Arabella of Mars (31 page)

And if that was the Khef Shulash … She shaded her eyes and peered ahead, to where the canal vanished in the haze of the horizon. Fort Augusta lay in that direction.

From here, she thought, she should be able to see, if not the great sandstone walls of the fort itself, at least some sign of the town that surrounded it. Even if the port was closed and devoid of ships, the forest of masts that made up the shipyard should be clearly visible from this height. “May I borrow your telescope, sir?” she inquired of the captain.

She raised the instrument to her eye, focused … and gasped.

The haze that hid Fort Augusta from view was not haze. It was smoke.

Great dark gouts of smoke, with orange flames flickering here and there. A few running figures were visible as well; at this distance she could not tell if they were human or Martian.

“What is the matter, Miss Ashby?”

“The town is afire,” she breathed.

The captain took the telescope from her numb fingers, glared through it, and grunted as though struck in the stomach. “That is … terribly distressing,” he managed at last.

 

18

LANDING

Diana
sailed majestically along, the canal drawing nearer on her starboard side, but Arabella could not tear her eyes from the dark column of smoke ahead, which grew more and more plain as they approached.

As the ship gradually drifted lower, Arabella could also begin to see that the boats that plied the canal were not, as usual, burdened with neat bundles of
khoresh
-logs and tidily stacked crates of other goods making their way to Fort Augusta from the provinces. They were, instead, piled high with hastily stacked heaps of household furniture, valises, and assorted boxes, and the vast majority were heading away from the town. Almost all of those on board were humans, who waved and hallooed at
Diana
as she passed overhead.

Arabella glanced at the captain at one such halloo, but his jaw was set and he kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the horizon ahead. Following his lead, the officers and men focused their attention on the running of the ship.

The few boats heading toward Fort Augusta rode high and bore no cargo. These were poled and crewed entirely by Martians, whose reaction to the airship sailing above was entirely different: the twang and thwap of bows and crossbows came clearly to Arabella's ears through the cold dry air. Fortunately,
Diana
's altitude and distance were too great for any projectiles to reach her, except for one arrow that bounced harmlessly off of a balloon and fell clattering to the deck. Several of the waisters immediately began to tussle over it.

“Don't touch that!” cried Faunt. “D—n thing could be poisoned!”

Arabella snorted at that, which attracted a quizzical glance from the captain. “Martians don't use poison,” she explained.

“Do they not have the making of it?”

“Oh, no, they know all about it;
thuroks
and
noshti
are extremely venomous. But for one Martian to poison another would be a violation of
okhaya
—entirely unacceptable.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “And for a Martian to poison an Englishman?”

“They'd never—” But she silenced herself before concluding that thought.

Surely they'd never do such a thing. But then she'd thought that the Martians of Fort Augusta would never rebel; they were civilized and friendly, not like the savages one sometimes heard of from the outlying provinces.

And yet, Fort Augusta still burned.

Arabella pressed her lips together and stared forward at the approaching column of smoke.

*   *   *

They crossed the canal and then left it behind. Burning Fort Augusta beneath its column of black smoke drew nearer and then alongside, though still some two miles distant. Through the telescope Arabella watched Martians and humans in groups—each group, sadly, consisting entirely of only one species or the other—scurrying to and fro. A few groups of each type seemed to be trying to fight the conflagrations that engulfed the town, but there was no coordination between them and the flames leapt ever higher. Other groups merely dashed from one place to another between the flames—though whether plundering, murdering, or trying to help, Arabella could not say.

Eventually the flaming town too fell behind, and
Diana
sailed across country, following the road toward Woodthrush Woods, which looked like the mark of a stick drawn through the sand.

No humans or Martians were visible on the road, though it was littered with abandoned furniture, broken carts, and the occasional bodies of
huresh
that had collapsed in their traces.

Sometimes a shattered cart was surrounded by dark stains in the sand. Arabella hoped these were spilled wine.

Once a troop of Martians scurried rapidly past on
huresh
-back, the setting sun glittering from their forked spears, a cloud of dust rising in their wake. One or two raised their eye-stalks to
Diana
, but they did not pause in their rush toward the town. After they had passed, the captain drew a key from his pocket and handed it to Richardson. “Open the small-arms locker,” he muttered so quietly that none but Arabella, who remained close by her captain, could have heard, “but do not distribute the rifles just yet.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Richardson whispered, sweating, and hurried below.

Arabella gripped the locket with her brother's picture and tried not to cry.

Yet a few stinging tears still forced themselves into the corners of her eyes.

*   *   *

By now they had descended so far that roadside shrines in their rocky cairns could be distinguished with the naked eye.
Diana
had flown over most of the miles from Fort Augusta to Woodthrush Woods in less than twenty minutes, and at this rate the manor house would surmount the last rise in just five or ten minutes more. Her hands, she realized, were gripping the rail so tightly they had gone entirely pale, and though she shook them and massaged them, the next time she thought to look down the knuckles were white again.

Young Watson appeared again, eyes red-rimmed in his blackened face. “Boatswain's compliments, sir,” he gasped, “we've used up the last of the charcoal.”

The captain nodded in brusque acknowledgement, then cast an analytical eye upward at the balloons.

“Cutting it too close by half,” muttered Stross.

“Nonetheless,” the captain replied, raising the telescope to his eye, “we retain sufficient lift for a safe landing.” A moment later he handed the instrument to Arabella. “Is that the plain on which you would have us land? Between that reddish rock pillar and the three large stones?”

She peered through the telescope. “Yes…,” she began, but then she noticed something that made the breath catch in her throat.

“What is the matter, Miss Ashby?”

She swallowed, struggling to focus the trembling instrument upon the distant, shimmering horizon. “The drying-sheds appear to be intact, but I … I think I see smoke. And running figures.” She handed the telescope back, realizing that the trembling was in her own hands. “I'm not certain.”

The captain steadied his elbow upon the forward rail, staring carefully for a long minute. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “Is there any better landing site within”—he glanced up at the balloons again—“three miles?”

Arabella and Stross exchanged a glance. They had argued long and hard over the charts and Arabella's memory of the plantation, so much so that his cold civility toward her had threatened to crack. “No, sir,” Stross replied. “Anywhere else is too far from the drying-sheds, or too stony, or too steep. Even if we manage to make a safe landing at any of the other sites, we'd likely never take off again.”

The captain snapped the telescope shut. “Then I fear we have no alternative but to land there as planned, and prepare to defend the ship if necessary.” He nodded to Richardson. “Distribute the small arms.”

Arabella stared forward, through the forest of masts and cables, hoping against all hope that she'd been mistaken.

*   *   *

How many times had she traveled this road? Hundreds, certainly; among her earliest memories was awaking on the rocking back of a scuttling
huresh
, her cheek pressed against her father's warm leather-clad flank, with the field Martians hooting a greeting as she and her father passed through the outer gate.

No one greeted them now.

The gate that drifted past beneath
Diana
's keel lay open in silence, the great doors half unhinged and peppered with crossbow bolts. The packed and hardened sand around the gate was scuffed and marked with the tracks of many men, Martians, and beasts, and great dark splashes steamed gently here and there in the slanting late-afternoon sun.

In a moment the manor house would appear, rising like a pale square sun above the prominence her brother had named Observatory Hill.…

But the first sight that met Arabella's eyes above that hill was not nearly so reassuring.

A thin column of black smoke.

“No…,” she breathed, her hands clasped beneath her chin.

But the house, as it began to appear, was not entirely destroyed. The north wing, housing the kitchen and stores, lay in blackened ruins, but the main house with the bedrooms and her father's—no, Michael's—office still seemed intact.

She must not lose hope, she reminded herself.

“Bring her down,” the captain muttered to Richardson.

“Back pulsers!” Richardson called.

From below the deck came the grunting chant of the men at the pedals, followed shortly by a low grinding sound from abaft as the propulsive sails, long silent, began to turn. Soon the grinding had risen in tone, accompanied by the low repetitive rushing sound as the sails themselves sped past. With each rush, a strong breeze swept forward, the moving air bringing the ship's forward motion to a halt.

The captain nodded, and Richardson cried, “Out anchors!”

With a great clatter of wooden pawls, the two sand-anchors, one forward and the other aft, descended rapidly on their thigh-thick ropes. The booming thuds of their contact with the Martian surface below were plainly audible.

“Belay pulsers! Set anchors and prepare to warp in!”

The chanting of the men at the pedals ceased, while two airmen hopped over the rails fore and aft and began to shinny down the anchor ropes.

Arabella looked over the rail, watching the man descending the aft rope dwindle into the distance, recalling her terror as she herself had been lowered over the rail less than two months ago. The distance to the ground had been very much greater then, and her experience very much less. She wondered if, had her sex not been revealed, she would be one of those descending now.

If she were the one clambering down that rope right now, she thought, she might not be so terrified as she actually was. The certainty of a dangerous task was better than the uncertainty of what she might find in the partly destroyed manor house.

The man on the rope had now reached the anchor far below. With hands and feet he wedged it firmly into the sand, waving his cap and hallooing.

“Warp in!”

A new chant now broke out, closer to hand, as men on deck heaved at the capstans. Bare feet skidding on the polished
khoresh
-wood of the deck as they hauled in a circle, they wound the great anchor-ropes back onto the hogshead-sized spool belowdecks, pulling
Diana
gradually down toward the sand.

Arabella clung to the rail as the deck jerked unsteadily downward, peering anxiously toward the manor house. But there was no motion visible there.

Despite the vast conspicuous bulk of
Diana
floating above, despite the creak of the capstans and the plainly audible chanting of the men … no one was hurrying from the manor house to greet them. “Captain…,” she began, but he cut her off with a gesture, barking commands to Richardson as he strode the quarterdeck.

Stross stepped to the rail next to Arabella. “Where are they?” he muttered to her, gesturing with his chin to the manor house.

“I do not know,” she responded. “They should certainly be coming out by now, out of curiosity if nothing else.”

Stross turned from her to address the captain. “I don't like the look of the situation, sir.”

The captain's eyes flicked from the balloons to the anchor-ropes to the horizon. “Understood,” he replied. Then, to Richardson, he said, “Prepare to strike envelopes.”

A moment later came a long whispering crunch as the ship's keel settled into the sand, followed by the soft double thuds of the sand-legs touching down. “Strike envelopes!” Richardson cried, and a man at the base of each balloon pulled hard on a slim line that had been kept, up until now, made fast to a cleat.

A large circular flap opened at the top of each balloon, fluttering like a pennant in the shimmering draft of escaping hot air. Teams of chanting men shepherded the descending loops of fabric and rope into their cabinet as the balloons deflated and collapsed.

“Well, we're well and truly landed now,” Stross said, shaking his head.

Beneath Arabella's feet, the ship seemed to sigh as she settled deeply into the red sand beneath her keel.

Just then, a great clattering burst out from the watch-tower at the northeast corner of the manor house—a clatter like the
mharesh
call with which Martians greeted the dawn, but harsher and more strident.

A moment later the clatter was joined by other sounds: the harsh rustle of Martian voices, the susurration of feet on sand, and the clash and snap of steel on armored carapaces.

A huge crowd of Martians boiled from the manor house like angry
thuroks
from their nest, surging to surround the helpless
Diana
.