Arabella of Mars(75)
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.”