PULPWORK PRESS

'Thrust into the savage Martian past, Garvey Dire must solve the mystery of time in a world of alien monsters and brutal violence, or see his own world destroyed by war!'

Joel Jenkins' thrilling sword & planet series is three books in with no signs of stopping any time soon! Below you'll find the first chapter of each book, so that you can give it a look before you buy!

Listen here for Ric Croxton's Dire Planet-centric interview with Joel on The Book Cave Podcast! 

 Chapter I:

The Stasis Loop

 
Her footsteps crossed the cracked stone dais, leaving no impression in 
the fluorescent blue moss that covered the time-weathered stone like a 
cushion. Long, pale hair fell about her shoulders in a twisted 
profusion, amethyst glistening from sloe eyes smeared with some dark 
makeup. The bare flesh that peered from beneath her torn, reflective 
cuirass was tinted green, and her lips—the lower being fuller than the 
upper—bore a purple hue.
 
A scabbard slapped against her bare thigh, the narrow hilt of a 
rapier-like blade protruding. On her back she wore some sort of firearm 
unlike anything Garvey had ever seen, built with a wide bore and massive 
vents. The strange woman looked toward the stranded astronaut, and her 
lips parted. Just as Garvey Dire thought that she would speak, her lithe 
form began to shimmer, and she faded into nothingness like the 
apparition that she was.
 
Each time that she appeared it was the same. She sprang into existence 
near the shattered pillars at the top of the dais, and crossed from the 
collapsed passage to the bottom of the dais where Garvey sat nursing a 
broken right leg that had been shattered when his probe, the Mars 
Climate Orbiter crash landed on Mars’ arid surface. Once he had even 
reached out to touch the woman, but his hands passed through her as 
though she were made of mist.
 
Officially, NASA designated Garvey’s ship, the Orbiter, as an unmanned 
space probe, but elements within the space program were far more 
ambitious. They equipped the craft with landing capabilities, and enough 
supplies and equipment for one man to survive indefinitely on the 
hostile surface of Mars. Following the claustrophobic nightmare of the 
286-day trip from Earth, Garvey began the descent onto Mars’ surface and 
one of the landing thrusters gave out.
 
The only things Garvey managed to salvage from the Orbiter were the 
space suit he was wearing, a few days worth of food, and a small 
atmospheric generator, which was feebly pumping out oxygen next to him.
 
The air supply in his suit had long since been exhausted, and he rested 
his right elbow on the fishbowl helmet, grimacing as he once again felt 
blood flowing from his compound fracture, and pooling in the bottom of 
the space suit that he still wore.

It was only a matter of time now. After the crash he managed to crawl 
from the flaming wreckage and into the shelter of a rock fall, where he 
jammed himself between two boulders to protect himself from the gritty 
winds that swept across Mars’ rugged surface. As he struggled his way 
deeper, the ground gave way beneath him, painfully depositing him among 
the rubble of this alien-constructed chamber buried beneath the surface 
of the planet.
 
She came every hour, her step and stride never changing. Garvey knew 
each movement and glance by memory; it never altered. Though the lure of 
adventure had ever been greater for him than the lure of human 
companionship, as his life wound down to its last minutes, and his 
breathing grew labored as the atmospheric generator faltered, Garvey 
found himself wishing that this woman was more than just a wraith, more 
than some phantasmal vestige of a decayed and lost civilization that 
Mars once possessed.
 
While he sat bleeding, waiting to draw his last breath, he tried to push 
aside the agony of his broken leg and in the dim light shed from a globe 
hanging on the cracked and heaving ceiling, his eyes searched for the 
mechanism that might be projecting this three-dimensional illusion. 
Finally, he perceived a trio of mechanical devices that pushed from the 
moss growing on the dais.

He checked the chronometer on his suit and saw that it was another ten 
minutes before his exotic visitor would once again appear. Curiosity got 
the better of him, and he decided that, even dying, he could not sit 
idly by while the great mysteries of Mars remained still unexplored. 
Clenching his teeth, he dragged himself up the broad steps of the dais, 
and began brushing the rubble away from the metallic knob protruding 
from the moss. Garvey ripped away a great clot of the bluish bryophyte 
and uncovered a metallic box that had once been hidden beneath the stone 
pavings of the steps. The lid was jammed tight, but Garvey withdrew a 
multi-tool from one of the pockets on his suit, and managed to pry it 
away with his screwdriver extension. Inside the box rested a dazzling 
array of capacitors and circuits constructed from no metals or 
materials, which he had ever seen. Thick cables penetrated the box from 
beneath, and Garvey guessed that these might be providing the power 
source for the projectors. Maybe a more brilliant man might have been 
able to adapt this alien source of energy to feed the dying atmospheric 
generator, but Garvey had no idea where to begin.
 
Once again the alien woman appeared at the top of the dais, her booted 
feet carrying her weightlessly across the moss. Garvey’s atmospheric 
generator chugged to a halt, and black spots appeared before his eyes, 
marring his vision of the ephemeral beauty that walked toward him in her 
predestined, and unending circuit. It was only moments before he lost 
consciousness, but still Garvey’s curiosity drove him to experiment. He 
lowered the metal tip of his screwdriver into the box until it touched 
the nearest capacitor.
 
Blue fire arced from the box, leaping up the screwdriver and climbing 
Garvey’s right arm. For a brief moment a blue aurora played across the 
marooned astronaut’s body, then the misdirected energy picked him up and 
hurled him through the air, directly into the image of the pale-haired 
woman that crossed the dais.
 
This time, however, he did not pass through her. Their bodies met, flesh 
against flesh. She cried out and they went down in a tangled, rolling 
heap, blue fire playing about them, soaring in great jagged arcs. The 
scent of ozone hung thick in the air as energy crackled, leaping from 
mechanism to mechanism. A blinding flash filled the chamber, and then 
blackness descended like a great sheet...
 

 
Thrust into the savage Martian past, Garvey Dire must solve the mystery of time in a world of alien monsters and brutal violence, or see his own world destroyed by war!

 The first in Joel Jenkins' stunning sword & planet series, DIRE PLANET is available  in our store, on Amazon, or on Fictionwise!

 Trade: $14.95

 E-Book: $5.95

 ISBN: 978-0-9797-3294-2

 
It had been many hours since Garvey Dire had seen any sign of life in 
these lost and forgotten caves far below the city, but now a faint rasp 
of breath came to his ears, and he realized he was being stalked.
 
He had delved deep into the subterranean caverns beneath Ledgrim, his 
lantern spreading its soft yellow rays into the rugged corners of the 
jagged tunnels that sank in twisting, meandering paths. The sound of his 
own footsteps covered the breathing of his pursuers, but if he halted 
suddenly—unexpectedly—he could hear them following. There were at least 
three of them, breath rasping in and out in asynchronous disharmony.
 
Two centuries ago the Muvari tribe drove out the degenerate, and 
cannibalistic Galbran and fortified the extensive caverns in which they 
lived, making it into nothing short of an underground fortress and city. 
To Garvey, Ledgrim existed in a wonderland of maze-like tunnels, but 
since the spiderous sinthral, Shavrena, had slipped through the volcanic 
steam vents and attacked from behind during the assault by the Warlord 
Shaxia, he worried that there were more than a few weaknesses left 
undiscovered in the city’s defenses.
 
He remembered now Lana’s warning, which he had blithely ignored.
 
“Don’t go exploring the Under Tunnels alone,” she said, her purple eyes 
stern. “A half dozen Muvari are lost in the Under Tunnels every year. We 
send out search parties, but rarely is a trace of them ever found.”
 
Garvey assumed that the missing Muvari simply lost their way in the 
bewildering maze of turns and forks, and took great pains to mark his 
path so he would have no trouble finding his way back. Now, much too 
late, he realized that there were dangers in the Under Tunnels far 
greater than losing one’s sense of direction.
 
It was difficult to locate the direction from which the raspy breathing 
of his stalkers originated because the noise resonated, rebounding from 
the walls of the caverns until the sound was a hopeless jumble of faint 
echoes. Unconscious of the action, Garvey let his hand drift to the 
pommel of the sword he’d looted from the vaults of the ancient city of 
Caladrex. Though he still had a lot to learn, he was much more confident 
in his dueling abilities than when, as his oxygen supply ran low, he 
first had seen the strange apparition of a beautiful woman below the 
surface of the red planet, and been catapulted back thousands of years 
to a Mars undreamed of.
 
Those first perils he encountered he overcame by virtue of his 
earth-born strength, which was enormous in the lighter gravity of the 
Martian world. Since then he had gained a measure of skill, primarily by 
the patient instruction of his new wife, Ntashia. The touch of the blade 
reassured Garvey that he was not by any means defenseless, and he 
crouched suddenly, seizing a chunk of rock and rolling it down the 
corridor before him.
 
The sound of the rock careening down the tunnel became a cacophony of 
echoes, and under the cover of its noise Garvey set down his lantern, 
slipped his sword from its sheath, and waited to see if the racket would 
draw out whatever it was that was following him. He didn’t have to wait 
for long.
 
The stone bounced by a shadowed recess and a six-legged creature leapt 
into the lighted tunnel from the darkness of an adjoining corridor. A 
purple tongue stabbed out and impaled the stone through its center, then 
shook it away and swiveled a head laden with over-sized ears. The beast 
was reptilian in form, covered with scales that reflected back the light 
of the lantern in a rainbow of hues, but as the creature stood in the 
corridor inhaling raspy lungfuls of air, Garvey immediately noticed that 
the beast possessed no eyes to see him. Yet, as the creature stood, each 
of the ears swiveled in a slightly different direction as if absorbing 
and analyzing every bit of sound.
 
Garvey stood motionless; he remembered the children of Ledgrim telling 
stories of blind beasts called senrasts that found their prey by 
sound—creeping in through doors and windows and stealing away snoring 
children who didn’t obey their parents. At the time, Garvey had 
dismissed the tales as the Martian equivalent of the bogeyman. Now, he 
was rapidly revising his opinion. Perhaps the raspy breathing of the 
senrast was not some sort of genetic defect, and it served a similar 
purpose as the bat’s cry—as a kind of sonar to bounce back to the 
animal’s ears.
 
Apparently confused by Garvey’s motionlessness, the senrast shook its 
broad, scaly head and then began to sniff the air with the double slits 
of a hump that rose toward the front of its skull amid a cluster of 
rotating ears. Garvey knew that he wouldn’t be able to escape detection 
now. His scent would be apparent to the beast, and there was no way that 
he could disguise it. Still, Garvey was reluctant to make the first move 
against the senrast. He had seen the beast push his tongue through a 
bouncing rock—a feat that required amazing accuracy and strength. If the 
senrast was able to do that to a rock, what effect might its tongue have 
on a human body? Garvey really didn’t want to find out.
 
Garvey bent his knees, getting ready to jump out of the way should the 
senrast spring upon him. He carefully watched the six legs of the beast 
so he could anticipate the leaping attack. The former astronaut to Mars 
was so focused upon his opponent that he nearly didn’t hear the arrival 
of two more behind him. He hazarded a glance backward and saw a pair of 
senrasts stalking the corridor side by side, leaving him no room to 
escape. Their harsh breathing bounced from the wall like the sound of 
buzz saws.
 
There was only one way that Garvey could see out of this dilemma, and it 
required heavy firepower. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any. He reached 
up with his left hand, past the golden hoop in his left ear that marked 
him a married man, and drew forth an already loaded crossbow from its 
scabbard. The ears of the senrasts swiveled, homing in on this sudden 
movement, and in deadly concert the three of them leaped.
 
Garvey pulled the trigger of his crossbow releasing the cable so that it 
pushed an arrow completely through the body of one of the leaping 
senrasts. The beast died with a whimper, and it struck the ground, its 
tongue unrolling from its skull at the impact, and purple blood 
spattering the cavern floor.
 
The hapless astronaut barely registered his success from the corner of 
one eye as the second senrast hurtled through the air at him. Just 
before the scaled beast reached the pinnacle of his leap he opened his 
toothless mouth and let his long tongue uncoil, shooting the 
diamond-hard point like a bullet toward Garvey’s skull. As he fell 
backward, Garvey lashed out wildly with his sword blade, severing the 
elastic tongue before it could reach him, and then he felt the weight of 
the senrast’s scaly body pound into him.
 
He staggered but kept his feet, only to feel the impact of the third 
senrast that attacked from behind. The senrast’s diamond-hard tongue 
struck him between the shoulder blades, and sent Garvey tumbling head 
over heels into the wall. Garvey felt blood spurting down his back where 
the tip of the beast’s tongue impacted. His neck burned and his whole 
body felt numb. He lay still, unable to move as the unwounded senrast 
padded over to him, nostrils flaring, and lungs buzzing.

In the fog of his stunned mind, Garvey thought he saw a human shape move 
up behind the beast. As the figure moved into the pool of light still 
shed by the Muvari lantern, Garvey saw a narrow man with a large bulbous 
nose and heavily lined face glide into view. His eyes were dark and 
crimson shot in the whites, and his ears were unmarked by any marriage 
rings. As he walked his mop of black hair, tinged with purple 
pigmentation, nearly brushed the ceiling. He lifted his hands as if 
commanding the remaining senrast, and Garvey could see that the fingers 
were covered with carved and jeweled rings, and around his neck he wore 
a golden amulet marked with a series of intertwined triangles.
 
The senrast padded up so close that Garvey could smell its putrid breath 
as it opened its mouth to administer the death blow, but even as the 
scaly jaw widened Garvey’s fingers regained a small amount of feeling- 
enough so that he could feel the hilt of his sword that still lay in his 
hand. He swung numbly, not sure if his arm was really obeying his 
command to attack, and was rewarded with a jolt of sensation as he 
lopped off the senrast’s head.
 
As the purple blood of his last senrast gushed forth, the serene 
demeanor of the stranger changed to an expression of stark terror, and 
he backpedaled down the corridor, before turning and fleeing into the 
darkness, his footsteps receding into the quagmire of black.
 
Garvey managed to raise himself up onto his elbow before the impending 
oblivion of darkness claimed him, and then he fell hard to the 
unflinching stone of the cavern floor, his crimson blood mingling with 
the violet hues leaking from the slain senrasts...

In the savage Martian past, Garvey Dire discovers an old nemesis gathering vicious killers beneath his banner to conquer, crush and build a new empire on the blood and bones of the innocent!

The second in Joel Jenkins' sword & planet series, EXILES OF THE DIRE PLANET, available  in our store, on Amazon, or on Fictionwise!

 Trade: $14.95

 E-Book: $5.95

ISBN: 978-0-9797-3292-8

 
Two solitary figures awoke among a welter of broken wings and torn 
membranes, and vague visions of their nightmarish flight from Gredgehold 
assaulted their minds. Groaning, they slowly sat up, feeling their 
weary, bruised and aching limbs. Garvey’s torn back stung with the fire 
of a thousand bee stings and he gingerly unstrapped his harness and 
pushed away the wreckage of the wings that had carried him before the 
great storm.
 
Ntashia tried to blink away the cobwebs in her skull, and turned her 
head from the light of the overhead sun that seemed to burn at her eyes. 
“Any idea where we’re at?”
 
Garvey looked around, noting the chasm-interrupted terrain to the north 
and the the three great peaks to the south. “I see peaks, but we’re 
definitely not anywhere near Gredgehold—the formations are different. I 
was hoping the winds would blow us toward the Valley Idor.”
 
“No such luck,” said Ntashia as she reached for a knife and cut away the 
tangled harness of her wings. “The winds picked us up and threw us in 
the opposite direction. Fortune was not favoring us last night. I lost a 
sister, and who knows how many miles we’ve been hurled away from Valley 
of Diamonds?”
 
Garvey climbed alongside of his wife and she put her head on his broad 
shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her narrow waist. “I’m sorry about 
Lana. I wish we could have done something more to save her.”
 
Ntashia’s brow furrowed. “It was that treacherous skelk, Cinyan. I 
should have put my blade through her gullet when I had the chance.”
 
“Maybe so,” said Garvey. “I didn’t care for her much, but I didn’t 
realize she was capable of such treachery.”
 
“Each of us is capable of committing any number of attrocities,” said 
Ntashia, “but we rely on our conscience to guide us to better actions.”
 
“The problem with a conscience,” said Garvey, “is that the more you 
ignore it the duller it becomes until eventually it’s withered and dead. 
Maybe even someone like Cinyan, who started as a basically good person, 
could let her envy eat her up so much that finally she was able to 
rationalize away her conscience to the point where even murder wasn’t 
beyond her ken.”
 
He felt Ntashia stifle a sob and she quickly wiped away a tear.
 
“It’s okay, go ahead and cry. There’s nothing wrong with letting it out.”
 
“A Muvari warrior does not shed tears until after the battle is over,” 
answered Ntashia. Abruptly she rose to her feet. “I will cry for Lana 
when I have brought Cinyan to justice, but before that we must find our 
way to Caladrex. Ledgrim is still under the tyranny of the exiles.”
 
Garvey looked again at the three peaks again and noted the black walls 
of the third. “Perhaps the One God was pushing us in the right direction 
when he let the winds carry us further from the Valley Idor. Instead 
they have carried us almost to the doorstep of the exile fortress. That 
is the Black Lode Peak, which Sar Savaht told you about in your 
hallucination.”
 
Ntashia looked upon the peak with awe slowly dawning upon her face. “So 
it is. Then our plans have been adjusted by a higher power. First we 
shall rescue Sar Savaht and his family, then we shall find our way 
through the diamond gates of Caladrex.”
 
“Exterak,” murmured Garvey, remembering the password which Sharone had 
shouted out to the guards at the mouth of the defile which entered into 
the exile fortress.
 
“No mercy,” translated Ntashia as Garvey brought that moment back to 
mind. “That is the motto we must adopt if we are to have any hope of 
surviving this night.”
 
The darkness fell quickly because they had spent much of the day caught 
in the grip of utter exhaustion, sleeping beneath the wreckage of their 
wings as Mar’s sun blazed above. The remaining hours of daylight were 
spent picking their way through the natural rockeries and treacherous 
defiles toward the exile fortress. As the red sun dropped beneath the 
far crags and dusk deepened Ntashia and Garvey settled into hiding above 
the box canyon that held the lush oasis in which the exiles had made 
their fortress.
 
Below they could see the taut wires, barely visible in the fading light, 
that were stretched tightly from canyon wall to canyon wall, and held 
fast by a series of steel eyes that were driven into solid rock. From 
these razor wires hung the sliced and sun-bleached remnants of a 
Pesthule that hadn’t picked up the wires with its inherent radar, and 
had hungrily dove toward what it thought were the easy pickings of the 
exposed exile warriors below.
 
It was a sheer 120 feet to the encampment on the floor of the oasis, and 
at least forty feet to the razor wire that netted the area. On the west 
side of the canyon, a ledge ran along the cliff wall and cut around the 
corner, down the narrow alley which the exiles had gated and used as 
their entrance. A metal rung ladder was pegged into the stone cliff and 
emerged from the greenery to reach the ledge. Even now the two observers 
could see several exile warriors moving back and forth on the ledge, and 
they suspected that there were quite a few more stationed, unseen, 
around the corner guarding the gateway.
 
“If we could get to that ledge unseen,” mused Ntashia, “then we could 
use the ladder to take us the rest of the way down.”
 
“I like the idea, but we still have to get down to that ledge,” said 
Garvey. “We’ve got no rope, and there may be some slight handholds in 
the cliff, but we’ll be going backwards in the dark. If we slip, that 
razor wire will do the same thing to us as it did to that Pesthule.”
 
“Even if we did reach the razor wire, there isn’t enough room to slide 
between without getting cut to pieces,” she agreed. “We’ve got the 
password to walk in through the front gate, but it wouldn’t take but a 
few moments for them to realize who we really are and take us apart from 
the safety of the cliff ledges alongside the entry corridor. Somehow 
that seems like a worse plan than trying to descend the cliff wall in 
the pitch black.”
 
“The hallucination that Sar Savaht induced showed us going right down 
through the razor wires,” said Garvey. “Maybe there is some way.”
 
“Or maybe he was just trying to illustrate where he was being held 
prisoner. I think it would be dangerous to take a hallucination, of any 
sort, too literally. Besides, Sar Savaht expected his mechanical insect 
to inject one of us with the hallucinogen while we were still within the 
exile’s fortress, so we wouldn’t have needed to pass through the razor 
mesh.”
 
“Maybe,” agreed Garvey, “or maybe there was a reason he showed us the 
topography surrounding the fortress. Perhaps he realized that we might 
not be able to make the rescue immediately and that we might need to 
know what surrounds the fortress in case we returned.”
 
“It’s spits nor tacks now,” said Ntashia. “After all, finding the 
fortress isn’t our problem. It’s getting into the fortress that poses 
the difficulty.”
 
“Yes, but Sar Savaht has his own peculiar type of brilliance. Maybe he 
foresaw this as one of the potential scenarios—that we might have to 
enter the exile fortress from above upon our return, and maybe he 
provided some means for us to get down from the cliff tops.” Garvey left 
his hiding place and darted from boulder to boulder as he searched the 
cliff top for some idea or means by which they could descend.
 
“It seems a bit unlikely,” answered Ntashia, but she followed her 
husband nonetheless. “If Arnold Stechter won’t let him leave his 
laboratory how is he supposed to get up here and leave some help behind?”
 
“They may well let him leave the laboratory,” suggested Garvey, “but by 
holding his family captive they effectively hold him captive, also. This 
new and not-improved Stechter seems wholly capable of killing Sar’s wife 
and kids if Sar Savaht has the temerity to return even a little bit late 
for dinner.”

“What happened to him?” asked Ntashia. “The Stechter I first met was 
addled by his trip through Sar Savaht’s time singularity, but once his 
mind cleared he risked his life to stay behind and hold off the Torracks 
while we escaped.”
 
“If you’ll remember he apologized for sabotaging the Mars Orbiter 
spacecraft, in which I crash-landed on Mars, so he could get credit for 
being the first to set foot on the red planet. That certainly 
illustrated a natural penchant for murder, even though he didn’t quite 
succeed in his plans. Still, you’re right, I thought he had redeemed 
himself so I was surprised to find him alive and so utterly evil. Maybe 
it was some malfunction in the time singularity through which he escaped 
that twisted his mind.”
 
Ntashia leaned her svelte figure against a red-veined boulder. “Perhaps, 
or maybe he just let his evil inclinations take over when they were 
given the opportunity. Look at Cinyan; she always had the tendency to be 
jealous and vituperative, but while that might make someone hard to live 
with it doesn’t necessarily make them a murderer.”
 
Garvey scrambled over a rock and dropped into a depression that sank 
about ten feet into the ground and was filled with jagged upthrusting 
stones that made him think of a giant mouth. “Maybe we all have that 
demon seed somewhere within us. If we water it with hate and jealousy we 
let it turn us into a monster.”
 
“The problem with you,” said Ntashia, “is that you see people’s good 
traits and overlook their bad—assuming that their real character is the 
one with the quality traits and not the other way around.”
 
“I suppose I made that mistake with Cinyan,” agreed Garvey. “I gave her 
the benefit of the doubt and it cost Lana her life.”
 
Ntashia’s face took on a grim aspect for a moment then her features 
softened. “It wasn’t your fault. I believed badly of Cinyan, yet I still 
never imagined that she might murder my sister and betray us with 
treachery.”
 
Garvey was silent for a moment as he searched between the moss-grown 
teeth of the depression, then he changed the subject. “I don’t know how 
Sar Savaht did it, or if he was even involved, but I think I’ve found 
what we’re looking for.”
 
With a start Ntashia snapped out of her reverie, her blonde braids 
flailing. “What are you talking about?”
 
“Climb on down here,” said Garvey, “and I’ll show you.”
 
Ntashia grabbed hold of the pit’s edge and dropped easily between two 
stone incisors. With a graceful ease she ran along the stone tops to 
join her husband where he stood overlooking a blackened and scorched 
body. Charred bones clung together, still wrapped by scraps of melted 
sinew, but the skeleton lay in a welter of ash, which had once been her 
flesh. Oddly enough this warrior’s breastplate was barely singed, and 
still gleamed back a bit of light from the double moons as they rose 
overhead to replace the vacuum left by the fleeing sun. Her sword still 
lay undamaged in a scorched scabbard, which was hooked to her 
diamond-studded belt.
 
Kneeling down beside the skeleton Ntashia retrieved a coil of 
lightweight rope and gently unhooked it from the loop that had fastened 
it to the dead warrior’s belt. “You don’t think that Sar Savaht arranged 
this, do you?”
 
“Either that,” said Garvey, “or she just happened to be wandering around 
the cliff tops over the fortress when she was struck by lightning.”
 
“It looks like she was burned from the inside out, because anything that 
wasn’t directly touching her skin seems to be nearly untouched by the fire.”
 
“I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but when we find Sar Savaht 
let’s ask him if knows anything about this.”
 
“I counted thirty to forty warriors below, before the sun set, and 
that’s not including those warriors that I know are guarding the gate. 
We’ve got to slip by them before we ever see Sar Savaht.”
Garvey observed the few heavy clouds that scudded to the northeast. “The 
sky is going to be clearer tonight than I’d hoped. It will make it 
easier for us to find our way, but it will also make it easier for the 
exiles to spot us.”
 
“It will be another hour or maybe two before it is dark enough for us to 
attempt the climb. That will give us time to get into position and 
secure our rope.”
 
Garvey cast his eyes about the barren jumble of rocks wondering if there 
was anything edible growing up from the hard scrabble soil beneath. “I’m 
starving—that flight last night really took it out of me; little that I 
had left.”
 
A saucer-eyed rock-chuck with luminous yellow pupils poked its furry 
head from its den about thirty feet off and curiously observed them, 
four of his six paws beating a nervous pattern on the rock in front of him.
 
“You know, I could probably throw a knife and kill that rock-chuck.”
 
“I’ve seen you in action,” agreed Garvey. “Are rock-chucks tasty?”
 
“If you’re hungry they taste plenty good, but you’d have to eat him raw. 
Even the slightest whiff of smoke from the smallest of fires might give 
our presence away to the exiles.”
Garvey was hungry enough to momentarily consider eating a raw 
rock-chuck, but he wasn’t quite ready to make the jump to raw meat. “I 
guess I’ll wait and see what I can come up with when we get into the 
exile encampment.”
 
Ntashia smiled. “You eat like a hobranx, but I thought you might not be 
quite famished enough to devour a raw rock-chuck.”
 
They took up a place on the west side of the box canyon behind a spike 
of stone to which Ntashia expertly tied the rope. There they waited 
until darkness laid full hold of the firmament, and when a bank of 
clouds drifted across the faces of Phobos and Deimos, Garvey slipped 
over the side of the cliff and let himself down the rope, walking down 
the cliff face until he stood just above the net of razor wires, which 
were woven too tightly for either he or even Ntashia to slip through.
 
On the cliff top Ntashia stood at its edge, her crossbow cocked and 
loaded and leaning out slightly so that she could cover Garvey’s 
advance. Two plumed warriors sat against the cliff wall on the north end 
of the ledge near the corner. Though the night was warm they had a small 
fire flickering, over which they roasted some sort of fowl. They were 
engaged in a side game of dice, and each had a pile of silver and gold 
ingots which they had either amassed or managed to keep from losing 
during the course of the evening. The night was quiet and both Garvey 
and Ntashia could easily hear the conversation of the exiles as it 
carried up the hard cliff walls.
 
The slight blonde warrior spoke, disdain touching her voice, and she 
wiped a greasy finger on a thigh that was colored with an elaborate 
tattoo of a hobranx. “I didn’t like my husband teaching the children the 
moral codes of Gestrom Tribe, so I started diverting myself by spending 
time with some of the less uptight men of the tribe.”
 
“I see,” said the hard-faced brunette with the ring through her nose. “A 
little side gratification never hurt anybody, right Fajnee!”
 
Fajnee laughed. “And a more trusting husband no one has ever had. It 
took him an awfully long time to put it together, but when he did he 
turned me over to the tribal elders and they exiled me. I begged him to 
take me back, but he wouldn’t have any of it.”
 
Karsti grunted, “They exiled you but not the men you were gratifying, 
right? They weren’t put up for judgment. They never are.”
 
The blonde exile shrugged her shapely shoulders. “Actually, they caught 
two of them and put them to death. The Gestrom elders take their foolish 
moral code quite seriously.”
 
Ntashia sighted in on Karsti, the taller of the two exiles. She knew 
that Garvey could not cut his way through the razor wire until these two 
departed or were dead. They didn’t seem to have any inclination to leave 
their roasting fowl, but Ntashia was worried that even if she could kill 
one with her first shot that the other would raise the alarm. She’d best 
wait for Garvey to cut the first wire and see if he was able to do so 
undetected. There was no point in risking having the alarm raised unless 
it was absolutely necessary.
 
The razor wire would be too tough for a normal blade to cut through, but 
Garvey still carried one last prize from his trip to the dead city of 
Caladrex buried beneath the crust of Mars, and that was the sword forged 
from ancient alloys that were beyond the resilience of any steel created 
by any current weaponsmith. He lowered the edge of the sword and sawed 
it across the closest wire. Almost immediately the taut razor wire gave 
way with a twang that reminded Garvey of the sound of a breaking guitar 
string. The released wire whipped through the air, cutting past Garvey’s 
ear and snaking across the open chasm of the box canyon until it became 
tangled in the net of razor wire from which it had been cut.
 
At the sound of the breaking razor wire Fajnee looked up from the fire, 
stopping short in the middle of a bawdy escapade which she was relating 
to Karsti. The moment might have passed and she might have gone back to 
her story if not for the cloud banks drifting away from the face of the 
moons. In that precise moment Fajnee caught sight of Garvey’s nearly 
naked form braced against the cliff side, sword gleaming in hand.
 
“It’s a man,” breathed Fajnee. “Take him alive!”
 
Karsti took a deep breath in preparation to let loose with a bellow that 
would alert the entire encampment, but before she could cry out Ntashia 
let loose with her crossbow and sent a quarrel plunging through Karsti’s 
clavicle. Karsti’s breath hissed out and she dropped to her knees, then 
fell over sideways, stone dead; her blood leaking across the ledge.
Unaware or heedless of her companion’s demise, Fajnee snatched up a 
javelin and sprinted headlong down the narrow ledge toward the spot 
where Garvey hung above the net of razor wire. He knew that once beneath 
him she could easily thrust the javelin up through the gaps in the net, 
and despite her inclination to keep him alive for her own purposes, that 
didn’t mean that she wouldn’t hesitate to wound him or even kill him if 
he put up too much of a fight. Either he could scramble back up the rope 
and he and Ntashia would have to abandon their assault on the exile 
encampment, or he would have to get down through the net before Fajnee 
reached him.

Deciding on the latter course of action Garvey lifted his sword blade 
and hewed through a half dozen wires. The sound of the released tension 
echoed a symphony through the box canyon oasis as the severed wires 
whirred through the air. One of the wires slashed through the thick 
leather sole of Garvey’s already-split boots, and another cut past his 
eyebrow leaving a thin cut and severing a lock of his sand-colored hair.
 
Fajnee was not so fortunate as Garvey. With speed too fast for the eye 
to follow, one of the wires whipped downward, slicing through her neck 
so that her head rolled over the side of the ledge even as her body 
crumpled to the ground in a spray of violet blood. Garvey dropped to the 
blood-spattered ledge, and absently noted the tattoo of the hobranx that 
curled around Fajnee’s bare thigh as he stepped over her fallen corpse.
 
Both Karsti and Fajnee had fallen without raising a warning cry, but the 
sound of the tensioned wires being cut loose were likely to have alerted 
at least the exiles that guarded the mouth of the canyon on this 
self-same ledge where it bent around the corner of the cliff wall.
As Ntashia slid rapidly down the rope to join him, Garvey ran along the 
ledge, leaping over Karsti’s fallen body, and coming to a halt at the 
corner. He waited here and listened, and sure enough he could hear the 
footfalls of leather-shod exile warriors scraping along the ledge, then 
becoming hollow as they apparently passed over some sort of wooden 
bridge, and then solid as they met the stone of the ledge once again.
 
The odor of death wafted into Garvey’s nostrils and then the wind 
shifted slightly, carrying the sickly sweet scent of the crasthfax 
blossom from the natural gardens below. Then the footsteps drew near the 
corner and Garvey hewed into the first warrior, cutting through her 
hardened leather cuirass and into her spine. He wrenched his blade free 
and kicked away the flailing warrior as she spasmed in her death throes, 
knocking down a trio of warriors that followed her, and sending one 
crashing through the wooden railing to plummet to her demise.
 
It was quick and sickening butchery to wade through the tangle of bodies 
and slay the two fallen warriors before they could regain their feet, 
but Garvey steeled himself to the task by the memory of what had 
befallen the women and children of Ledgrim at the hands of these exile 
monsters.

Now Garvey could see down the length of the night-shadowed canyon to the 
narrow gate at the end, and he could discern the moonlit forms of at 
least a dozen exile warriors on the ledges which were cut along each 
side of the canyon. These ledges were joined with a series of wooden 
bridges that arched between crevices and over the canyon itself to 
connect with the rampart on the opposite side.
 
Though all the exiles were heavily armed it was apparent that they felt 
quite safe within the supposed security of their fortress, for in the 
still-hot night few of them wore armour or heavy clothing, and when they 
emerged from the shadows of the canyon walls, footfalls clapping across 
bridges as they sprinted to meet the intruder, the moonlight glimmered 
against their flesh and bared blades.
 
On ledge and bridge the exiles could come at him only one a time, but 
they had no intention of facing him steel to steel except as a last 
resort. On the opposite side of the canyon a pair of exiles with swaths 
of indigo silk wrapped around their waists and a quiver of quarrels on 
their backs stopped at the rail and each put their heel into the stirrup 
of their crossbow, drawing back the blades and locking the cable into 
place. It was obvious to Garvey that they intended to shoot him from the 
ledge, and would succeed in doing just that unless he made a quick retreat.
 
Garvey heard the snap of a crossbow behind him, near the corner of the 
ledge where Karsti’s body still lay, and saw a feathered quarrel sprout 
between the breasts of the crossbow-toting exiles across the canyon. Her 
crossbow tumbled over the rail and she staggered back against the dark 
stone of the cliff wall, clutching at the shaft of the quarrel.
 
Ntashia slipped from around the corner, her crossbow empty of the 
quarrel which had been loaded into it a moment before. She cast aside 
her crossbow, plucked a throwing knife from her bandolier and hurled it 
across the canyon even as the second crossbowwoman sent a shaft speeding 
toward Garvey, who threw himself down on the ledge. The quarrel struck 
the canyon wall and shattered, throwing splintered debris across 
Garvey’s back, but he had no time to analyze his narrow escape and he 
scrambled around the corner to join Ntashia.
 
The second crossbow-woman caught Ntashia’s thrown blade in her forearm, 
and retreated into the darkness with a spate of curse words upon her 
lips. Garvey and Ntashia pressed flat against the cliff wall, with the 
corpse of Karsti at their feet, and Ntashia put her heel into her 
crossbow and forced back the blades for a reload.
 
“So much for our plans of creeping quietly into the exile citadel,” 
commented Garvey, a wry turn twisting the corner of his mouth. “What do 
we do now?”
 
Ntashia dropped a quarrel into the runnel of her crossbow. “We kill 
them—every last one of them.”
 
Garvey picked up Karsti’s crossbow and snatched up the quiver of bolts 
that leaned against the cliff side near his leg. “That may be easier 
said than done.”
 
Ntashia ducked around the corner and let a bolt fly, punching it through 
the body of the foremost exile warrior who was about thirty yards off. 
As she came back alongside of Garvey to reload the crossbow he slipped 
around the corner and put a shaft through the abdomen of the following 
warrior, who stumbled and fell with a terrifying shriek upon her lips.
 
The oncoming warriors cared little for their fallen sisters and trampled 
them under their feet as they continued the charge. Garvey and Ntashia 
continued to exchange turns firing their crossbows and loading them and 
slew at least five, but then they were deluged in a rush of exile bodies 
and blades. Garvey took the front now and the ledge became slippery with 
blood as he hewed down warrior after warrior, some falling where they 
stood and others plunging through the broken railing to lie shattered 
and still on the canyon floor below.
 
Behind him, Ntashia continued to load her crossbow and she picked off 
exile crossbowwomen that took up station at the rail of the ledge across 
the canyon with the idea of picking off Garvey from a distance. A couple 
of them succeeded in firing quarrels at Garvey before Ntashia could 
preempt them, but in the swirling chaos of battle they only succeeded in 
striking their exile companions and saved Garvey the trouble of 
dispatching them himself.
 
Garvey bled from a half dozen wounds, mostly cuts upon his hands and 
forearm and he wished that he still possessed his Caladrexian armour, 
but thankfully few of the exile warriors wore armour of any sort, else 
the advantage would have gone to them and he would have fallen long ago.
 
Now, at the end of the ledge near where Garvey and Ntashia had 
originally descended into the exile enclave, alerted exile warriors 
swarmed up the ladder from the encampments below. Fortunately, most of 
the crossbowwomen on the other side of the canyon corridor seemed to 
have been dispatched and no longer posed a threat to Garvey, so Ntashia 
was able to turn her attentions to this new menace which caused them to 
be assaulted from both sides.
 
The first exile up the ladder was a bronze-skinned woman of statuesque 
proportions, but Ntashia shot a quarrel through her skull and sent her 
toppling down the cliff she had just climbed. This caused a retreat down 
the ladder by the exiles that followed her, but soon they returned, 
climbing the iron rungs of the ladder with their left hands, while 
bearing shields in their right. This tactic covered their heads and 
torsos, and left their thighs and calves exposed. But their moving limbs 
were no easy targets for Ntashia.
 
The foremost warrior climbed the ladder holding a steel shield 
emblazoned with the horned skull of a fixsha, and Ntashia decided to 
test the strength of her crossbow against it. Her first quarrel struck 
square in the center of the shield, denting the steel, but falling away 
and leaving the warrior behind unharmed.
 
Seeing that her weapon had been rendered ineffective by this new tactic, 
Ntashia slung the crossbow across her back and sprinted along the ledge. 
A couple of crossbow bolts came arching from below, but struck the cliff 
side above her head as the archers below had no real line of sight shot 
at her. Ntashia snatched her sword blade from her sheath and as the 
first exile topped the ladder she drove Caladrexian steel through the 
skull-painted steel of the shield, and through the breastbone of the 
warrior beneath it.
 
The sword became lodged in bone and as the dead exile careened backward, 
Ntashia realized that she must let go of her blade or be dragged over 
the cliff’s edge by the weight of her victim. She released her sword 
blade and the body plunged down the ladder, taking three exiles with it.
One of the exiles who had escaped the fate of the others by pressing her 
body close against the ladder looked up fifteen feet and found herself 
staring into the amethyst eyes of Ntashia Dire. The exile desperately 
tried to raise her shield above her head, but before she could lift the 
cumbersome shield into place Ntashia extracted a knife from her 
bandolier and hurled it straight down into the exile’s face, where it 
drove through the thick bone of the forehead.
 
For a moment the dying exile clutched tightly to the iron rungs of the 
ladder, but then she began to sway. Her legs became unstrung and they 
slipped through the rungs, becoming trapped between those rungs and the 
cliff side so that when she fell back she did not fall from the ladder; 
her body hung limp and bleeding over the other exiles attempting the 
climb, blocking their way.
 
This was a fortuitous occurrence, yet Ntashia could see that if an exile 
abandoned her shield she might be able to swing out to the side of the 
ladder and climb around. Still, they might be loath to attempt this 
since Ntashia was standing above with at least eight more throwing 
knives glowing on her bandolier in the pale light of the double moons.
 
On the other front all but a handful of the exiles had fallen to 
Garvey’s onslaught, and now with fear and trembling they fell back lest 
they should join the gory heaps of their fallen sisters who piled the 
ledge, and whose bodies were choking the narrow defile below. However 
they could not outstrip Garvey whose Earthly muscles sent him bounding 
forward over unsteady wooden bridges and across the uneven ledges until 
the fleeing exiles were caught in a corner against the jumble of 
Cyclopean stones which closed the mouth of the canyon and through which 
passed the tight gateway to the rugged paths outside the exile 
stronghold. This gateway was some sixty feet below the crumbling ledge 
upon which the exiles were trapped, and an exile with a sleeve of 
cryptic tattoos from shoulder to hand frantically hooked the two iron 
rings of a rope ladder over a pair of pitons driven into the stone ledge 
and hurled down the ladder, which wildly unrolled down the pocked and 
pitted cliff side.
 
She was about to climb onto the swaying rope, but Garvey moved forward 
with dripping sword blade extended. The trio of exiles between her and 
Garvey fell back as they attempted to escape his sword, pressing into a 
tight knot of flesh against the massive lever mechanism that controlled 
the portcullis gateway. Their retreat left the exile who was poised 
above the ladder exposed, and Garvey pressed the tip of his sword 
against her throat.
 
“What is your name, exile?”
 
“Gairtess,” she stuttered, her body frozen still lest Garvey should 
judge that she still attempted to escape and hack her down.
 
“The exile motto is exterak—no mercy,” said Garvey. “Yet, I am going to 
offer you mercy, but it shall be upon the conditions that I impose.”
 
Gairtess’ orange eyes blazed back at Garvey with defiance. “And what 
conditions might those be?”
“Simple enough. Open up the canyon gate and flee. If I see you again 
this night, I’ll let my sword finish its work.”
 
“But the pesthules will scent us out,” exclaimed a shaven exile, her 
bare pate gleaming in the moonlight. “You send us to sure death.”
 
“Not so sure a death as at the tip of my blade,” growled Garvey. “There 
are plenty of caverns and hiding holes in these mountains, and the 
pesthules numbers have dwindled considerably. Which do you choose? Death 
by my blade or a chance at life outside your fortress gates?”
 
The exiles could sense Garvey’s impatience and they quickly accepted the 
latter of the choices. They joined forces and with their combined 
strengths they shifted the great lever that set a system of 
counterweights into motion. With a rattle of chains the gate opened up, 
and they agilely descended the rope ladder, casting nervous glances 
upward as Garvey followed them down. Before Garvey’s split and tattered 
boots hit the ground the six exiles fled into the darkness of the 
outside mountainscape, flitting up steep trails and through close 
defiles until their forms mingled with the shadows and were lost from 
Garvey’s sight.
 
Garvey, however, had little time for spying out the paths of their 
flight to see if they might actually keep their word. He knew that 
Ntashia was still in dangerous circumstance, attempting to hold off an 
exile horde as they scaled the ladder at the cliff side. He sprinted 
down the narrow defile, each stride taking him ten feet, and in a few 
moments he rounded the corner and through the thick foliage he could 
make out a mob of angry exiles gathered at the base of the cliff. Seven 
or eight were on the ladder, the highest of them hacking away the legs 
of a dead exile which were caught in the iron rungs and stopping the 
other warriors from climbing to the ledge—where Ntashia stood pressed 
against the cliff side while she reloaded her crossbow.
 
Garvey breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that his wife was still 
alive and well, but at the base of the cliff at least five exiles were 
aiming their crossbows upward and just waiting for Ntashia to reappear 
and take a shot at one of the gathering mob below. This wasn’t something 
that Garvey was about to allow if he could possibly do anything about 
it, so before Ntashia could finish reloading and venture again to the 
cliff’s edge he took three great bounds through the foliage, heedless of 
the danger into which he was again thrusting himself, black branches 
raking at his battered flesh, and hanging vines snapping and tearing 
away before his headlong rush.
 
Though the flesh of his back had scarcely had a chance to begin the 
healing process from the vicious stripes of the geltar whip administered 
by the cruel and ruthless hand of the beautiful but wicked Sharone, and 
though each vigorous movement sprayed blood from his leaking hand, for 
the moment Garvey did not feel the pain of these wounds, these hurts 
being swept away by the rush of adrenaline which was carrying him 
through the battle. Though he felt a weakness of limb and body due to 
having involuntarily fasted for twenty-four hours he momentarily forgot 
his hunger as the frenzy of battle came upon him and all seemed to swim 
in a vertiginous sea of flashing swords and spattering blood.
 
He hewed into the ranks of the exile crossbow warriors, cleaving flesh 
and sundering limb. They fell before him like wheat before the scythe, 
and he paused for a second among the litter of exile debris, body 
painted in the blood of the enemy and violet dripping from the edge of 
the sword. Wild-eyed, he launched into the knot of exiles gathered at 
the base of the ladder and quickly found himself overwhelmed in an ocean 
of glinting swords carried by brazen warriors that moved with 
assassin-speed and deadly confidence in the arts of war that they possessed.
 
No longer did Garvey possess the element of surprise to balance the 
overwhelming numbers that he faced, and no longer was he able to face 
his enemy one by one, as on the ledges above. Now he was awash in the 
enemy, and though a couple fell beneath his sword, the others slowly 
encircled him, taking turns tentatively jabbing at him so as to create 
an opening for another warrior to slide in and make the kill.
 
Garvey fended off a sudden assault from his left, but heard quick 
footsteps trampling through the grass from behind. As a sleek warrior 
prepared to run him through the back, a crossbow cable loosed from the 
cliff above and his assailant groaned, going to the ground with a 
quarrel through her thigh.
 
Hazarding a glance, Garvey realized just how close he had come to dying. 
He also realized that there was no way in which Ntashia could continue 
to defend him against the dozen warriors that encircled him. Even if she 
could continue to fire crossbow bolts at every warrior that came at him, 
she could not do so quickly enough, and also the body blocking the 
ladder had been hacked away and a half dozen exiles were scaling the 
remaining iron rungs with amazing celerity. In just a few moments, 
Ntashia would have her hands full, just keeping them from gaining the 
ledge upon which she stood.
 
Still, Garvey possessed one advantage that the exiles did not have—that 
of his Earth born musculature. He took a mighty leap into the air, 
warding off a sword blow, and using the helm of that same warrior as a 
stepping stone to hurl himself even farther into the air. He crashed 
through a thicket of saplings and scrub brush fully ten feet outside the 
circle of exile warriors, snapping narrow trunks beneath his weight and 
coming down in a haze of splintered wood.
 
This bought him only a temporary reprieve for they turned, and began to 
fan out, again attempting to encircle him. This time a pair of exiles 
dropped back and unlimbered leather thongs from their belt. They 
deposited leaden slugs into the pouch at the center of these slings and 
began to whip them around in a wide circle, gathering enough speed so 
that they could release one end of that strap and let that crudely 
molded bullet fly.
 
One of them screamed as a crossbow bolt feathered her forearm, and the 
bullet flew wide, buzzing past Garvey’s head with uncomfortable 
proximity. Garvey knew that this was the last help he could expect from 
Ntashia for now she tossed aside her crossbow and met the first of the 
ascending exiles sword to sword atop the cliff. She no longer bore her 
Caladrexian blade, but one borrowed from a defeated foe lying on the 
gore-spattered ledge. Steel clamored against steel and violet blood 
spattered from the cliff tops, red ruin raining down as screaming exiles 
plunged to their deaths.
 
Garvey used all the strength at his disposal to tear a snapped trunk 
free from the bark shell and splintered wood that still held it fast to 
the stump. With a roar he pulled it loose and lurched back toward the 
ring of exiles from which he had just escaped, but now he bore a fifteen 
foot stave with which he sent his opponents flying into jumbled heaps. 
Some succeeded in hacking notches in his stave or even shortening its 
length, but with this new weapon at his disposal, Garvey was able to 
stay out of reach of the exile’s swords, and pummel them into submission.
 
In moments only three of them still stood and Garvey’s stave was reduced 
to a couple of feet in length, the other pieces laying broken and hewn 
about him in the piles of groaning enemies. The trio turned to flee and 
Garvey hurled the broken chunk of wood, bringing down the rearmost exile 
with a blow to the back of the skull which sent her reeling forward and 
headlong into unconsciousness.

Garvey worried that the other two might warn the remaining exiles, but 
his first concern was Ntashia so he let them go, instead turning his 
attention to the ladder upon which four exiles still climbed in their 
attempt to gain the cliff top which Ntashia still held. The bottom of 
the ladder was bolted into the cliff wall and Garvey picked up a great 
boulder and several blows succeeded in breaking the bolts free.
 
Adrenaline could only take Garvey so far and he noticed that his 
strength was failing, and he was breathing heavily as he threw aside the 
boulder and took hold of the ladder, shaking it violently so that two 
exiles lost their grip and careened down the cliff side. Garvey stepped 
aside, the first narrowly missing him as she crashed headfirst into the 
rocky ground at the base of the cliff.

From above Ntashia rolled a boulder over the ledge and dropped it onto 
the upraised shield of the highest exile. The weight of the boulder 
crushed the shield arm of the unfortunate exile and jarred her loose 
from the ladder, also carrying the warrior that followed her on the 
ladder to her death.

Once the boulders and bodies ceased falling Garvey returned to the base 
of the ladder and held it steady. He sent a mental message up to 
Ntashia, and she immediately began to descend the ladder, momentarily 
joining him at the base of the cliff among the gory carnage of the exile 
defenses.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
 
Garvey looked absently at his bloodied hand and forearms, a great 
weariness coming over him. “I’m lucky to be alive at all.”
 
Ntashia tore a piece of linen from the lining of her bossed leather 
skirt and wrapped his wounds. Garvey looked over his wife while she 
tended to him and noted that she had come through the combat unscathed. 
He thought of the fowl still roasting up on the top of the cliff and 
wished he had it in his hands.
 
“You’re hungry,” said Ntashia.
 
“Is it that obvious?” said Garvey.
 
Ntashia looked at her husband with a quizzical expression upon her face. 
“I can read your mind, remember? Besides, it looks as though you are 
about to faint away from blood loss and fatigue. I’m sure you could use 
something to replenish your energy.”
 
“We don’t have time,” answered Garvey. “I let two of the exiles get 
away. It’s only a matter of time before they return with reinforcements.”
 
“Then we’ve got to keep moving. If we can find Sar Savaht he may well 
have some idea of the best way to escape.”
 
“How many more exiles can there be?” asked Garvey. “I’ve lost count of 
how many I’ve killed.”

A fallen exile laying at the foot of the ladder twitched, fingers 
reaching for the sword still in her scabbard and Ntashia delayed her 
answer for long enough to run her through with her borrowed blade. She 
cast about among the dead and found her Caladrexian blade still firmly 
lodged in the breast bone of a fallen enemy. With a grunt she managed to 
wrench it free. “It appears that Stechter managed to recruit a few more 
exiles since we last left his company. There are a number of exile bands 
roaming the wastes, though usually they can’t abide each other’s company 
well enough to stay in very large groups. Stechter, apparently, has 
brought quite a few of these bands together.”
 
Garvey started up a narrow path that ran along a high rockery toward the 
back of the canyon with Ntashia at his side. He noticed his blood 
seeping through the fresh linen bandages which Ntashia had applied. “If 
I remember our hallucination correctly, Sar Savaht’s lair was back this 
way.”
“This seems right to me,” agreed Ntashia.
 
Their surroundings took on further familiarity when they met a path that 
descended along a jagged retaining wall of rock to join a set of spiral 
steps, which pushed yet further into the earth. At the bottom of this 
was a landing constructed of uneven paving stones between which several 
odd varieties of mushroom were sprouting in the sandy loam. It was here 
that they came to a halt in front of a stone portal which was set into 
the cliff wall. In the shadow of the retaining wall the light of the 
double moons were blocked out and the large metal ring set into the 
portal’s face was scarcely visible.
 
“Press your hand against the door,” said Garvey. He leaned against the 
retaining wall, the sharp rocks pressing into his shredded back, yet the 
air was cool here and he longed to sit down in this cool well beneath 
the surface of Mars and take a long nap until his strength returned.
 
Ntashia was fully aware that Garvey’s strength was flagging and she 
pushed her hand against the face of the stone door, surprised to find it 
warm to the touch. Immediately gears began to clack from within the 
cliff and the door rumbled and grated, slowly swinging open for the 
intruders.

A soft scarlet light leaked from the inside, washing them in ruddy hues. 
Above, they heard shouts and cries, and it was obvious that a wounded, 
but still living exile had pointed out the path Garvey and Ntashia had 
taken, and now, like a pack of hungry dogs, a mob of exiles was on their 
trail. Leather boots slapped on the stone steps and from among a thicket 
of dense foliage atop the retaining wall of jagged rock, a javelin 
whispered through the air and broke on the stone flagging next to 
Garvey’s left foot.
 
Ntashia slipped into the scarlet haze and past the great door, then 
Garvey leaped across the intervening dozen feet and a second javelin 
ricocheted from the stone lintel and whooshed past his ear into the dim 
interior of the long hallway. Garvey cast about for some means by which 
to shut the door which grated wider, ever so slowly. On his right, and 
in open view to the exiles who were hurling javelins from above was a 
panel of gleaming, green-tinted metal that held a variety of levers and 
dials. To Garvey, it wasn’t easily apparent what any of these mechanisms 
did or how they operated, yet he took a chance and pulled down a couple 
of these levers as he passed.
 
Immediately a great hum filled the air, and Garvey felt static 
electricity charging the air around him. He noticed the hair on his 
forearm lifting, and a glance at Ntashia showed her braids lifting in a 
Medusa tangle that writhed about her head.
 
“What did you do?” Her violet eyes darted to Garvey’s sandy hair, which 
lifted bolt upright. “It looks like you’ve seen a hobranx!”
 
Garvey heard a rush of footsteps and a clamor of voices, and a wave of 
exiles rushed down the cracked stone steps. A lean, young exile with 
flowing brown hair and coin discs in her ear lobes led the charge. She 
lifted a spear and hurled it at Garvey, and he instinctively went into a 
diving roll that carried him across the hallway. The spear, however, 
never came near him. It struck the vertical plane of the arched doorway 
in a flash of coruscating light, and glanced away, its speed doubling. 
An exile with a spiked shield and scimitar hurled herself forward, and 
found herself thrown backward onto the sword blades of her companions, 
who tumbled like dominoes.
 
Ntashia stared on in wonder. “There’s some sort of invisible wall that’s 
protecting us.”
 
“That’s why the exiles call Sar Savaht the Magician,” said Garvey, who 
was no less in awe of the miraculous device which was saving their lives 
from a score of bloodthirsty exiles.
 
The hum of rampant energy grew louder, until it was painful to their 
ears. Still the exiles gathered in a knot on the enclosed landing, 
poking and prodding the shield in the hopes of finding some kind of 
weakness which they could exploit. Static was so thick in the air that 
both Garvey and Ntashia were receiving shocks each time that they moved. 
Sparks played upon the floor and danced in the air like lunatic fireflies.
 
“Let’s get out of here,” shouted Garvey. As he spoke, electric shocks 
skipped across the fillings in his back teeth, so that his face spasmed 
uncontrollably.
 
He and Ntashia sprinted away from the mad mob, Ntashia’s armour throwing 
off sparks as the links of her chain mail rubbed against each other, and 
a fury of sparks igniting in the air behind them. Their mad dash carried 
them down the corridor and around a sharp corner, and suddenly a great 
flash of light filled the rounded vaults of the ceiling, jagged bolts of 
lightening ricocheting, and thunder booming through the enclosed spaces.
 
Garvey and Ntashia were each picked up and hurled thirty feet down the 
hall, and when they rose to their feet, bruised and battered, they found 
that their hair was singed and the ends blackened. Garvey brushed his 
hand down his forearm and the charred dust of burnt hair crumbled away, 
leaving his skin bare.
 
No longer did static electricity fill the air and the hum was gone, 
leaving them in dead silence that was not marred by the bloodthirsty cry 
of exile.
 
“What happened?” asked Garvey.
 
Ntashia shook her head, char-tipped braids of green-tinted blonde 
brushing over her shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
 
Garvey crept back to the corner and peeked into the corridor from which 
they had come. The walls were scorched with great black spots and in 
some places the stone had melted, running down the wall in long rivulets 
which had already hardened. The stone portal was reduced to rubble, and 
beyond, where a score of exiles had clamored for blood, there was 
nothing but bone and ash. Every exile on that stone landing had been 
instantly burned to a crisp.
 
He felt Ntashia at his shoulder. “If we had been but a bit slower, we’d 
have joined them,” she said.
 
“I wonder what other surprises Sar Savaht has waiting for us,” said Garvey.
 
“Do you think that lightning was by design?”
 
“I don’t know,” answered Garvey. “But it could have easily killed us 
just as well as it killed the exiles.”
 
By hallucinatory memory, which flooded back to them all too easily, they 
passed down a series of hallways, and through a number of rooms jumbled 
with archaic scientific equipment. The scent of chemical and the 
peculiar odor of heated alloys, the recipes of which were no longer 
known to Martian-kind, drifted to them, and finally they passed up a 
flight of broad stairs in a vaulted and pillared chamber which was 
stacked with bails of razor wire, apparently left over from the project 
of netting over the boxed canyon. Along the stairs were a series of 
plinths and upon each one of these glowed a red lantern, spreading 
roseate fingers of hazy illumination through the room.
 
“They aren’t oil or gas lamps like in Ledgrim,” observed Ntashia.
 
“And they’re not quite like anything I’ve seen on Earth, either,” added 
Garvey. “More of the Ancients’ technology, I imagine.”
 
At the top of the steps rose double iron doors inscribed with ancient 
characters that Ntashia did not recognize, and though the doors must 
have stood there for century upon century, they were not cankered with 
rust. Garvey lifted a metal ring set into the nose of a graven hobranx, 
which face was set toward the left center of the right door, and pulled 
silent and smooth—the door swinging open with the slightest of effort.
 
In the hallucination which Garvey and Ntashia had shared, Sar Savaht was 
waiting behind these doors with his family. When they entered now the 
divan upon which Sar Savaht and his family had been sitting was still 
there, but it was overturned. The rich furnishings of the chamber that 
they had seen in the drug-induced vision were in disarray, shards of 
pottery broken on the floor, velvet tapestries torn and hanging from 
bent brass rings on long rods that hung askew. Splintered toys crunched 
underfoot, and glass beads scattered before their boots as they warily 
entered the room, their swords in hand. Blood soaked through Garvey’s 
linen dressings and he left a crimson trail of drops behind.
 
“What’s happened to Sar Savaht?” murmured Ntashia.
 
“And his family,” added Garvey in muted tones, similar to those of his wife.
 
The clatter of rings sliding against a rod sent Ntashia and Garvey 
whirling, and they saw a maroon tapestry being swept aside, and in the 
mouth of the arched portal behind stood two exiles. The red-haired exile 
with the generous figure stood on the back of the gagged Sar Savaht’s 
neck with her right foot and pointed her crossbow pistol at the back of 
his graying pate. “Here’s a clue for you, dimwits! Now drop your weapons 
or Sar Savaht and his whelps get dead!”
 
Back a little further in the ruddy overhead light of the hallway the 
second exile, a narrow-framed woman with hollow cheeks and a black 
mohawk folding over striking golden eyes, stood over the bound and 
gagged forms of a buxom, purple-haired woman and three young children. 
She bore a full-size crossbow and she let the wicked-looking tip of a 
quadruple-bladed quarrel stray toward the youngest child who was pushed 
back up against the wall with tears in her wide eyes. “Listen to what 
Linhan says or I’ll start by shooting the youngest, then work my way up 
to the breeder wench.”
 
Garvey could see the concern, the pleading in old Sar Savaht’s eyes. 
Finally the aging man had found something more important to him than the 
quest for scientific knowledge—his family, and he couldn’t bear to see 
them come to any harm. Garvey saw the resolve in Linhan’s face, and in 
her partner’s compassionless golden eyes. His gaze traveled downward and 
he saw the fear of death in those children’s eyes, and the determination 
of Sar Savaht’s wife as she struggled against her bonds, trying to slide 
her hands free from the knotted ropes that kept her wrists confined 
behind her back.
 
Finally Garvey glanced at his wife and slowly crouched, laying his sword 
blade down, and across the toe of his bursting boot. His blood dripped, 
leaving spatters across the stone floor, his boot, and joining the 
clotting violet blood in which the steel of his sword was already quenched.
Ntashia frowned and threw down her blade so that its point stuck in the 
bottom of the wooden divan, and it stood there quivering about six feet off.
 
“Take your crossbow by the strap and lower it to the floor,” directed 
Linhan.
 
Ntashia complied with this new demand, carefully laying her crossbow at 
her feet so that it would be undamaged in case she had a chance to 
recover it later.
 
“And now your bandolier of knives,” ordered Linhan.
 
Ntashia had already anticipated this last demand and she quickly 
shrugged off her bandolier of glittering blades and dropped it to the 
stones beside her. “Anything else? Perhaps you’d like me to clip my 
fingernails lest I claw out your eyes?”
 
“No, that will do just fine,” said Linhan. She pulled up her crossbow 
from Sar Savaht’s head and pointed it directly at Ntashia’s chest. 
“Because you’ll be clipping Satan’s toenails where you’re going!” And so 
saying, Linhan pulled the trigger and sent the shaft plunging between 
Ntashia’s breasts...
 

To defeat his bloody nemesis and free an enslaved people, Garvey Dire explores the depths of the Martian planet to uncover the hideous secrets of the lost city of Caladrex!

The third in Joel Jenkins' sword & planet series, INTO THE DIRE PLANET is available  in our store, on Amazon, or on Fictionwise!

Trade: $14.95  

E-Book: $5.95

ISBN: 978-0-9797-3293-5

JOEL JENKINS

Joel Jenkins lives with his wife and children in the misty, heron-haunted reaches of the Great Northwest, shadowed in the perpetual gloom of the Rainier Mountains. This former rock vocalist for Static Condition, and Red Die #5 enjoys weightlifting, weapons collecting, and concocting a good tale. Visit his site here.