The warlord of Mars
of Thurid and Dejah Thoris in the new-fallen snow. Now, at last, was my
task an easy one, for though the going was rough in the extreme, I was
no longer vexed by doubts as to the direction I should follow, or
harassed by darkness or hidden dangers.
Through a snow-covered canyon the way led up toward the summit of low
hills. Beyond these it dipped again into another canyon, only to rise a
quarter-mile farther on toward a pass which skirted the flank of a
rocky hill.
I could see by the signs of those who had gone before that when Dejah
Thoris had walked she had been continually holding back, and that the
black man had been compelled to drag her. For other stretches only his
foot-prints were visible, deep and close together in the heavy snow,
and I knew from these signs that then he had been forced to carry her,
and I could well imagine that she had fought him fiercely every step of
the way.
As I came round the jutting promontory of the hill’s shoulder I saw
that which quickened my pulses and set my heart to beating high, for
within a tiny basin between the crest of this hill and the next stood
four people before the mouth of a great cave, and beside them upon the
gleaming snow rested a flier which had evidently but just been dragged
from its hiding place.
The four were Dejah Thoris, Phaidor, Thurid, and Matai Shang. The two
men were engaged in a heated argument—the Father of Therns threatening,
while the black scoffed at him as he went about the work at which he
was engaged.
As I crept toward them cautiously that I might come as near as possible
before being discovered, I saw that finally the men appeared to have
reached some sort of a compromise, for with Phaidor’s assistance they
both set about dragging the resisting Dejah Thoris to the flier’s deck.
Here they made her fast, and then both again descended to the ground to
complete the preparations for departure. Phaidor entered the small
cabin upon the vessel’s deck.
I had come to within a quarter of a mile of them when Matai Shang
espied me. I saw him seize Thurid by the shoulder, wheeling him around
in my direction as he pointed to where I was now plainly visible, for
the moment that I knew I had been perceived I cast aside every attempt
at stealth and broke into a mad race for the flier.
The two redoubled their efforts at the propeller at which they were
working, and which very evidently was being replaced after having been
removed for some purpose of repair.
They had the thing completed before I had covered half the distance
that lay between me and them, and then both made a rush for the
boarding-ladder.
Thurid was the first to reach it, and with the agility of a monkey
clambered swiftly to the boat’s deck, where a touch of the button
controlling the buoyancy tanks sent the craft slowly upward, though not
with the speed that marks the well-conditioned flier.
I was still some hundred yards away as I saw them rising from my grasp.
Back by the city of Kadabra lay a great fleet of mighty fliers—the
ships of Helium and Ptarth that I had saved from destruction earlier in
the day; but before ever I could reach them Thurid could easily make
good his escape.
As I ran I saw Matai Shang clambering up the swaying, swinging ladder
toward the deck, while above him leaned the evil face of the First
Born. A trailing rope from the vessel’s stern put new hope in me, for
if I could but reach it before it whipped too high above my head there
was yet a chance to gain the deck by its slender aid.
That there was something radically wrong with the flier was evident
from its lack of buoyancy, and the further fact that though Thurid had
turned twice to the starting lever the boat still hung motionless in
the air, except for a slight drifting with a low breeze from the north.
Now Matai Shang was close to the gunwale. A long, claw-like hand was
reaching up to grasp the metal rail.
Thurid leaned farther down toward his co-conspirator.
Suddenly a raised dagger gleamed in the upflung hand of the black. Down
it drove toward the white face of the Father of Therns. With a loud
shriek of fear the Holy Hekkador grasped frantically at that menacing
arm.
I was almost to the trailing rope by now. The craft was still rising
slowly, the while it drifted from me. Then I stumbled on the icy way,
striking my head upon a rock as I fell sprawling but an arm’s length
from the rope, the end of which was now just leaving the ground.
With the blow upon my head came unconsciousness.
It could not have been more than a few seconds that I lay senseless
there upon the northern ice, while all that was dearest to me drifted
farther from my reach in the clutches of that black fiend, for when I
opened my eyes Thurid and Matai Shang yet battled at the ladder’s top,
and the flier drifted but a hundred yards farther to the south—but the
end of the trailing rope was now a good thirty feet above the ground.
Goaded to madness by the cruel misfortune that had tripped me when
success was almost within my grasp, I tore frantically across the
intervening space, and just beneath the rope’s dangling end I put my
earthly muscles to the supreme test.
With a mighty, catlike bound I sprang upward toward that slender
strand—the only avenue which yet remained that could carry me to my
vanishing love.
A foot above its lowest end my fingers closed. Tightly as I clung I
felt the rope slipping, slipping through my grasp. I tried to raise my
free hand to take a second hold above my first, but the change of
position that resulted caused me to slip more rapidly toward the end of
the rope.
Slowly I felt the tantalizing thing escaping me. In a moment all that I
had gained would be lost—then my fingers reached a knot at the very end
of the rope and slipped no more.
With a prayer of gratitude upon my lips I scrambled upward toward the
boat’s deck. I could not see Thurid and Matai Shang now, but I heard
the sounds of conflict and thus knew that they still fought—the thern
for his life and the black for the increased buoyancy that relief from
the weight of even a single body would give the craft.
Should Matai Shang die before I reached the deck my chances of ever
reaching it would be slender indeed, for the black dator need but cut
the rope above me to be freed from me forever, for the vessel had
drifted across the brink of a chasm into whose yawning depths my body
would drop to be crushed to a shapeless pulp should Thurid reach the
rope now.
At last my hand closed upon the ship’s rail and that very instant a
horrid shriek rang out below me that sent my blood cold and turned my
horrified eyes downward to a shrieking, hurtling, twisting thing that
shot downward into the awful chasm beneath me.
It was Matai Shang, Holy Hekkador, Father of Therns, gone to his last
accounting.
Then my head came above the deck and I saw Thurid, dagger in hand,
leaping toward me. He was opposite the forward end of the cabin, while
I was attempting to clamber aboard near the vessel’s stern. But a few
paces lay between us. No power on earth could raise me to that deck
before the infuriated black would be upon me.
My end had come. I knew it; but had there been a doubt in my mind the
nasty leer of triumph upon that wicked face would have convinced me.
Beyond Thurid I could see my Dejah Thoris, wide-eyed and horrified,
struggling at her bonds. That she should be forced to witness my awful
death made my bitter fate seem doubly cruel.
I ceased my efforts to climb across the gunwale. Instead I took a firm
grasp upon the rail with my left hand and drew my dagger.
I should at least die as I had lived—fighting.
As Thurid came opposite the cabin’s doorway a new element projected
itself into the grim tragedy of the air that was being enacted upon the
deck of Matai Shang’s disabled flier.
It was Phaidor.
With flushed face and disheveled hair, and eyes that betrayed the
recent presence of mortal tears—above which this proud goddess had
always held herself—she leaped to the deck directly before me.
In her hand was a long, slim dagger. I cast a last look upon my beloved
princess, smiling, as men should who are about to die. Then I turned my
face up toward Phaidor—waiting for the blow.
Never have I seen that beautiful face more beautiful than it was at
that moment. It seemed incredible that one so lovely could yet harbor
within her fair bosom a heart so cruel and relentless, and today there
was a new expression in her wondrous eyes that I never before had seen
there—an unfamiliar softness, and a look of suffering.
Thurid was beside her now—pushing past to reach me first, and then what
happened happened so quickly that it was all over before I could
realize the truth of it.
Phaidor’s slim hand shot out to close upon the black’s dagger wrist.
Her right hand went high with its gleaming blade.
“That for Matai Shang!” she cried, and she buried her blade deep in the
dator’s breast. “That for the wrong you would have done Dejah Thoris!”
and again the sharp steel sank into the bloody flesh.
“And that, and that, and that!” she shrieked, “for John Carter, Prince
of Helium,” and with each word her sharp point pierced the vile heart
of the great villain. Then, with a vindictive shove she cast the
carcass of the First Born from the deck to fall in awful silence after
the body of his victim.
I had been so paralyzed by surprise that I had made no move to reach
the deck during the awe-inspiring scene which I had just witnessed, and
now I was to be still further amazed by her next act, for Phaidor
extended her hand to me and assisted me to the deck, where I stood
gazing at her in unconcealed and stupefied wonderment.
A wan smile touched her lips—it was not the cruel and haughty smile of
the goddess with which I was familiar. “You wonder, John Carter,” she
said, “what strange thing has wrought this change in me? I will tell
you. It is love—love of you,” and when I darkened my brows in
disapproval of her words she raised an appealing hand.
“Wait,” she said. “It is a different love from mine—it is the love of
your princess, Dejah Thoris, for you that has taught me what true love
may be—what it should be, and how far from real love was my selfish and
jealous passion for you.
“Now I am different. Now could I love as Dejah Thoris loves, and so my
only happiness can be to know that you and she are once more united,
for in her alone can you find true happiness.
“But I am unhappy because of the wickedness that I have wrought. I have
many sins to expiate, and though I be deathless, life is all too short
for the atonement.
“But there is another way, and if Phaidor, daughter of the Holy
Hekkador of the Holy Therns, has sinned she has this day already made
partial reparation, and lest you doubt the sincerity of her
protestations and her avowal of a new love that embraces Dejah Thoris
also, she will prove her sincerity in the only way that lies
open—having saved you for another, Phaidor leaves you to her embraces.”
With her last word she turned and leaped from the vessel’s deck into
the abyss below.
With a cry of horror I sprang forward in a vain attempt to save the
life that for two years I would so gladly have seen extinguished. I was
too late.
With tear-dimmed eyes I turned away that I might not see the awful
sight beneath.
A moment later I had struck the bonds from Dejah Thoris, and as her
dear arms went about my neck and her perfect lips pressed to mine I
forgot the horrors that I had witnessed and the suffering that I had
endured in the rapture of my reward.
THE NEW RULER
The flier upon whose deck Dejah Thoris and I found ourselves after
twelve long years of separation proved entirely useless. Her buoyancy