Down to a Sunless Sea

7 The Riders

After breakfast the next morning, Brant set Agila to digging a trench for their latrine.

He had briefly considered speaking to Will Harbin about the guide’s behavior, but dismissed the notion. He felt certain that Agila had learned his lesson and would leave the women alone. Nor did he exchange words with the guide, merely asking him to hand over the dirk the fellow wore, which the other did grudgingly and with a sullen look in his eyes. The long knife Brant gave to Zuarra for her own protection.

Then they sat beneath the awnings and watched as Agila, grumbling and spitting Martian curses under his breath, toiled for three hours at digging the latrine trench.

Brant and Harbin made a circuit of the encampment, studying the dust-soft sands. There were no markings to be seen about the limits of the protective fence, which suggested to them that the camp had been in no danger of beasts during the night. This relieved them of one worry, but another was not long in arising… .

In midmorning, Will Harbin, aided by Zuarra, went prowling up the ravine, searching for maritime fossils. About the same time, Brant, with Agila, went hunting for game. They rode out into the dustlands, and, finding naught, searched farther along the edges of the cliff, and brought down two fat reptiles whose meat would serve to replenish their larder.

Suoli was left alone to tend to the feeding of the lopers and the cleansing of the cookpots and utensils. These menial tasks she performed without complaint, but who could know what resentments smoldered within the depths of her being?

The day passed slowly, as the travelers rested from the exertions of their long journey. Brant and Agila returned at length to the camp with fat reptiles and fodder for the riding beasts; toward sunfall, Doc Harbin and Zuarra came back to the encampment, the Earthsider scientist jubilant over the discovery of rare fossils of marine life, the woman with little interest in such things, and relieved to be able to rest, after an afternoon of clambering about the rock-strata in search of lumps of stone whose import was incomprehensible to her.

Brant and Agila, during the hunt, had exchanged few words and had seldom looked at each other. As Brant had imagined would be the case, the Martian guide was subdued, saying little, never referring to the events of the previous night, and for his part, Brant had been equally reticent. They both knew about hunting, and simply did the job.

The evening meal that night was shared in silence, each busy with his or her own thoughts. Brant noticed that between Zuarra and Suoli was little converse and less interchange of looks than before. It would seem evident that between the two “sisters” loomed the failure of Suoli to come to Zuarra’s defense when the rock dragon had attacked.

Brant’s lips twisted in a private, bitter smile, but he said nothing.

Will Harbin, however, waxed voluble, after the meal, jubilant over the discovery of so many important fossils. This ancient ocean, he said, had been one of the largest and most important on all of Mars, and had served to link many significant and wealthy maritime nations eons ago. Among the fossil remains he had uncovered that afternoon were at least four previously unrecorded by Earthsider scientists.

Brant was not particularly impressed, and said little by way of comment. The rest of the meal was passed without further speech.

Once the beasts were seen to and the protective fence energized, the members of the party sought their rest.

Brant was just dozing off when he was roused to alertness

by the catlike scratching of long nails at the sealed flap of his tent. He spoke in inquiry, and the answer roused him in every sense of the word.

“It is Zuarra, O Brant—”

Loins tingling and blood surging high, the Earthsider sprang to his feet and covered his nakedness with a loose robe. He unseamed the tent and Zuarra slipped within.

Pulses drumming, Brant caught her in his arms, but she disengaged herself with agility.

“I am not come here for that purpose. Brant,” she said. Her voice was breathless and urgent, not seething with contempt, so he took no particular offense.

“What is it, then?” he demanded.

“Come outside,” she breathed.

He secured his garments, and buckled on the gun-belt, and followed her outside the tent. The starblaze lit the skies of Mars in scintillant glory, as ever, but the luminance thereof was dim, being moonless. He stared about.

“What is it, woman?”

She pointed wordlessly toward the ridgeline of the antique continent above where they camped.

“A watcher on the heights,” she whispered. “He has been there for the better part of an hour.”

Brant looked and saw the mounted man looming in dark silhouette against the glitter of a thousand stars. His jaw tightened and his face went grim.

“Who can it be?” he muttered under his breath, but the Martian woman heard his words.

“Someone who scouts for a greater number,” she said tersely. “But I know not for what purpose.”

“Bandits? Raiders? Outlaws?”

She shrugged. “Mayhap, O Brant.”

He thought to himself: Or slavers.

But it didn’t make sense to him, not completely. Slavers or bandits would have no particular reason to risk their guns for so small a party of travelers.

“Shall we wake the others?” Zuarra asked in low tones.

Brant shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said gruffly.

Beside Brant’s brace of power guns and Zuarra’s long knife, they had only Will Harbin’s twin laser rifles wherewith to defend themselves against attack by the natives.

There were now two riders on the ridge above them.

“Who do you think they are, Jim?” asked Harbin. Brant said nothing, merely shrugged. There was no way to hazard a guess as to the identity of the riders. They could be anybody.

The thing was, there were no native clans encamped in these parts so near the southern pole.

The older man inquired of Agila his opinion. But the guide only made the Martian gesture that was equivalent to a shrug, voicing no opinion. He looked nervous and tense to Brant’s eyes, but the big man said nothing.

Suoli squeaked and fluttered nervously. Brant asked of Zuarra if she thought the riders were scouts of her people. He knew that if the Moon Hawk nation had discovered that the two women staked out to die had been set free by the hand of a f’yagh they might resent the interference enough to come after them. But somehow he doubted it. As did Zuarra.

“At this season, they are encamped to the north,” she said tonelessly, “in regions about Khorahd. Nor are such as Zuarra and Suoli important enough to merit pursuit, O Brant.”

Brant had thought as much, himself. Still and all, it did no harm to ask.

By moonrise the two riders had left the high ridge and were nowhere to be seen. Nor was there any further sign of them that night, although Harbin, Agila and Brant stood guard, each in turn, while the women slept.

With dawn, the travelers held a brief council, trying to decide what to do for their own protection. Brant pointed out that now that their camp had been discovered, they were exposed to danger. It would seem that the scouts had ridden back to join a larger force, but whether or not this force was interested in pursuing and attacking them was an unanswerable question.

No one had any better idea to present, so for the moment they decided to remain in their present camp, simply standing guard day and night against the chance of attack.

Neither that day nor all that next night, nor the following day did the unknown riders show themselves again. The travelers began to relax, seeming to have little enough to fear.

“Perhaps they were but travelers such as we,” suggested Zuarra over a frugal meal, “alert and wary in these untraveled regions, but uninterested in attacking us.”

Brant shrugged, saying nothing. But it was true than bandits or raiders would normally have little interest in so small a party as were they. And few native clans would risk the liarthsider power guns with so little to gain. After all, there were only three men, two women and three beasts… .

“Maybe it would be better to break camp under cover of darkness and move farther south,” suggested Doc Harbin. Brant thought about it briefly.

“Maybe, Doc,” he grunted. “But we have a secure position here, with our back to the steep cliffs. They can hardly come at us down the cliffs, for their beasts would find them hard to negotiate, and we could fire from below while their hands were busy guiding the beasts down. On the other hand, if they came after us while we were on the run, they would have us at a disadvantage.”

The older man nodded thoughtfully. “And, for that matter, why should they come at us at all, since we have done them no harm?” he said.

Brant agreed.

But he noticed the guilty flush that darkened the sullen features of Harbin’s guide.

For some reason, the man seemed afraid, did Agila.

But … why?