Thuvia, Maid of Mars
by
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Part 1 out of 4
This etext was typed by Judith Boss, proofread by Charles Keller
Thuvia, Maid of Mars
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
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;
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