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[pg/etext03/mmars10.txt]
July, 1993 [Etext #72]
This etext was typed by Judy Boss, proofread by Charles Keller.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Carthoris and Thuvia . . . . . . . . 7
II Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
III Treachery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
IV A Green Man's Captive . . . . . . . 34
V The Fair Race . . . . . . . . . . . 45
VI The Jeddak of Lothar . . . . . . . . 59
VII The Phantom Bowmen . . . . . . . . . 68
VIII The Hall of Doom . . . . . . . . . . 78
IX The Battle in the Plain . . . . . . 89
X Kar Komak, the Bowman . . . . . . . 99
XI Green Men and White Apes . . . . . . 109
XII To Save Dusar . . . . . . . . . . . 121
XIII Turjun, the Panthan . . . . . . . . 130
XIV Kulan Tith's Sacrifice . . . . . . . 141
Glossary of Names and Terms . . . . 153
THUVIA, MAID OF MARS
CHAPTER I
CARTHORIS AND THUVIA
Upon a massive bench of polished ersite beneath
the gorgeous blooms of a giant pimalia a woman sat.
Her shapely, sandalled foot tapped impatiently upon the
jewel-strewn walk that wound beneath the stately sorapus
trees across the scarlet sward of the royal gardens of
Thuvan Dihn, Jeddak of Ptarth, as a dark-haired, red-
skinned warrior bent low toward her, whispering heated
words close to her ear.
"Ah, Thuvia of Ptarth," he cried, "you are cold
even before the fiery blasts of my consuming love!
No harder than your heart, nor colder is the hard,
cold ersite of this thrice happy bench which supports
your divine and fadeless form! Tell me, O Thuvia of
Ptarth, that I may still hope--that though you do not
love me now, yet some day, some day, my princess, I--"
The girl sprang to her feet with an exclamation of
surprise and displeasure. Her queenly head was poised
haughtily upon her smooth red shoulders. Her dark eyes
looked angrily into those of the man.
"You forget yourself, and the customs of Barsoom, Astok,"
she said. "I have given you no right thus to address
the daughter of Thuvan Dihn, nor have you won such a right."
The man reached suddenly forth and grasped her by the arm.
"You shall be my princess!" he cried. "By the breast of
Issus, thou shalt, nor shall any other come between Astok,
Prince of Dusar, and his heart's desire. Tell me that
there is another, and I shall cut out his foul heart and
fling it to the wild calots of the dead sea-bottoms!"
At touch of the man's hand upon her flesh the girl
went pallid beneath her coppery skin, for the persons
of the royal women of the courts of Mars are held but
little less than sacred. The act of Astok, Prince of Dusar,
was profanation. There was no terror in the eyes of
Thuvia of Ptarth--only horror for the thing the man
had done and for its possible consequences.
"Release me." Her voice was level--frigid.
The man muttered incoherently and drew her roughly toward him.
"Release me!" she repeated sharply, "or I call the guard,
and the Prince of Dusar knows what that will mean."
Quickly he threw his right arm about her shoulders and
strove to draw her face to his lips. With a little cry
she struck him full in the mouth with the massive bracelets
that circled her free arm.
"Calot!" she exclaimed, and then: "The guard! The guard!
Hasten in protection of the Princess of Ptarth!"
In answer to her call a dozen guardsmen came racing
across the scarlet sward, their gleaming long-swords
naked in the sun, the metal of their accoutrements clanking
against that of their leathern harness, and in their throats
hoarse shouts of rage at the sight which met their eyes.
But before they had passed half across the royal garden
to where Astok of Dusar still held the struggling girl
in his grasp, another figure sprang from a cluster of
dense foliage that half hid a golden fountain close at
hand. A tall, straight youth he was, with black hair and
keen grey eyes; broad of shoulder and narrow of hip;
a clean-limbed fighting man. His skin was but faintly tinged
with the copper colour that marks the red men of Mars from
the other races of the dying planet--he was like them,
and yet there was a subtle difference greater even than
that which lay in his lighter skin and his grey eyes.
There was a difference, too, in his movements. He came on
in great leaps that carried him so swiftly over the ground
that the speed of the guardsmen was as nothing by comparison.
Astok still clutched Thuvia's wrist as the young warrior
confronted him. The new-comer wasted no time and he spoke
but a single word.
"Calot!" he snapped, and then his clenched fist
landed beneath the other's chin, lifting him high into the
air and depositing him in a crumpled heap within the
centre of the pimalia bush beside the ersite bench.
Her champion turned toward the girl. "Kaor, Thuvia of Ptarth!"
he cried. "It seems that fate timed my visit well."
"Kaor, Carthoris of Helium!" the princess returned the
young man's greeting, "and what less could one expect
of the son of such a sire?"
He bowed his acknowledgment of the compliment to
his father, John Carter, Warlord of Mars. And then the
guardsmen, panting from their charge, came up just as
the Prince of Dusar, bleeding at the mouth, and with
drawn sword, crawled from the entanglement of the pimalia.
Astok would have leaped to mortal combat with the son
of Dejah Thoris, but the guardsmen pressed about him,
preventing, though it was clearly evident that naught
would have better pleased Carthoris of Helium.
"But say the word, Thuvia of Ptarth," he begged,
"and naught will give me greater pleasure than meting to
this fellow the punishment he has earned."
"It cannot be, Carthoris," she replied. "Even though
he has forfeited all claim upon my consideration, yet is
he the guest of the jeddak, my father, and to him alone
may he account for the unpardonable act he has committed."
"As you say, Thuvia," replied the Heliumite. "But
afterward he shall account to Carthoris, Prince of Helium,
for this affront to the daughter of my father's friend."
As he spoke, though, there burned in his eyes a fire
that proclaimed a nearer, dearer cause for his championship
of this glorious daughter of Barsoom.
The maid's cheek darkened beneath the satin of her
transparent skin, and the eyes of Astok, Prince of Dusar,
darkened, too, as he read that which passed unspoken
between the two in the royal gardens of the jeddak.
"And thou to me," he snapped at Carthoris, answering
the young man's challenge.
The guard still surrounded Astok. It was a difficult
position for the young officer who commanded it.
His prisoner was the son of a mighty jeddak; he was
the guest of Thuvan Dihn--until but now an honoured
guest upon whom every royal dignity had been showered.
To arrest him forcibly could mean naught else than war,
and yet he had done that which in the eyes of the Ptarth
warrior merited death.
The young man hesitated. He looked toward his princess.
She, too, guessed all that hung upon the action of
the coming moment. For many years Dusar and Ptarth
had been at peace with each other. Their great merchant
ships plied back and forth between the larger cities of
the two nations. Even now, far above the gold-shot
scarlet dome of the jeddak's palace, she could see the
huge bulk of a giant freighter taking its majestic way
through the thin Barsoomian air toward the west and Dusar.
By a word she might plunge these two mighty nations
into a bloody conflict that would drain them of their
bravest blood and their incalculable riches, leaving them
all helpless against the inroads of their envious and
less powerful neighbors, and at last a prey to the savage
green hordes of the dead sea-bottoms.
No sense of fear influenced her decision, for fear is
seldom known to the children of Mars. It was rather a
sense of the responsibility that she, the daughter of their
jeddak, felt for the welfare of her father's people.
"I called you, Padwar," she said to the lieutenant of
the guard, "to protect the person of your princess,
and to keep the peace that must not be violated within the
royal gardens of the jeddak. That is all. You will escort
me to the palace, and the Prince of Helium will accompany me."
Without another glance in the direction of Astok she
turned, and taking Carthoris' proffered hand, moved
slowly toward the massive marble pile that housed the
ruler of Ptarth and his glittering court. On either side
marched a file of guardsmen. Thus Thuvia of Ptarth found
a way out of a dilemma, escaping the necessity of placing
her father's royal guest under forcible restraint,
and at the same time separating the two princes,
who otherwise would have been at each other's throat
the moment she and the guard had departed.
Beside the pimalia stood Astok, his dark eyes narrowed
to mere slits of hate beneath his lowering brows as he
watched the retreating forms of the woman who had aroused
the fiercest passions of his nature and the man whom he
now believed to be the one who stood between his love
and its consummation.
As they disappeared within the structure Astok
shrugged his shoulders, and with a murmured oath
crossed the gardens toward another wing of the
building where he and his retinue were housed.
That night he took formal leave of Thuvan Dihn, and
though no mention was made of the happening within
the garden, it was plain to see through the cold mask
of the jeddak's courtesy that only the customs of royal
hospitality restrained him from voicing the contempt he
felt for the Prince of Dusar.
Carthoris was not present at the leave-taking, nor was Thuvia.
The ceremony was as stiff and formal as court etiquette
could make it, and when the last of the Dusarians
clambered over the rail of the battleship that had
brought them upon this fateful visit to the court of Ptarth,
and the mighty engine of destruction had risen slowly
from the ways of the landing-stage, a note of relief
was apparent in the voice of Thuvan Dihn as he turned
to one of his officers with a word of comment upon a
subject foreign to that which had been uppermost in the
minds of all for hours.
But, after all, was it so foreign?
"Inform Prince Sovan," he directed, "that it is our
wish that the fleet which departed for Kaol this morning
be recalled to cruise to the west of Ptarth."
As the warship, bearing Astok back to the court of his
father, turned toward the west, Thuvia of Ptarth, sitting
upon the same bench where the Prince of Dusar had
affronted her, watched the twinkling lights of the craft
growing smaller in the distance. Beside her, in the
brilliant light of the nearer moon, sat Carthoris.
His eyes were not upon the dim bulk of the battleship,
but on the profile of the girl's upturned face.
"Thuvia," he whispered.
The girl turned her eyes toward his. His hand stole out
to find hers, but she drew her own gently away.
"Thuvia of Ptarth, I love you!" cried the young warrior.
"Tell me that it does not offend."
She shook her head sadly. "The love of Carthoris of
Helium," she said simply, "could be naught but an honour
to any woman; but you must not speak, my friend,
of bestowing upon me that which I may not reciprocate."
The young man got slowly to his feet. His eyes were
wide in astonishment. It never had occurred to the Prince
of Helium that Thuvia of Ptarth might love another.
"But at Kadabra!" he exclaimed. "And later here at
your father's court, what did you do, Thuvia of Ptarth,
that might have warned me that you could not return my love?"
"And what did I do, Carthoris of Helium," she returned,
"that might lead you to believe that I DID return it?"
He paused in thought, and then shook his head.
"Nothing, Thuvia, that is true; yet I could have
sworn you loved me. Indeed, you well knew how
near to worship has been my love for you."
"And how might I know it, Carthoris?" she asked innocently.
"Did you ever tell me as much? Ever before have words
of love for me fallen from your lips?"
"But you MUST have known it!" he exclaimed. "I am
like my father--witless in matters of the heart, and of a
poor way with women; yet the jewels that strew these
royal garden paths--the trees, the flowers, the sward--
all must have read the love that has filled my heart since
first my eyes were made new by imaging your perfect face
and form; so how could you alone have been blind to it?"
"Do the maids of Helium pay court to their men?" asked Thuvia.
"You are playing with me!" exclaimed Carthoris. "Say that
you are but playing, and that after all you love me, Thuvia!"
"I cannot tell you that, Carthoris, for I am promised to another."
Her tone was level, but was there not within it the
hint of an infinite depth of sadness? Who may say?
"Promised to another?" Carthoris scarcely breathed
the words. His face went almost white, and then his head
came up as befitted him in whose veins flowed the blood
of the overlord of a world.
"Carthoris of Helium wishes you every happiness with
the man of your choice," he said. "With--" and then
he hesitated, waiting for her to fill in the name.
"Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol," she replied. "My father's
friend and Ptarth's most puissant ally."
The young man looked at her intently for a moment
before he spoke again.
"You love him, Thuvia of Ptarth?" he asked.
"I am promised to him," she replied simply.
He did not press her. "He is of Barsoom's noblest blood
and mightiest fighters," mused Carthoris. "My father's
friend and mine--would that it might have been another!"
he muttered almost savagely. What the girl thought was
hidden by the mask of her expression, which was tinged
only by a little shadow of sadness that might have been
for Carthoris, herself, or for them both.
Carthoris of Helium did not ask, though he noted it,
for his loyalty to Kulan Tith was the loyalty of the
blood of John Carter of Virginia for a friend,
greater than which could be no loyalty.
He raised a jewel-encrusted bit of the girl's magnificent
trappings to his lips.
"To the honour and happiness of Kulan Tith and the
priceless jewel that has been bestowed upon him,"
he said, and though his voice was husky there was the true
ring of sincerity in it. "I told you that I loved you,
Thuvia, before I knew that you were promised to another.
I may not tell you it again, but I am glad that you know it,
for there is no dishonour in it either to you or to Kulan
Tith or to myself. My love is such that it may embrace
as well Kulan Tith--if you love him." There was almost
a question in the statement.
"I am promised to him," she replied.
Carthoris backed slowly away. He laid one hand upon
his heart, the other upon the pommel of his long-sword.
"These are yours--always," he said. A moment later he had
entered the palace, and was gone from the girl's sight.
Had he returned at once he would have found her prone
upon the ersite bench, her face buried in her arms.
Was she weeping? There was none to see.
Carthoris of Helium had come all unannounced to the
court of his father's friend that day. He had come alone
in a small flier, sure of the same welcome that always
awaited him at Ptarth. As there had been no formality
in his coming there was no need of formality in his going.
To Thuvan Dihn he explained that he had been but
testing an invention of his own with which his flier was
equipped--a clever improvement of the ordinary Martian
air compass, which, when set for a certain destination,
will remain constantly fixed thereon, making it only
necessary to keep a vessel's prow always in the direction
of the compass needle to reach any given point upon Barsoom
by the shortest route.
Carthoris' improvement upon this consisted of an
auxiliary device which steered the craft mechanically in
the direction of the compass, and upon arrival directly
over the point for which the compass was set, brought
the craft to a standstill and lowered it, also automatically,
to the ground.
"You readily discern the advantages of this invention,"
he was saying to Thuvan Dihn, who had accompanied
him to the landing-stage upon the palace roof to inspect
the compass and bid his young friend farewell.
A dozen officers of the court with several body servants
were grouped behind the jeddak and his guest,
eager listeners to the conversation--so eager on the
part of one of the servants that he was twice rebuked
by a noble for his forwardness in pushing himself
ahead of his betters to view the intricate mechanism of
the wonderful "controlling destination compass," as the
thing was called.
"For example," continued Carthoris, "I have an all-
night trip before me, as to-night. I set the pointer here
upon the right-hand dial which represents the eastern
hemisphere of Barsoom, so that the point rests upon
the exact latitude and longitude of Helium. Then I
start the engine, roll up in my sleeping silks and furs,
and with lights burning, race through the air toward
Helium, confident that at the appointed hour I shall drop
gently toward the landing-stage upon my own palace,
whether I am still asleep or no."
"Provided," suggested Thuvan Dihn, "you do not chance
to collide with some other night wanderer in the meanwhile."
Carthoris smiled. "No danger of that," he replied.
"See here," and he indicated a device at the right of the
destination compass. "This is my `obstruction evader,'
as I call it. This visible device is the switch which throws
the mechanism on or off. The instrument itself is below deck,
geared both to the steering apparatus and the control levers.
"It is quite simple, being nothing more than a radium
generator diffusing radio-activity in all directions to a
distance of a hundred yards or so from the flier. Should
this enveloping force be interrupted in any direction a
delicate instrument immediately apprehends the irregularity,
at the same time imparting an impulse to a magnetic device
which in turn actuates the steering mechanism, diverting
the bow of the flier away from the obstacle until the
craft's radio-activity sphere is no longer in contact
with the obstruction, then she falls once more into her
normal course. Should the disturbance approach from
the rear, as in case of a faster-moving craft overhauling me,
the mechanism actuates the speed control as well as the
steering gear, and the flier shoots ahead and either
up or down, as the oncoming vessel is upon a lower or
higher plane than herself.
"In aggravated cases, that is when the obstructions are many,
or of such a nature as to deflect the bow more than
forty-five degrees in any direction, or when the craft
has reached its destination and dropped to within
a hundred yards of the ground, the mechanism brings her
to a full stop, at the same time sounding a loud alarm
which will instantly awaken the pilot. You see I have
anticipated almost every contingency."
Thuvan Dihn smiled his appreciation of the marvellous device.
The forward servant pushed almost to the flier's side.
His eyes were narrowed to slits.
"All but one," he said.
The nobles looked at him in astonishment, and one
of them grasped the fellow none too gently by the
shoulder to push him back to his proper place.
Carthoris raised his hand.
"Wait," he urged. "Let us hear what the man has to
say--no creation of mortal mind is perfect. Perchance he
has detected a weakness that it will be well to know at
once. Come, my good fellow, and what may be the one
contingency I have overlooked?"
As he spoke Carthoris observed the servant closely for
the first time. He saw a man of giant stature and handsome,
as are all those of the race of Martian red men; but the
fellow's lips were thin and cruel, and across one cheek
was the faint, white line of a sword-cut from the
right temple to the corner of the mouth.
"Come," urged the Prince of Helium. "Speak!"
The man hesitated. It was evident that he regretted
the temerity that had made him the centre of interested
observation. But at last, seeing no alternative, he spoke.
"It might be tampered with," he said, "by an enemy."
Carthoris drew a small key from his leathern pocket-pouch.
"Look at this," he said, handing it to the man. "If you
know aught of locks, you will know that the mechanism which
this unlooses is beyond the cunning of a picker of locks.
It guards the vitals of the instrument from crafty tampering.
Without it an enemy must half wreck the device to reach its heart,
leaving his handiwork apparent to the most casual observer."
The servant took the key, glanced at it shrewdly, and
then as he made to return it to Carthoris dropped it upon
the marble flagging. Turning to look for it he planted the
sole of his sandal full upon the glittering object. For an
instant he bore all his weight upon the foot that covered
the key, then he stepped back and with an exclamation
as of pleasure that he had found it, stooped, recovered
it, and returned it to the Heliumite. Then he dropped
back to his station behind the nobles and was forgotten.
A moment later Carthoris had made his adieux to
Thuvan Dihn and his nobles, and with lights twinkling
had risen into the star-shot void of the Martian night.
CHAPTER II
SLAVERY
As the ruler of Ptarth, followed by his courtiers,
descended from the landing-stage above the palace,
the servants dropped into their places in the rear
of their royal or noble masters, and behind the others
one lingered to the last. Then quickly stooping
he snatched the sandal from his right foot, slipping
it into his pocket-pouch.
When the party had come to the lower levels, and the
jeddak had dispersed them by a sign, none noticed that
the forward fellow who had drawn so much attention to
himself before the Prince of Helium departed, was no
longer among the other servants.
To whose retinue he had been attached none had thought
to inquire, for the followers of a Martian noble
are many, coming and going at the whim of their master,
so that a new face is scarcely ever questioned, as the
fact that a man has passed within the palace walls is
considered proof positive that his loyalty to the jeddak
is beyond question, so rigid is the examination of each
who seeks service with the nobles of the court.
A good rule that, and only relaxed by courtesy in favour of
the retinue of visiting royalty from a friendly foreign power.
It was late in the morning of the next day that a giant
serving man in the harness of the house of a great Ptarth
noble passed out into the city from the palace gates.
Along one broad avenue and then another he strode briskly
until he had passed beyond the district of the nobles and
had come to the place of shops. Here he sought a pretentious
building that rose spire-like toward the heavens, its outer walls
elaborately wrought with delicate carvings and intricate mosaics.
It was the Palace of Peace in which were housed the
representatives of the foreign powers, or rather in
which were located their embassies; for the ministers
themselves dwelt in gorgeous palaces within the district
occupied by the nobles.
Here the man sought the embassy of Dusar. A clerk
arose questioningly as he entered, and at his request
to have a word with the minister asked his credentials.
The visitor slipped a plain metal armlet from above his elbow,
and pointing to an inscription upon its inner surface,
whispered a word or two to the clerk.
The latter's eyes went wide, and his attitude turned at
once to one of deference. He bowed the stranger to a seat,
and hastened to an inner room with the armlet in his hand.
A moment later he reappeared and conducted the caller into
the presence of the minister.
For a long time the two were closeted together, and when at
last the giant serving man emerged from the inner office his
expression was cast in a smile of sinister satisfaction.
From the Palace of Peace he hurried directly to the palace
of the Dusarian minister.
That night two swift fliers left the same palace top.
One sped its rapid course toward Helium; the other--
Thuvia of Ptarth strolled in the gardens of her father's palace,
as was her nightly custom before retiring. Her silks and furs
were drawn about her, for the air of Mars is chill after the
sun has taken his quick plunge beneath the planet's western verge.
The girl's thoughts wandered from her impending nuptials, that would
make her empress of Kaol, to the person of the trim young Heliumite
who had laid his heart at her feet the preceding day.
Whether it was pity or regret that saddened her expression
as she gazed toward the southern heavens where she had
watched the lights of his flier disappear the previous night,
it would be difficult to say.
So, too, is it impossible to conjecture just what her
emotions may have been as she discerned the lights of
a flier speeding rapidly out of the distance from that
very direction, as though impelled toward her garden
by the very intensity of the princess' thoughts.
She saw it circle lower above the palace until she was
positive that it but hovered in preparation for a landing.
Presently the powerful rays of its searchlight shot downward
from the bow. They fell upon the landing-stage for a brief
instant, revealing the figures of the Ptarthian guard,
picking into brilliant points of fire the gems upon their
gorgeous harnesses.
Then the blazing eye swept onward across the burnished
domes and graceful minarets, down into court and park
and garden to pause at last upon the ersite bench and
the girl standing there beside it, her face upturned full
toward the flier.
For but an instant the searchlight halted upon Thuvia
of Ptarth, then it was extinguished as suddenly as it had
come to life. The flier passed on above her to disappear
beyond a grove of lofty skeel trees that grew within the
palace grounds.
The girl stood for some time as it had left her, except
that her head was bent and her eyes downcast in thought.
Who but Carthoris could it have been? She tried to feel
anger that he should have returned thus, spying upon her;
but she found it difficult to be angry with the young
prince of Helium.
What mad caprice could have induced him so to transgress
the etiquette of nations? For lesser things great powers
had gone to war.
The princess in her was shocked and angered--but what of the girl!
And the guard--what of them? Evidently they, too,
had been so much surprised by the unprecedented action
of the stranger that they had not even challenged;
but that they had no thought to let the thing go unnoticed
was quickly evidenced by the skirring of motors upon
the landing-stage and the quick shooting airward of a
long-lined patrol boat.
Thuvia watched it dart swiftly eastward. So, too,
did other eyes watch.
Within the dense shadows of the skeel grove, in a
wide avenue beneath o'erspreading foliage, a flier hung a
dozen feet above the ground. From its deck keen eyes
watched the far-fanning searchlight of the patrol boat.
No light shone from the enshadowed craft. Upon its deck
was the silence of the tomb. Its crew of a half-dozen red
warriors watched the lights of the patrol boat diminishing
in the distance.
"The intellects of our ancestors are with us to-night,"
said one in a low tone.
"No plan ever carried better," returned another. "They
did precisely as the prince foretold."
He who had first spoken turned toward the man who
squatted before the control board.
"Now!" he whispered. There was no other order given.
Every man upon the craft had evidently been well schooled
in each detail of that night's work. Silently the dark hull
crept beneath the cathedral arches of the dark and silent grove.
Thuvia of Ptarth, gazing toward the east, saw the blacker blot
against the blackness of the trees as the craft topped the
buttressed garden wall. She saw the dim bulk incline gently
downward toward the scarlet sward of the garden.
She knew that men came not thus with honourable intent.
Yet she did not cry aloud to alarm the near-by guardsmen,
nor did she flee to the safety of the palace.
Why?
I can see her shrug her shapely shoulders in reply as she
voices the age-old, universal answer of the woman: Because!
Scarce had the flier touched the ground when four men
leaped from its deck. They ran forward toward the girl.
Still she made no sign of alarm, standing as though hypnotized.
Or could it have been as one who awaited a welcome visitor?
Not until they were quite close to her did she move.
Then the nearer moon, rising above the surrounding foliage,
touched their faces, lighting all with the brilliancy of her silver rays.
Thuvia of Ptarth saw only strangers--warriors in the
harness of Dusar. Now she took fright, but too late!
Before she could voice but a single cry, rough hands
seized her. A heavy silken scarf was wound about her
head. She was lifted in strong arms and borne to the deck
of the flier. There was the sudden whirl of propellers, the
rushing of air against her body, and, from far beneath the
shouting and the challenge from the guard.
Racing toward the south another flier sped toward Helium.
In its cabin a tall red man bent over the soft sole of an
upturned sandal. With delicate instruments he measured
the faint imprint of a small object which appeared there.
Upon a pad beside him was the outline of a key,
and here he noted the results of his measurements.
A smile played upon his lips as he completed his task and
turned to one who waited at the opposite side of the table.
"The man is a genius," he remarked.
"Only a genius could have evolved such a lock as this
is designed to spring. Here, take the sketch, Larok, and
give all thine own genius full and unfettered freedom
in reproducing it in metal."
The warrior-artificer bowed. "Man builds naught,"
he said, "that man may not destroy." Then he left the
cabin with the sketch.
As dawn broke upon the lofty towers which mark the twin cities
of Helium--the scarlet tower of one and the yellow tower of
its sister--a flier floated lazily out of the north.
Upon its bow was emblazoned the signia of a lesser noble
of a far city of the empire of Helium. Its leisurely
approach and the evident confidence with which it moved
across the city aroused no suspicion in the minds of the
sleepy guard. Their round of duty nearly done, they had little
thought beyond the coming of those who were to relieve them.
Peace reigned throughout Helium. Stagnant, emasculating
peace. Helium had no enemies. There was naught to fear.
Without haste the nearest air patrol swung sluggishly
about and approached the stranger. At easy speaking
distance the officer upon her deck hailed the incoming craft.
The cheery "Kaor!" and the plausible explanation that the
owner had come from distant parts for a few days of pleasure
in gay Helium sufficed. The air-patrol boat sheered off,
passing again upon its way. The stranger continued toward
a public landing-stage, where she dropped into the ways
and came to rest.
At about the same time a warrior entered her cabin.
"It is done, Vas Kor," he said, handing a small metal
key to the tall noble who had just risen from his sleeping
silks and furs.
"Good!" exclaimed the latter. "You must have worked
upon it all during the night, Larok."
The warrior nodded.
"Now fetch me the Heliumetic metal you wrought some
days since," commanded Vas Kor.
This done, the warrior assisted his master to replace
the handsome jewelled metal of his harness with the
plainer ornaments of an ordinary fighting man of Helium,
and with the insignia of the same house that appeared
upon the bow of the flier.
Vas Kor breakfasted on board. Then he emerged upon
the aerial dock, entered an elevator, and was borne quickly
to the street below, where he was soon engulfed by the early
morning throng of workers hastening to their daily duties.
Among them his warrior trappings were no more remarkable
than is a pair of trousers upon Broadway. All Martian men
are warriors, save those physically unable to bear arms.
The tradesman and his clerk clank with their martial
trappings as they pursue their vocations. The schoolboy,
coming into the world, as he does, almost adult from the
snowy shell that has encompassed his development for five
long years, knows so little of life without a sword at his
hip that he would feel the same discomfiture at going abroad
unarmed that an Earth boy would experience in walking the
streets knicker-bockerless.
Vas Kor's destination lay in Greater Helium, which lies
some seventy-five miles across the level plain from Lesser
Helium. He had landed at the latter city because the air
patrol is less suspicious and alert than that above the
larger metropolis where lies the palace of the jeddak.
As he moved with the throng in the parklike canyon of
the thoroughfare the life of an awakening Martian city
was in evidence about him. Houses, raised high upon their
slender metal columns for the night were dropping gently
toward the ground. Among the flowers upon the scarlet sward
which lies about the buildings children were already playing,
and comely women laughing and chatting with their neighbours as
they culled gorgeous blossoms for the vases within doors.
The pleasant "kaor" of the Barsoomian greeting fell
continually upon the ears of the stranger as friends and
neighbours took up the duties of a new day.
The district in which he had landed was residential--a
district of merchants of the more prosperous sort.
Everywhere were evidences of luxury and wealth.
Slaves appeared upon every housetop with gorgeous silks
and costly furs, laying them in the sun for airing.
Jewel-encrusted women lolled even thus early upon the carven
balconies before their sleeping apartments. Later in the day
they would repair to the roofs when the slaves had arranged
couches and pitched silken canopies to shade them from the sun.
Strains of inspiring music broke pleasantly from open windows,
for the Martians have solved the problem of attuning the
nerves pleasantly to the sudden transition from sleep to
waking that proves so difficult a thing for most Earth folk.
Above him raced the long, light passenger fliers, plying,
each in its proper plane, between the numerous landing-
stages for internal passenger traffic. Landing-stages that
tower high into the heavens are for the great international
passenger liners. Freighters have other landing-stages at
various lower levels, to within a couple of hundred feet
of the ground; nor dare any flier rise or drop from one
plane to another except in certain restricted districts where
horizontal traffic is forbidden.
Along the close-cropped sward which paves the avenue ground
fliers were moving in continuous lines in opposite directions.
For the greater part they skimmed along the surface of the sward,
soaring gracefully into the air at times to pass over a
slower-going driver ahead, or at intersections, where the
north and south traffic has the right of way and the east
and west must rise above it.
From private hangars upon many a roof top fliers were
darting into the line of traffic. Gay farewells and parting
admonitions mingled with the whirring of motors and
the subdued noises of the city.
Yet with all the swift movement and the countless
thousands rushing hither and thither, the predominant
suggestion was that of luxurious ease and soft noiselessness.
Martians dislike harsh, discordant clamour. The only
loud noises they can abide are the martial sounds of war,
the clash of arms, the collision of two mighty dreadnoughts
of the air. To them there is no sweeter music than this.
At the intersection of two broad avenues Vas Kor descended
from the street level to one of the great pneumatic
stations of the city. Here he paid before a little wicket
the fare to his destination with a couple of the dull,
oval coins of Helium.
Beyond the gatekeeper he came to a slowly moving
line of what to Earthly eyes would have appeared to be
conical-nosed, eight-foot projectiles for some giant gun.
In slow procession the things moved in single file along
a grooved track. A half dozen attendants assisted passengers
to enter, or directed these carriers to their proper destination.
Vas Kor approached one that was empty. Upon its nose was
a dial and a pointer. He set the pointer for a certain
station in Greater Helium, raised the arched lid of
the thing, stepped in and lay down upon the upholstered
bottom. An attendant closed the lid, which locked with a
little click, and the carrier continued its slow way.
Presently it switched itself automatically to another track,
to enter, a moment later, one of the series of dark- mouthed tubes.
The instant that its entire length was within the black
aperture it sprang forward with the speed of a rifle ball.
There was an instant of whizzing--a soft, though sudden,
stop, and slowly the carrier emerged upon another platform,
another attendant raised the lid and Vas Kor stepped out at
the station beneath the centre of Greater Helium,
seventy-five miles from the point at which he had embarked.
Here he sought the street level, stepping immediately
into a waiting ground flier. He spoke no word to the slave
sitting in the driver's seat. It was evident that he had
been expected, and that the fellow had received his instructions
before his coming.
Scarcely had Vas Kor taken his seat when the flier
went quickly into the fast-moving procession, turning
presently from the broad and crowded avenue into a
less congested street. Presently it left the thronged
district behind to enter a section of small shops, where it
stopped before the entrance to one which bore the sign
of a dealer in foreign silks.
Vas Kor entered the low-ceiling room. A man at the
far end motioned him toward an inner apartment, giving
no further sign of recognition until he had passed in
after the caller and closed the door.
Then he faced his visitor, saluting deferentially.
"Most noble--" he commenced, but Vas Kor silenced
him with a gesture.
"No formalities," he said. "We must forget that I
am aught other than your slave. If all has been as
carefully carried out as it has been planned, we have no
time to waste. Instead we should be upon our way to the
slave market. Are you ready?"
The merchant nodded, and, turning to a great chest,
produced the unemblazoned trappings of a slave. These
Vas Kor immediately donned. Then the two passed from
the shop through a rear door, traversed a winding alley
to an avenue beyond, where they entered a flier which
awaited them.
Five minutes later the merchant was leading his slave
to the public market, where a great concourse of people
filled the great open space in the centre of which stood
the slave block.
The crowds were enormous to-day, for Carthoris,
Prince of Helium, was to be the principal bidder.
One by one the masters mounted the rostrum beside
the slave block upon which stood their chattels.
Briefly and clearly each recounted the virtues of
his particular offering.
When all were done, the major-domo of the Prince of Helium
recalled to the block such as had favourably impressed him.
For such he had made a fair offer.
There was little haggling as to price, and none at all
when Vas Kor was placed upon the block. His merchant-
master accepted the first offer that was made for him, and
thus a Dusarian noble entered the household of Carthoris.
CHAPTER III
TREACHERY
The day following the coming of Vas Kor to the
palace of the Prince of Helium great excitement reigned
throughout the twin cities, reaching its climax in the
palace of Carthoris. Word had come of the abduction of
Thuvia of Ptarth from her father's court, and with it the
veiled hint that the Prince of Helium might be suspected
of considerable knowledge of the act and the whereabouts
of the princess.
In the council chamber of John Carter, Warlord of
Mars, was Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium; Mors Kajak,
his son, Jed of Lesser Helium; Carthoris, and a score of
the great nobles of the empire.
"There must be no war between Ptarth and Helium, my son,"
said John Carter. "That you are innocent of the charge
that has been placed against you by insinuation, we well know;
but Thuvan Dihn must know it well, too.
"There is but one who may convince him, and that
one be you. You must hasten at once to the court of
Ptarth, and by your presence there as well as by your
words assure him that his suspicions are groundless.
Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom,
and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the
allied powers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter
and punish her abductors, whomsoever they may be.
"Go! I know that I do not need to urge upon you the
necessity for haste."
Carthoris left the council chamber, and hastened to his palace.
Here slaves were busy in a moment setting things to
rights for the departure of their master. Several worked
about the swift flier that would bear the Prince of Helium
rapidly toward Ptarth.
At last all was done. But two armed slaves remained
on guard. The setting sun hung low above the horizon.
In a moment darkness would envelop all.
One of the guardsmen, a giant of a fellow across whose
right cheek there ran a thin scar from temple to mouth,
approached his companion. His gaze was directed beyond
and above his comrade. When he had come quite close he spoke.
"What strange craft is that?" he asked.
The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward.
Scarce was his back turned toward the giant than the
short-sword of the latter was plunged beneath his left
shoulder blade, straight through his heart.
Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks--stone dead.
Quickly the murderer dragged the corpse into the black
shadows within the hangar. Then he returned to the flier.
Drawing a cunningly wrought key from his pocket-pouch,
he removed the cover of the right-hand dial of the
controlling destination compass. For a moment he
studied the construction of the mechanism beneath.
Then he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer,
and removed it again to note the resultant change in the
position of the parts affected by the act.
A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he
snipped off the projection which extended through the
dial from the external pointer--now the latter might be
moved to any point upon the dial without affecting the
mechanism below. In other words, the eastern hemisphere
dial was useless.
Now he turned his attention to the western dial.
This he set upon a certain point. Afterward he removed
the cover of this dial also, and with keen tool cut the
steel finger from the under side of the pointer.
As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial
cover, and resumed his place on guard. To all intents
and purposes the compass was as efficient as before; but,
as a matter of fact, the moving of the pointers upon
the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift of the
mechanism beneath--and the device was set, immovably,
upon a destination of the slave's own choosing.
Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful
of his gentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the
single slave who stood guard. The fellow's thin, cruel
lips, and the sword-cut that ran from temple to mouth
aroused the suggestion of an unpleasant memory within him.
He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man-- then the
matter faded from his thoughts, and in another moment
the Prince of Helium was laughing and chatting with
his companions, though below the surface his heart
was cold with dread, for what contingencies
confronted Thuvia of Ptarth he could not even guess.
First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought
that Astok of Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but
almost simultaneously with the report of the abduction had
come news of the great fetes at Dusar in honour of the
return of the jeddak's son to the court of his father.
It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the
very night that Thuvia was taken Astok had been in
Dusar, and yet--
He entered the flier, exchanging casual remarks with his
companions as he unlocked the mechanism of the compass
and set the pointer upon the capital city of Ptarth.
With a word of farewell he touched the button which
controlled the repulsive rays, and as the flier rose lightly
into the air, the engine purred in answer to the touch of
his finger upon a second button, the propellers whirred
as his hand drew back the speed lever, and Carthoris,
Prince of Helium, was off into the gorgeous Martian night
beneath the hurtling moons and the million stars.
Scarce had the flier found its speed ere the man,
wrapping his sleeping silks and furs about him,
stretched at full length upon the narrow deck to sleep.
But sleep did not come at once at his bidding.
Instead, his thoughts ran riot in his brain, driving sleep away.
He recalled the words of Thuvia of Ptarth, words that had half
assured him that she loved him; for when he had asked her if she
loved Kulan Tith, she had answered only that she was promised to him.
Now he saw that her reply was open to more than a
single construction. It might, of course, mean that
she did not love Kulan Tith; and so, by inference,
be taken to mean that she loved another.
But what assurance was there that the other was Carthoris of Helium?
The more he thought upon it the more positive he
became that not only was there no assurance in her words
that she loved him, but none either in any act of hers.
No, the fact was, she did not love him. She loved another.
She had not been abducted--she had fled willingly with her lover.
With such pleasant thoughts filling him alternately with
despair and rage, Carthoris at last dropped into the
sleep of utter mental exhaustion.
The breaking of the sudden dawn found him still asleep.
His flier was rushing swiftly above a barren, ochre
plain--the world-old bottom of a long-dead Martian sea.
In the distance rose low hills. Toward these the craft
was headed. As it approached them, a great promontory
might have been seen from its deck, stretching out into
what had once been a mighty ocean, and circling back
once more to enclose the forgotten harbour of a forgotten
city, which still stretched back from its deserted quays,
an imposing pile of wondrous architecture of a long-dead past.
The countless dismal windows, vacant and forlorn,
stared, sightless, from their marble walls; the whole
sad city taking on the semblance of scattered mounds of
dead men's sun-bleached skulls--the casements having the
appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, grinning jaws.
Closer came the flier, but now its speed was
diminishing--yet this was not Ptarth.
Above the central plaza it stopped, slowly settling Marsward.
Within a hundred yards of the ground it came to rest,
floating gently in the light air, and at the same instant
an alarm sounded at the sleeper's ear.
Carthoris sprang to his feet. Below him he looked to
see the teeming metropolis of Ptarth. Beside him,
already, there should have been an air patrol.
He gazed about in bewildered astonishment. There indeed
was a great city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes
surged through its broad avenues. No signs of life
broke the dead monotony of its deserted roof tops.
No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lent life and
colour to the cold marble and the gleaming ersite.
No patrol boat lay ready with its familiar challenge.
Silent and empty lay the great city--empty and silent
the surrounding air.
What had happened?
Carthoris examined the dial of his compass. The pointer
was set upon Ptarth. Could the creature of his genius
have thus betrayed him? He would not believe it.
Quickly he unlocked the cover, turning it back upon
its hinge. A single glance showed him the truth, or at
least a part of it--the steel projection that communicated
the movement of the pointer upon the dial to the heart
of the mechanism beneath had been severed.
Who could have done the thing--and why?
Carthoris could not hazard even a faint guess. But the
thing now was to learn in what portion of the world he
was, and then take up his interrupted journey once more.
If it had been the purpose of some enemy to delay him,
he had succeeded well, thought Carthoris, as he
unlocked the cover of the second dial the first having
shown that its pointer had not been set at all.
Beneath the second dial he found the steel pin severed
as in the other, but the controlling mechanism had first
been set for a point upon the western hemisphere.
He had just time to judge his location roughly at
some place south-west of Helium, and at a considerable
distance from the twin cities, when he was startled by a
woman's scream beneath him.
Leaning over the side of the flier, he saw what appeared
to be a red woman being dragged across the plaza by a
huge green warrior--one of those fierce, cruel denizens
of the dead sea-bottoms and deserted cities of dying Mars.
Carthoris waited to see no more. Reaching for the
control board, he sent his craft racing plummet-like
toward the ground.
The green man was hurrying his captive toward a
huge thoat that browsed upon the ochre vegetation of
the once scarlet-gorgeous plaza. At the same instant a
dozen red warriors leaped from the entrance of a nearby
ersite palace, pursuing the abductor with naked swords
and shouts of rageful warning.
Once the woman turned her face upward toward the falling flier,
and in the single swift glance Carthoris saw that it was
Thuvia of Ptarth!
CHAPTER IV
A GREEN MAN'S CAPTIVE
When the light of day broke upon the little craft to
whose deck the Princess of Ptarth had been snatched
from her father's garden, Thuvia saw that the night had
wrought a change in her abductors.
No longer did their trappings gleam with the metal of Dusar,
but instead there was emblazoned there the insignia of the
Prince of Helium.
The girl felt renewed hope, for she could not believe that
in the heart of Carthoris could lie intent to harm her.
She spoke to the warrior squatting before the control board.
"Last night you wore the trappings of a Dusarian,"
she said. "Now your metal is that of Helium.
What means it?"
The man looked at her with a grin.
"The Prince of Helium is no fool," he said.
Just then an officer emerged from the tiny cabin. He
reprimanded the warrior for conversing with the prisoner,
nor would he himself reply to any of her inquiries.
No harm was offered her during the journey, and so
they came at last to their destination with the girl no
wiser as to her abductors or their purpose than at first.
Here the flier settled slowly into the plaza of one of
those mute monuments of Mars' dead and forgotten past--
the deserted cities that fringe the sad ochre sea-bottoms
where once rolled the mighty floods upon whose bosoms moved
the maritime commerce of the peoples that are gone for ever.
Thuvia of Ptarth was no stranger to such places.
During her wanderings in search of the River Iss,
that time she had set out upon what, for countless ages,
had been the last, long pilgrimage of Martians, toward
the Valley Dor, where lies the Lost Sea of Korus,
she had encountered several of these sad reminders
of the greatness and the glory of ancient Barsoom.
And again, during her flight from the temples of the
Holy Therns with Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, she had
seen them, with their weird and ghostly inmates, the
great white apes of Barsoom.
She knew, too, that many of them were used now by
the nomadic tribes of green men, but that among them
all was no city that the red men did not shun, for without
exception they stood amidst vast, waterless tracts,
unsuited for the continued sustenance of the dominant
race of Martians.
Why, then, should they be bringing her to such a place?
There was but a single answer. Such was the nature
of their work that they must needs seek the seclusion
that a dead city afforded. The girl trembled at thought
of her plight.
For two days her captors kept her within a huge palace
that even in decay reflected the splendour of the age
which its youth had known.
Just before dawn on the third day she had been aroused
by the voices of two of her abductors.
"He should be here by dawn," one was saying. "Have her
in readiness upon the plaza--else he will never land.
The moment he finds that he is in a strange country
he will turn about--methinks the prince's plan is weak
in this one spot."
"There was no other way," replied the other. "It is
wondrous work to get them both here at all, and even
if we do not succeed in luring him to the ground,
we shall have accomplished much."
Just then the speaker caught the eyes of Thuvia upon him,
revealed by the quick-moving patch of light cast by Thuria
in her mad race through the heavens.
With a quick sign to the other, he ceased speaking,
and advancing toward the girl, motioned her to rise.
Then he led her out into the night toward the centre
of the great plaza.
"Stand here," he commanded, "until we come for you.
We shall be watching, and should you attempt to escape
it will go ill with you--much worse than death.
Such are the prince's orders."
Then he turned and retraced his steps toward the palace,
leaving her alone in the midst of the unseen terrors of
the haunted city, for in truth these places are haunted
in the belief of many Martians who still cling to an ancient
superstition which teaches that the spirits of Holy Therns
who die before their allotted one thousand years, pass,
on occasions, into the bodies of the great white apes.
To Thuvia, however, the real danger of attack by one
of these ferocious, manlike beasts was quite sufficient.
She no longer believed in the weird soul transmigration
that the therns had taught her before she was rescued
from their clutches by John Carter; but she well knew the
horrid fate that awaited her should one of the terrible
beasts chance to spy her during its nocturnal prowlings.
What was that?
Surely she could not be mistaken. Something had moved,
stealthily, in the shadow of one of the great monoliths
that line the avenue where it entered the plaza opposite her!
Thar Ban, jed among the hordes of Torquas, rode
swiftly across the ochre vegetation of the dead sea-
bottom toward the ruins of ancient Aaanthor.
He had ridden far that night, and fast, for he had but
come from the despoiling of the incubator of a neighbouring
green horde with which the hordes of Torquas were
perpetually warring.
His giant thoat was far from jaded, yet it would be
well, thought Thar Ban, to permit him to graze upon
the ochre moss which grows to greater height within the
protected courtyards of deserted cities, where the soil is
richer than on the sea-bottoms, and the plants partly
shaded from the sun during the cloudless Martian day.
Within the tiny stems of this dry-seeming plant is
sufficient moisture for the needs of the huge bodies of
the mighty thoats, which can exist for months without
water, and for days without even the slight moisture
which the ochre moss contains.
As Thar Ban rode noiselessly up the broad avenue
which leads from the quays of Aaanthor to the great
central plaza, he and his mount might have been mistaken
for spectres from a world of dreams, so grotesque the man
and beast, so soundless the great thoat's padded, nailless
feet upon the moss-grown flagging of the ancient pavement.
The man was a splendid specimen of his race. Fully
fifteen feet towered his great height from sole to pate.
The moonlight glistened against his glossy green hide,
sparkling the jewels of his heavy harness and the ornaments
that weighted his four muscular arms, while the
upcurving tusks that protruded from his lower jaw
gleamed white and terrible.
At the side of his thoat were slung his long radium
rifle and his great, forty-foot, metal-shod spear, while
from his own harness depended his long-sword and his
short-sword, as well as his lesser weapons.
His protruding eyes and antennae-like ears were turning
constantly hither and thither, for Thar Ban was yet
in the country of the enemy, and, too, there was always
the menace of the great white apes, which, John Carter
was wont to say, are the only creatures that can arouse
in the breasts of these fierce denizens of the dead
sea-bottoms even the remotest semblance of fear.
As the rider neared the plaza, he reined suddenly in.
His slender, tubular ears pointed rigidly forward.
An unwonted sound had reached them. Voices! And where
there were voices, outside of Torquas, there, too,
were enemies. All the world of wide Barsoom contained
naught but enemies for the fierce Torquasians.
Thar Ban dismounted. Keeping in the shadows of the
great monoliths that line the Avenue of Quays of sleeping
Aaanthor, he approached the plaza. Directly behind him,
as a hound at heel, came the slate-grey thoat, his white
belly shadowed by his barrel, his vivid yellow feet merging
into the yellow of the moss beneath them.
In the centre of the plaza Thar Ban saw the figure
of a red woman. A red warrior was conversing with
her. Now the man turned and retraced his steps toward
the palace at the opposite side of the plaza.
Thar Ban watched until he had disappeared within
the yawning portal. Here was a captive worth having!
Seldom did a female of their hereditary enemies fall to
the lot of a green man. Thar Ban licked his thin lips.
Thuvia of Ptarth watched the shadow behind the monolith at
the opening to the avenue opposite her. She hoped that it
might be but the figment of an overwrought imagination.
But no! Now, clearly and distinctly, she saw it move.
It came from behind the screening shelter of the ersite shaft.
The sudden light of the rising sun fell upon it.
The girl trembled. The THING was a huge green warrior!
Swiftly it sprang toward her. She screamed and tried
to flee; but she had scarce turned toward the palace when
a giant hand fell upon her arm, she was whirled about,
and half dragged, half carried toward a huge thoat
that was slowly grazing out of the avenue's mouth
on to the ochre moss of the plaza.
At the same instant she turned her face upward toward
the whirring sound of something above her, and there
she saw a swift flier dropping toward her, the head
and shoulders of a man leaning far over the side;
but the man's features were deeply shadowed, so that
she did not recognize them.
Now from behind her came the shouts of her red abductors.
They were racing madly after him who dared to steal what
they already had stolen.
As Thar Ban reached the side of his mount he snatched
his long radium rifle from its boot, and, wheeling,
poured three shots into the oncoming red men.
Such is the uncanny marksmanship of these Martian
savages that three red warriors dropped in their tracks
as three projectiles exploded in their vitals.
The others halted, nor did they dare return the fire
for fear of wounding the girl.
Then Thar Ban vaulted to the back of his thoat, Thuvia of Ptarth
still in his arms, and with a savage cry of triumph disappeared
down the black canyon of the Avenue of Quays between the sullen
palaces of forgotten Aaanthor.
Carthoris' flier had not touched the ground before he
had sprung from its deck to race after the swift thoat,
whose eight long legs were sending it down the avenue
at the rate of an express train; but the men of Dusar
who still remained alive had no mind to permit so valuable
a capture to escape them.
They had lost the girl. That would be a difficult thing
to explain to Astok; but some leniency might be expected
could they carry the Prince of Helium to their
master instead.
So the three who remained set upon Carthoris with
their long-swords, crying to him to surrender; but they
might as successfully have cried aloud to Thuria to
cease her mad hurtling through the Barsoomian sky, for
Carthoris of Helium was a true son of the Warlord of Mars
and his incomparable Dejah Thoris.
Carthoris' long-sword had been already in his hand
as he leaped from the deck of the flier, so the instant
that he realized the menace of the three red warriors,
he wheeled to face them, meeting their onslaught as only
John Carter himself might have done.
So swift his sword, so mighty and agile his half-earthly
muscles, that one of his opponents was down, crimsoning
the ochre moss with his life-blood, when he had scarce
made a single pass at Carthoris.
Now the two remaining Dusarians rushed simultaneously
upon the Heliumite. Three long-swords clashed and
sparkled in the moonlight, until the great white apes,
roused from their slumbers, crept to the lowering windows
of the dead city to view the bloody scene beneath them.
Thrice was Carthoris touched, so that the red blood
ran down his face, blinding him and dyeing his broad
chest. With his free hand he wiped the gore from his
eyes, and with the fighting smile of his father touching
his lips, leaped upon his antagonists with renewed fury.
A single cut of his heavy sword severed the head of
one of them, and then the other, backing away clear of
that point of death, turned and fled toward the palace
at his back.
Carthoris made no step to pursue. He had other concern
than the meting of even well-deserved punishment to strange
men who masqueraded in the metal of his own house,
for he had seen that these men were tricked out in
the insignia that marked his personal followers.
Turning quickly toward his flier, he was soon rising
from the plaza in pursuit of Thar Ban.
The red warrior whom he had put to flight turned in the
entrance to the palace, and, seeing Carthoris' intent,
snatched a rifle from those that he and his fellows
had left leaning against the wall as they had rushed out
with drawn swords to prevent the theft of their prisoner.
Few red men are good shots, for the sword is their
chosen weapon; so now as the Dusarian drew bead upon
the rising flier, and touched the button upon his rifle's
stock, it was more to chance than proficiency that he
owed the partial success of his aim.
The projectile grazed the flier's side, the opaque
coating breaking sufficiently to permit daylight to
strike in upon the powder phial within the bullet's nose.
There was a sharp explosion. Carthoris felt his craft reel
drunkenly beneath him, and the engine stopped.
The momentum the air boat had gained carried her on
over the city toward the sea-bottom beyond.
The red warrior in the plaza fired several more shots,
none of which scored. Then a lofty minaret shut the
drifting quarry from his view.
In the distance before him Carthoris could see the
green warrior bearing Thuvia of Ptarth away upon his
mighty thoat. The direction of his flight was toward
the north-west of Aaanthor, where lay a mountainous
country little known to red men.
The Heliumite now gave his attention to his injured craft.
A close examination revealed the face that one of the
buoyancy tanks had been punctured, but the engine
itself was uninjured.
A splinter from the projectile had damaged one of
the control levers beyond the possibility of repair
outside a machine shop; but after considerable tinkering,
Carthoris was able to propel his wounded flier at low
speed, a rate which could not approach the rapid gait
of the thoat, whose eight long, powerful legs carried it
over the ochre vegetation of the dead sea-bottom at
terrific speed.
The Prince of Helium chafed and fretted at the slowness
of his pursuit, yet he was thankful that the damage
was no worse, for now he could at least move more
rapidly than on foot.
But even this meagre satisfaction was soon to be denied
him, for presently the flier commenced to sag toward
the port and by the bow. The damage to the buoyancy
tanks had evidently been more grievous than he had at
first believed.
All the balance of that long day Carthoris crawled
erratically through the still air, the bow of the flier
sinking lower and lower, and the list to port becoming more
and more alarming, until at last, near dark, he was floating
almost bowdown, his harness buckled to a heavy
deck ring to keep him from being precipitated to the
ground below.
His forward movement was now confined to a slow drifting
with the gentle breeze that blew out of the south-east,
and when this died down with the setting of the sun,
he let the flier sink gently to the mossy carpet beneath.
Far before him loomed the mountains toward which
the green man had been fleeing when last he had seen
him, and with dogged resolution the son of John Carter,
endowed with the indomitable will of his mighty sire,
took up the pursuit on foot.
All that night he forged ahead until, with the dawning
of a new day, he entered the low foothills that guard
the approach to the fastness of the mountains of Torquas.
Rugged, granitic walls towered before him. Nowhere
could he discern an opening through the formidable
barrier; yet somewhere into this inhospitable world
of stone the green warrior had borne the woman of
the red man's heart's desire.
Across the yielding moss of the sea-bottom there had
been no spoor to follow, for the soft pads of the thoat
but pressed down in his swift passage the resilient
vegetation which sprang up again behind his fleeting
feet, leaving no sign.
But here in the hills, where loose rock occasionally
strewed the way; where black loam and wild flowers
partially replaced the sombre monotony of the waste
places of the lowlands, Carthoris hoped to find some
sign that would lead him in the right direction.
Yet, search as he would, the baffling mystery of the
trail seemed likely to remain for ever unsolved.
It was drawing toward the day's close once more when
the keen eyes of the Heliumite discerned the tawny
yellow of a sleek hide moving among the boulders
several hundred yards to his left.
Crouching quickly behind a large rock, Carthoris
watched the thing before him. It was a huge banth,
one of those savage Barsoomian lions that roam the
desolate hills of the dying planet.
The creature's nose was close to the ground. It was
evident that he was following the spoor of meat by scent.
As Carthoris watched him, a great hope leaped into
the man's heart. Here, possibly, might lie the solution
to the mystery he had been endeavouring to solve. This
hungry carnivore, keen always for the flesh of man,
might even now be trailing the two whom Carthoris sought.
Cautiously the youth crept out upon the trail of the
man-eater. Along the foot of the perpendicular cliff the
creature moved, sniffing at the invisible spoor, and now
and then emitting the low moan of the hunting banth.
Carthoris had followed the creature for but a few
minutes when it disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously
as though dissolved into thin air.
The man leaped to his feet. Not again was he to be
cheated as the man had cheated him. He sprang forward
at a reckless pace to the spot at which he last had
seen the great, skulking brute.
Before him loomed the sheer cliff, its face unbroken
by any aperture into which the huge banth might have
wormed its great carcass. Beside him was a small, flat
boulder, not larger than the deck of a ten-man flier, nor
standing to a greater height than twice his own stature.
Perhaps the banth was in hiding behind this? The brute
might have discovered the man upon his trail, and even
now be lying in wait for his easy prey.
Cautiously, with drawn long-sword, Carthoris crept
around the corner of the rock. There was no banth
there, but something which surprised him infinitely more
than would the presence of twenty banths.
Before him yawned the mouth of a dark cave leading
downward into the ground. Through this the banth must
have disappeared. Was it his lair? Within its dark and
forbidding interior might there not lurk not one but many
of the fearsome creatures?
Carthoris did not know, nor, with the thought that had
been spurring him onward upon the trail of the creature
uppermost in his mind, did he much care; for into this
gloomy cavern he was sure the banth had trailed the
green man and his captive, and into it he, too, would
follow, content to give his life in the service of the
woman he loved.
Not an instant did he hesitate, nor yet did he
advance rashly; but with ready sword and cautious steps,
for the way was dark, he stole on. As he advanced,
the obscurity became impenetrable blackness.
CHAPTER V
THE FAIR RACE
Downward along a smooth, broad floor led the strange tunnel,
for such Carthoris was now convinced was the nature of the
shaft he at first had thought but a cave.
Before him he could hear the occasional low moans of the banth,
and presently from behind came a similar uncanny note.
Another banth had entered the passageway on HIS trail!
His position was anything but pleasant. His eyes could
not penetrate the darkness even to the distinguishing of
his hand before his face, while the banths, he knew,
could see quite well, though absence of light were utter.
No other sounds came to his ears than the dismal, bloodthirsty
moanings of the beast ahead and the beast behind.
The tunnel had led straight, from where he had entered
it beneath the side of the rock furthest from the
unscaleable cliffs, toward the mighty barrier that had
baffled him so long.
Now it was running almost level, and presently he
noted a gradual ascent.
The beast behind him was gaining upon him, crowding him
perilously close upon the heels of the beast in front.
Presently he should have to do battle with one, or both.
More firmly he gripped his weapon.
Now he could hear the breathing of the banth at his heels.
Not for much longer could he delay the encounter.
Long since he had become assured that the tunnel led
beneath the cliffs to the opposite side of the barrier,
and he had hoped that he might reach the moonlit open before
being compelled to grapple with either of the monsters.
The sun had been setting as he entered the tunnel,
and the way had been sufficiently long to assure him
that darkness now reigned upon the world without.
He glanced behind him. Blazing out of the darkness,
seemingly not ten paces behind, glared two flaming points
of fire. As the savage eyes met his, the beast emitted a
frightful roar and then he charged.
To face that savage mountain of onrushing ferocity,
to stand unshaken before the hideous fangs that he knew
were bared in slavering blood-thirstiness, though he
could not see them, required nerves of steel; but of
such were the nerves of Carthoris of Helium.
He had the brute's eyes to guide his point, and, as true
as the sword hand of his mighty sire, his guided the
keen point to one of those blazing orbs, even as he leaped
lightly to one side.
With a hideous scream of pain and rage, the wounded
banth hurtled, clawing, past him. Then it turned to charge
once more; but this time Carthoris saw but a single
gleaming point of fiery hate directed upon him.
Again the needle point met its flashing target. Again
the horrid cry of the stricken beast reverberated through
the rocky tunnel, shocking in its torture-laden shrillness,
deafening in its terrific volume.
But now, as it turned to charge again,
the man had no guide whereby to direct his point.
He heard the scraping of the padded feet upon the rocky floor.
He knew the thing was charging down upon him once again,
but he could see nothing.
Yet, if he could not see his antagonist, neither could
his antagonist now see him.
Leaping, as he thought, to the exact centre of the tunnel,
he held his sword point ready on a line with the
beast's chest. It was all that he could do, hoping that
chance might send the point into the savage heart as he
went down beneath the great body.
So quickly was the thing over that Carthoris could
scarce believe his senses as the mighty body rushed
madly past him. Either he had not placed himself in the
centre of the tunnel, or else the blinded banth had
erred in its calculations.
However, the huge body missed him by a foot,
and the creature continued on down the tunnel as
though in pursuit of the prey that had eluded him.
Carthoris, too, followed the same direction, nor was it
long before his heart was gladdened by the sight of the
moonlit exit from the long, dark passage.
Before him lay a deep hollow, entirely surrounded by
gigantic cliffs. The surface of the valley was dotted with
enormous trees, a strange sight so far from a Martian waterway.
The ground itself was clothed in brilliant scarlet sward,
picked out with innumerable patches of gorgeous wild flowers.
Beneath the glorious effulgence of the two moons the
scene was one of indescribable loveliness, tinged with the
weirdness of strange enchantment.
For only an instant, however, did his gaze rest upon
the natural beauties outspread before him. Almost
immediately they were riveted upon the figure of a great
banth standing across the carcass of a new-killed thoat.
The huge beast, his tawny mane bristling around his
hideous head, kept his eyes fixed upon another banth that
charged erratically hither and thither, with shrill screams
of pain, and horrid roars of hate and rage.
Carthoris quickly guessed that the second brute was
the one he had blinded during the fight in the tunnel,
but it was the dead thoat that centred his interest more
than either of the savage carnivores.
The harness was still upon the body of the huge Martian mount,
and Carthoris could not doubt but that this was the very
animal upon which the green warrior had borne away
Thuvia of Ptarth.
But where were the rider and his prisoner? The Prince
of Helium shuddered as he thought upon the probability
of the fate that had overtaken them.
Human flesh is the food most craved by the fierce
Barsoomian lion, whose great carcass and giant thews
require enormous quantities of meat to sustain them.
Two human bodies would have but whetted the creature's appetite,
and that he had killed and eaten the green man and the red girl
seemed only too likely to Carthoris. He had left the carcass
of the mighty thoat to be devoured after having consumed the
more tooth-some portion of his banquet.
Now the sightless banth, in its savage, aimless charging
and counter-charging, had passed beyond the kill of its fellow,
and there the light breeze that was blowing wafted the scent
of new blood to its nostrils.
No longer were its movements erratic. With outstretched
tail and foaming jaws it charged straight as an arrow,
for the body of the thoat and the mighty creature of
destruction that stood with forepaws upon the slate-grey
side, waiting to defend its meat.
When the charging banth was twenty paces from the dead
thoat the killer gave vent to its hideous challenge,
and with a mighty spring leaped forward to meet it.
The battle that ensued awed even the warlike Barsoomian.
The mad rending, the hideous and deafening roaring,
the implacable savagery of the blood-stained
beasts held him in the paralysis of fascination, and when
it was over and the two creatures, their heads and shoulders
torn to ribbons, lay with their dead jaws still buried
in each other's bodies, Carthoris tore himself from the
spell only by an effort of the will.
Hurrying to the side of the dead thoat, he searched for
traces of the girl he feared had shared the thoat's fate,
but nowhere could he discover anything to confirm his fears.
With slightly lightened heart he started out to explore
the valley, but scarce a dozen steps had he taken when
the glistening of a jewelled bauble lying on the sward
caught his eye.
As he picked it up his first glance showed him that it
was a woman's hair ornament, and emblazoned upon it
was the insignia of the royal house of Ptarth.
But, sinister discovery, blood, still wet, splotched the
magnificent jewels of the setting.
Carthoris half choked as the dire possibilities which
the thing suggested presented themselves to his imagination.
Yet he could not, would not believe it.
It was impossible that that radiant creature could have
met so hideous an end. It was incredible that the glorious
Thuvia should ever cease to be.
Upon his already jewel-encrusted harness, to the strap
that crossed his great chest beneath which beat his loyal
heart, Carthoris, Prince of Helium, fastened the gleaming
thing that Thuvia of Ptarth had worn, and wearing, had made
holy to the Heliumite.
Then he proceeded upon his way into the heart of the
unknown valley.
For the most part the giant trees shut off his view
to any but the most limited distances. Occasionally he
caught glimpses of the towering hills that bounded the
valley upon every side, and though they stood out clear
beneath the light of the two moons, he knew that they
were far off, and that the extent of the valley was immense.
For half the night he continued his search, until
presently he was brought to a sudden halt by the
distant sound of squealing thoats.
Guided by the noise of these habitually angry beasts, he
stole forward through the trees until at last he came upon
a level, treeless plain, in the centre of which a mighty city
reared its burnished domes and vividly coloured towers.
About the walled city the red man saw a huge encampment
of the green warriors of the dead sea-bottoms, and as
he let his eyes rove carefully over the city he realized
that here was no deserted metropolis of a dead past.
But what city could it be? His studies had taught him
that in this little-explored portion of Barsoom the fierce
tribe of Torquasian green men ruled supreme, and that
as yet no red man had succeeded in piercing to the heart
of their domain to return again to the world of civilization.
The men of Torquas had perfected huge guns with
which their uncanny marksmanship had permitted them
to repulse the few determined efforts that near-by red
nations had made to explore their country by means of
battle fleets of airships.
That he was within the boundary of Torquas, Carthoris
was sure, but that there existed there such a wondrous
city he never had dreamed, nor had the chronicles of the
past even hinted at such a possibility, for the Torquasians
were known to live, as did the other green men of
Mars, within the deserted cities that dotted the dying
planet, nor ever had any green horde built so much as a
single edifice, other than the low-walled incubators where
their young are hatched by the sun's heat.
The encircling camp of green warriors lay about five
hundred yards from the city's walls. Between it and the
city was no semblance of breastwork or other protection
against rifle or cannon fire; yet distinctly now in the light
of the rising sun Carthoris could see many figures moving
along the summit of the high wall, and upon the roof tops beyond.
That they were beings like himself he was sure, though
they were at too great distance from him for him to be
positive that they were red men.
Almost immediately after sunrise the green warriors
commenced firing upon the little figures upon the wall.
To Carthoris' surprise the fire was not returned,
but presently the last of the city's inhabitants had sought
shelter from the weird marksmanship of the green men,
and no further sign of life was visible beyond the wall.
Then Carthoris, keeping within the shelter of the
trees that fringed the plain, began circling the rear of the
besiegers' line, hoping against hope that somewhere he
would obtain sight of Thuvia of Ptarth, for even now he
could not believe that she was dead.
That he was not discovered was a miracle, for mounted warriors
were constantly riding back and forth from the camp into the forest;
but the long day wore on and still he continued his seemingly
fruitless quest, until, near sunset, he came opposite a mighty gate
in the city's western wall.
Here seemed to be the principal force of the attacking horde.
Here a great platform had been erected whereon Carthoris could
see squatting a huge green warrior, surrounded by others of his kind.
This, then, must be the notorious Hortan Gur, Jeddak of Torquas,
the fierce old ogre of the south-western hemisphere, as only for
a jeddak are platforms raised in temporary camps or upon the
march by the green hordes of Barsoom.
As the Heliumite watched he saw another green warrior
push his way forward toward the rostrum. Beside him
he dragged a captive, and as the surrounding warriors
parted to let the two pass, Carthoris caught a fleeting
glimpse of the prisoner.
His heart leaped in rejoicing. Thuvia of Ptarth still lived!
It was with difficulty that Carthoris restrained the
impulse to rush forward to the side of the Ptarthian
princess; but in the end his better judgment prevailed,
for in the face of such odds he knew that he should have
been but throwing away, uselessly, any future opportunity
he might have to succour her.
He saw her dragged to the foot of the rostrum.
He saw Hortan Gur address her. He could not hear
the creature's words, nor Thuvia's reply; but it must
have angered the green monster, for Carthoris saw him
leap toward the prisoner, striking her a cruel blow
across the face with his metal-banded arm.
Then the son of John Carter, Jeddak of Jeddaks,
Warlord of Barsoom, went mad. The old, blood-red haze
through which his sire had glared at countless foes,
floated before his eyes.
His half-Earthly muscles, responding quickly to his will,
sent him in enormous leaps and bounds toward the green
monster that had struck the woman he loved.
The Torquasians were not looking in the direction of
the forest. All eyes had been upon the figures of the
girl and their jeddak, and loud was the hideous laughter
that rang out in appreciation of the wit of the green
emperor's reply to his prisoner's appeal for liberty.
Carthoris had covered about half the distance between
the forest and the green warriors, when a new factor
succeeded in still further directing the attention of
the latter from him.
Upon a high tower within the beleaguered city a man appeared.
From his upturned mouth there issued a series of frightful shrieks;
uncanny shrieks that swept, shrill and terrifying, across the
city's walls, over the heads of the besiegers, and out across
the forest to the uttermost confines of the valley.
Once, twice, thrice the fearsome sound smote upon the
ears of the listening green men and then far, far off
across the broad woods came sharp and clear from the
distance an answering shriek.
It was but the first. From every point rose similar
savage cries, until the world seemed to tremble to their
reverberations.
The green warriors looked nervously this way and that.
They knew not fear, as Earth men may know it; but in
the face of the unusual their wonted self-assurance
deserted them.
And then the great gate in the city wall opposite the
platform of Hortan Gur swung suddenly wide. From it
issued as strange a sight as Carthoris ever had witnessed,
though at the moment he had time to cast but a single
fleeting glance at the tall bowmen emerging through the
portal behind their long, oval shields; to note their
flowing auburn hair; and to realize that the growling
things at their side were fierce Barsoomian lions.
Then he was in the midst of the astonished Torquasians.
With drawn long-sword he was among them, and to
Thuvia of Ptarth, whose startled eyes were the first to
fall upon him, it seemed that she was looking upon John
Carter himself, so strangely similar to the fighting of the
father was that of the son.
Even to the famous fighting smile of the Virginian
was the resemblance true. And the sword arm!
Ah, the subtleness of it, and the speed!
All about was turmoil and confusion. Green warriors were
leaping to the backs of their restive, squealing thoats.
Calots were growling out their savage gutturals,
whining to be at the throats of the oncoming foemen.
Thar Ban and another by the side of the rostrum had
been the first to note the coming of Carthoris, and it
was with them he battled for possession of the red girl,
while the others hastened to meet the host advancing
from the beleaguered city.
Carthoris sought both to defend Thuvia of Ptarth and
reach the side of the hideous Hortan Gur that he might
avenge the blow the creature had struck the girl.
He succeeded in reaching the rostrum, over the dead
bodies of two warriors who had turned to join Thar Ban
and his companion in repulsing this adventurous red man,
just as Hortan Gur was about to leap from it to the
back of his thoat.
The attention of the green warriors turned principally
upon the bowmen advancing upon them from the city,
and upon the savage banths that paced beside them--
cruel beasts of war, infinitely more terrible than their
own savage calots.
As Carthoris leaped to the rostrum he drew Thuvia
up beside him, and then he turned upon the departing
jeddak with an angry challenge and a sword thrust.
As the Heliumite's point pricked his green hide, Hortan
Gur turned upon his adversary with a snarl, but at the
same instant two of his chieftains called to him to hasten,
for the charge of the fair-skinned inhabitants of the city
was developing into a more serious matter than the
Torquasians had anticipated.
Instead of remaining to battle with the red man,
Hortan Gur promised him his attention after he had
disposed of the presumptuous citizens of the walled city,
and, leaping astride his thoat, galloped off to meet the
rapidly advancing bowmen.
The other warriors quickly followed their jeddak,
leaving Thuvia and Carthoris alone upon the platform.
Between them and the city raged a terrific battle. The
fair-skinned warriors, armed only with their long bows
and a kind of short-handled war-axe, were almost helpless
beneath the savage mounted green men at close quarters;
but at a distance their sharp arrows did fully as much
execution as the radium projectiles of the green men.
But if the warriors themselves were outclassed, not so
their savage companions, the fierce banths. Scarce had the
two lines come together when hundreds of these appalling
creatures had leaped among the Torquasians, dragging warriors
from their thoats--dragging down the huge thoats themselves,
and bringing consternation to all before them.
The numbers of the citizenry, too, was to their advantage,
for it seemed that scarce a warrior fell but his
place was taken by a score more, in such a constant
stream did they pour from the city's great gate.
And so it came, what with the ferocity of the banths
and the numbers of the bowmen, that at last the
Torquasians fell back, until presently the platform upon
which stood Carthoris and Thuvia lay directly in the
centre of the fight.
That neither was struck by a bullet or an arrow seemed
a miracle to both; but at last the tide had rolled
completely past them, so that they were alone between the
fighters and the city, except for the dying and the dead,
and a score or so of growling banths, less well trained
than their fellows, who prowled among the corpses
seeking meat.
To Carthoris the strangest part of the battle had
been the terrific toll taken by the bowmen with their
relatively puny weapons. Nowhere that he could see
was there a single wounded green man, but the corpses
of their dead lay thick upon the field of battle.
Death seemed to follow instantly the slightest pinprick
of a bowman's arrow, nor apparently did one ever miss
its goal. There could be but one explanation: the missiles
were poison-tipped.
Presently the sounds of conflict died in the distant forest.
Quiet reigned, broken only by the growling of the devouring banths.
Carthoris turned toward Thuvia of Ptarth. As yet neither had spoken.
"Where are we, Thuvia?" he asked.
The girl looked at him questioningly. His very presence
had seemed to proclaim a guilty knowledge of her abduction.
How else might he have known the destination of the flier
that brought her!
"Who should know better than the Prince of Helium?"
she asked in return. "Did he not come hither of his own
free will?"
"From Aaanthor I came voluntarily upon the trail of
the green man who had stolen you, Thuvia," he replied;
"but from the time I left Helium until I awoke above
Aaanthor I thought myself bound for Ptarth.
"It had been intimated that I had guilty knowledge of
your abduction," he explained simply, "and I was hastening
to the jeddak, your father, to convince him of the falsity
of the charge, and to give my service to your recovery.
Before I left Helium some one tampered with my compass,
so that it bore me to Aaanthor instead of to Ptarth.
That is all. You believe me?"
"But the warriors who stole me from the garden!" she
exclaimed. "After we arrived at Aaanthor they wore the
metal of the Prince of Helium. When they took me they
were trapped in Dusarian harness. There seemed but a
single explanation. Whoever dared the outrage wished
to put the onus upon another, should he be detected in
the act; but once safely away from Ptarth he felt safe in
having his minions return to their own harness."
"You believe that I did this thing, Thuvia?" he asked.
"Ah, Carthoris," she replied sadly, "I did not wish to
believe it; but when everything pointed to you--even
then I would not believe it."
"I did not do it, Thuvia," he said. "But let me be
entirely honest with you. As much as I love your father,
as much as I respect Kulan Tith, to whom you are betrothed,
as well as I know the frightful consequences that must
have followed such an act of mine, hurling into war, as it
would, three of the greatest nations of Barsoom--yet,
notwithstanding all this, I should not have hesitated to
take you thus, Thuvia of Ptarth, had you even hinted
that it would not have displeased YOU.
"But you did nothing of the kind, and so I am here,
not in my own service, but in yours, and in the service
of the man to whom you are promised, to save you for him,
if it lies within the power of man to do so," he concluded,
almost bitterly.
Thuvia of Ptarth looked into his face for several moments.
Her breast was rising and falling as though to some
resistless emotion. She half took a step toward him.
Her lips parted as though to speak--swiftly and impetuously.
And then she conquered whatever had moved her.
"The future acts of the Prince of Helium," she said coldly,
"must constitute the proof of his past honesty of purpose."
Carthoris was hurt by the girl's tone, as much as by
the doubt as to his integrity which her words implied.
He had half hoped that she might hint that his love
would be acceptable--certainly there was due him at least
a little gratitude for his recent acts in her behalf;
but the best he received was cold scepticism.
The Prince of Helium shrugged his broad shoulders.
The girl noted it, and the little smile that touched
his lips, so that it became her turn to be hurt.
Of course she had not meant to hurt him. He might
have known that after what he had said she could not do
anything to encourage him! But he need not have made
his indifference quite so palpable. The men of Helium
were noted for their gallantry--not for boorishness.
Possibly it was the Earth blood that flowed in his veins.
How could she know that the shrug was but Carthoris'
way of attempting, by physical effort, to cast blighting
sorrow from his heart, or that the smile upon his lips
was the fighting smile of his father with which the son
gave outward evidence of the determination he had
reached to submerge his own great love in his efforts to
save Thuvia of Ptarth for another, because he believed
that she loved this other!
He reverted to his original question.
"Where are we?" he asked. "I do not know."
"Nor I," replied the girl. "Those who stole me from
Ptarth spoke among themselves of Aaanthor, so that I
thought it possible that the ancient city to which they
took me was that famous ruin; but where we may be now
I have no idea."
"When the bowmen return we shall doubtless learn all
that there is to know," said Carthoris. "Let us hope that
they prove friendly. What race may they be? Only in the
most ancient of our legends and in the mural paintings of
the deserted cities of the dead sea-bottoms are depicted
such a race of auburn-haired, fair-skinned people. Can it
be that we have stumbled upon a surviving city of the
past which all Barsoom believes buried beneath the ages?"
Thuvia was looking toward the forest into which the
green men and the pursuing bowmen had disappeared.
From a great distance came the hideous cries of banths,
and an occasional shot.
"It is strange that they do not return," said the girl.
"One would expect to see the wounded limping or being carried
back to the city," replied Carthoris, with a puzzled frown.
"But how about the wounded nearer the city?
Have they carried them within?"
Both turned their eyes toward the field between them and
the walled city, where the fighting had been most furious.
There were the banths, still growling about their hideous feast.
Carthoris looked at Thuvia in astonishment. Then he pointed
toward the field.
"Where are they?" he whispered. "WHAT HAS BECOME
OF THEIR DEAD AND WOUNDED?"
CHAPTER VI
THE JEDDAK OF LOTHAR
The girl looked her incredulity.
"They lay in piles," she murmured. "There were thousands
of them but a minute ago."
"And now," continued Carthoris, "there remain but the
banths and the carcasses of the green men."
"They must have sent forth and carried the dead bowmen
away while we were talking," said the girl.
"It is impossible!" replied Carthoris. "Thousands of
dead lay there upon the field but a moment since. It would
have required many hours to have removed them. The
thing is uncanny."
"I had hoped," said Thuvia, "that we might find an
asylum with these fair-skinned people. Notwithstanding
their valour upon the field of battle, they did not strike
me as a ferocious or warlike people. I had been about
to suggest that we seek entrance to the city, but now I
scarce know if I care to venture among people whose
dead vanish into thin air."
"Let us chance it," replied Carthoris. "We can be no
worse off within their walls than without. Here we may
fall prey to the banths or the no less fierce Torquasians.
There, at least, we shall find beings moulded after
our own images.
"All that causes me to hesitate," he added, "is the
danger of taking you past so many banths. A single
sword would scarce prevail were even a couple of
them to charge simultaneously."
"Do not fear on that score," replied the girl, smiling.
"The banths will not harm us."
As she spoke she descended from the platform, and
with Carthoris at her side stepped fearlessly out upon the
bloody field in the direction of the walled city of mystery.
They had advanced but a short distance when a banth,
looking up from its gory feast, descried them. With an
angry roar the beast walked quickly in their direction,
and at the sound of its voice a score of others followed
its example.
Carthoris drew his long-sword. The girl stole a quick
glance at his face. She saw the smile upon his lips,
and it was as wine to sick nerves; for even upon warlike
Barsoom where all men are brave, woman reacts quickly to
quiet indifference to danger--to dare-deviltry that is
without bombast.
"You may return your sword," she said. "I told you
that the banths would not harm us. Look!" and as she
spoke she stepped quickly toward the nearest animal.
Carthoris would have leaped after her to protect her,
but with a gesture she motioned him back. He heard her
calling to the banths in a low, singsong voice that
was half purr.
Instantly the great heads went up and all the
wicked eyes were riveted upon the figure of the girl.
Then, stealthily, they commenced moving toward her.
She had stopped now and was standing waiting them.
One, closer to her than the others, hesitated. She spoke to
him imperiously, as a master might speak to a refractory hound.
The great carnivore let its head droop, and with tail
between its legs came slinking to the girl's feet,
and after it came the others until she was entirely
surrounded by the savage maneaters.
Turning she led them to where Carthoris stood.
They growled a little as they neared the man, but a
few sharp words of command put them in their places.
"How do you do it?" exclaimed Carthoris.
"Your father once asked me that same question in the
galleries of the Golden Cliffs within the Otz Mountains,
beneath the temples of the therns. I could not answer him,
nor can I answer you. I do not know whence comes my power
over them, but ever since the day that Sator Throg threw
me among them in the banth pit of the Holy Therns,
and the great creatures fawned upon instead of devouring me,
I ever have had the same strange power over them.
They come at my call and do my bidding, even as the
faithful Woola does the bidding of your mighty sire."
With a word the girl dispersed the fierce pack. Roaring,
they returned to their interrupted feast, while Carthoris
and Thuvia passed among them toward the walled city.
As they advanced the man looked with wonder upon
the dead bodies of those of the green men that had not
been devoured or mauled by the banths.
He called the girl's attention to them. No arrows
protruded from the great carcasses. Nowhere upon any of
them was the sign of mortal wound, nor even slightest
scratch or abrasion.
Before the bowmen's dead had disappeared the corpses
of the Torquasians had bristled with the deadly arrows
of their foes. Where had the slender messengers
of death departed? What unseen hand had plucked them
from the bodies of the slain?
Despite himself Carthoris could scarce repress a shudder
of apprehension as he glanced toward the silent city
before them. No longer was sign of life visible upon wall
or roof top. All was quiet--brooding, ominous quiet.
Yet he was sure that eyes watched them from somewhere
behind that blank wall.
He glanced at Thuvia. She was advancing with wide eyes
fixed upon the city gate. He looked in the direction
of her gaze, but saw nothing.
His gaze upon her seemed to arouse her as from a lethargy.
She glanced up at him, a quick, brave smile touching
her lips, and then, as though the act was involuntary,
she came close to his side and placed one of her hands in his.
He guessed that something within her that was beyond her
conscious control was appealing to him for protection.
He threw an arm about her, and thus they crossed the field.
She did not draw away from him. It is doubtful that
she realized that his arm was there, so engrossed
was she in the mystery of the strange city before them.
They stopped before the gate. It was a mighty thing.
From its construction Carthoris could but dimly
speculate upon its unthinkable antiquity.
It was circular, closing a circular aperture, and the
Heliumite knew from his study of ancient Barsoomian
architecture that it rolled to one side, like a huge wheel,
into an aperture in the wall.
Even such world-old cities as ancient Aaanthor were as
yet undreamed of when the races lived that built such
gates as these.
As he stood speculating upon the identity of this
forgotten city, a voice spoke to them from above.
Both looked up. There, leaning over the edge of
the high wall, was a man.
His hair was auburn, his skin fair--fairer even than
that of John Carter, the Virginian. His forehead was
high, his eyes large and intelligent.
The language that he used was intelligible to the two
below, yet there was a marked difference between it and
their Barsoomian tongue.
"Who are you?" he asked. "And what do you here
before the gate of Lothar?"
"We are friends," replied Carthoris. "This be the
princess, Thuvia of Ptarth, who was captured by the
Torquasian horde. I am Carthoris of Helium, Prince of
the house of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium, and son of
John Carter, Warlord of Mars, and of his wife, Dejah Thoris."
"`Ptarth'?" repeated the man. "`Helium'?" He shook
his head. "I never have heard of these places, nor
did I know that there dwelt upon Barsoom a race of thy
strange colour. Where may these cities lie, of which
you speak? From our loftiest tower we have never seen
another city than Lothar."
Carthoris pointed toward the north-east.
"In that direction lie Helium and Ptarth," he said.
"Helium is over eight thousand haads from Lothar, while
Ptarth lies nine thousand five hundred haads north-east
of Helium." <1
<1 On Barsoom the AD is the basis of linear measurement.
It is the equivalent of an Earthly foot, measuring about 11.694
Earth inches. As has been my custom in the past, I have generally
translated Barsoomian symbols of time, distance, etc., into their
Earthly equivalent, as being more easily understood by Earth
readers. For those of a more studious turn of mind it may be
interesting to know the Martian table of linear measurement, and
so I give it here:
10 sofads = 1 ad
200 ads = 1 haad
100 haads = 1 karad
360 karads = 1 circumference of Mars at equator.
A haad, or Barsoomian mile, contains about 2,339 Earth feet.
A karad is one degree. A sofad about 1.17 Earth inches.
Still the man shook his head.
"I know of nothing beyond the Lotharian hills," he said.
"Naught may live there beside the hideous green hordes of Torquas.
They have conquered all Barsoom except this single valley and
the city of Lothar. Here we have defied them for countless ages,
though periodically they renew their attempts to destroy us.
From whence you come I cannot guess unless you be descended
from the slaves the Torquasians captured in early times when
they reduced the outer world to their vassalage; but we had
heard that they destroyed all other races but their own."
Carthoris tried to explain that the Torquasians ruled
but a relatively tiny part of the surface of Barsoom, and
even this only because their domain held nothing to attract
the red race; but the Lotharian could not seem to
conceive of anything beyond the valley of Lothar other
than a trackless waste peopled by the ferocious green
hordes of Torquas.
After considerably parleying he consented to admit
them to the city, and a moment later the wheel-like gate
rolled back within its niche, and Thuvia and Carthoris
entered the city of Lothar.
All about them were evidences of fabulous wealth. The
facades of the buildings fronting upon the avenue within
the wall were richly carven, and about the windows and
doors were ofttimes set foot-wide borders of precious
stones, intricate mosaics, or tablets of beaten gold bearing
bas-reliefs depicting what may have been bits of the
history of this forgotten people.
He with whom they had conversed across the wall was
in the avenue to receive them. About him were a hundred
or more men of the same race. All were clothed in
flowing robes and all were beardless.
Their attitude was more of fearful suspicion than antagonism.
They followed the new-comers with their eyes; but spoke no word to them.
Carthoris could not but notice the fact that though the
city had been but a short time before surrounded by a
horde of bloodthirsty demons yet none of the citizens
appeared to be armed, nor was there sign of soldiery about.
He wondered if all the fighting men had sallied forth in one
supreme effort to rout the foe, leaving the city all unguarded.
He asked their host.
The man smiled.
"No creature other than a score or so of our sacred
banths has left Lothar to-day," he replied.
"But the soldiers--the bowmen!" exclaimed Carthoris.
"We saw thousands emerge from this very gate,
overwhelming the hordes of Torquas and putting them
to rout with their deadly arrows and their fierce banths."
Still the man smiled his knowing smile.
"Look!" he cried, and pointed down a broad avenue before him.
Carthoris and Thuvia followed the direction indicated,
and there, marching bravely in the sunlight, they saw
advancing toward them a great army of bowmen.
"Ah!" exclaimed Thuvia. "They have returned through another gate,
or perchance these be the troops that remained to defend the city?"
Again the fellow smiled his uncanny smile.
"There are no soldiers in Lothar," he said. "Look!"
Both Carthoris and Thuvia had turned toward him while he spoke,
and now as they turned back again toward the advancing regiments
their eyes went wide in astonishment, for the broad avenue before
them was as deserted as the tomb.
"And those who marched out upon the hordes to-day?" whispered Carthoris.
"They, too, were unreal?"
The man nodded.
"But their arrows slew the green warriors," insisted Thuvia.
"Let us go before Tario," replied the Lotharian.
"He will tell you that which he deems it best you know.
I might tell you too much."
"Who is Tario?" asked Carthoris.
"Jeddak of Lothar," replied the guide, leading them
up the broad avenue down which they had but a moment
since seen the phantom army marching.
For half an hour they walked along lovely avenues between
the most gorgeous buildings that the two had ever seen.
Few people were in evidence. Carthoris could not but
note the deserted appearance of the mighty city.
At last they came to the royal palace. Carthoris saw
it from a distance, and guessing the nature of the
magnificent pile wondered that even here there should
be so little sign of activity and life.
Not even a single guard was visible before the great
entrance gate, nor in the gardens beyond, into which he
could see, was there sign of the myriad life that pulses
within the precincts of the royal estates of the red jeddaks.
"Here," said their guide, "is the palace of Tario."
As he spoke Carthoris again let his gaze rest upon the
wondrous palace. With a startled exclamation he rubbed
his eyes and looked again. No! He could not be mistaken.
Before the massive gate stood a score of sentries. Within,
the avenue leading to the main building was lined on either
side by ranks of bowmen. The gardens were dotted
with officers and soldiers moving quickly to and fro,
as though bent upon the duties of the minute.
What manner of people were these who could conjure
an army out of thin air? He glanced toward Thuvia.
She, too, evidently had witnessed the transformation.
With a little shudder she pressed more closely toward him.
"What do you make of it?" she whispered. "It is most uncanny."
"I cannot account for it," replied Carthoris, "unless we
have gone mad."
Carthoris turned quickly toward the Lotharian. The fellow
was smiling broadly.
"I thought that you just said that there were no soldiers
in Lothar," said the Heliumite, with a gesture toward
the guardsmen. "What are these?"
"Ask Tario," replied the other. "We shall soon be before him."
Nor was it long before they entered a lofty chamber
at one end of which a man reclined upon a rich couch
that stood upon a high dais.
As the trio approached, the man turned dreamy eyes
sleepily upon them. Twenty feet from the dais their
conductor halted, and, whispering to Thuvia and Carthoris
to follow his example, threw himself headlong to the floor.
Then rising to hands and knees, he commenced crawling
toward the foot of the throne, swinging his head to
and fro and wiggling his body as you have seen a hound
do when approaching its master.
Thuvia glanced quickly toward Carthoris. He was
standing erect, with high-held head and arms folded
across his broad chest. A haughty smile curved his lips.
The man upon the dais was eyeing him intently, and
Carthoris of Helium was looking straight in the other's face.
"Who be these, Jav?" asked the man of him who
crawled upon his belly along the floor.
"O Tario, most glorious Jeddak," replied Jav, "these be
strangers who came with the hordes of Torquas to our gates,
saying that they were prisoners of the green men.
They tell strange tales of cities far beyond Lothar."
"Arise, Jav," commanded Tario, "and ask these two
why they show not to Tario the respect that is his due."
Jav arose and faced the strangers. At sight of their
erect positions his face went livid. He leaped toward them.
"Creatures!" he screamed. "Down! Down upon your
bellies before the last of the jeddaks of Barsoom!"
CHAPTER VII
THE PHANTOM BOWMEN
As Jav leaped toward him Carthoris laid his hand upon
the hilt of his long-sword. The Lotharian halted. The
great apartment was empty save for the four at the dais,
yet as Jav stepped back from the menace of the Heliumite's
threatening attitude the latter found himself surrounded
by a score of bowmen.
From whence had they sprung? Both Carthoris and
Thuvia looked their astonishment.
Now the former's sword leaped from its scabbard, and
at the same instant the bowmen drew back their slim shafts.
Tario had half raised himself upon one elbow. For the
first time he saw the full figure of Thuvia, who had been
concealed behind the person of Carthoris.
"Enough!" cried the jeddak, raising a protesting hand,
but at that very instant the sword of the Heliumite cut
viciously at its nearest antagonist.
As the keen edge reached its goal Carthoris let the point
fall to the floor, as with wide eyes he stepped backward
in consternation, throwing the back of his left hand across
his brow. His steel had cut but empty air--his antagonist
had vanished--there were no bowmen in the room!
"It is evident that these are strangers," said Tario to Jav.
"Let us first determine that they knowingly affronted us
before we take measures for punishment."
Then he turned to Carthoris, but ever his gaze wandered
to the perfect lines of Thuvia's glorious figure, which the
harness of a Barsoomian princess accentuated rather
than concealed.
"Who are you," he asked, "who knows not the etiquette
of the court of the last of jeddaks?"
"I am Carthoris, Prince of Helium," replied the Heliumite.
"And this is Thuvia, Princess of Ptarth. In the
courts of our fathers men do not prostrate themselves
before royalty. Not since the First Born tore their
immortal goddess limb from limb have men crawled upon
their bellies to any throne upon Barsoom. Now think
you that the daughter of one mighty jeddak and the son
of another would so humiliate themselves?"
Tario looked at Carthoris for a long time. At last he spoke.
"There is no other jeddak upon Barsoom than Tario," he said.
"There is no other race than that of Lothar, unless the
hordes of Torquas may be dignified by such an appellation.
Lotharians are white; your skins are red. There are no
women left upon Barsoom. Your companion is a woman."
He half rose from the couch, leaning far forward and
pointing an accusing finger at Carthoris.
"You are a lie!" he shrieked. "You are both lies, and
you dare to come before Tario, last and mightiest of the
jeddaks of Barsoom, and assert your reality. Some one
shall pay well for this, Jav, and unless I mistake it is
yourself who has dared thus flippantly to trifle with the
good nature of your jeddak.
"Remove the man. Leave the woman. We shall see if both be lies.
And later, Jav, you shall suffer for your temerity. There be few
of us left, but--Komal must be fed. Go!"
Carthoris could see that Jav trembled as he prostrated
himself once more before his ruler, and then, rising,
turned toward the Prince of Helium.
"Come!" he said.
"And leave the Princess of Ptarth here alone?" cried Carthoris.
Jav brushed closely past him, whispering:
"Follow me--he cannot harm her, except to kill; and
that he can do whether you remain or not. We had best
go now--trust me."
Carthoris did not understand, but something in the
urgency of the other's tone assured him, and so he turned
away, but not without a glance toward Thuvia in which
he attempted to make her understand that it was in her
own interest that he left her.
For answer she turned her back full upon him, but
not without first throwing him such a look of contempt
that brought the scarlet to his cheek.
Then he hesitated, but Jav seized him by the wrist.
"Come!" he whispered. "Or he will have the bowmen upon you,
and this time there will be no escape. Did you not see how
futile is your steel against thin air!"
Carthoris turned unwillingly to follow. As the two left
the room he turned to his companion.
"If I may not kill thin air," he asked, "how, then,
shall I fear that thin air may kill me?"
"You saw the Torquasians fall before the bowmen?" asked Jav.
Carthoris nodded.
"So would you fall before them, and without one single
chance for self-defence or revenge."
As they talked Jav led Carthoris to a small room in one
of the numerous towers of the palace. Here were
couches, and Jav bid the Heliumite be seated.
For several minutes the Lotharian eyed his prisoner,
for such Carthoris now realized himself to be.
"I am half convinced that you are real," he said at last.
Carthoris laughed.
"Of course I am real," he said. "What caused you
to doubt it? Can you not see me, feel me?"
"So may I see and feel the bowmen," replied Jav,
"and yet we all know that they, at least, are not real."
Carthoris showed by the expression of his face his
puzzlement at each new reference to the mysterious
bowmen--the vanishing soldiery of Lothar.
"What, then, may they be?" he asked.
"You really do not know?" asked Jav.
Carthoris shook his head negatively.
"I can almost believe that you have told us the truth
and that you are really from another part of Barsoom,
or from another world. But tell me, in your own country
have you no bowmen to strike terror to the hearts of the
green hordesmen as they slay in company with the fierce
banths of war?"
"We have soldiers," replied Carthoris. "We of the red
race are all soldiers, but we have no bowmen to defend
us, such as yours. We defend ourselves."
"You go out and get killed by your enemies!" cried
Jav incredulously.
"Certainly," replied Carthoris. "How do the Lotharians?"
"You have seen," replied the other. "We send out our
deathless archers--deathless because they are lifeless,
existing only in the imaginations of our enemies. It is
really our giant minds that defend us, sending out
legions of imaginary warriors to materialize before the
mind's eye of the foe.
"They see them--they see their bows drawn back--they
see their slender arrows speed with unerring precision
toward their hearts. And they die--killed by the
power of suggestion."
"But the archers that are slain?" exclaimed Carthoris.
"You call them deathless, and yet I saw their dead bodies
piled high upon the battlefield. How may that be?"
"It is but to lend reality to the scene," replied Jav.
"We picture many of our own defenders killed that the
Torquasians may not guess that there are really no flesh
and blood creatures opposing them.
"Once that truth became implanted in their minds,
it is the theory of many of us, no longer would they fall
prey to the suggestion of the deadly arrows, for greater
would be the suggestion of the truth, and the more
powerful suggestion would prevail--it is law."
"And the banths?" questioned Carthoris. "They, too,
were but creatures of suggestion?"
"Some of them were real," replied Jav. "Those that
accompanied the archers in pursuit of the Torquasians
were unreal. Like the archers, they never returned, but,
having served their purpose, vanished with the bowmen
when the rout of the enemy was assured.
"Those that remained about the field were real. Those we
loosed as scavengers to devour the bodies of the dead of Torquas.
This thing is demanded by the realists among us. I am a realist.
Tario is an etherealist.
"The etherealists maintain that there is no such thing
as matter--that all is mind. They say that none of us exists,
except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an
intangible, invisible mentality.
"According to Tario, it is but necessary that we all
unite in imagining that there are no dead Torquasians
beneath our walls, and there will be none, nor any need
of scavenging banths."
"You, then, do not hold Tario's beliefs?" asked Carthoris.
"In part only," replied the Lotharian. "I believe, in
fact I know, that there are some truly ethereal creatures.
Tario is one, I am convinced. He has no existence except
in the imaginations of his people.
"Of course, it is the contention of all us realists that
all etherealists are but figments of the imagination.
They contend that no food is necessary, nor do they eat;
but any one of the most rudimentary intelligence must realize
that food is a necessity to creatures having actual existence."
"Yes," agreed Carthoris, "not having eaten to-day I can
readily agree with you."
"Ah, pardon me," exclaimed Jav. "Pray be seated
and satisfy your hunger," and with a wave of his hand
he indicated a bountifully laden table that had not been
there an instant before he spoke. Of that Carthoris was
positive, for he had searched the room diligently with his
eyes several times.
"It is well," continued Jav, "that you did not fall into
the hands of an etherealist. Then, indeed, would you have
gone hungry."
"But," exclaimed Carthoris, "this is not real food--it
was not here an instant since, and real food does not
materialize out of thin air."
Jav looked hurt.
"There is no real food or water in Lothar," he said;
"nor has there been for countless ages. Upon such as
you now see before you have we existed since the dawn
of history. Upon such, then, may you exist."
"But I thought you were a realist," exclaimed Carthoris.
"Indeed," cried Jav, "what more realistic than this
bounteous feast? It is just here that we differ most from
the etherealists. They claim that it is unnecessary to
imagine food; but we have found that for the maintenance
of life we must thrice daily sit down to hearty meals.
"The food that one eats is supposed to undergo certain
chemical changes during the process of digestion and
assimilation, the result, of course, being the rebuilding
of wasted tissue.
"Now we all know that mind is all, though we may differ
in the interpretation of its various manifestations.
Tario maintains that there is no such thing as substance,
all being created from the substanceless matter of the brain.
"We realists, however, know better. We know that
mind has the power to maintain substance even though it
may not be able to create substance--the latter is still
an open question. And so we know that in order to
maintain our physical bodies we must cause all our
organs properly to function.
"This we accomplish by materializing food-thoughts,
and by partaking of the food thus created. We chew, we
swallow, we digest. All our organs function precisely as
if we had partaken of material food. And what is the result?
What must be the result? The chemical changes take place
through both direct and indirect suggestion, and we live and thrive."
Carthoris eyed the food before him. It seemed real enough.
He lifted a morsel to his lips. There was substance indeed.
And flavour as well. Yes, even his palate was deceived.
Jav watched him, smiling, as he ate.
"Is it not entirely satisfying?" he asked.
"I must admit that it is," replied Carthoris. "But tell
me, how does Tario live, and the other etherealists who
maintain that food is unnecessary?"
Jav scratched his head.
"That is a question we often discuss," he replied.
"It is the strongest evidence we have of the non-existence
of the etherealists; but who may know other than Komal?"
"Who is Komal?" asked Carthoris. "I heard your jeddak speak of him."
Jav bent low toward the ear of the Heliumite, looking fearfully about
before he spoke.
"Komal is the essence," he whispered. "Even the
etherealists admit that mind itself must have substance
in order to transmit to imaginings the appearance of
substance. For if there really was no such thing as
substance it could not be suggested--what never has
been cannot be imagined. Do you follow me?"
"I am groping," replied Carthoris dryly.
"So the essence must be substance," continued Jav.
"Komal is the essence of the All, as it were. He is
maintained by substance. He eats. He eats the real.
To be explicit, he eats the realists. That is Tario's work.
"He says that inasmuch as we maintain that we alone
are real we should, to be consistent, admit that we
alone are proper food for Komal. Sometimes, as to-day,
we find other food for him. He is very fond of Torquasians."
"And Komal is a man?" asked Carthoris.
"He is All, I told you," replied Jav. "I know not how
to explain him in words that you will understand. He is
the beginning and the end. All life emanates from Komal,
since the substance which feeds the brain with imaginings
radiates from the body of Komal.
"Should Komal cease to eat, all life upon Barsoom would
cease to be. He cannot die, but he might cease to eat,
and, thus, to radiate."
"And he feeds upon the men and women of your belief?" cried Carthoris.
"Women!" exclaimed Jav. "There are no women in Lothar.
The last of the Lotharian females perished ages since,
upon that cruel and terrible journey across the
muddy plains that fringed the half-dried seas, when the
green hordes scourged us across the world to this our
last hiding-place--our impregnable fortress of Lothar.
"Scarce twenty thousand men of all the countless millions
of our race lived to reach Lothar. Among us were no
women and no children. All these had perished by the way.
"As time went on, we, too, were dying and the race
fast approaching extinction, when the Great Truth was
revealed to us, that mind is all. Many more died before
we perfected our powers, but at last we were able to
defy death when we fully understood that death was
merely a state of mind.
"Then came the creation of mind-people, or rather the
materialization of imaginings. We first put these to
practical use when the Torquasians discovered our retreat,
and fortunate for us it was that it required ages of search
upon their part before they found the single tiny entrance
to the valley of Lothar.
"That day we threw our first bowmen against them.
The intention was purely to frighten them away by the
vast numbers of bowmen which we could muster upon
our walls. All Lothar bristled with the bows and arrows
of our ethereal host.
"But the Torquasians did not frighten. They are lower
than the beasts--they know no fear. They rushed upon
our walls, and standing upon the shoulders of others
they built human approaches to the wall tops, and were
on the very point of surging in upon us and overwhelming us.
"Not an arrow had been discharged by our bowmen--we did
but cause them to run to and fro along the wall top,
screaming taunts and threats at the enemy.
"Presently I thought to attempt the thing--THE GREAT
THING. I centred all my mighty intellect upon the bowmen
of my own creation--each of us produces and directs as
many bowmen as his mentality and imagination is capable of.
"I caused them to fit arrows to their bows for the first time.
I made them take aim at the hearts of the green men.
I made the green men see all this, and then I made them
see the arrows fly, and I made them think that the points
pierced their hearts.
"It was all that was necessary. By hundreds they toppled
from our walls, and when my fellows saw what I had done
they were quick to follow my example, so that presently the
hordes of Torquas had retreated beyond the range of our arrows.
"We might have killed them at any distance, but one rule of
war we have maintained from the first--the rule of realism.
We do nothing, or rather we cause our bowmen to do nothing
within sight of the enemy that is beyond the understanding
of the foe. Otherwise they might guess the truth, and that
would be the end of us.
"But after the Torquasians had retreated beyond bowshot,
they turned upon us with their terrible rifles, and by
constant popping at us made life miserable within our walls.
"So then I bethought the scheme to hurl our bowmen
through the gates upon them. You have seen this day
how well it works. For ages they have come down upon us
at intervals, but always with the same results."
"And all this is due to your intellect, Jav?" asked
Carthoris. "I should think that you would be high in the
councils of your people."
"I am," replied Jav, proudly. "I am next to Tario."
"But why, then, your cringing manner of approaching the throne?"
"Tario demands it. He is jealous of me. He only awaits
the slightest excuse to feed me to Komal. He fears that I
may some day usurp his power."
Carthoris suddenly sprang from the table.
"Jav!" he exclaimed. "I am a beast! Here I have been
eating my fill, while the Princess of Ptarth may perchance
be still without food. Let us return and find some
means of furnishing her with nourishment."
The Lotharian shook his head.
"Tario would not permit it," he said. "He will, doubtless,
make an etherealist of her."
"But I must go to her," insisted Carthoris. "You
say that there are no women in Lothar. Then she must
be among men, and if this be so I intend to be near where
I may defend her if the need arises."
"Tario will have his way," insisted Jav. "He sent you
away and you may not return until he sends for you."
"Then I shall go without waiting to be sent for."
"Do not forget the bowmen," cautioned Jav.
"I do not forget them," replied Carthoris, but he did
not tell Jav that he remembered something else that the
Lotharian had let drop--something that was but a conjecture,
possibly, and yet one well worth pinning a forlorn hope to,
should necessity arise.
Carthoris started to leave the room. Jav stepped before him,
barring his way.
"I have learned to like you, red man," he said;
"but do not forget that Tario is still my jeddak,
and that Tario has commanded that you remain here."
Carthoris was about to reply, when there came faintly
to the ears of both a woman's cry for help.
With a sweep of his arm the Prince of Helium brushed
the Lotharian aside, and with drawn sword sprang into
the corridor without.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HALL OF DOOM
As Thu