CHAPTER TWO: THE CRIMSON TRAIL

BY TIM HARTIN

Shimmering red bands, known to the locals as the Aurora Martias, snaked their way across the Martian night sky. Phobos hung midway in the star filled sky while Deimos was barely visible above the horizon. Osiris Wilde snapped his coat's collar shut as he bundled up against the evening chill. He tugged his hat down in front of his face, to better shield him from random particles of trail dust. He swayed in unison with his horse's stride.

Of course, this wasn't a Terran horse. This beastie was a pure Martian design - more like a cross between a gazelle and a lizard, with a pinch of insect thrown in just to confuse the viewer. About the same size as a normal horse, it had a hide of tiny, red scales with green spurs on the joints of its long limbs. Its eyes were multifaceted with a purple tinge. As unusual as they looked, they had turned out to be as dependable and loyal as any Terran steed.

Osiris scanned the looming horizon for any sign of trouble. This area wasn't the safest of places during the day, let alone in the middle of the night. His survey was interrupted as he heard another horse trot up from behind. He turned his head and saw that its rider was the young red-headed archivist, Stephanie Blaine.

She looked uncomfortable as she tried to keep her mount under control. Osiris could tell this was her first time in the saddle. He slowed to allow the rookie to catch up. "What are you doing out here? If you need me you can always use the wagon's comm system."

"I wanted to see what Mars is really like for myself." Stephanie shifted in her saddle as she continued to try to find a comfortable way to sit. So far, she was having no such luck. "I'm tired of reading about Mars, but never actually seeing it."

"Ah, the life of an Archivist. Didn't your mentor object when you told him you were going riding?" Osiris looked back and noticed that the wagon was still on auto-pilot and tracking his position, as he had programmed it to do. Stephanie didn't say a word and just stared down at the trail. Osiris smiled back at her. "The old man's asleep, right?"

She smiled. It was one of those smiles that made her whole face light up. "He was snoring so loud that I couldn't stand it anymore. So I hopped on one of these creatures and..." Stephanie squirmed in her seat as she tried to stop herself from falling off. "How do you ride these blasted things?"

Osiris laughed. He hadn't done that in a while, at least not since leaving town after killing Jacob Barnaby. He reached over and gave Stephanie a hand. "Your right leg goes here while the other... that's right... that's the spot. Lean back and keep a firm grip on the reins. That's it." Osiris snapped shut a loose harness and readjusted the saddle a bit and suddenly Stephanie seemed to fall into place and she was now swaying in tune with her horse. Osiris noticed that she seemed to be turning a shade of green. "Now what's the matter?"

Stephanie waited for her stomach to settle down before answering. "This swaying?" There was a short pause as Stephanie waited for the nausea to pass. "I think I would rather have the saddle sores."

"Trust me, no you wouldn't. Here, chew on this." Osiris passed Stephanie a small, slender yellowish leaf. "Go on, take it. Chew on it. The juices will help your stomach. If you're going to break your mentor's curfew, you might as well enjoy yourself while doing it."

Stephanie quickly chewed the strange Martian herb and almost immediately felt better. She studied the leaf before she took her next bite. "So that's what the Opuntia basilaris martias taste like. Hmmm... somewhat sweeter than I suspected."

"That would be the insects that live inside the leaf." Osiris rode on, trying to appear oblivious to the look of disgust on Stephanie's face. He spoke up as she turned her head... "Don't do anything foolish like spitting it out. It's those bugs that are making you feel better. Stop fussin' and take your medicine like a good little Apprentice Archivist." Osiris gave her horse a friendly slap and pulled into the lead.

Stephanie shook her reins as she urged her horse onward to catch up to Osiris. "Osiris, is it true that you..." She became quiet as Osiris suddenly leaped from his mount to the craggy Martian terrain below. He studied the ground for clues. "What is it?" she asked.

"Blood. Human blood." Osiris scanned the nearby steppes for signs of movement. He sniffed the ground until he stopped at a small spiky patch of plant life. He grabbed a handful of its barbs and pulled them loose. Another whiff confirmed his suspicions.

"What is it?" asked Stephanie with greater enthusiasm, if not a bit of impatience.

He held the Martian weed to Stephanie to smell. Her nose coiled against the pungent fragrance as she tried to escape its fumes. Osiris threw the weed to the ground and readied his signature weapon, the C-30 Cardinal Blaster. "Devil urine and it's fresh. We could be in for some trouble. Get back to the wagon. You're not safe out in the open."

"I'm staying here with you." Stephanie straightened her back to appear taller. "Besides..."

She was interrupted by blaster fire as Osiris began to shoot at an approaching wave of red monsters. Part gorilla, part insect with a devilish red complexion of fur and armoured chitin and, if that wasn't frightening enough, the noise they made only added to the disturbing picture. A low buzzing sound echoed from the approaching Devils with sporadic high pitched shrieking thrown in for good measure. A Martian Devil raiding party was fast approaching them.

Stephanie couldn't even hear her own words over the increasing din, "I think I'll head back to the wagon now..."

Osiris continued to fire his pistol at the Martian Devils. This didn't look good to him at all. These Devils were agitated about something. Someone or something had worked them into a killing frenzy. That complicated things. Osiris holstered his blaster and did the only thing he thought might have a slim chance of working. He unsheathed his Martian Devil Warblade and shouted an oath of respect to their gods in the Martian dialect. Unfortunately he didn't get to finish his sentence as the Devils overwhelmed him.

Dawn broke as four grim men rode across the craggy landscape with its sporadic shrubs of barbed vegetation. One rode ahead to scout the nearby terrain while the lead man raised his right hand and the rest of the makeshift posse stopped. Their horses hissed in unison; their long, thin purple tongues darted in and out of their narrow muzzles. The lead man was tall and slender, wearing weather-worn clothes. His hat covered his bald head; the brim pulled low over his stormy grey eyes. He dismounted and examined the ground.

"What is it, O'Rourke?" asked Oliver, the eldest Barnaby Brother, who always dressed completely in black.

O'Rourke ignored the question and continued to study the Martian cactus before him. Tips of its long fan-like leaves had been cut off recently. "We're getting closer." His eyes drifted to the spike weed nearby and examined its ripped spines. "Someone was here and then..." O'Rourke followed the trail on foot. "See how this dirt is darker than the surrounding soil? Something happened here."

"Something big? You mean like the Confederacy?" Alphonso Barnaby dismounted and searched the area for any sign of trouble but couldn't see anything except dirt and scrub vegetation. "I don't know why you hired this Devilhunter, Oliver. We don't need his help. It ain't right. We could hunt down Osiris ourselves."

Mordecai O'Rourke shook his head in disbelief. If he knew that he was going to be hired by amateurs, he wouldn't have taken the job. But he wasn't doing it just for the money - he had heard some interesting tales about this Osiris Wilde and his relationship with the Devils, and he wanted to satisfy his own curiosity. Still, Alphonso's stupidity could not be ignored. "Unbelievable. Are you a complete simpleton? I'm talking about Martian Devils, not the Marshal. How you've survived this long on the frontier is beyond me."

"I won't take any insult from the likes of you. What's the Confederate bounty on Devils' heads these days?" Alphonso Barnaby raised his blaster rifle towards the Devilhunter. "Can't be so great if you're forced to work for us."

O'Rourke stared Alphonso straight in the eye. His gaze never flinched. It wasn't the first time he had looked death in the eye. He readied himself for the shot. The standoff ended as Oliver Barnaby knocked the rifle from his brother's hands.

The eldest brother quickly put his younger sibling in his place with a mere whisper, "First Osiris, then you can have the Devilhunter or you answer to me. Understand?" Alphonso nodded. He knew better than to anger his older brother. Better men had made that mistake; none had lived. He nodded again and went back to his horse.

Young Lucas Barnaby suddenly came into view from the nearby hills. He had been riding hard and both rider and the mount were winded. His gasping for air exaggerated his cheek bones, making his thin face look even more skeletal. "There's a bunch of Devil carcasses up ahead and what looks like the remains of a Conestoga that has been... I don't know... maybe shredded?"

"Any human remains?" asked Oliver rather abruptly. He readied his blaster rifle as he remounted his horse.

Lucas shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't have time. I reckon there's still Devils roaming about. I didn't stay long to make a target of myself."

Oliver calmly walked over and slapped his youngest brother across the face. Blood ran down Lucas' chin from his lower lip. "You should have checked. You're no good to me if you can't pull your weight."

Lucas wiped the blood from his chin and remounted his horse. "I'll do better next time, sir. I won't disappoint you again. I can show you. Follow me." He started back to the ambush site.

O'Rourke turned to Oliver and said, "What you're waiting for? Aren't you coming?" Kicking his steed into action he quickly caught up to Lucas, leaving a cloud of red dust in his trail.

Coughing and swearing, the remaining Barnabys followed their youngest brother and the Devilhunter. Wiping his eyes, Alphonso spent the ride glaring at O'Rourke, while the others were busy watching for trouble.

Stephanie groaned as she regained consciousness. Her vision was blurred from the sweat and blood that stung her eyes. Her arms and legs ached fiercely but she forgot about that once she realized that they were staked to the ground and she couldn't move.

"Stop struggling, you're just making the rope cut deeper into your flesh."

Osiris' voice was hoarse but offered Stephanie something that she had briefly forgotten, hope. "Archivist Silver? Is he alive?" she asked.

A groan emerged from Augustin Silver's prone position. "I'm not dead yet," Augustin's speech was interrupted by a rasping cough. "But it isn't me that I'm worried about. I'm afraid of what these monsters will do to you. Your virtue must be protected from these savages."

Considering the amount of pain that Osiris felt, he couldn't help but smile at the Archivist's ridiculous statement. "I assure you that Stephanie's virtue and our own are safe from the Martian Devils. It is much more likely we will end up as dinner than in a Martian bedroom." He tested his bonds but stopped when he realized they were well secured.

Osiris turned his head trying to scan the area. He squinted as the morning sun near blinded him. From his limited perspective all he could see was many gnawed, bleached skulls and bones laid out in a semi-circle pattern around them. Many of the bones looked human. At their feet was a looming rock face, much of which was obscured in shadows, but Osiris could make out a grid of many small holes that pierced the rock. These holes were tiny and uniform in shape. There must have been several hundred of them.

"Why are we still alive?" asked Stephanie.

"Surely these Devils have some diabolical plan for us," answered Archivist Silver.

"Maybe they just aren't hungry yet. More likely we're about to be sacrificed to appease their gods for whatever angered them in the first place." Osiris kept his eyes trained on the small holes and waited. "Smell that?"

"What?" asked the elderly Archivist. "I have too much dust in my sinuses. I can't smell anything at the moment."

"I smell it, " said Stephanie. "It's the smell of blood."

Osiris tried to wet his cracked lips with limited success before he spoke. "Yup, our blood, and it has been smeared on the sacrifice rock at our feet. See the strange shape of that boulder. It blocks out the sun and as the sun rises higher behind it, the shadow will slowly cover us completely. Once that shadow reaches our heads, we're as good as dead."

"The rock will kill us?" asked Archivist Silver.

"No, but what lives in it will." Osiris became silent as the rhythmic drumming echoed around them. Strange chanting filled the air, highlighted with peculiar barking, yelping and clicking noises. Stephanie screamed as a series of crimson red worm-like creatures erupted from the slender holes. They flailed about in the air as their tiny circular mouths spun with thousand tiny, razor-sharp teeth.

The whipworms hovered just above our captive victims. The ritual had started.

TO BE CONTINUED...

"Martian Sixgun Justice" and HTML © Tim Hartin.

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