Read Online The God Mars Book Five: Onryo by Michael Rizzo - Free Book Online

was used on would come out un-bloodied. The Sasumata
isn’t much more merciful: it’s capped with a large U-shaped fork,
blunt-edged but sharp-tipped, and—as Negev showed us with a willing
volunteer so we would know how to use one—just the right size for
catching a neck or a limb between the prongs and holding on by
applying the right twist. Any combination of two should be
sufficient to hold and guide an enemy while keeping him well out of
reach.
    “Did all of this come from the west?” my father asks
Negev about the incredibly dense and healthy plant life. “Or did
your Founders have engineered plants from the old labs as
well?”
    I see this question get Murphy’s attention as well,
as all the plant life we saw in western Coprates was supposedly
spread from his home gardens. But then we passed the Badlands,
which were nearly barren, before descending into the lush growth of
the Pax Lands. Since then, the valley floors have been nearly as
thickly overgrown as the Tranquility Garden, and without the
benefit of careful tending.
    “Some and some,” he answers vaguely at first. “The
Founders had been gifted samples grown at Tranquility, which they
carried here in the Crossing. The Pax also had such gifts. But most
of this was seeded by the Eternals.”
    “How long has it been like this?” I dare ask, all
wonder. This gets a quick chuckle out of Negev.
    “When I was a boy, there were only small groves. The
rest was barely above my knees. Sparse. You could see more rock
than green. I remember when we had to change our patterns, when the
Pax Hunters began to wear all green.” He reaches out a hand and
caresses a branch of Graingrass as he passes—the plant, if I can
tell it apart from those it’s grown together with, is over five
meters high. “These plants are hearty, stronger than flesh,
stronger than us. They grow fast, and need little. If it wasn’t for
the insatiable hunger of the Cats and Butters, we would probably
not be able to move through them at all. But then, the Cats and
Butters feed them in turn, as do the Dragons, the Worms, the
Beetles. And us, for our small part.”
    “’Cats’?” Murphy wonders for all of us. This gets
another chuckle out of Negev.
    “The Butter’s larval form. You will see.”
    The growth has managed to become even more
foreboding.
     
    Behind us, the Spine Range is already barely visible
through the foliage. We turned south as soon as we passed the end
of the Katar Canyon’s southern wall, which is also the farthest
eastern tip of the Spine. But now, from what I can see of the
position of the sun, it looks like we’re moving southwest.
    Used to getting lost in this place, I’ve programmed
my flashcard with a pedometer program that Murphy had, allowing me
to roughly measure our progress. I also took the time to draw some
notes on my maps, based on the maps that the Katar with us studied
during their briefing.
    We seem to be heading slightly but steadily downhill,
and I think I can see rises on either side of us. This would put us
in a narrow ravine that diagonally crosses the “base” of the
Central Blade, pointing us directly toward the South Blade.
    On my maps, the two Blades start as one valley where
we are, but soon branch, divided by the way they cut into the
Planum-elevation Catena Rim. The Central Blade is larger, much
wider, and stretches roughly west. The South Blade runs at an angle
southwest, eventually becoming a narrow canyon cutting ten klicks
into the Rim. And about five klicks deep inside that steep-walled
gash of a canyon is where Eureka Colony should be.
    During the debrief, Cousteau indicated the point that
her party encountered the infected Keeper. It was very close to the
end of the ridge that separates the Central and South Blades. He
wasn’t coming from the lost colony. He was coming from the
north-northwest, out of the Central Blade. If I’m reading his
course right, he may have been walking home. And coming from the
general direction of