The caravan departed from the oasis town of Yhakhah at midday as scheduled, and headed north along the old stone-paved way which bordered the Nilosyrtis.
For some time they rode with the broad acres of blue, rubbery-leafed plants to their right hand, and the highlands of Casius dead ahead, marching across the world from horizon to horizon like a wall built by captive titans.
There were some twenty-five covered wains comprising the main body of the caravan, and they looked for all the world like pictures of the ancient covered wagons the pioneers had used to cross the western plains Ryker had seen in history tapes. The wains were not made of wood, however, since nothing resembling a tree is to be found on water-poor, oxygen-starved Mars. Instead, the capacious, high-sided wagons were constructed from panels of thick, tar soaked canvas, fastened together with metal joints and hinges. The People weave this cloth from plant fibre, and it is remarkably tough and durable. These wains were loaded with merchandise: wines from the south in ceramic casks; liqueurs, syrups, dyes and perfumes; bolts of rare silks, colored cloths, and the gorgeous tapestries and carpets of Shiaze, Yukara and Diome.
Houm carried carven ivory and jewelry and tradeware of copper and bronze as well, for gifts to the northern chieftains of the towns and encampments he planned to visit.
The guards were a rough lot, clad in tunics and jerkins of black leather with long cloaks of fur. Some wore helmets of metal, others high hats of black felt, or turban-like headdresses of colored cloth. Hoops of gold dangled in their earlobes, and their leather trappings were adorned with small plaques of precious metal and jewelled ornaments.
This ostentatious display was not a display occasioned by vanity, but a simple precaution. There are no banking institutions on Mars, or at least none that will deal with the natives, and no safety deposit boxes, either. The People either carry their wealth on their person, or conceal it in their homes, or bury it in the dead sea bottoms or on the highlands far from other men, returning to dig it up months or even years later. This being so, treasure maps, generally spurious ones, are easy to buy on Mars, but are purchased mainly by the gullible. The People need no maps to find their hidden caches. Nature has given them an innate sense of location which is uncannily accurate.
Ryker took a lot of hazing from the guards, who disliked having one of the despised F’yagha amongst them. He endured their insults in grim silence, but when the punishment became tentatively physical it was a different matter. Despite the fact that he wore power-guns, while they were only armed with swords, dirks, spears and targes, they dared to lay their hands upon him.
These weapons, he knew, were mostly for show. Their real weapons hung over their shoulders—slim, hollow, long black tubes which were used like blowguns, and thin flat quivers of needlelike darts used in the tubes, and poison tipped, as like as not. Guns were no deadlier than those long black tubes, he knew, and he would lose face with the men if he went for them.
Instead he waded in with balled fists and battered his chief tormentor to his knees in a few seconds. It was not hard, as the People have no knowledge of the fine art of the prize ring. His opponent, a long-legged fellow called Raith, climbed painfully to his feet and swayed awhile, fingering a loose tooth and spitting blood. Then he came over to Ryker, slapped him on the shoulder a time or two, and called him a dirty name, grinning.
Ryker grinned back, and called Raith by an even deadlier insult. The other men hooted, slapped their thighs, and relaxed. And he was accepted—for a time, at least.
That night they made camp under the jewelled skies, having drawn the wagons into a huge ring. Green flames lit the gloom, meat sizzled on spits, and leathern bottles of fire-hearted wine were passed from hand to hand. After drinking, they drew apart to eat in private.
Then, posting guards about the perimeter of the circle, they bedded down in their cloaks and slept.
Ryker, as a very junior newcomer, had the first watch, as did Raith, in punishment for letting himself be beaten by a mere F’yagh. He leaned on his tall spear, and watched the stars wheel across the sky, and thought of Valarda. His need for her was like an ache deep in his groin.
He had been a long time without a woman. And men like him have strong need for women, as other men need wealth or fame or power.
That night, his watch done, he slept deep and there were no dreams.
8. The Dead City
by the following afternoon they reached the foothills of the Casius. The vast plateau obliterated half the sky, cutting the world in two. Once, perhaps, it had been a small northern continent near the Pole, like Greenland hack on Earth. Now it was only a bleak, barren expanse of stony desolation, although pod-lichen lived in the clefts, and rock lizards, too, and probably slioths.
Here they were forced to take refuge from a duststorm, one of the rare phenomena which occur often enough to remind visitors from Earth, gasping on the thin, dry air, that Mars truly does have an atmosphere, and even winds at times.
Like sandstorms in the desert countries back home, Ryker knew, the airborne deluge of whirling dust can be, and often is, deadly. The talcum-soft powder seeps through cloth with ease, and works into your lungs, bringing the coughing sickness they call yagh.
He had seen a man die of it once, and it was not a nice thing to watch. Houm evidently felt the same way, and hastily guided the caravan off course to the west as soon as the storm showed visibly, a sooty smudge against the sky.
Why west? Ryker wondered silently to himself. He would have thought it best to have driven north, to the cliff wall of the great plateau, where surely they could take refuge from the whirlwind in one of the deep, narrow ravines that cleft the wall of stone asunder in a thousand places. But Houm seemed to know where he was going, and before long Ryker got a surprise.
As they urged their lopers across the desert with all the speed they could coax or coerce or cudgel out of the troublesome creatures, riding before the wind which yammered in their ears like a screeching devil horde, they came upon a city in the sands, lost and forgotten for ages.
It was one of the Dead Cities, Ryker knew. There were many such as this scattered across the dusty face of Mars, abandoned as the wells ran dry or the inhabitants dwindled to a handful. It was just that he had not known there was one this far north, this near the Pole. For they were in the Dustlands of Meroe, near the narrow isthmus which connects Casius and its sister plateau to the west, Boreosyrtis. And the city was only some thirty-eight miles or so south of the maximum winter limit of the polar ice.
Which meant the city was … old.
A chill ran tingling up Ryker’s spine at the sight of it, the fallen walls mouldering in deep-drifted dust, the riven minarets which leaned and some of which lay fallen, broken into sections, and the long stone quays, crusted with fossilized barnacles, which thrust out from the dock-front into the dead, empty Dustlands.
This city had been already old before the oceans died.
Ryker gaped, and muttered a dazed oath. A city that old should have been one of the wonders of Mars, famed afar, crawling with tourists, rifled by three generations of archaeologists. And he hadn’t even known it was there!
But Houm had, evidently.
They entered the lost city well ahead of the duststorm, and sought refuge in a large domed structure whose walls were still intact and where, presumably, they would be safe from the dangers of the tempest. They stabled the wains and beasts within an inner court, high walled and secure enough.