The Barsoom Project

Hippogryph lowered the point of his spear, confused. The creatures across the divide hissed and gibbered at him, shaking their fists.

“What in the hell is going on?”

“Earthquake?” But Eviane knew different. It felt wrong. It wasn’t the random movement of tectonic plates, nor the movement of a melting labyrinth of ice. The motion was deliberate and… dare she say it? Controlled.

Behind them a gap had opened that was at least five yards across. Below it was darkness and slow, sluggish coils of sound. Something was moving down there, and she didn’t like it even a little.

Ollie hung back, looked down. “Jesus Christ!” he screamed. His face curdled with shock, and he staggered back.

The headless Amartoqs attacked.

There were six. They moved with grim sureness. Their arms hung so low that their blackened claws raked the ground. The faces, sunken into those swollen bellies, leered at them.

They were slow, and that was all that saved the Adventurers in the first moments of the attack.

Eviane howled and darted in, her enchanted spear drawing first blood.

Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion-except that the Amartoqs couldn’t seem to keep up with the dervish Adventurers. Ice and stone grew neon-red with blood. The monsters fell one after another, and she found herself fighting side by side with Hippogryph, who wielded his spear well.

Her spear was magic indeed! She sliced effortlessly through monster flesh, and with every stroke she slew another.

As the last of them went down, she realized that something was wrong.

Hippogryph was staring at the forest of slabs. The six Amartoqs they had fought were only the beginning. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, were emerging now. Their long heavy nails scratched along the slabs of ice and masonry like nails on a blackboard.

“We’re dead,” she said, almost matter-of-factly.

The creatures emerged another foot, and then the hideous sunken faces in the bellies looked out questioningly. Something that could only have been fear shone in their misshapen faces. They froze where they stood.

In spite of herself, Eviane turned and looked back over her shoulder… and the old recurring nightmare began again.

The slab had opened. The misshapen, octopus-headed thing, the thing from the gulfs, had begun to worm through. It was hideous beyond imagining, and Ollie had time only to scream “Chthul-” before one of the fanged cilia had him, had lifted him into the air, and was carrying him down toward the awful, gaping mouth.

“Ollie!” Eviane had time to scream, and Ollie’s eyes met hers. She thought she saw a message there: I won’t die like this!

The instant before that ghastly mouth would have swallowed him, Ollie’s hands ripped from his bandoleer, the makeshift belt which held flare grenades and sticks of dynamite. With an audible snick he pulled a brace of rings free from the incendiary flares.

There was a painfully brief scream of defiance, and Ollie disappeared in a flash of light and thunder that dimmed the auroras. In that light she caught a glimpse of the thing hiding down in the darkness, and wished she hadn’t.

It hissed and spit in pain and indignation. The damaged tentacle zipped back into the ground. The slab slammed shut with a thunderous roar.

Sour smoke hung in the air. The ice was littered with corpses. On the far side of the plateau lay something shattered and smoking. She didn’t want to go and look.

“Come on,” Hippogryph said. “The others need us.”

She stared at him. She had foreseen death, but not Ollie’s. Now she saw death in Hippogryph’s face. Was it real? Was it for him?

He turned, uncomfortable with the intensity of her gaze.

Snow Goose saw it, but didn’t really believe it. Orson, protecting Charlene, was a totally different person.

Backlit by the discharging satellite, his bulky figure moved not with grace but with great energy. She heard him mutter, “Here’s where Orson the barbarian battles the bloody beast that blocks their path-”

One swipe of the Amartoq’s claws, and his left shoulder went red. He gamely transferred his sword to his right hand, stumbling out of the way as its subsequent, slower swipe missed him by inches.

Orson lunged in with the sword in a move that looked like something out of The Prisoner of Zenda. It should have stayed there. He lost his balance and stumbled.

The face in the middle of the beast’s torso laughed an ugly laugh. It swung its claws. They came slowly, but they came.

Yarnall, in a movement so swift and sure that it startled her, spun Orson back and attacked in that narrow space, squeezing up from the rear and firing into the Amartoq’s rather oddly placed face. Its fighting snarl evaporated in a red mist.

Orson was gasping for air, holding his shoulder and ankle. “Ow! I think I twisted my anide that time.”