James Axler - Deathlands 038 - Mars Arena

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Cold talons pinched his skin

"Dean…" someone said, and he couldn't believe how much it sounded like Krysty.

Something shimmered into being on his right. It was impossibly close, near enough to

reach out and touch him. He'd have seen anyone or anything that had come that close to

him.

Then he saw the face, made out the features. She was indistinct, as if he were seeing her

through a heavy fog. "Krysty?" Dean said, not believing it.

"Your father is coming for you. Look for him." The words sounded as if they were

coming from a long distance, then she was gone.

Before the boy could puzzle over her appearance and what it meant, the door burst open.

Framed in it was a nightmare figure Dean remembered well: a giant mutie pig, its beady,

merciless eyes nearly buried in wrinkles of scarred gristle.

Before he could draw the Browning, the beast started for him, squealing shrilly in

anticipation of an easy kill.

The Mars Arena

#38 in the Deathland series

James Axler

A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARS • SYDNEY •

HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN MADRID •

WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

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If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen

property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the

author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

First edition August 1997

ISBN 0-373-62538-3

THE MARS ARENA

work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now

known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in

any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission

of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario,

Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and

have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not

even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all

incidents are pure invention.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered

in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and

in other countries.

Printed in U.S.A.

Some say that men love games

Some say that war's a game

And from the Roman days

The red god sets the pace

Mars, it's always Mars

With Venus in his arms

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Don't they know the real arena

She draws blood to stoke her love

And the Reaper shows his bones

Shedding kindness like a cloak

Mars, his nights of bliss

Venus and her blood-red kiss

—from the Liar cycle the rock group Polo Heads

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the

bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance,

vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk

and the tiger, true to nature's heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal

from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of

tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother

Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too, honed his skills

traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has

been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not

much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century

healing skills to a nightmare.

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Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the

albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet

he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope…

Chapter One

It was the moon that gave the brushwooders away, hanging against the sable sky, as

white and bright as a man's skull just carved clean.

Ryan Cawdor stifled a curse as he moved through the shadows and silence of the forest,

quiet himself so the stalkers wouldn't know he was among them. The Steyr rifle that had

seen him out of so many tight spots across Deathlands was hard and sure in his hands.

Jak Lauren had noticed the brushwooders first, even before the sun had dropped like a

burst heart against the leaden evening sky. But Ryan's combat sense had been prickling

the back of his neck an hour before that.

Ryan held his breath as he watched the brushwooders, not wanting the thin gray fog to

give away his position. The pursuers had broken into at least two groups that he could

identify, and walked up the broken terrain in a staggered line. It was a pincer movement,

as old as war itself.

The one-eyed warrior had used it a few times himself, and he knew it would be deadly

effective. He and his companions were outnumbered at least seven to one.

The sky was clear at the moment, but against the mountains the weather could change in

an instant. The wind came out of the north and carried a wolfs bite. Ryan had dressed

warmly, wearing a heavy coat he'd found after he and his companions had raided

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deserted houses along their trek in from the gateway among the Western Islands. But

he'd had to shed the coat to double back on their would-be attackers because the material

was too light colored.

He felt as if he were freezing on the outside, but inside his survival instinct was burning

him up. He was a tall man, a couple inches over six feet, broad shouldered and clean

limbed. His dark curling hair held a frosting of snow from the flurries that appeared

suddenly over the Sierra Nevada along the Cific Ocean.

Most women would have called him handsome, if not for the black leather patch that

covered his left eye, and the cruel, puckered scar that ran from the corner of his right eye,

down his cheek to just above his jawbone.

Two pointmen, one the head of each group of the pincer arms, met and knelt to examine

the ground in the light of the full moon. Ryan knew they were following footsteps his

group had left in the damp earth underneath the crust of snow. Given the weather

conditions, it was hard to pass unnoticed even as practiced as his people were.

They'd seen the brushwooders earlier in the day without being seen themselves, not

many hours after they'd made the jump through the mat-trans into the area. It had taken

Ryan only a few minutes of observation to figure them for the raiding parties he'd been

told about. The companions had encountered a group of farmers in the early evening and

learned that brushwooders had fired several farmhouses and killed a dozen people. It was

part of a spree of violence that had been going on for days.

Violence was nothing new in Deathlands, or to the companions. The fleeing group of

farmers had also warned Ryan that the weapons they carried would be highly prized by

the brushwooders. Their leader had designs on consolidating his hold on the area and

killing anyone who stood to oppose him. Adding to his armament was necessary to

achieve his goal.

Ryan had kept his people clear of the roving hands of brushwooders, but their search for

a pass through the mountains had brought them here, and within sight of one of the

brushwooder patrols. Now they were running through the darkness for their lives.

Rising, his nose tilted up and forward as if he were taking in the air like a hunting hound,

the pointman nearer to Ryan turned to his group and pointed toward the east, where the

terrain grew steeper. He moved on, moonlight glinting from the blaster in his hands. He'd

torn branches off trees and stuck them inside his clothing for camouflage, as well as

down the neck of his coat and in the sleeves. Other branches were pinned against his

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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/James%20Axler%20-%20Deathlands\%20038%20-%20Mars%20Arena.htmlColdtalonspinchedhisskin"Dean…"someonesaid,andhecouldn'tbelievehowmuchitsoundedlik\eKrysty.Somethingshimmeredintobeingonhisright.Itwasimpossiblyclose,ne\arenoughtoreachoutandtouchhim.He'dhaveseenan...

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