Warlord of Mars Embattled (9 page)

'I am not a
thern,' I replied, and then, flinging caution to the winds, I said:
'I am Joan Carter, Princess of Helium, whose name may not be
entirely unknown to you.'

If her eyes had
gone wide when she thought that I was a Holy Thern, they fairly
popped now that she knew that I was Joan Carter. I grasped my
long-sword more firmly as I spoke the words which I was sure would
precipitate an attack, but to my surprise they precipitated nothing
of the kind.

'Joan Carter,
Princess of Helium,' she repeated slowly, as though she could not
quite grasp the truth of the statement. 'Joan Carter, the mightiest
warrior of Barsoom!'

And then she
dismounted and placed her hand upon my shoulder after the manner of
most friendly greeting upon Mars.

'It is my duty,
and it should be my pleasure, to kill you, Joan Carter,' she said,
'but always in my heart of hearts have I admired your prowess and
believed in your sincerity the while I have questioned and
disbelieved the therns and their religion.

'It would mean my
instant death were my heresy to be suspected in the court of Kula
Tith, but if I may serve you, Princess, you have but to command
Torkar Bar, Dwar of the Kaolian Road.'

Truth and honesty
were writ large upon the warrior's noble countenance, so that I
could not but have trusted her, enemy though she should have been.
Her title of Captain of the Kaolian Road explained her timely
presence in the heart of the savage forest, for every highway upon
Barsoom is patrolled by doughty warriors of the noble class, nor is
there any service more honorable than this lonely and dangerous
duty in the less frequented sections of the domains of the red
women of Barsoom.

'Torkar Bar has
already placed a great debt of gratitude upon my shoulders,' I
replied, pointing to the carcass of the creature from whose heart
she was dragging her long spear.

The red woman
smiled.

'It was fortunate
that I came when I did,' she said. 'Only this poisoned spear
pricking the very heart of a sith can kill it quickly enough to
save its prey. In this section of Kaol we are all armed with a long
sith spear, whose point is smeared with the poison of the creature
it is intended to kill; no other virus acts so quickly upon the
beast as its own.

'Look,' she
continued, drawing her dagger and making an incision in the carcass
a foot above the root of the sting, from which she presently drew
forth two sacs, each of which held fully a gallon of the deadly
liquid.

'Thus we maintain
our supply, though were it not for certain commercial uses to which
the virus is put, it would scarcely be necessary to add to our
present store, since the sith is almost extinct.

'Only
occasionally do we now run upon one. Of old, however, Kaol was
overrun with the frightful monsters that often came in herds of
twenty or thirty, darting down from above into our cities and
carrying away men, children, and even warriors.'

As she spoke I
had been wondering just how much I might safely tell this woman of
the mission which brought me to her land, but her next words
anticipated the broaching of the subject on my part, and rendered
me thankful that I had not spoken too soon.

'And now as to
yourself, Joan Carter,' she said, 'I shall not ask your business
here, nor do I wish to hear it. I have eyes and ears and ordinary
intelligence, and yesterday morning I saw the party that came to
the city of Kaol from the north in a small flier. But one thing I
ask of you, and that is: the word of Joan Carter that she
contemplates no overt act against either the nation of Kaol or its
jeddak.'

'You may have my
word as to that, Torkar Bar,' I replied.

'My way leads
along the Kaolian road, away from the city of Kaol,' she continued.
'I have seen no one--Joan Carter least of all. Nor have you seen
Torkar Bar, nor ever heard of her. You understand?'

'Perfectly,' I
replied.

She laid her hand
upon my shoulder.

'This road leads
directly into the city of Kaol,' she said. 'I wish you fortune,'
and vaulting to the back of her thoat she trotted away without even
a backward glance.

It was after dark
when Woolan and I spied through the mighty forest the great wall
which surrounds the city of Kaol.

We had traversed
the entire way without mishap or adventure, and though the few we
had met had eyed the great calot wonderingly, none had pierced the
red pigment with which I had smoothly smeared every square inch of
my body.

But to traverse
the surrounding country, and to enter the guarded city of Kula
Tith, Jeddak of Kaol, were two very different things. No woman
enters a Martian city without giving a very detailed and
satisfactory account of herself, nor did I delude myself with the
belief that I could for a moment impose upon the acumen of the
officers of the guard to whom I should be taken the moment I
applied at any one of the gates.

My only hope
seemed to lie in entering the city surreptitiously under cover of
the darkness, and once in, trust to my own wits to hide myself in
some crowded quarter where detection would be less liable to
occur.

With this idea in
view I circled the great wall, keeping within the fringe of the
forest, which is cut away for a short distance from the wall all
about the city, that no enemy may utilize the trees as a means of
ingress.

Several times I
attempted to scale the barrier at different points, but not even my
earthly muscles could overcome that cleverly constructed rampart.
To a height of thirty feet the face of the wall slanted outward,
and then for almost an equal distance it was perpendicular, above
which it slanted in again for some fifteen feet to the
crest.

And smooth!
Polished glass could not be more so. Finally I had to admit that at
last I had discovered a Barsoomian fortification which I could not
negotiate.

Discouraged, I
withdrew into the forest beside a broad highway which entered the
city from the east, and with Woolan beside me lay down to
sleep.

A HERO IN
KAOL

It was daylight
when I was awakened by the sound of stealthy movement near
by.

As I opened my
eyes Woolan, too, moved and, coming up to her haunches, stared
through the intervening brush toward the road, each hair upon her
neck stiffly erect.

At first I could
see nothing, but presently I caught a glimpse of a bit of smooth
and glossy green moving among the scarlet and purple and yellow of
the vegetation.

Motioning Woolan
to remain quietly where she was, I crept forward to investigate,
and from behind the bole of a great tree I saw a long line of the
hideous green warriors of the dead sea bottoms hiding in the dense
jungle beside the road.

As far as I could
see, the silent line of destruction and death stretched away from
the city of Kaol. There could be but one explanation. The green
women were expecting an exodus of a body of red troops from the
nearest city gate, and they were lying there in ambush to leap upon
them.

I owed no fealty
to the Jeddak of Kaol, but she was of the same race of noble red
women as my own prince, and I would not stand supinely by and see
her warriors butchered by the cruel and heartless demons of the
waste places of Barsoom.

Cautiously I
retraced my steps to where I had left Woolan, and warning her to
silence, signaled her to follow me. Making a considerable detour to
avoid the chance of falling into the hands of the green women, I
came at last to the great wall.

A hundred yards
to my right was the gate from which the troops were evidently
expected to issue, but to reach it I must pass the flank of the
green warriors within easy sight of them, and, fearing that my plan
to warn the Kaolians might thus be thwarted, I decided upon
hastening toward the left, where another gate a mile away would
give me ingress to the city.

I knew that the
word I brought would prove a splendid passport to Kaol, and I must
admit that my caution was due more to my ardent desire to make my
way into the city than to avoid a brush with the green women. As
much as I enjoy a fight, I cannot always indulge myself, and just
now I had more weighty matters to occupy my time than spilling the
blood of strange warriors.

Could I but win
beyond the city's wall, there might be opportunity in the confusion
and excitement which were sure to follow my announcement of an
invading force of green warriors to find my way within the palace
of the jeddak, where I was sure Matain Shang and her party would be
quartered.

But scarcely had
I taken a hundred steps in the direction of the farther gate when
the sound of marching troops, the clank of metal, and the squealing
of thoats just within the city apprised me of the fact that the
Kaolians were already moving toward the other gate.

There was no time
to be lost. In another moment the gate would be opened and the head
of the column pass out upon the death-bordered highway.

Turning back
toward the fateful gate, I ran rapidly along the edge of the
clearing, taking the ground in the mighty leaps that had first made
me famous upon Barsoom. Thirty, fifty, a hundred feet at a bound
are nothing for the muscles of an athletic Earth woman upon
Mars.

As I passed the
flank of the waiting green women they saw my eyes turned upon them,
and in an instant, knowing that all secrecy was at an end, those
nearest me sprang to their feet in an effort to cut me off before I
could reach the gate.

At the same
instant the mighty portal swung wide and the head of the Kaolian
column emerged. A dozen green warriors had succeeded in reaching a
point between me and the gate, but they had but little idea who it
was they had elected to detain.

I did not slacken
my speed an iota as I dashed among them, and as they fell before my
blade I could not but recall the happy memory of those other
battles when Tara Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, mightiest of Martian
green women, had stood shoulder to shoulder with me through long,
hot Martian days, as together we hewed down our enemies until the
pile of corpses about us rose higher than a tall woman's
head.

When several
pressed me too closely, there before the carved gateway of Kaol, I
leaped above their heads, and fashioning my tactics after those of
the hideous plant women of Dor, struck down upon my enemies' heads
as I passed above them.

From the city the
red warriors were rushing toward us, and from the jungle the savage
horde of green women were coming to meet them. In a moment I was in
the very center of as fierce and bloody a battle as I had ever
passed through.

These Kaolians
are most noble fighters, nor are the green women of the equator one
whit less warlike than their cold, cruel cousins of the temperate
zone. There were many times when either side might have withdrawn
without dishonor and thus ended hostilities, but from the mad
abandon with which each invariably renewed hostilities I soon came
to believe that what need not have been more than a trifling
skirmish would end only with the complete extermination of one
force or the other.

With the joy of
battle once roused within me, I took keen delight in the fray, and
that my fighting was noted by the Kaolians was often evidenced by
the shouts of applause directed at me.

If I sometimes
seem to take too great pride in my fighting ability, it must be
remembered that fighting is my vocation. If your vocation be
shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and you can do one or the
other better than your fellows, then you are a fool if you are not
proud of your ability. And so I am very proud that upon two planets
no greater fighter has ever lived than Joan Carter, Princess of
Helium.

And I outdid
myself that day to impress the fact upon the natives of Kaol, for I
wished to win a way into their hearts--and their city. Nor was I to
be disappointed in my desire.

All day we
fought, until the road was red with blood and clogged with corpses.
Back and forth along the slippery highway the tide of battle
surged, but never once was the gateway to Kaol really in
danger.

There were
breathing spells when I had a chance to converse with the red women
beside whom I fought, and once the jeddak, Kula Tith herself, laid
her hand upon my shoulder and asked my name.

'I am Dotar
Sojat,' I replied, recalling a name given me by the Tharks many
years before, from the surnames of the first two of their warriors
I had killed, which is the custom among them.

'You are a mighty
warrior, Dotar Sojat,' she replied, 'and when this day is done I
shall speak with you again in the great audience
chamber.'

And then the
fight surged upon us once more and we were separated, but my
heart's desire was attained, and it was with renewed vigor and a
joyous soul that I laid about me with my long-sword until the last
of the green women had had enough and had withdrawn toward their
distant sea bottom.

Not until the
battle was over did I learn why the red troops had sallied forth
that day. It seemed that Kula Tith was expecting a visit from a
mighty jeddak of the north--a powerful and the only ally of the
Kaolians, and it had been her wish to meet her guest a full day's
journey from Kaol.