The warlord of Mars
At last the messenger despatched to fetch Matai Shang returned. I
craned my neck to catch the first glimpse of those who should be
following, but the messenger was alone.
Halting before the throne he addressed his jeddak in a voice that was
plainly audible to all within the chamber.
“O Kulan Tith, Mightiest of Jeddaks,” he cried, after the fashion of
the court, “your messenger returns alone, for when he reached the
apartments of the Father of Therns he found them empty, as were those
occupied by his suite.”
Kulan Tith went white.
A low groan burst from the lips of Thuvan Dihn who stood next me, not
having ascended the throne which awaited him beside his host. For a
moment the silence of death reigned in the great audience chamber of
Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. It was he who broke the spell.
Rising from his throne he stepped down from the dais to the side of
Thuvan Dihn. Tears dimmed his eyes as he placed both his hands upon the
shoulders of his friend.
“O Thuvan Dihn,” he cried, “that this should have happened in the
palace of thy best friend! With my own hands would I have wrung the
neck of Matai Shang had I guessed what was in his foul heart. Last
night my life-long faith was weakened—this morning it has been
shattered; but too late, too late.
“To wrest your daughter and the wife of this royal warrior from the
clutches of these archfiends you have but to command the resources of a
mighty nation, for all Kaol is at your disposal. What may be done? Say
the word!”
“First,” I suggested, “let us find those of your people who be
responsible for the escape of Matai Shang and his followers. Without
assistance on the part of the palace guard this thing could not have
come to pass. Seek the guilty, and from them force an explanation of
the manner of their going and the direction they have taken.”
Before Kulan Tith could issue the commands that would initiate the
investigation a handsome young officer stepped forward and addressed
his jeddak.
“O Kulan Tith, Mightiest of Jeddaks,” he said, “I alone be responsible
for this grievous error. Last night it was I who commanded the palace
guard. I was on duty in other parts of the palace during the audience
of the early morning, and knew nothing of what transpired then, so that
when the Father of Therns summoned me and explained that it was your
wish that his party be hastened from the city because of the presence
here of a deadly enemy who sought the Holy Hekkador’s life I did only
what a lifetime of training has taught me was the proper thing to do—I
obeyed him whom I believed to be the ruler of us all, mightier even
than thou, mightiest of jeddaks.
“Let the consequences and the punishment fall on me alone, for I alone
am guilty. Those others of the palace guard who assisted in the flight
did so under my instructions.”
Kulan Tith looked first at me and then at Thuvan Dihn, as though to ask
our judgment upon the man, but the error was so evidently excusable
that neither of us had any mind to see the young officer suffer for a
mistake that any might readily have made.
“How left they,” asked Thuvan Dihn, “and what direction did they take?”
“They left as they came,” replied the officer, “upon their own flier.
For some time after they had departed I watched the vessel’s lights,
which vanished finally due north.”
“Where north could Matai Shang find an asylum?” asked Thuvan Dihn of
Kulan Tith.
For some moments the Jeddak of Kaol stood with bowed head, apparently
deep in thought. Then a sudden light brightened his countenance.
“I have it!” he cried. “Only yesterday Matai Shang let drop a hint of
his destination, telling me of a race of people unlike ourselves who
dwell far to the north. They, he said, had always been known to the
Holy Therns and were devout and faithful followers of the ancient cult.
Among them would he find a perpetual haven of refuge, where no ‘lying
heretics’ might seek him out. It is there that Matai Shang has gone.”
“And in all Kaol there be no flier wherein to follow,” I cried.
“Nor nearer than Ptarth,” replied Thuvan Dihn.
“Wait!” I exclaimed, “beyond the southern fringe of this great forest
lies the wreck of the thern flier which brought me that far upon my
way. If you will loan me men to fetch it, and artificers to assist me,
I can repair it in two days, Kulan Tith.”
I had been more than half suspicious of the seeming sincerity of the
Kaolian jeddak’s sudden apostasy, but the alacrity with which he
embraced my suggestion, and the despatch with which a force of officers
and men were placed at my disposal entirely removed the last vestige of
my doubts.
Two days later the flier rested upon the top of the watchtower, ready
to depart. Thuvan Dihn and Kulan Tith had offered me the entire
resources of two nations—millions of fighting men were at my disposal;
but my flier could hold but one other than myself and Woola.
As I stepped aboard her, Thuvan Dihn took his place beside me. I cast a
look of questioning surprise upon him. He turned to the highest of his
own officers who had accompanied him to Kaol.
“To you I entrust the return of my retinue to Ptarth,” he said. “There
my son rules ably in my absence. The Prince of Helium shall not go
alone into the land of his enemies. I have spoken. Farewell!”
THROUGH THE CARRION CAVES
Straight toward the north, day and night, our destination compass led
us after the fleeing flier upon which it had remained set since I first
attuned it after leaving the thern fortress.
Early in the second night we noticed the air becoming perceptibly
colder, and from the distance we had come from the equator were assured
that we were rapidly approaching the north arctic region.
My knowledge of the efforts that had been made by countless expeditions
to explore that unknown land bade me to caution, for never had flier
returned who had passed to any considerable distance beyond the mighty
ice-barrier that fringes the southern hem of the frigid zone.
What became of them none knew—only that they passed forever out of the
sight of man into that grim and mysterious country of the pole.
The distance from the barrier to the pole was no more than a swift
flier should cover in a few hours, and so it was assumed that some
frightful catastrophe awaited those who reached the “forbidden land,”
as it had come to be called by the Martians of the outer world.
Thus it was that I went more slowly as we approached the barrier, for
it was my intention to move cautiously by day over the ice-pack that I
might discover, before I had run into a trap, if there really lay an
inhabited country at the north pole, for there only could I imagine a
spot where Matai Shang might feel secure from John Carter, Prince of
Helium.
We were flying at a snail’s pace but a few feet above the
ground—literally feeling our way along through the darkness, for both
moons had set, and the night was black with the clouds that are to be
found only at Mars’s two extremities.
Suddenly a towering wall of white rose directly in our path, and though
I threw the helm hard over, and reversed our engine, I was too late to
avoid collision. With a sickening crash we struck the high looming
obstacle three-quarters on.
The flier reeled half over; the engine stopped; as one, the patched
buoyancy tanks burst, and we plunged, headforemost, to the ground
twenty feet beneath.
Fortunately none of us was injured, and when we had disentangled
ourselves from the wreckage, and the lesser moon had burst again from
below the horizon, we found that we were at the foot of a mighty
ice-barrier, from which outcropped great patches of the granite hills
which hold it from encroaching farther toward the south.
What fate! With the journey all but completed to be thus wrecked upon
the wrong side of that precipitous and unscalable wall of rock and ice!
I looked at Thuvan Dihn. He but shook his head dejectedly.
The balance of the night we spent shivering in our inadequate sleeping
silks and furs upon the snow that lies at the foot of the ice-barrier.
With daylight my battered spirits regained something of their
accustomed hopefulness, though I must admit that there was little
enough for them to feed upon.
“What shall we do?” asked Thuvan Dihn. “How may we pass that which is
impassable?”
“First we must disprove its impassability,” I replied. “Nor shall I
admit that it is impassable before I have followed its entire circle
and stand again upon this spot, defeated. The sooner we start, the
better, for I see no other way, and it will take us more than a month
to travel the weary, frigid miles that lie before us.”
For five days of cold and suffering and privation we traversed the
rough and frozen way which lies at the foot of the ice-barrier. Fierce,
fur-bearing creatures attacked us by daylight and by dark. Never for a
moment were we safe from the sudden charge of some huge demon of the
north.
The apt was our most consistent and dangerous foe.
It is a huge, white-furred creature with six limbs, four of which,
short and heavy, carry it swiftly over the snow and ice; while the
other two, growing forward from its shoulders on either side of its
long, powerful neck, terminate in white, hairless hands, with which it
seizes and holds its prey.
Its head and mouth are more similar in appearance to those of a
hippopotamus than to any other earthly animal, except that from the
sides of the lower jawbone two mighty horns curve slightly downward
toward the front.
Its two huge eyes inspired my greatest curiosity. They extend in two
vast, oval patches from the center of the top of the cranium down
either side of the head to below the roots of the horns, so that these
weapons really grow out from the lower part of the eyes, which are
composed of several thousand ocelli each.
This eye structure seemed remarkable in a beast whose haunts were upon
a glaring field of ice and snow, and though I found upon minute
examination of several that we killed that each ocellus is furnished
with its own lid, and that the animal can at will close as many of the
facets of his huge eyes as he chooses, yet I was positive that nature
had thus equipped him because much of his life was to be spent in dark,
subterranean recesses.
Shortly after this we came upon the hugest apt that we had seen. The
creature stood fully eight feet at the shoulder, and was so sleek and
clean and glossy that I could have sworn that he had but recently been
groomed.
He stood head-on eyeing us as we approached him, for we had found it a
waste of time to attempt to escape the perpetual bestial rage which
seems to possess these demon creatures, who rove the dismal north
attacking every living thing that comes within the scope of their
far-seeing eyes.
Even when their bellies are full and they can eat no more, they kill
purely for the pleasure which they derive from taking life, and so when
this particular apt failed to charge us, and instead wheeled and
trotted away as we neared him, I should have been greatly surprised had
I not chanced to glimpse the sheen of a golden collar about its neck.
Thuvan Dihn saw it, too, and it carried the same message of hope to us
both. Only man could have placed that collar there, and as no race of
Martians of which we knew aught ever had attempted to domesticate the
ferocious apt, he must belong to a people of the north of whose very
existence we were ignorant—possibly to the fabled yellow men of
Barsoom; that once powerful race which was supposed to be extinct,
though sometimes, by theorists, thought still to exist in the frozen
north.
Simultaneously we started upon the trail of the great beast. Woola was
quickly made to understand our desires, so that it was unnecessary to