Slaves of Mars

'Who are these Cyrax?' he asks.

'A cruel barbarian tribe' spits Borastan bitterly. 'Normally they war among themselves along the polar meltwater wastes. But a strong leader -- Cyra Corfage, has risen to unite them, he leads them on new conquest. And Jeddarh lies directly in their path.'

The days pass without incident. Until jagged noise, distant and indistinct drifts in and out of focus. The sound of fighting. The rattle of fleeing heels in the alley beyond. Then what sounds to be a muffled detonation. Homer, with Borastan and Arri share a cell, and wait. Arri clings close, holding back tears. The outer door, the only exit is securely locked and bolted, and Al-Thurl is nowhere to be seen. Maybe he's fled with the rest of the townsfolk and abandoned them to their fate? Borastan crosses the enclosed garden to the food preparation area, and returns with a selection of sharp knives.

The sounds outside seem to be coming closer. Yells and screams of terror. Homer tries to reach a high upper barred window in order to see outside, but his vision is restricted. He can see only other walls. They sleep uneasily. Only to be shocked awake by an explosive crashing outside. The outer door is being battered. They exchange wary glances. Arri is sobbing. Borastan and Homer arm themselves and pace through into the carpeted reception area. The battering at the locked door is louder, the timbers begin splintering, the hinges grinding where they're embedded in dusty stone. Then the door smashes to splinters... the barbarians are using one of the ugly scorpion-beasts Homer had encountered earlier, as a brute battering ram.

Despite its terrifying appearance, the beast itself -- which he now knows as a Hadrurus, is docile. The two men who step over the shattered timbers wear the usual Martian combination of near-nudity with fiercely barbaric accoutrements. They're intent on looting what they consider abandoned domiciles, they're not expecting resistance. Borastan takes the first down with his kitchen knife before the intruder has chance to orientate. Homer tackles the other, they collapse together kicking and gouging onto the rich carpet. Homer has his knife poised at the others chest... but hesitates. He's a human being. A squirming man, even a plundering barbarian who'd think nothing of skewering him. Hatred glares in dark Martian eyes. He has a second, no longer. Then the invader will take the advantage. But he's never killed, never maimed, he holds, brandishing the poised knife, incapable of dealing the death-blow. Sweat blinds him...

Lithe Arri bends down, leans across, and calmly slits the Cyrax throat in an abrupt deluge of crimson blood. The barbarian twitches and writhes, and dies. Homer is shaking. His entire body wracked in aftershocks. Borastan pulls him lurching to his feet and together the three of them step out over the splinters into the alley beyond. The first breath of free air they can remember in a long time. The Hadrurus beast observes them curiously. They smell the stench of its breath. It shudders in an unsettling manner, and returns to calmly cropping at weed that grows along the brothel's outside gutters.

There's an audacious sense of agoraphobia after so long an incarceration, compounded by fear of hostile attack. The three escapers stumble down the passage to emerge warily into the square. Outside the tavern there are several other Cyrax who seem to have drunk themselves into a stupor. They offer no threat. The sound of fighting comes from higher. Homer shields his eyes with the flat of his hand to look up into the burning red sky, the fortress on the natural crag is under siege, defenders desperately attempting to repel a glittering horde of encroaching barbarians.

'The end is predetermined' says Borastan gruffly. 'Once they've fought their way into the fortress and slaughtered those who dare resist them, the Cyrax will turn their attentions to abducting the females in the towers.'

'Shouldn't they have been rescued when Jeddarh was abandoned, and taken to a safe refuge?' says Homer.

The big former antiques and curios dealer turns with an expression of confused wonderment. 'Sometimes you ask such stupid questions I almost believe your ludicrous story of travelling here from another world. Do you know nothing, my ignorant friend?'

Homer shrugs. 'We should maybe use the beast to escape now?'

He looks over the Earthman's shoulder, back the way they've come, to where the monstrous creature waits. And nods. 'I have an idea.'

They retreat back down the alley. Homer steps carefully over the two barbarian corpses, back into the brothel, and returns with a coil of rope from the store. Together they pinion Arri's arms behind his back and secure them there. Homer finds himself disturbingly aroused by touching the sensual curve of the youth's bare buttocks. Arri smiles at him knowingly. To Homer, the youth resembles images of the young martyred Saint Sebastian as painted by Caravaggio, ready to be pierced by arrows of desire.

'To move the females from the towers requires neurosurgery beyond our abilities' explains Borastan, in a tone that suggests he's talking to an idiot, as they attach the other end of the tether to the pommel of the Hadrurus' saddle. 'The women are plumbed into the tower systems in such a way that renders it impossible to move them. Perhaps it is different where your tribe dwells?'

'That is... that is just grotesque' stammers Homer, as the full horror is laid bare. Mars has become whimsical and cruel in its long-drawn-out senility.

'The Cyrax, under Cyra Corfage's direction has captured scientists, surgeons and necromancers who will be forced to use their skills to disconnect their tanks and drips, and transport the females back to their strongholds in the polar wastes, where they will be used to proliferate future warriors. While Jeddarh will simply depopulate and die.' He shrugs dismissively.

The situation is now reversed. They mount the scorpion-beast, and urge it forward, dragging the naked youth behind them, as though he is the captured slave and they the captors. At first the crab-like gait of the rolling ride is sickeningly unpleasant, with a vile aroma, but Homer swiftly adjusts to the motion and sits back as Borastan guides a path across the square. There are panicky moments as laughing groups of Cyrax pass them, laden with plunder, but they barely spare a second glance. One of them even raises a fist in a gesture of solidarity. Breathing relief they continue down towards the canal pathway. Glancing back, the battle at the fortress seems to be reaching a terrible crescendo.

After a lengthy uncomfortable ride Borastan reigns in the beast outside a partially collapsed villa on the town's deserted outer canal-side rim, where he dismounts. 'We can't risk going further where there will be stronger barbarian forces, we hide in here until it's over.'

They slither down from the creature's high back, and cut Arri free. 'Those tethers were too tight' he pouts, 'you men have no consideration.' As they poke in through a shattered arch, Homer recognises that, if it's not the same, it's very similar to the villa he'd sheltered in with his original captors, what seems like a lifetime ago. There are even dusty steps leading down into subterranean catacombs.

'Yes' says Borastan, 'this neglected tomb network extends way beneath the town and goes back thousands of years.' Homer is uneasy, recalling the shadows he'd half-glimpsed moving in the crypt's deeper darkness during his earlier overnight stay, as his companion leads them further down into cobwebbed gloom. 'We will be safe here. We can hide out until the Cyrax move on to fresh conquest.'

They descend deeper, down dusty corridors of natural undressed stone through into a linked complex of crypts and racked tombs. Many of them have been plundered, smashed open with scattered rib-bones and mildewed skulls underfoot. The passage opens out into vaulted caves that have been carved and artificially extended, down to where a stream of running water flows into a stony pool surrounded by sickly-white fungus-growth. Borastan slumps down beside the water with a sigh of relief. Grubs up a handful of mushroom, washes it perfunctorily, then crams it into his mouth, chewing lustily. Arri pulls a disgusted expression and cowers behind Homer, who settles down for the long wait.

Assailed by waves of fatigue, Homer closes his eyes as Arri curves tenderly into the warm protective curve of his body, and they sleep. His dreams are tortured and confused. He's a child lying with his stomach on the warm sand overlooking the Cape Kennedy rocket-launches over the bay, caught in startling flights of waterfowl. Intoxicated by breathtaking visions of the future, ships that climb with deceptive slowness on thrusting columns of searing flame towards the orbital space-station, towards the Lunar base, and the worlds beyond. Looking across with excited eyes at his schoolfriend who lies beside him on the sun-warm tussocks. The same friend who would be snatched away from him on that terrible day, forbidden ever to see him again. The betrayed friend, the sodomite. Until he's shocked awake in confusion, Borastan is standing, brandishing the razor-sharp blade taken from Al-Thurl's kitchen.

'Necrophage' grunts the former antiques and curios dealer.

'Wh... what is that?' What more horrors lurk in the bowels of this nightmare planet?

'They must come here to drink. I'd never thought of that.'

He looks, his eyes raking the cavern, hunting shapes. And yes, they're there. Moving so fast there are only startled shock-glimpses. Nightmare white hair, with glowing red albino eyes. Man-shapes, but not quite men. Men devolving into apes. Apes evolving painfully towards men. Morloks. Deathstalkers, who live in these warrens and feast on corpses. Necrophages who feed on the dead.

Borastan stands by the pool, keeping whatever lurks in the darkness at bay by slicing the air with his knife. Cyrax above. Necrophage below.

'If they only eat dead flesh, perhaps they won't bother with us, the living?' ventures Arri hopefully.

'If they're hungry enough the distinction becomes arbitrary' growls Borastan.

Arri screeches in panic, breaks and runs. Homer lurches to his feet, yells his name, and follows him. There's a narrow corridor with a paved floor, but silted in grime. There are stacked stone coffins on either side. His shoulders brush up against them causing a cascade of brickwork that breaks free in a small avalanche. Something skitters in the cracks between sarcophaguses, huge spiders. The passage seems to be a cul-de-sac, but no, there's a sharp turn. Arri cowers at the branchway, his hands over his ears, whimpering softly. As Homer kneels down to comfort him, he can see that some of the tombs have ruptured and collapsed in upon each other. The light is not good. But what he sees shocks him rigid.

The carved coffin-lid is cracked, and has slipped away. Inside there are the remains of a man. In an EVA spacesuit. Fighting his revulsion he brushes the choking dust-coating free. Scraping finger-paths through the accumulated grime. The face inside the transparent globe-helmet has shrunk into a desiccated skeletal mask. Some of the oxygen pipes feeding the helmet have perished into brittle flakes. But the suit is essentially intact. The Cyrillic letters 'USSR' are emblazoned on the breast. There's a rising sickness in his gut that he can't fight. This is insane. I don't understand. I don't understand.

Arri is holding him tight, pulling him away. He can feel the close warmth of his body. In a stunned silence he takes a pace back, then another. How long since the USSR fell? He's not hot on history. But it must have been... when, the 1990s? There were always fake-news stories circulating social media about failed cosmonauts. Lost space-shots endlessly orbiting. Had there been a Mars expedition too? There was no report he'd ever heard about. Yet he's here. Yuri, or Ivan, in this cold dead alien place, lost and far from home. He must have slipped through the same dimensional-temporal stress-field that he'd become victim of. Which means that it's not simply a temporary phenomenon caused by a freak coincidence of one-off conditions. It was there then. It's there now. Is it one-way, into the past? Can it be navigated the other way? Is there a pathway back into a more familiar future?

Borastan is there, warily casting his attention along the stone passage behind them, nudging them onward. Reluctantly they resume, seemingly deeper into the labyrinth, Borastan keeps to the rear with his knife brandished at moving shadows. The Necrophage are silent ghost-shapes that lurk at the edge of vision. As Homer glances back, one drops from an overhead ledge onto Borastan's back, clinging there. Homer stops. Borastan spins in circles, reaches up, seizes one of the clutching claws, and cleanly severs the wrist. The beast howls silently, its soundless jaws gaping wide with pain, showing pointed fangs. But Borastan stumbles beneath the weight, and abruptly there are two more beasts. Homer takes a single step back towards the struggle.

Borastan screams as incisor teeth rip into his leg, opening the flesh. He reaches out, Homer seizes his friend's hand to pull him free. There are more leaping ravenous figures slashing and ripping. The stench is foul. His eyes fill with terrified agony... 'Go, Go' Borastan yells, 'get out, get away.' Homer kicks out at a shaggy animal body. It switches its glaring red-eyed attention around at him. Gleaming with sheer predatory hatred. Borastan has lost his blade, he's disappearing beneath a scrabbling mass of obscene bodies. Homer pulls the hand in a desperate attempt to haul his companion clear, but the gnawed-through limb comes free and dangles in his grip. Bile cants at the back of his throat.

He drops the bloodied limb, staggers back in shocked revulsion, while Arri urgently pulls him away. As the Necrophage feast the two lurch away, feet nailed with lead. Until there are vague sounds ahead, and filtered shafts of hazy daylight. Accustomed to darkness, the Necrophage fear light. There's an eroded archway carved with heraldic figures, it abruptly debouches them onto an inspection ledge low on the dry canal wall. They grab huge lungfuls of clean air. But instantly there's a sense of change.

Still numb with shock, Homer glances upwards, and it takes his breath away. From their perch he can see it all. A line of dirigible-like sky-craft are advancing relentlessly towards the besieged Jeddarh stronghold, with beams of green fire poking lethally down into the Cyrax encampments, causing massive explosions and conflagration, leaving luminous swathes of glowing destruction. Already there's panic and confusion among the barbarian horde as a second line of sky-craft follow the first. There are pulsing lights along the smooth curving lines of the ships, some have spread solar-wings, others have huge screw-propellers for propulsion, there are observational blisters that catch and reflect the light, and panoramic forward view-panels in which aeronauts can be seen navigating the fleet and coordinating the assault. The armaments are clearly visible poking through ranks of open portals.

'The Old Ones be praised' breathes Arri, waving his hand in the air. 'The forces from Solis Lacus, they've answered the appeals for assistance, and they've come.'

From where they sit they can simply stare in dumb wonder as the bizarre aerial military technology of the ancient planet is deployed to devastating effect. They can see the tide of battle flowing. At first there are ragged attempts by the Cyrax to regroup and answer the ray-barrage with crossbows and inaccurate ballista volleys, but it soon becomes apparent that the barbarians are no match for the disciplined assault from the sky.

They sit side-by-side on the ledge, Homer's arm protectively draped around Arri's slender shoulders, as they recover from the aftershocks of their ordeal in the catacombs. Difficult to believe that their companion is gone. Borastan had been beside them all those months of squalor in Al-Thurl's cells. He'd slain the first Cyrax warrior, enabling their escape. A wise and measured individual. A friend who'd given his life that they might survive. Homer washes hands over his face in an effort to wipe away his last visions of Borastan's pain-racked face.

Eventually they stand and follow the ledge back towards Jeddarh, it inclines upwards towards a series of worn steps back to street level. They stand back as a stampede of Hadrurus cavalry carries fierce Cyrax warriors in a frenzied rout away from the battle and towards the refuge of the desert wasteland beyond. Then the two continue back towards the town centre. The battle is drawing to a close. The fortress siege has been lifted. Huge sky-ships settle in open spaces, and already there are squadrons of troops mopping up the last few pockets of resistance.

The soldier who bars their path wears a plumed helmet, plus a utility belt around his otherwise naked waist with holstered ray-pistol on one hip and a scimitar appended from the other. He gestures them to halt, appraising them closely. 'You are the pale-skin?' His voice clipped and strangely accented.

Homer glances down at his arm, which is already taking on the bronzed Martian hue. 'I guess so.'

'I have instructions that, once apprehended, you are to be taken to the Meryk.' Less an invitation as a command.

Meekly, they follow him, towards one of the grounded ships, which are even more impressive up-close than they appear when sky-borne. Homer stops for a moment, shielding his eyes to take in its full grandeur. The soldier prompts him forward onto the ramp that ascends to its interior. Arri follows, pacing patiently behind him. There's an impression of ancient power thrumming around them as they climb aboard, to be escorted briskly towards the huge arc of the forward observation suite. Through the glassine they can see the town spread out below them like a map. There's a throne that also gazes forward. Its occupant stands to face them.

He stands with arms folded, impressively muscled with an ornate winged helmet denoting status. Only rich red bandoliers and straps cross his otherwise majestic nakedness. This is Meryk Tharkus, warlord of Solis Lacus. 'We were informed by two itinerant bounty-hunters that they'd stumbled across a pale-skin wandering in the desert. I was curious to know more.'

At last, a civilised response to his presence. He stands to attention, as dignified as his circumstances allow. 'I am Captain Homer Tresco, NAASA Tenth expedition. Planet Earth.' He uses the Martian word for Earth.

With an expansive gesture of his hand, his mouth set in a thin line, the Meryk says 'military might can repel and hold back barbarian incursions. But it's only the accumulation of wisdoms that can save us from the darkness that threatens to engulf us all. So what do you hope to gain from such an obvious lie? Or are you delusional? Has the desert deprivation stolen your wits?'

He feels as though the floor is opening up beneath him. His story must sound impossible. With a wave of his hand the Meryk dismisses them. Despite his protests they're hustled off the bridge and into a sealed room to the rear of the mighty ship. He sinks down onto the bunk, head in hands, into a great sense of desolation. All he'd endured, all he'd suffered, the appalling death of Borastan, all for nothing. His suddenly elevated optimism was dashed, his hopes for some kind of cultural response to his exile abruptly shattered. Perhaps he should have avoided the truth, said that he'd come from the southern marshlands. They'd have accepted that. Arri sits meekly beside him.

After some time there's an ascending whine that vibrates the floor beneath their feet. The ramp is retracted and the ship lifts off. There's a portal from which he can see Jeddarh recede below, as the ship climbs into the red Martian sky, leading a division of the fleet out over the endless desert. A garrison remains in the town to restore order. Another division will shepherd the shattered Cyrax tribes back towards their homeland. But for the Meryk the expeditionary task is completed. Yet Jeddarh, and Al-Thurl's obscene establishment, are the only locations on this blighted world with which Homer was familiar. There was a sense of loss at leaving. On a new journey into fresh strangeness. He lifts his head, and meets Arri's deep soulful eyes. He reaches out, runs his fingers down the softness of the youth's face. Cups his chin. Arri smiles and kisses his fingers. They move closer together, into the warmth where each other's bodies touch.