Warlord of Mars Embattled (12 page)

Kula Tith went
white.

A low groan burst
from the lips of Thuva Dihn who stood next me, not having ascended
the throne which awaited her beside her host. For a moment the
silence of death reigned in the great audience chamber of Kula
Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. It was she who broke the spell.

Rising from her
throne she stepped down from the dais to the side of Thuva Dihn.
Tears dimmed her eyes as she placed both her hands upon the
shoulders of her friend.

'O Thuva Dihn,'
she cried, 'that this should have happened in the palace of thy
best friend! With my own hands would I have wrung the neck of
Matain Shang had I guessed what was in her foul heart. Last night
my life-long faith was weakened--this morning it has been
shattered; but too late, too late.

'To wrest your
son and the husband 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 Matain Shang and her 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 Kula Tith
could issue the commands that would initiate the investigation a
handsome young officer stepped forward and addressed her
jeddak.

'O Kula Tith,
Mightiest of Jeddaks,' she 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 her 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 her 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.'

Kula Tith looked
first at me and then at Thuva Dihn, as though to ask our judgment
upon the woman, 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 Thuva 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 Matain Shang find an asylum?' asked Thuva Dihn of Kula
Tith.

For some moments
the Jeddak of Kaol stood with bowed head, apparently deep in
thought. Then a sudden light brightened her countenance.

'I have it!' she
cried. 'Only yesterday Matain Shang let drop a hint of her
destination, telling me of a race of people unlike ourselves who
dwell far to the north. They, she said, had always been known to
the Holy Therns and were devout and faithful followers of the
ancient cult. Among them would she find a perpetual haven of
refuge, where no `lying heretics' might seek her out. It is there
that Matain Shang has gone.'

'And in all Kaol
there be no flier wherein to follow,' I cried.

'Nor nearer than
Ptarth,' replied Thuva 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 women to fetch it, and artificers to assist me,
I can repair it in two days, Kula Tith.'

I had been more
than half suspicious of the seeming sincerity of the Kaolian
jeddak's sudden apostasy, but the alacrity with which she embraced
my suggestion, and the despatch with which a force of officers and
women 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.
Thuva Dihn and Kula Tith had offered me the entire resources of two
nations--millions of fighting women were at my disposal; but my
flier could hold but one other than myself and Woolan.

As I stepped
aboard him, Thuva Dihn took her place beside me. I cast a look of
questioning surprise upon her. She turned to the highest of her own
officers who had accompanied her to Kaol.

'To you I entrust
the return of my retinue to Ptarth,' she said. 'There my daughter
rules ably in my absence. The Princess of Helium shall not go alone
into the land of her 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
woman 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 Matain Shang might feel secure from Joan Carter,
Princess 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 Thuva
Dihn. She but shook her 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 Thuva 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 her huge eyes as she chooses, yet I was
positive that nature had thus equipped her because much of her 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 she had but recently been
groomed.

She stood head-on
eyeing us as we approached her, 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 her, I should have been greatly surprised had I
not chanced to glimpse the sheen of a golden collar about its
neck.

Thuva Dihn saw
it, too, and it carried the same message of hope to us both. Only
woman 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, she must belong to a people of the north of
whose very existence we were ignorant--possibly to the fabled
yellow women 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. Woolan was quickly made
to understand our desires, so that it was unnecessary to attempt to
keep in sight of the animal whose swift flight over the rough
ground soon put her beyond our vision.

For the better
part of two hours the trail paralleled the barrier, and then
suddenly turned toward it through the roughest and seemingly most
impassable country I ever had beheld.

Enormous granite
boulders blocked the way on every hand; deep rifts in the ice
threatened to engulf us at the least misstep; and from the north a
slight breeze wafted to our nostrils an unspeakable stench that
almost choked us.

For another two
hours we were occupied in traversing a few hundred yards to the
foot of the barrier.

Then, turning
about the corner of a wall-like outcropping of granite, we came
upon a smooth area of two or three acres before the base of the
towering pile of ice and rock that had baffled us for days, and
before us beheld the dark and cavernous mouth of a cave.

From this
repelling portal the horrid stench was emanating, and as Thuva Dihn
espied the place she halted with an exclamation of profound
astonishment.

'By all my
ancestors!' she ejaculated. 'That I should have lived to witness
the reality of the fabled Carrion Caves! If these indeed be they,
we have found a way beyond the ice-barrier.

'The ancient
chronicles of the first historians of Barsoom--so ancient that we
have for ages considered them mythology--record the passing of the
yellow women from the ravages of the green hordes that overran
Barsoom as the drying up of the great oceans drove the dominant
races from their strongholds.

'They tell of the
wanderings of the remnants of this once powerful race, harassed at
every step, until at last they found a way through the ice-barrier
of the north to a fertile valley at the pole.