The gods of Mars
without took heart at the sound of my voice, and with shouts of “John
Carter! John Carter!” redoubled their efforts so effectually that
before the blacks could recover from their temporary demoralization
their ranks were broken and the red men had burst into the chamber.
The fight within that room, had it had but a competent chronicler,
would go down in the annals of Barsoom as a historic memorial to the
grim ferocity of her warlike people. Five hundred men fought there that
day, the black men against the red. No man asked quarter or gave it. As
though by common assent they fought, as though to determine once and
for all their right to live, in accordance with the law of the survival
of the fittest.
I think we all knew that upon the outcome of this battle would hinge
for ever the relative positions of these two races upon Barsoom. It was
a battle between the old and the new, but not for once did I question
the outcome of it. With Carthoris at my side I fought for the red men
of Barsoom and for their total emancipation from the throttling bondage
of a hideous superstition.
Back and forth across the room we surged, until the floor was ankle
deep in blood, and dead men lay so thickly there that half the time we
stood upon their bodies as we fought. As we swung toward the great
windows which overlooked the gardens of Issus a sight met my gaze which
sent a wave of exultation over me.
“Look!” I cried. “Men of the First Born, look!”
For an instant the fighting ceased, and with one accord every eye
turned in the direction I had indicated, and the sight they saw was one
no man of the First Born had ever imagined could be.
Across the gardens, from side to side, stood a wavering line of black
warriors, while beyond them and forcing them ever back was a great
horde of green warriors astride their mighty thoats. And as we watched,
one, fiercer and more grimly terrible than his fellows, rode forward
from the rear, and as he came he shouted some fierce command to his
terrible legion.
It was Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, and as he couched his great
forty-foot metal-shod lance we saw his warriors do likewise. Then it
was that we interpreted his command. Twenty yards now separated the
green men from the black line. Another word from the great Thark, and
with a wild and terrifying battle-cry the green warriors charged. For a
moment the black line held, but only for a moment—then the fearsome
beasts that bore equally terrible riders passed completely through it.
After them came utan upon utan of red men. The green horde broke to
surround the temple. The red men charged for the interior, and then we
turned to continue our interrupted battle; but our foes had vanished.
My first thought was of Dejah Thoris. Calling to Carthoris that I had
found his mother, I started on a run toward the chamber where I had
left her, with my boy close beside me. After us came those of our
little force who had survived the bloody conflict.
The moment I entered the room I saw that some one had been there since
I had left. A silk lay upon the floor. It had not been there before.
There were also a dagger and several metal ornaments strewn about as
though torn from their wearer in a struggle. But worst of all, the door
leading to the pits where I had hidden my Princess was ajar.
With a bound I was before it, and, thrusting it open, rushed within.
Dejah Thoris had vanished. I called her name aloud again and again, but
there was no response. I think in that instant I hovered upon the verge
of insanity. I do not recall what I said or did, but I know that for an
instant I was seized with the rage of a maniac.
“Issus!” I cried. “Issus! Where is Issus? Search the temple for her,
but let no man harm her but John Carter. Carthoris, where are the
apartments of Issus?”
“This way,” cried the boy, and, without waiting to know that I had
heard him, he dashed off at breakneck speed, further into the bowels of
the temple. As fast as he went, however, I was still beside him, urging
him on to greater speed.
At last we came to a great carved door, and through this Carthoris
dashed, a foot ahead of me. Within, we came upon such a scene as I had
witnessed within the temple once before—the throne of Issus, with the
reclining slaves, and about it the ranks of soldiery.
We did not even give the men a chance to draw, so quickly were we upon
them. With a single cut I struck down two in the front rank. And then
by the mere weight and momentum of my body, I rushed completely through
the two remaining ranks and sprang upon the dais beside the carved
sorapus throne.
The repulsive creature, squatting there in terror, attempted to escape
me and leap into a trap behind her. But this time I was not to be
outwitted by any such petty subterfuge. Before she had half arisen I
had grasped her by the arm, and then, as I saw the guard starting to
make a concerted rush upon me from all sides, I whipped out my dagger
and, holding it close to that vile breast, ordered them to halt.
“Back!” I cried to them. “Back! The first black foot that is planted
upon this platform sends my dagger into Issus’ heart.”
For an instant they hesitated. Then an officer ordered them back, while
from the outer corridor there swept into the throne room at the heels
of my little party of survivors a full thousand red men under Kantos
Kan, Hor Vastus, and Xodar.
“Where is Dejah Thoris?” I cried to the thing within my hands.
For a moment her eyes roved wildly about the scene beneath her. I think
that it took a moment for the true condition to make any impression
upon her—she could not at first realize that the temple had fallen
before the assault of men of the outer world. When she did, there must
have come, too, a terrible realization of what it meant to her—the loss
of power—humiliation—the exposure of the fraud and imposture which she
had for so long played upon her own people.
There was just one thing needed to complete the reality of the picture
she was seeing, and that was added by the highest noble of her
realm—the high priest of her religion—the prime minister of her
government.
“Issus, Goddess of Death, and of Life Eternal,” he cried, “arise in the
might of thy righteous wrath and with one single wave of thy omnipotent
hand strike dead thy blasphemers! Let not one escape. Issus, thy people
depend upon thee. Daughter of the Lesser Moon, thou only art
all-powerful. Thou only canst save thy people. I am done. We await thy
will. Strike!”
And then it was that she went mad. A screaming, gibbering maniac
writhed in my grasp. It bit and clawed and scratched in impotent fury.
And then it laughed a weird and terrible laughter that froze the blood.
The slave girls upon the dais shrieked and cowered away. And the thing
jumped at them and gnashed its teeth and then spat upon them from
frothing lips. God, but it was a horrid sight.
Finally, I shook the thing, hoping to recall it for a moment to
rationality.
“Where is Dejah Thoris?” I cried again.
The awful creature in my grasp mumbled inarticulately for a moment,
then a sudden gleam of cunning shot into those hideous, close-set eyes.
“Dejah Thoris? Dejah Thoris?” and then that shrill, unearthly laugh
pierced our ears once more.
“Yes, Dejah Thoris—I know. And Thuvia, and Phaidor, daughter of Matai
Shang. They each love John Carter. Ha-ah! but it is droll. Together for
a year they will meditate within the Temple of the Sun, but ere the
year is quite gone there will be no more food for them. Ho-oh! what
divine entertainment,” and she licked the froth from her cruel lips.
“There will be no more food—except each other. Ha-ah! Ha-ah!”
The horror of the suggestion nearly paralysed me. To this awful fate
the creature within my power had condemned my Princess. I trembled in
the ferocity of my rage. As a terrier shakes a rat I shook Issus,
Goddess of Life Eternal.
“Countermand your orders!” I cried. “Recall the condemned. Haste, or
you die!”
“It is too late. Ha-ah! Ha-ah!” and then she commenced her gibbering
and shrieking again.
Almost of its own volition, my dagger flew up above that putrid heart.
But something stayed my hand, and I am now glad that it did. It were a
terrible thing to have struck down a woman with one’s own hand. But a
fitter fate occurred to me for this false deity.
“First Born,” I cried, turning to those who stood within the chamber,
“you have seen to-day the impotency of Issus—the gods are impotent.
Issus is no god. She is a cruel and wicked old woman, who has deceived
and played upon you for ages. Take her. John Carter, Prince of Helium,
would not contaminate his hand with her blood,” and with that I pushed
the raving beast, whom a short half-hour before a whole world had
worshipped as divine, from the platform of her throne into the waiting
clutches of her betrayed and vengeful people.
Spying Xodar among the officers of the red men, I called him to lead me
quickly to the Temple of the Sun, and, without waiting to learn what
fate the First Born would wreak upon their goddess, I rushed from the
chamber with Xodar, Carthoris, Hor Vastus, Kantos Kan, and a score of
other red nobles.
The black led us rapidly through the inner chambers of the temple,
until we stood within the central court—a great circular space paved
with a transparent marble of exquisite whiteness. Before us rose a
golden temple wrought in the most wondrous and fanciful designs, inlaid
with diamond, ruby, sapphire, turquoise, emerald, and the thousand
nameless gems of Mars, which far transcend in loveliness and purity of
ray the most priceless stones of Earth.
“This way,” cried Xodar, leading us toward the entrance to a tunnel
which opened in the courtyard beside the temple. Just as we were on the
point of descending we heard a deep-toned roar burst from the Temple of
Issus, which we had but just quitted, and then a red man, Djor Kantos,
padwar of the fifth utan, broke from a nearby gate, crying to us to
return.
“The blacks have fired the temple,” he cried. “In a thousand places it
is burning now. Haste to the outer gardens, or you are lost.”
As he spoke we saw smoke pouring from a dozen windows looking out upon
the courtyard of the Temple of the Sun, and far above the highest
minaret of Issus hung an ever-growing pall of smoke.
“Go back! Go back!” I cried to those who had accompanied me. “The way!
Xodar; point the way and leave me. I shall reach my Princess yet.”
“Follow me, John Carter,” replied Xodar, and without waiting for my
reply he dashed down into the tunnel at our feet. At his heels I ran
down through a half-dozen tiers of galleries, until at last he led me
along a level floor at the end of which I discerned a lighted chamber.
Massive bars blocked our further progress, but beyond I saw her—my
incomparable Princess, and with her were Thuvia and Phaidor. When she
saw me she rushed toward the bars that separated us. Already the
chamber had turned upon its slow way so far that but a portion of the
opening in the temple wall was opposite the barred end of the corridor.
Slowly the interval was closing. In a short time there would be but a
tiny crack, and then even that would be closed, and for a long
Barsoomian year the chamber would slowly revolve until once more for a
brief day the aperture in its wall would pass the corridor’s end.
But in the meantime what horrible things would go on within that
chamber!
“Xodar!” I cried. “Can no power stop this awful revolving thing? Is
there none who holds the secret of these terrible bars?”
“None, I fear, whom we could fetch in time, though I shall go and make
the attempt. Wait for me here.”
After he had left I stood and talked with Dejah Thoris, and she
stretched her dear hand through those cruel bars that I might hold it
until the last moment.