“I am well, father,” she seems to need to tell him. “These people have treated me as their own family, even when I was a poor guest.”
Still, we get little more than his glare of menace and disdain. But he turns, climbs back on his armored animal, and says his first words to us as a barked order:
“Come. Keep your weapons down.”
He turns his mount and proceeds slowly back to the gap. Terina gives us a nod, and we follow him cautiously.
The gaps does wind at angles through steep stone walls for fifty meters or so, zig-zagging, the path rising as it goes. When we pass through the wall, it’s only five or six meters high behind us on this side. And ahead of us, across another open defensive space, is…
“Okay. That is cool.”
###
Maps of Eastern Coprates and the Western Vajra
The God Mars continues in Book Five: Onryo
Author’s Acknowledgement:
You may have noticed that all of the titles for Erickson’s chapters are titles of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs (all but one of them from his “Barsoom” series, and that one was when Erickson was particularly out of his element). This is because Erickson is a big fan, and so am I. I loved reading Burroughs when I was a kid, and his books did inspire me to try my hand at “Sword and Planet” fiction, which has become part of my own Mars series. Now I know titles are (usually) not copyright protected, and Burroughs’ books have been slipping into Public Domain, but I wanted to take the words here to express my utmost respect and appreciation for the master. Mr. Burroughs, this one’s for you.
About the Author:
Michael Rizzo is an artist (yes, those god-awful covers are his), martial artist, collector (and frequent user) of fine weaponry, and a pretty good cook. He continues his long, varied and brutal career on the mental health and social services battlefield, trying to do good work while writing about very bad things.
He is also the author of the Grayman series.
He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.
For updates and original art, visit Michael on Facebook.com, and see the Facebook page for “The God Mars Series”.
Discover other books by Michael Rizzo at smashwords.com
The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades Page 43
