The Barsoom Project

Chapter Thirteen

The male Tin-mi-uk-puk carried a caribou in its outsize claws. As it caught sight of the carnage it screamed and released the carcass. Gamers froze as it dropped toward them. That mass was carrying enough kinetic energy to kill Rambo XII.

The caribou brushed the edge of the nest and dropped into the mist amid a shower of leafy debris, lost before it crashed against the side of the mountain.

Max was frozen as the male approached and swooped down. As close as he came, it was the female who actually landed first. She stalked directly to her babies as her mate circled overhead.

She nudged one of the broken shells, her eyes and body language almost unendurably grief-stricken. One of the turkeysized, feathered corpses was still partially intact. She nudged it, pushed her great beak against its lifeless mass, before giving up and inspecting the other shells.

The male landed. The birds weren’t as big as houses, but certainly twice the size of dray horses, the size of small elephants. The smaller of them easily sported a twenty-foot wingspan. Their bodies were golden-eagle bodies tinged with silver. For birds, they were extraordinarily muscular. Each clawed footstep, each ripple of a wing conveyed a sense of majesty, authority, power.

The male studied each of them in turn.

“Nobody panic,” Snow Goose commanded. “We might just survive this.” She turned her head. “Mr. Welsh. Give me your charm. And no jokes.”

Johnny stared, then shut his mouth. He fumbled in his pack, extracted a small carved bird figure. Max caught only a glimpse of it as it passed from hand to hand, but it seemed exquisitely rendered in some dark, smooth stone.

The female approached the male and rubbed her great head against his, and they cooed together. He silently inspected the nest and intact eggs, then returned to nudge at the bodies of the slain monsters. He looked up at the Gamers with a clear question in those huge, black, intelligent eyes.

Snow Goose stepped forward, charm in upraised hand. “Hail to you, great warriors of the wind. We saved your children from the mountain trolls. In return, we ask a favor.”

Max was aghast. The two enormous creatures looked at Snow Goose as if she were insane. Their babies lay at their feet-their feet were wet with yolk and blood-and this impertinent tidbit was asking for favors? Max gripped his harpoon and readied for some fancy footwork.

“Take us to the top of the world,” Snow Goose demanded. “Only with your help can we enter Sedna’s realm, and set right that which has gone awry. Will you help us?”

The Gamers drew back as the two birds came nearer, and then nearer still, until either could have lunged forward and caught a plump, screaming human in its softly gleaming talons.

Max shivered as the male inspected him. It cocked its head sideways and stared at Max with one huge, hypnotically deep black eye. Gazing into its depth was dizzying, but Max dared not back down. He was spinning, spinning, and prayed not to fall.

Without knowing why, Max stretched out one trembling hand. The Thunderbird watched his hand suspiciously, then jerked its head out of reach.

“What’d I do?”

“Watch your hands, smartass,” Orson hissed. “Thunderbirds are not pets! In Inuit mythology they’re usually the villains. Whatever Snow Goose did, I hope it’s strong enough.”

The male threw his head back, and the golden feathers around his neck ruffled. His scream reverberated to the heavens, rang up and down the mountain range like a thunderclap.

For a moment, the Adventurers were frozen in their tracks. Then from far away there came an answering scream of recognition.

Johnny Welsh coughed nervously. “I think someone just rejected a collect call-”

On the edge of the horizon, looming up now, came a quartet of winged figures, identical to the first two, but even larger.

The newcomers were older, the gold in their feathers more tarnished by time and the elements. They carried curious leather appliances in their claws, fitted with dangling straps and buckles.

“We’ve got the grandparents, I think,” Orson said nervously.

They circled, then came in for a landing. While the younger couple kept an eye on the Gamers, the older Thunderbirds examined the evidence. They found a spear still lodged in a blood-spattered troll corpse, bit and wrenched it out with the toss of a great plumed head.

One of the Thunderbirds carried it over and respectfully laid it before Snow Goose. The others folded their wings and sat in front of the Gamers, heads bowed.

“Well, I’ll be dipped..

“Hurry,” Snow Goose said, handing the charm back to Johnny. “We have five birds. One will stay to watch over the eggs. Break into groups of two or three. Fix the saddles and mount up.”

Docilely, the great beasts presented themselves as Max approached and nervously threw a saddle across the back of the nearest Thunderbird.

Hologram? Must be, and yet they expect us to…

The saddle landed on something solid. Max reached forward, and touched feathers. He struggled with his surprise, and then subdued it. Stop trying to figure out when they make the switch!

Hebert and Trianna were the handiest with the leather saddles, were fastest following Snow Goose’s directions as she helped them buckle and strap the contraptions into place.

“Guess they’ve had riders before, eh?” Hebert puffed.

Snow Goose smiled enigmatically. “So the legends say. I assume you mean the birds?”

Max and Orson nodded to each other, then split up. Orson went with Charlene and Hippogryph, while Max got into line in front of Trianna and Francis Hebert.

He tugged at the saddle, anchored just ahead of the giant wings. As much as the idea scared him, they were really very secure. He climbed up onto the waiting back and strapped himself in.

Trianna slid up behind, wrapped her arms around his waist. Her breath warmed his cheek, had that sweet-and-sour excited tang that is irritating from a man, but a turn-on from a woman. And Trianna was a lot of woman. His belly muscles flexed within her arms, feel the hardness, without consulting his forebrain. His lower body tingled with localized, increased circulation.

Ah, well. His heart yearned for Eviane, but the rest of him seemed more pragmatic.

Hebert climbed on behind Trianna-and the three of them, he estimated, added up to a hefty tonnage. He hoped the Thunder-birds were as strong as they looked.

The last Gamer had boarded his mount. Snow Goose checked all of the buckles with sober, expert care, then climbed aboard the lead male. It ruffled its feathers and ran at the edge of the bluff. Without a moment’s hesitation, it dove over and disappeared into the clouds.

Max barely had time to say “What?” when his own mount turned stiffly toward the cliff. It took five running steps that reminded him of something out of a Disney film on ostriches, and dove off.

He screamed, and swore to himself that he would scream all of the way down. His stomach contracted as if trying to squeeze his intestines out of his nostrils. When he opened his eyes his Thunderbird was plunging straight for the bottom-

(And he remembered, briefly, a quote from twentieth-century stunt man Eve! Knievel: “I’ve gotten to where I can say the Lord’s Prayer in ten seconds.”)

“OurFatherwhoartin-”

The bird leveled up and began to climb. And climb. Up and up, and when he looked back he saw the other Thunderbirds and their passengers behind and below him, sleek black wings beating against a dwindling backdrop of mountains. The wind burned his eyes, and they began to water.

The clouds drifted past. Within a few moments the plateau was a memory. He turned around and faced Trianna, who although strapped onto the saddle still gripped his waist with eyes closed.

“We’re all right,” he said. When that produced no visible result, he nudged her again. “Go ahead. Open your eyes.”

“I’m afraid of heights.”

He looked down. Distantly, a blue carpet of sparkling sea glimmered through the clouds. Not the place for an acrophobe. “Better keep ‘em shut, then.”

Behind her, Francis Hebert was gazing down at the view, eyes as wide as a child’s in Santa’s toy shop.

The view was somewhere beyond wonderful. After a few minutes, the birds curved around and began to head toward a range of mountains so distant that they registered only as wrinkles on a far horizon.

This was the life! The air beating against his face was pleasantly cool. The strong, steady stroke of the Thunderbird’s wings was a heartbeat rhythm, as soothing as it was exhilarating.

He began to lose track of time, pleasantly mesmerized by the frozen vistas below. Endless stretches of glacial ice and snow-locked rivers passed. From time to time his mount would bank gently and then level out again, but on the whole the trip was hypnotically placid.

Hebert was the first to spot trouble. Max heard the man’s shout and followed his pointing finger, detected a flock of tiny black dots approaching from the eastern horizon.

“They’ve got wings,” Hebert bellowed, leaning far out around Trianna’s shoulder. “More big birds. Does it look to you like they’re coming right at us?”

“Could be,” Max said.

“I wish we could ask Snow Goose.”

Max wished he could ask Orson. The other Thunderbirds were lumbering along with slow, steady wing strokes, but they were too far away for a good shout. Again he scanned the horizon. The other flying creatures were disquietingly close.

More Thunderbirds? He doubted it. The line of wing and tail on these great golden eagles was a marvel of nature. The new figures were somehow… misshapen.

Hebert was checking his rifle. “Hope this’ll be more use than last time. Trianna, dammit-open your eyes!”

“I can’t! I’m scared!”

Max swore under his breath. “Well then, give me your rifle!” He reached back to try to tug it out of her hands, but she hung on like an alligator. “Shit!”

“No!”

He looked back again. The creatures were only a kilometer away, and now he could distinguish them more clearly. They seemed a melding of bird and beast. He could make out a gigantic, misshapen wolf’s head grafted onto the body of an enormous falcon. They weren’t as large as the Thunderbirds, but there were nine, make that ten of them.

Before he could say or think anything else, the creatures swooped to the attack.

He had a brief glimpse of wolf snout and falcon claw as his mount suddenly folded its wings and dove toward the earth. He gripped a handful of feathers for dear life, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Sun, earth, cloud, and white-speckled mountains merged dizzyingly. His stomach, and the fluid contents therein, sloshed every way but out and up. His Thunderbird swooped and dove, careened like a berserk roller coaster, striving to evade the two monstrous Wolfalcons which had set upon it.

Suddenly, and with a speed that left his spine somewhere back at the last loop, the Thunderbird doubled back on its own trail and caught one of the unholy hybrids. The beast screamed, but its scream was the scream of a wolf, and it was the wolf head which turned and set its teeth into the Thunderbird’s neck.

Feathers and skin came away as the Thunderbird shook its tormentor loose, and then savaged it to pieces. Max peeked around his mount’s shoulder, saw the Wolfalcon fight back, then go limp and offer no resistance. Its ravaged body plummeted toward the ground.

The second Wolfalcon swooped close. With the whoosh of wings Trianna Stith-Wood finally opened her eyes, and her gun almost flew into her hands. Hysterically she pumped bullets into the creature’s face.

That face exploded with crimson and it flopped away, vanishing into a cloud.

The Thunderbird wheeled around and dove back toward its family.

The eight remaining Wolfalcons fought demonically. One went straight for the Guardsman. He ducked and swung his war club futilely, then laughed hysterically when a second, dive-bombing, was snatched from the air by the vengeful claws of Max’s bird.

“Hey, Welles!” he yelled, hands cupped to mouth. “Missed me! Nyahh nyahh!”

Their mounts took terrible damage, and the aerobatics continued in dizzying flurries. Max was no longer sure which way was up. At last the final two Wolfalcons screamed in frustration. The cries were not those of beasts, but of men-men rendered inhuman by bloodlust and hate.

One of the two remaining enemy swooped close before it withdrew from the fray. There in its chest Max saw the face of a human being embedded among the feathers. It was the face of a man who lived to hate, fed on hate, felt no other human emotion. It was quite mad, the eyes alight with sufficient loathing to fry Max’s marrow.

Then both were gone.