Peter sat at the counter beside the man in black, and unfurled the map across the wooden surface. It was unevenly scored down one side, not ripped, more like it had been haphazardly sliced with a blade. The material was slick, oily almost. The skin was a greyish-green, and the chart was yellowed by age. All along its border were tiny symbols that seemed to be a crude merging of the Old Martian tongue with other, simplistic languages, one of which was made up entirely of triangles and circles. He could pick out the familiar landmarks of Fort Ares and the surrounding region, with the classic treasure map, ‘X’ half-visible along the score and surrounded by a black ring that had been scratched into its surface. He could pick out that it was somewhere in the mountains a hundred or so miles north-east of the town, but it was not a straight route. It could not be. Too many impassible formations in the way, and without the other half, he could not immediately discern all the hazards that stood between here and there. He did know, however, that one man would be dead before he came even close to the goal.
