The gods of Mars
I turned again in time to see the gate of a nearby cage thrown open and
three monstrous white apes spring into the arena. The girls shrank in a
frightened group in the centre of the enclosure.
One was on her knees with imploring hands outstretched toward Issus;
but the hideous deity only leaned further forward in keener
anticipation of the entertainment to come. At length the apes spied the
huddled knot of terror-stricken maidens and with demoniacal shrieks of
bestial frenzy, charged upon them.
A wave of mad fury surged over me. The cruel cowardliness of the
power-drunk creature whose malignant mind conceived such frightful
forms of torture stirred to their uttermost depths my resentment and my
manhood. The blood-red haze that presaged death to my foes swam before
my eyes.
The guard lolled before the unbarred gate of the cage which confined
me. What need of bars, indeed, to keep those poor victims from rushing
into the arena which the edict of the gods had appointed as their death
place!
A single blow sent the black unconscious to the ground. Snatching up
his long-sword, I sprang into the arena. The apes were almost upon the
maidens, but a couple of mighty bounds were all my earthly muscles
required to carry me to the centre of the sand-strewn floor.
For an instant silence reigned in the great amphitheatre, then a wild
shout arose from the cages of the doomed. My long-sword circled
whirring through the air, and a great ape sprawled, headless, at the
feet of the fainting girls.
The other apes turned now upon me, and as I stood facing them a sullen
roar from the audience answered the wild cheers from the cages. From
the tail of my eye I saw a score of guards rushing across the
glistening sand toward me. Then a figure broke from one of the cages
behind them. It was the youth whose personality so fascinated me.
He paused a moment before the cages, with upraised sword.
“Come, men of the outer world!” he shouted. “Let us make our deaths
worth while, and at the back of this unknown warrior turn this day’s
Tribute to Issus into an orgy of revenge that will echo through the
ages and cause black skins to blanch at each repetition of the rites of
Issus. Come! The racks without your cages are filled with blades.”
Without waiting to note the outcome of his plea, he turned and bounded
toward me. From every cage that harboured red men a thunderous shout
went up in answer to his exhortation. The inner guards went down
beneath howling mobs, and the cages vomited forth their inmates hot
with the lust to kill.
The racks that stood without were stripped of the swords with which the
prisoners were to have been armed to enter their allotted combats, and
a swarm of determined warriors sped to our support.
The great apes, towering in all their fifteen feet of height, had gone
down before my sword while the charging guards were still some distance
away. Close behind them pursued the youth. At my back were the young
girls, and as it was in their service that I fought, I remained
standing there to meet my inevitable death, but with the determination
to give such an account of myself as would long be remembered in the
land of the First Born.
I noted the marvellous speed of the young red man as he raced after the
guards. Never had I seen such speed in any Martian. His leaps and
bounds were little short of those which my earthly muscles had produced
to create such awe and respect on the part of the green Martians into
whose hands I had fallen on that long-gone day that had seen my first
advent upon Mars.
The guards had not reached me when he fell upon them from the rear, and
as they turned, thinking from the fierceness of his onslaught that a
dozen were attacking them, I rushed them from my side.
In the rapid fighting that followed I had little chance to note aught
else than the movements of my immediate adversaries, but now and again
I caught a fleeting glimpse of a purring sword and a lightly springing
figure of sinewy steel that filled my heart with a strange yearning and
a mighty but unaccountable pride.
On the handsome face of the boy a grim smile played, and ever and anon
he threw a taunting challenge to the foes that faced him. In this and
other ways his manner of fighting was similar to that which had always
marked me on the field of combat.
Perhaps it was this vague likeness which made me love the boy, while
the awful havoc that his sword played amongst the blacks filled my soul
with a tremendous respect for him.
For my part, I was fighting as I had fought a thousand times before—now
sidestepping a wicked thrust, now stepping quickly in to let my sword’s
point drink deep in a foeman’s heart, before it buried itself in the
throat of his companion.
We were having a merry time of it, we two, when a great body of Issus’
own guards were ordered into the arena. On they came with fierce cries,
while from every side the armed prisoners swarmed upon them.
For half an hour it was as though all hell had broken loose. In the
walled confines of the arena we fought in an inextricable mass—howling,
cursing, blood-streaked demons; and ever the sword of the young red man
flashed beside me.
Slowly and by repeated commands I had succeeded in drawing the
prisoners into a rough formation about us, so that at last we fought
formed into a rude circle in the centre of which were the doomed maids.
Many had gone down on both sides, but by far the greater havoc had been
wrought in the ranks of the guards of Issus. I could see messengers
running swiftly through the audience, and as they passed the nobles
there unsheathed their swords and sprang into the arena. They were
going to annihilate us by force of numbers—that was quite evidently
their plan.
I caught a glimpse of Issus leaning far forward upon her throne, her
hideous countenance distorted in a horrid grimace of hate and rage, in
which I thought I could distinguish an expression of fear. It was that
face that inspired me to the thing that followed.
Quickly I ordered fifty of the prisoners to drop back behind us and
form a new circle about the maidens.
“Remain and protect them until I return,” I commanded.
Then, turning to those who formed the outer line, I cried, “Down with
Issus! Follow me to the throne; we will reap vengeance where vengeance
is deserved.”
The youth at my side was the first to take up the cry of “Down with
Issus!” and then at my back and from all sides rose a hoarse shout, “To
the throne! To the throne!”
As one man we moved, an irresistible fighting mass, over the bodies of
dead and dying foes toward the gorgeous throne of the Martian deity.
Hordes of the doughtiest fighting-men of the First Born poured from the
audience to check our progress. We mowed them down before us as they
had been paper men.
“To the seats, some of you!” I cried as we approached the arena’s
barrier wall. “Ten of us can take the throne,” for I had seen that
Issus’ guards had for the most part entered the fray within the arena.
On both sides of me the prisoners broke to left and right for the
seats, vaulting the low wall with dripping swords lusting for the
crowded victims who awaited them.
In another moment the entire amphitheatre was filled with the shrieks
of the dying and the wounded, mingled with the clash of arms and
triumphant shouts of the victors.
Side by side the young red man and I, with perhaps a dozen others,
fought our way to the foot of the throne. The remaining guards,
reinforced by the high dignitaries and nobles of the First Born, closed
in between us and Issus, who sat leaning far forward upon her carved
sorapus bench, now screaming high-pitched commands to her following,
now hurling blighting curses upon those who sought to desecrate her
godhood.
The frightened slaves about her trembled in wide-eyed expectancy,
knowing not whether to pray for our victory or our defeat. Several
among them, proud daughters no doubt of some of Barsoom’s noblest
warriors, snatched swords from the hands of the fallen and fell upon
the guards of Issus, but they were soon cut down; glorious martyrs to a
hopeless cause.
The men with us fought well, but never since Tars Tarkas and I fought
out that long, hot afternoon shoulder to shoulder against the hordes of
Warhoon in the dead sea bottom before Thark, had I seen two men fight
to such good purpose and with such unconquerable ferocity as the young
red man and I fought that day before the throne of Issus, Goddess of
Death, and of Life Eternal.
Man by man those who stood between us and the carven sorapus wood bench
went down before our blades. Others swarmed in to fill the breach, but
inch by inch, foot by foot we won nearer and nearer to our goal.
Presently a cry went up from a section of the stands near by—“Rise
slaves!” “Rise slaves!” it rose and fell until it swelled to a mighty
volume of sound that swept in great billows around the entire
amphitheatre.
For an instant, as though by common assent, we ceased our fighting to
look for the meaning of this new note nor did it take but a moment to
translate its significance. In all parts of the structure the female
slaves were falling upon their masters with whatever weapon came first
to hand. A dagger snatched from the harness of her mistress was waved
aloft by some fair slave, its shimmering blade crimson with the
lifeblood of its owner; swords plucked from the bodies of the dead
about them; heavy ornaments which could be turned into bludgeons—such
were the implements with which these fair women wreaked the long-pent
vengeance which at best could but partially recompense them for the
unspeakable cruelties and indignities which their black masters had
heaped upon them. And those who could find no other weapons used their
strong fingers and their gleaming teeth.
It was at once a sight to make one shudder and to cheer; but in a brief
second we were engaged once more in our own battle with only the
unquenchable battle cry of the women to remind us that they still
fought—“Rise slaves!” “Rise slaves!”
Only a single thin rank of men now stood between us and Issus. Her face
was blue with terror. Foam flecked her lips. She seemed too paralysed
with fear to move. Only the youth and I fought now. The others all had
fallen, and I was like to have gone down too from a nasty long-sword
cut had not a hand reached out from behind my adversary and clutched
his elbow as the blade was falling upon me. The youth sprang to my side
and ran his sword through the fellow before he could recover to deliver
another blow.
I should have died even then but for that as my sword was tight wedged
in the breastbone of a Dator of the First Born. As the fellow went down
I snatched his sword from him and over his prostrate body looked into
the eyes of the one whose quick hand had saved me from the first cut of
his sword—it was Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang.
“Fly, my Prince!” she cried. “It is useless to fight them longer. All
within the arena are dead. All who charged the throne are dead but you
and this youth. Only among the seats are there left any of your
fighting-men, and they and the slave women are fast being cut down.
Listen! You can scarce hear the battle-cry of the women now for nearly
all are dead. For each one of you there are ten thousand blacks within
the domains of the First Born. Break for the open and the sea of Korus.
With your mighty sword arm you may yet win to the Golden Cliffs and the
templed gardens of the Holy Therns. There tell your story to Matai
Shang, my father. He will keep you, and together you may find a way to
rescue me. Fly while there is yet a bare chance for flight.”
But that was not my mission, nor could I see much to be preferred in
the cruel hospitality of the Holy Therns to that of the First Born.