The Gods Of Mars (8 page)

Thuvia, the girl whom I had first freed, soon had the others at
liberty. Tars Tarkas and I stripped the bodies of the two therns of
their weapons, which included swords, daggers, and two revolvers of the
curious and deadly type manufactured by the red Martians.

We distributed the weapons as far as they would go among our followers,
giving the firearms to two of the women; Thuvia being one so armed.

With the latter as our guide we set off rapidly but cautiously through
a maze of passages, crossing great chambers hewn from the solid metal
of the cliff, following winding corridors, ascending steep inclines,
and now and again concealing ourselves in dark recesses at the sound of
approaching footsteps.

Our destination, Thuvia said, was a distant storeroom where arms and
ammunition in plenty might be found. From there she was to lead us to
the summit of the cliffs, from where it would require both wondrous wit
and mighty fighting to win our way through the very heart of the
stronghold of the Holy Therns to the world without.

“And even then, O Prince,” she cried, “the arm of the Holy Thern is
long. It reaches to every nation of Barsoom. His secret temples are
hidden in the heart of every community. Wherever we go should we
escape we shall find that word of our coming has preceded us, and death
awaits us before we may pollute the air with our blasphemies.”

We had proceeded for possibly an hour without serious interruption, and
Thuvia had just whispered to me that we were approaching our first
destination, when on entering a great chamber we came upon a man,
evidently a thern.

He wore in addition to his leathern trappings and jewelled ornaments a
great circlet of gold about his brow in the exact centre of which was
set an immense stone, the exact counterpart of that which I had seen
upon the breast of the little old man at the atmosphere plant nearly
twenty years before.

It is the one priceless jewel of Barsoom. Only two are known to exist,
and these were worn as the insignia of their rank and position by the
two old men in whose charge was placed the operation of the great
engines which pump the artificial atmosphere to all parts of Mars from
the huge atmosphere plant, the secret to whose mighty portals placed in
my possession the ability to save from immediate extinction the life of
a whole world.

The stone worn by the thern who confronted us was of about the same
size as that which I had seen before; an inch in diameter I should say.
It scintillated nine different and distinct rays; the seven primary
colours of our earthly prism and the two rays which are unknown upon
Earth, but whose wondrous beauty is indescribable.

As the thern saw us his eyes narrowed to two nasty slits.

“Stop!” he cried. “What means this, Thuvia?”

For answer the girl raised her revolver and fired point-blank at him.
Without a sound he sank to the earth, dead.

“Beast!” she hissed. “After all these years I am at last revenged.”

Then as she turned toward me, evidently with a word of explanation on
her lips, her eyes suddenly widened as they rested upon me, and with a
little exclamation she started toward me.

“O Prince,” she cried, “Fate is indeed kind to us. The way is still
difficult, but through this vile thing upon the floor we may yet win to
the outer world. Notest thou not the remarkable resemblance between
this Holy Thern and thyself?”

The man was indeed of my precise stature, nor were his eyes and
features unlike mine; but his hair was a mass of flowing yellow locks,
like those of the two I had killed, while mine is black and close
cropped.

“What of the resemblance?” I asked the girl Thuvia. “Do you wish me
with my black, short hair to pose as a yellow-haired priest of this
infernal cult?”

She smiled, and for answer approached the body of the man she had
slain, and kneeling beside it removed the circlet of gold from the
forehead, and then to my utter amazement lifted the entire scalp bodily
from the corpse’s head.

Rising, she advanced to my side and placing the yellow wig over my
black hair, crowned me with the golden circlet set with the magnificent
gem.

“Now don his harness, Prince,” she said, “and you may pass where you
will in the realms of the therns, for Sator Throg was a Holy Thern of
the Tenth Cycle, and mighty among his kind.”

As I stooped to the dead man to do her bidding I noted that not a hair
grew upon his head, which was quite as bald as an egg.

“They are all thus from birth,” explained Thuvia noting my surprise.
“The race from which they sprang were crowned with a luxuriant growth
of golden hair, but for many ages the present race has been entirely
bald. The wig, however, has come to be a part of their apparel, and so
important a part do they consider it that it is cause for the deepest
disgrace were a thern to appear in public without it.”

In another moment I stood garbed in the habiliments of a Holy Thern.

At Thuvia’s suggestion two of the released prisoners bore the body of
the dead thern upon their shoulders with us as we continued our journey
toward the storeroom, which we reached without further mishap.

Here the keys which Thuvia bore from the dead thern of the prison vault
were the means of giving us immediate entrance to the chamber, and very
quickly we were thoroughly outfitted with arms and ammunition.

By this time I was so thoroughly fagged out that I could go no further,
so I threw myself upon the floor, bidding Tars Tarkas to do likewise,
and cautioning two of the released prisoners to keep careful watch.

In an instant I was asleep.

How long I slept upon the floor of the storeroom I do not know, but it
must have been many hours.

I was awakened with a start by cries of alarm, and scarce were my eyes
opened, nor had I yet sufficiently collected my wits to quite realize
where I was, when a fusillade of shots rang out, reverberating through
the subterranean corridors in a series of deafening echoes.

In an instant I was upon my feet. A dozen lesser therns confronted us
from a large doorway at the opposite end of the storeroom from which we
had entered. About me lay the bodies of my companions, with the
exception of Thuvia and Tars Tarkas, who, like myself, had been asleep
upon the floor and thus escaped the first raking fire.

As I gained my feet the therns lowered their wicked rifles, their faces
distorted in mingled chagrin, consternation, and alarm.

Instantly I rose to the occasion.

“What means this?” I cried in tones of fierce anger. “Is Sator Throg
to be murdered by his own vassals?”

“Have mercy, O Master of the Tenth Cycle!” cried one of the fellows,
while the others edged toward the doorway as though to attempt a
surreptitious escape from the presence of the mighty one.

“Ask them their mission here,” whispered Thuvia at my elbow.

“What do you here, fellows?” I cried.

“Two from the outer world are at large within the dominions of the
therns. We sought them at the command of the Father of Therns. One
was white with black hair, the other a huge green warrior,” and here
the fellow cast a suspicious glance toward Tars Tarkas.

“Here, then, is one of them,” spoke Thuvia, indicating the Thark, “and
if you will look upon this dead man by the door perhaps you will
recognize the other. It was left for Sator Throg and his poor slaves
to accomplish what the lesser therns of the guard were unable to do—we
have killed one and captured the other; for this had Sator Throg given
us our liberty. And now in your stupidity have you come and killed all
but myself, and like to have killed the mighty Sator Throg himself.”

The men looked very sheepish and very scared.

“Had they not better throw these bodies to the plant men and then
return to their quarters, O Mighty One?” asked Thuvia of me.

“Yes; do as Thuvia bids you,” I said.

As the men picked up the bodies I noticed that the one who stooped to
gather up the late Sator Throg started as his closer scrutiny fell upon
the upturned face, and then the fellow stole a furtive, sneaking glance
in my direction from the corner of his eye.

That he suspicioned something of the truth I could have sworn; but that
it was only a suspicion which he did not dare voice was evidenced by
his silence.

Again, as he bore the body from the room, he shot a quick but searching
glance toward me, and then his eyes fell once more upon the bald and
shiny dome of the dead man in his arms. The last fleeting glimpse that
I obtained of his profile as he passed from my sight without the
chamber revealed a cunning smile of triumph upon his lips.

Only Tars Tarkas, Thuvia, and I were left. The fatal marksmanship of
the therns had snatched from our companions whatever slender chance
they had of gaining the perilous freedom of the world without.

So soon as the last of the gruesome procession had disappeared the girl
urged us to take up our flight once more.

She, too, had noted the questioning attitude of the thern who had borne
Sator Throg away.

“It bodes no good for us, O Prince,” she said. “For even though this
fellow dared not chance accusing you in error, there be those above
with power sufficient to demand a closer scrutiny, and that, Prince
would indeed prove fatal.”

I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed that in any event the outcome of
our plight must end in death. I was refreshed from my sleep, but still
weak from loss of blood. My wounds were painful. No medicinal aid
seemed possible. How I longed for the almost miraculous healing power
of the strange salves and lotions of the green Martian women. In an
hour they would have had me as new.

I was discouraged. Never had a feeling of such utter hopelessness come
over me in the face of danger. Then the long flowing, yellow locks of
the Holy Thern, caught by some vagrant draught, blew about my face.

Might they not still open the way of freedom? If we acted in time,
might we not even yet escape before the general alarm was sounded? We
could at least try.

“What will the fellow do first, Thuvia?” I asked. “How long will it be
before they may return for us?”

“He will go directly to the Father of Therns, old Matai Shang. He may
have to wait for an audience, but since he is very high among the
lesser therns, in fact as a thorian among them, it will not be long
that Matai Shang will keep him waiting.

“Then if the Father of Therns puts credence in his story, another hour
will see the galleries and chambers, the courts and gardens, filled
with searchers.”

“What we do then must be done within an hour. What is the best way,
Thuvia, the shortest way out of this celestial Hades?”

“Straight to the top of the cliffs, Prince,” she replied, “and then
through the gardens to the inner courts. From there our way will lie
within the temples of the therns and across them to the outer court.
Then the ramparts—O Prince, it is hopeless. Ten thousand warriors
could not hew a way to liberty from out this awful place.

“Since the beginning of time, little by little, stone by stone, have
the therns been ever adding to the defences of their stronghold. A
continuous line of impregnable fortifications circles the outer slopes
of the Mountains of Otz.

“Within the temples that lie behind the ramparts a million fighting-men
are ever ready. The courts and gardens are filled with slaves, with
women and with children.

“None could go a stone’s throw without detection.”

“If there is no other way, Thuvia, why dwell upon the difficulties of
this. We must face them.”

“Can we not better make the attempt after dark?” asked Tars Tarkas.
“There would seem to be no chance by day.”

“There would be a little better chance by night, but even then the
ramparts are well guarded; possibly better than by day. There are
fewer abroad in the courts and gardens, though,” said Thuvia.

“What is the hour?” I asked.

“It was midnight when you released me from my chains,” said Thuvia.
“Two hours later we reached the storeroom. There you slept for
fourteen hours. It must now be nearly sundown again. Come, we will go
to some nearby window in the cliff and make sure.”

So saying, she led the way through winding corridors until at a sudden
turn we came upon an opening which overlooked the Valley Dor.

At our right the sun was setting, a huge red orb, below the western
range of Otz. A little below us stood the Holy Thern on watch upon his
balcony. His scarlet robe of office was pulled tightly about him in
anticipation of the cold that comes so suddenly with darkness as the
sun sets. So rare is the atmosphere of Mars that it absorbs very
little heat from the sun. During the daylight hours it is always
extremely hot; at night it is intensely cold. Nor does the thin
atmosphere refract the sun’s rays or diffuse its light as upon Earth.
There is no twilight on Mars. When the great orb of day disappears
beneath the horizon the effect is precisely as that of the
extinguishing of a single lamp within a chamber. From brilliant light
you are plunged without warning into utter darkness. Then the moons
come; the mysterious, magic moons of Mars, hurtling like monster
meteors low across the face of the planet.

The declining sun lighted brilliantly the eastern banks of Korus, the
crimson sward, the gorgeous forest. Beneath the trees we saw feeding
many herds of plant men. The adults stood aloft upon their toes and
their mighty tails, their talons pruning every available leaf and twig.
It was then that I understood the careful trimming of the trees which
had led me to form the mistaken idea when first I opened my eyes upon
the grove that it was the playground of a civilized people.

As we watched, our eyes wandered to the rolling Iss, which issued from
the base of the cliffs beneath us. Presently there emerged from the
mountain a canoe laden with lost souls from the outer world. There
were a dozen of them. All were of the highly civilized and cultured
race of red men who are dominant on Mars.