Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

Max started to jump back into the fray. An electrical buzz in his underwear told him that Dream Park had other ideas. So Max lay where he was, covered his face with his arm, and moaned helplessly. Paralyzed, he watched Orson the Barbarian carry the day.

Orson carried it fine. The fighting snarl on his lips would have done credit to a blood-maddened jungle cat. Orson parried the deadly paws, slashed and mashed, sliced and diced, and generally made a red ruin out of the Amartoqs as they shambled in to attack the helpless Maxwell.

What a man.

Through and occasionally around Orson’s trunklike legs, Max glimpsed snatches of the rest of the battle.

There was Trianna capering with her spear, moving with the grace and poise of a dancer.

Hippogryph used a harpoon more adroitly than brother Orson, and was giving the monsters the old what-fer at a frightening rate. Max admired his erstwhile antagonist’s form and style.

(Uh-uh… brother Orson missed the slash of one claw, and got a glowing red band across the ankle. The monster paid for it dearly, sagging to the ground, pierced to the core.)

Oh, what a lovely fight it was. The claret flowed, war cries arced to the heavens, and in general, a mighty fine time was had by all.

Max searched the battlefield for Eviane, and finally spied her hiding behind a piece of bizarre, convoluted statuary. She was sighting her rifle and carefully placing shot after shot down into the battleground, to devastating effect. One Amartoq fell to the ground, shot in the gut and forehead by a single bullet.

Quite possibly, Max mused, an all-time first.

He only glimpsed Eviane for a few instants at a time. Her face was a small, pale oval screwed up in concentration. She punctured another beast. It staggered to the ground, long black paws scratching its back; moaned and thrashed, then was still.

Kevin Titus was a tiny red-haired whirlwind in the midst of the madness, swinging a war club almost as big as himself. He was a now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t dervish of motion. As long as he kept moving, nothing was able to touch him. But then he reeled and fell against a skewed block of black ice, face to the wall, panting like a dying man And an Amartoq clubbed him down from behind. The arm passed through Kevin. He looked down at himself, suddenly saw all of the blinking black and red light. He said something which, though inaudible, was doubtless vile enough to blister paint. He followed it by saying, “Now wait just a second-OW!” Kevin grabbed at his buttocks, moved by the hand of the Almighty.

Then he bowed to the inevitable, bowed further, and toppled to the ice, dead. He glowed black and red in the snow, sprawled as if boneless, chest still heaving.

So. The kid gloves were off. The rules had changed, and now death was a very real possibility. They had lost two. Max looked down at himself, at the huge red stain across his midsection. Three?

The last monster fell. The Gamers leaned on their weapons, panting and gasping for breath… really heaving this time. Orson had dropped his weapon. He stood with hands braced on knees, giving himself over solely to panting. Kevin was on his back on the ice, eyes open to the sky, dead, breathing more easily now. Robin Bowles was.. gone.

This engagement had been more intense, had continued longer than any of the others. Red-faced and sweating in the snow, they stared at one another, counting. Only ten of them were left.

Snow Goose came out of hiding. Her eyes flicked to each of her companions, studying them: their breathing, their color. At last she stood over Kevin. He looked up at her. “Isn’t there anything you can do…

She turned away sorrowfully. “In this damned place, even the dead still speak. We must perform ceremony, or else this one will be awakened to life against us.”

“Ah-ceremony?” Kevin asked blankly.

“Oliver,” Snow Goose said solemnly, “we need your war club.”

“Now just a second-Ow!” Kevin was shocked back into silence.

Oliver appeared beside her, implement of destruction in hand. “All right. What is it that you need?”

“The head must be crushed, the arms and legs severed, or he will walk against us.”

“Wait just a cotton-picking-Ow! Will you stop-Ow!”

Snow Goose’s expression was mournful. “Truly, it is easier on the recently slain if they accept their new station gracefully.”

Kevin gritted his teeth and lay still. Max wasn’t watching Kevin. He was watching Oliver, who had stealthily made an adjustment on his war club. He had palmed one of the blades. An illusion now projected from the back of the war club, nasty and axelike.

“I don’t think the rest of you want to watch-” Snow Goose said. They gawked.

“Now wait just a-Ahhh!” Kevin said, mighty uncooperative for a corpse, as Oliver’s war club rose and fell, and the blade clove one of Kevin’s thin legs. The entire leg went black. Kevin stared at it. “Jesus Christ! Snow Goose? Ahh!”

The war club rose and fell again, and again, and now Kevin was armless and legless, basically a trunk murder victim still conscious enough to complain about it. He looked up at them, and sighed in resignation. “Ain’t life a bitch?”

The war club fell again. His head went black. Kevin muttered inaudible curses.

Snow Goose examined Max carefully. “You can be saved, but we must make ceremony for you.”

“Not like that, I hope to God.”

Despite herself, a grin touched her face. “No, I think we have something a little more peaceful for you.”

He tried to sit up. “Well, then, I-” A sharp shock made him lie back down again. “Let’s get on with it.”

She touched his chest with her fingertips. “No, I don’t think that you should try to get up and around, the strain could be fatal.” She turned to the others. “Stretchers! We need to move this man to a safe place!”

Several of the Adventurers dug into their backpacks, pulled out flexible shelter sections. and joined them into a makeshift stretcher.

It took five of them to carry him, and they didn’t have breath to complain. Trianna was the only woman, and she seemed as strong as Hebert. “I didn’t know cooking built that kind of muscle,” Max whispered.

She just gritted her teeth and kept going, bumpity bump.

The procession ended in a tumbled pile of slabs and blocks. It might conceivably have been a temple once, but not for any Inuit or other shamanic civilization that he could imagine.

The inside was covered with those oddly ominous symbols. Again, he had the feeling that the glyphs portrayed something important. The images were fascinating, but until they got some torches set up, it was too dark to see anything.

Snow Goose shucked her backpack and came to stand over him, hemming and hawing. “Well, Daddy said there’d be days like this.”

“Like what?”

“I’m going to have to perform a healing ceremony on you.”

“Have you done it before?”

“Only on a dog.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“The dog died.”

“On the other hand, modern miracle drugs-”

“Will avail you nothing-”

“Falling Angels stuff! Magic!”

“You have been injured by a headless one, an Amartoq. Without spiritual treatment you will die.” She turned and examined each Gamer in turn. “Any of you who have been wounded by the Amartoqs, come forward.”

Orson, Charlene, and Johnny Welsh stepped forward.

“You three, lie on the ground next to Max.”

“Not my idea of a dream date, but-” Johnny grumbled, but lay down.

Snow Goose rummaged in her pack, and after a few moments, pulled out a flat, twisted pear-shaped mask tufted with caribou hair. The mouth featured a rather surreal gap-toothed smile. One eye was closed almost to a slit. The nose seemed less a nose than a continuation of the deep eye-sockets. It was carved of some dark wood.