, and then the
east a bit. They will not think to look there, because they do not
know I am with you. For all they know you fled alone.”

I could find no argument with that – besides
me, no one in camp had taken the slightest interest in the little
fellow.

He had resumed his counting, and when I asked
another question he held up his paw for silence.

“Twenty-nine...thirty...thirty-one, thirty –
ah!”

The blood- red liquid turned clear, and the
clear turned blood-red, as if a magic trick had been performed.

He immediately lost interest in the
experiment, and grabbed the two beakers, emptying their contents
onto the ground. They hissed like snakes.

“That’s that,” he said, satisfied. “It’s as I
thought. They were all drugged.”

“Who was drugged?” I asked.

He took off his goggles and dropped them onto
his workbench. “Practically everybody,” he said, giving me a sober
look. I opened my mouth but he plowed on, as if I were a science
student in his own lecture hall. “It is called mocra, and it’s
culled from the bark of the rinto tree. It is one of the most
dangerous substances on Mars. I doubt you’ve ever heard of it,
because, long before you were born, nearly every rinto tree on the
planet was cut down and destroyed. This was before even the first
republic was formed. Because it is such a dangerous and unstable
narcotic, mocra never became a large problem, but the potential for
disaster was there and so King Augustus, your great grandfather,
decreed that all the trees be eliminated, thereby eliminating the
problem. But here...”

He spread his hands out, highlighting our own
copse of rinto trees.

“And,” he continued, “that’s how Frane
controlled the Baldies – before she sent them to their deaths
against you.”

“She drugged them...” I said.

“Oh, yes, no doubt. She must have
experimented for months or years before she found a dosage that
would make the Baldies malleable. But there’s no doubt she did. It
is usually made into a paste from dry powder, and is always red in
color. It dissolves quickly in liquids of any kind. Do you recall
smelling a particularly spicy odor on the battlefield
yesterday?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That was from the drug. Its ingestion
produces that almost minty smell.”

“And—”

He held up a paw. “I haven’t finished, your
majesty. That same smell permeated the army’s camp last night. It’s
what alerted me to trouble. It was put into every chow bucket over
every camp fire, and eaten by nearly every soldier in the army.
Enough to produce complete disablement of the army. They became
disoriented, and then, at that dosage, they went to sleep. I doubt
many of them ever woke up.”

“Merciful One,” I swore. “And the others, the
officers, they were merely slaughtered. And I trusted the
gypsies...”

“Gypsies? There were no gypsies in camp,”
Copernicus said with conviction.

“Carion and his men were a gypsy band, sent
from Miklos.”

Copernicus shook his head. “Most assuredly
not. I grew up dealing with gypsies, and that group that joined up
just before the battle looked more liked raiders to me. In fact, I
assumed that an alliance had been made, for this battle alone. They
follow nothing but coin. They are mercenaries.”

I was stunned by General Reis’s incompetence
– even though his failure to vet our allies had cost him his life.
Ultimately, though, the responsibility still rested with me, and my
mood became even darker.

Copernicus must have sensed this, because he
said in a soothing voice, “You must remember, your majesty, that
20/20 hindsight is the clearest vision of all. It would have been
very easy for those raiders to fool you. If only I had not been so
caught up in my own studies, and had sought to ask...”

Now his own mood darkened.

“Well,” I said, “we can sit here and brood on
our stupidity, or we can move on and live.”

He looked at me, and a small smile lit his
brown-furred face. “I agree, your majesty. If we follow my plan,
and get to my home, there are inquiries I can make there, even as
you hide from those who would destroy you.”

“I will defeat Frane yet, if it is the last
thing I accomplish on this world.”

“That’s the spirit!” he cried. He set about
cleaning and packing all of his chemical apparatus, and then broke
apart his table, scattering the assembled pieces so that they were
once more part of the natural landscape.

“We have food for a week, and two good
horses, and two good riders, and all the will in the world!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Only that we have a very good chance of
living through it!” he answered, trying to stay cheerful.

“Living through the ride north, of
course?”

Seeing my continued incomprehension, he
added, pointing ahead of us, “The ride north, where no one will
follow us! Across the Great Desert!” His laugh sounded almost mad.
“Don’t you remember, your majesty? When we got just a kiss of the
dust storm from the north? I told you how harsh and forbidding it
is – and now we’re heading straight into it!”

Again his half-mad laugh. “Actually, there’s
very little chance we’ll survive!”

T
hat mad little
laugh of Copernicus’s stayed in my mind as we headed down into the
forbidding bowl that was the Great Desert. From the sparsely
grassed heights of the last plateau it didn’t look too forbidding –
the sun was shining and there was only a hint of increased heat
picked up from the hot sands below. Under the pink late summer sky
it looked merely daunting, a huge version, to three horizons,
north, east and west, of a child’s sand box. There were gentling
rolling dunes and dark patches that promised oases and, under this
summer sun on this gentle day, it looked no more horrid than a ride
across a huge valley. Substitute sand for countryside, I told
myself, and you would have this quick trip. There in the distance
were a few dark patches above the sand that seemed to undulate.